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polynymph · 5 years

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What Once Was Chapter 6

This definitely wasn’t supposed to take 2 weeks to write, I apologize for that. I hope it’s worth the wait! Thanks for reading!

TW: Could be considered slightly NSFW with brief mention of nudity, brief mention of scars

Armyah skid on gravel beneath her sandals. She had half a mind to kick them off, but she didn’t want to give the guards more of a head start than they already had. Dawn. She had until dawn to catch either the rabbit or the deer character to get her Emperor card back. After she has the card back in her possession, then she’ll decide whether to stay in the palace or not. As of right now, it was looking more toward the latter. She followed the sound of rustling and snapping branches until she met a path that only ran left and right. To the left she saw the flash of the deer guard rounding the far corner, the look on his face was particularly nervous. She bolted after him, but it didn’t take her long to realize she was far outclassed in speed, especially with her disadvantage. Even at a sprint, she could barely catch a glimpse of her target before they disappeared from her line of sight. The magician’s mounting frustration spurs her on as she presses further into the garden.

Armyah continues onward until she’s enveloped by a fold of green canopy; fronds obscure all but an arm’s length in front of her. Heart racing, she hands swept the springy vines out of her path. She nearly trips over a wide root that stuck out precariously from the dirt. Finally, she reaches the edge of the garden; a tall lemonstone wall stretches toward the late afternoon sky…a dead end. Her hand trails along the powdery stone and she walks with the barrier. It leads her out of the throng of bushes and trees to a quaint, mossy path. Dusty tools, shears, and old buckets are leaning against the wall, obviously not meant for the public eye. A servant’s path, narrow, but clear. She can see a ways down, but the deer guard is nowhere in sight. Hand never leaving the lemonstone, she lags in pace. A tingling in the magician’s fingertips distracts her from the current task and it grows stronger as she walks on. A short distance ahead she finds a great marble archway with intricate stone-carved roses decorating it. The top had long since collapsed, leaving only the supports. The faint buzzing in the back of her mind tells her this is the source of magic she was feeling moments before. You can see straight through to the wall behind it, and on that wall; a door. Small, rusty, and unassuming pushes open without resistance. Beyond it, a valley with high grass dancing in the gentle breeze. A breath catches in her throat; she could leave. Rolling slopes of meadow and sweet-smelling fields called her name. The terrain would be rough, more so in heels, but she spotted a few shepherd’s trails. What would happen if she just left? Would anyone look for her? Would the Countess send out a search party? A surge of anger flooded through the fortune-teller at the mere thought of her ladyship. Without a moment’s hesitation, she storms through the door and lets it swing shut with a metallic slam that echoes through the valley.

A curtain of coiling vines dropped down before the exit, smothering it from sight. Armyah takes a few heaving breaths as she looks toward the untamed hills. Wind sweeps through the thin fabric of her dress and she shivers despite the long sleeves. She walks as briskly as she can down the steep decline, golden grass tickling her bare calves. She’s free…for now, at least; whatever that may mean. She takes careful, nervous glances behind her. She half expects a bell to sound, alerting everyone she escaped. She wasn’t being held prisoner there, but she isn’t one hundred percent sure she is allowed to leave. What about Asra’s Emperor card? Will he be upset that she lost it? Technically, the Countess’s guard has it. Maybe she’ll wait for him to come home and she’ll explain the situation. They can come up with a course of action together. For now, she tried to even her breaths and calm her heart rate. ‘One step at a time,’ she thought. First, she had to get back to the city.

It’s almost dark once Armyah arrives into town, but she doesn’t recognize the area she’s in. Her breath grows short as tremors of anxiety radiate through her body. She hugs her arms around her waist and casts an aura of protective energy. It won’t hide her, but it will allow her to travel unbothered. There isn’t a soul in sight but a group of spindly cats picking over piles of charred, oily fish bones. They pay the quaking woman no mind as she walks between their inky forms. Then, the musical sound of rushing water catches her ear. It’s not familiar, but it’s different and that’s enough for the fortune-teller at this point. The dull roar leads her to a narrow, slippery street layered with shabby cobblestone. Clustered, worn apartments line the passage, the open windows cast an orange light onto the dark mist below. The air is full of loud conversations, but nothing clear enough to follow a single discussion. Suddenly, a door in front of her swings open, casting a warm light down three jagged stone steps. Raucous laughter and music spill out of the doorway while boots clip jauntily down the stairs.

“Oh, I’ll be right back!” a voice called to someone inside, “Just stepping out for some air!” The door swings shut and the muscles in Armyah’s legs feel as if they liquefied. Doctor Devorak was standing with his back to her, sweeping long slender fingers through his hair. She backs away slowly, careful to not alert him to her presence, but one of her heels catches a stone imbedded into the street. With a surprised gasp, she tumbled backward onto her ass, the contents of her bag spilling onto the flagstone. His shoulders tense at the sound behind him. Slowly turning, his grey eye catches chocolate ones. His thick eyebrows knit together in concern as he realized the noise was the young woman falling. “Are you alright? That was quite the tumble.” The doctor walks toward her extending a gloved hand to help her up, but rears back as soon as he’s close enough to see her face more clearly, “The…the shopkeep?” he stammers, eye wide, “what are you doing here?” His gaze softens, “Little early in the evening to be stumbling around in alleys, isn’t it?” He smiles and reaches is hand out to her once again, “I’m joking. It’s never too early. Come on, upsy-daisy.” A firm leather-clad grip encircled each of her wrists and he pulls her onto her feet. The magician staggered forward into his broad chest that a thin white shit barely covered. For a moment, his eye meets hers in surprise at their sudden proximity, his face flushed crimson. Realizing what was happening, she tugged her hands from his grasp and glowers at him. After all, this was the man who broke into her teacher’s shop and threatened her.

“Sooooo…you, ah, last I heard you…you were bound for the palace?” She doesn’t respond, he scratches the back of his neck awkwardly. “Dare I ask what brings you to this neck of the woods?” She tears her glare away from the doctor to survey her surroundings. Judging by the barrels and the noise, we’re behind a tavern. A hole in the wall, hidden from the street. Painted on the door is a cackling blackbird, laying back on a crescent moon. The Rowdy Raven it read, it looked seedy enough to have an alleged murderer as a patron. “Oh, what’s this?” She looks back to see that the doctor is gathering her scattered belongings and has taken an interest in scroll she had taken from his desk. Armyah panics, she quickly snatches the scroll away leaving him blinking at thin air. “Is…is that mine?” She hugs it closer to her chest, but he’s already seen. What more, he’s probably the only person capable of explaining it. Curiosity compelled her to take it in the first place, maybe he would be willing to reveal its contents. In the midst of her debating, Doctor Devorak whisked the scroll from her grasp and turned his back to her as he read.

“Hey!” she exclaimed. She tried to reach around him to get it back, but he held the parchment just out of her reach.

“Where did you get this?” he asked, leaning away from her. Armyah sighed, defeated, and ceased her attempts to retrieve the paper.

“Your desk…” He blinked, confused. “In the library?” Nothing. “At the palace?” A searching glance to his face and she saw a flinch of pain cross over his features.

“Oh yeah…” he said carefully, “My desk in the library…at the palace. Little window right above it?” She nodded slowly, watching the doctor massage his pinched brow. He groaned, rolled up the scroll, and handed it back to the magician. He wipes a hand over his face and places it on his hip, glancing to the slightly ajar door of the tavern; the warm light glows between them. He turns to her with a dynamic expression. “Well, I’m parched,” he announces to the only person in the alley with him, “think I’ll head back inside. Are you thirsty?” Doctor Devorak raises an eyebrow and smirks impishly at the fortune-teller. “You’re welcome to join me, if you’d like to.” She glares daggers at the man and he puts his hands up innocuously. “All I’m saying is that I still owe you for the reading the other night.” She wouldn’t call it a reading. More so, she flipped the Death card over and he assumed it meant he was going to meet a horrible, painful end. She looked torn; part of her wanted to run away and hope she’d never see his smug face again, but the other part really wanted to know what was in that letter.

“I should…” she jerked her thumb behind her weakly, “I just…” she sighs, that roguish grin will be her undoing, “…fine.” His face splits in a brilliant grin.

“Oh fantastic!” he exclaims excitedly, “Please, allow me.” He leads her by the small of her back up the steps through the door and into the warmth inside. It’s only past sundown, but the tavern was in full swing. The noise was jarring and caused the magician to grimace as she stepped inside. The barkeep, a wide, scar-faced, a barrel-armed fellow, gives the doctor a cheeky salute as they pass by. Bells on ropes decorated the wooden rafters along the small bar. There were few lanterns, so it was hard to see in the dim light and candles were scattered on tables to illuminate the conversations at ragged wood tables. A cackling drunk leaned back in his creaking chair with boisterous laughter as he swings a wooden leg out, which Doctor Devorak politely pushes aside. He ushers Armyah through the tumult with practiced ease, he definitely frequents this place. A loud beating of wings startles the fortune-teller, a haggard raven fluttered in after them, squawking and thumping its wings against the windows. The doctor chuckles at the bird, shaking his head. He winds his arm around the magician’s shoulders and guided her to a small booth in the back. “What can I get you to drink?” She glanced over his shoulder and scanned the colorful bottles that line the bar; some flavored with roots and herbs, others with coins, rocks, and beetles of all things. She chews her lip apprehensively, but he pats her reassuringly on the shoulder. “You know what, how about I take care of it and you make yourself comfortable?” He gestured for her to sit, “I’ll be right back.” He heads toward the bar, his stride is confident, almost cocky. He doesn’t seem to be too concerned by being recognized.

She settles into her seat and wrings her hands anxiously. Nearby, a pair of old crones are hunched over a card game and attended by an energetic, squabbling crowd. The cards in their hands makes Armyah think of Asra’s tarot deck, as well as the other contents of her bag that she spilled outside and failed to pick up. Heart dropping, she dives for the bag reaches in to find the deck safe and sound at the bottom, though its energy is abnormal. Of course...the Emperor card is missing. She sighs and cradles her forehead in a hand as tears prickle behind her eyes, there’s so much to be worried about: she is missing a card from her teacher’s deck, she deserted from the palace, and she was in a bar with the Count’s murderer! Well…alleged murderer, she still didn’t have the full story. Suppose it would be rude to ask. Still taking in her surroundings, she spots the rest of her missing possessions stacked on the bench beside the doctor’s seat. She smiles faintly, he must’ve grabbed them before coming in when she wasn’t looking. She found herself seeking him out at the bar where he was chatting up the bartender. He’s slim, but his shoulders are broad. The too-large shirt was billowing over his frame and tucked haphazardly into his belt. His messy auburn curls fell lazily over the eyepatch that’s strap ran over his aquiline nose and thick eyebrow. He looked at ease as he laughed with the man behind the bar. Overall, he was a very handsome for a suspected criminal, not that she had met very many to compare. He turns to the table she was sitting, she quickly averts her eyes to a particularly interesting knot in the wooden tabletop.

“Here we are.” He sets a pewter tankard in front of her and slides into the booth across from her as her gulps down his drink with gusto. Armyah warily eyes the golden liquid in her cup, it smelled faintly like fruit. She makes no move to drink it and her gaze flicker between him and the mug. He raises an eyebrow in confusion as he drinks heartily from his stein until he realizes… “Very smart! Never trust a free drink, especially from someone you barely know.” ‘Especially when that person is wanted’ she thought bitterly, but before she could respond he plucked the cup from her place at the table and took a dramatic swig. With a satisfied sigh he licked his lips exaggeratedly, making sure to look her dead in the eyes causing the magician to flush and look and look anywhere but his face. He returned the drink gave her a look as if to say ‘see?’. She takes a hesitant sip, not taking her incredulous gaze off the doctor. The beverage is refreshing; barely sweet and it fizzed excitingly all the way down. As soon as it washes down her throat she realized how thirsty she was after running after the guard. She drinks hungrily, and Doctor Devorak slowly lowers his stein to watch her drain her mug, his uncovered eye gleaming in the candlelight. “Look at you,” he tuts, “You’re dry as a bone. Drink, drink!” Her cup is empty after a few more desperate gulps. She sets the tankard down heavily and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, careful not to get it on the sleeve of her borrowed dress. The doctor slid his drink to the side and leaned in toward the young woman, flashing her that roguish smile. “You know…I never did get your name.” She eyes him carefully, thinking of what he could gain by knowing her name, but she’s distracted by that damned smile; smarmy yet strangely charming. She sighs, defeated. She doesn’t meet his gaze.

“Armyah…” She looks up at him as he beams, pleased and sincere.

“Ahh, Armyah…” he tests the name on his lips, “what a lovely name. Almost musical! Armyah.” He kept repeating her name in different voices and octaves, even singing it a few times. She raised an eyebrow at his antics. Noticing her look, he laughs nervously and lets out an awkward cough into his gloved fist. “Ah…um…you can call me Julian.” He offers his hand, but she hesitates to take it. After a prolonged moment, she manages to shake his hand and his smile broadens to a toothy grin. “So, I have to ask: how did you wind up in that ally?” She jerks her hand back defensively, “At first I thought you might have come for me on behalf of the palace, but I’m not wearing any chains yet and you’re covered in burrs.” She looks down. Sure enough, there are burrs and twigs tangled in her long, curly hair. “Now, I may be projecting, but…I’m sensing that you’re on the run.” He raises a thick eyebrow, but she turns away from him, blushing ashamedly. He chuckles at her obvious answer, reaches past her ear and pulls a small twig from her wild, dark curls. “Escaped from the palace down the southward side?” he muses, “Ah…we have so much in common already.”

“I am nothing like you,” the magician spat venomously. He raised his hands apologetically, but his grin never faulters. Then, his face turns more serious.

“Do you have anywhere to go?” He sounded concerned, she’s not sure why, though. “Back to the magic shop?” She straightens in her seat, perking up at the sound of home. He raises a cautionary finger, “Ah, but that is the very first place they’ll look.” She’d have to lie low until Arsa got back. “I can still tell you how to get back…”

“You can?” she asked excitedly. He smiled at how eager she was.

“You bet I can” he winked, “But first…” Of course there was a catch, “I’d like to take another look at that document” A painless trade. She willingly handed over the scroll and he spread it flat across the table. Once exposed, the contents steal the smile from his face and he leans over the page, frowning in concentration. “Oof…this light is not for reading. Alright, let’s see here,” he squints at the paper, “Well, it’s a letter, but you knew that. Dear so and so…”

“Dear sister.” Armyah translated. Julian’s eye flicked up to her, mortified.

“You…you can read this?” She couldn’t, but he didn’t need to know that. She just shrugged as if it were no real feat. “Incredible…” he mused, “you know, a cryptographer told me once that it would take years of study to decipher my handwriting and look at you. A natural.” She wasn’t surprised, his penmanship was atrocious. The magician squirms uncomfortable at his praise. The doctor beams, blinks and returns to the letter. “Ahem…Dear sister, I have…much to share since I last wrote.” He was hesitating, like he was struggling to read his own writing. “Winter has come to the palace…these marble floors are so cold…blah blah...” His voice tapers off to a mumble, then he’s quiet. His stormy eye slides carefully over the page. Armyah watches his face for any signs, but his expression doesn’t change. The more he reads, the more he pauses to massage his temples or pinch the bridge of his pointed nose. By the time he’s finished, his already pale complexion looks wistful and drained. He rolls up the paper and hands it back to the fortune-teller, which she takes and stuffs it back into her bag. Absent-mindedly, he reaches for his stein and tosses the rest of his drink down his throat. Armyah shifts in her seat awkwardly, little else to do than just sit there and watch him drink.

“So…you have a sister?” she inquires nervously. Not sure if her question will set him off; so far, he’s seemed like a reasonable man. He coughs while he drinks, sputtering, and he sets down the empty drink.

“I do!” he declared eagerly, “Haven’t seen her since she was ohh…this high?” His hand wavers just above the lip of the table. Suddenly, he whisks their empty cups away and heads to the bar, the magician stares off after him. Her attention was stolen by shrill bickering erupting from the card player’s table. Spectators threw their hands up in the air in disbelief. Her dark eyes flicker back to Julian making quick work at the bar. He smiles at her on the way back until he’s accosted at the card game by a boney claw snatching his wrist. After careful consideration, he leans in and whispers in the haggard woman’s ear and taps on a card in her hand. The card is played, throwing the crowd into chaos. The sly doctor ducked away just before someone tries to douse him with their drink and heads back to his and the magician’s shared table. “You would think I’d know better than to get involved with politics,” he chuckled, setting the respective drinks in front of them. A small smile tugs briefly at the corner of her mouth.

“Looks like you know all the right moves.” He cocks an eyebrow and smiles roguishly as one arm leans on the table, striking a debonair pose. It was easy to talk to him, easy to let your guard down around him. It takes every ounce of Armyah’s effort to remember that this man was dangerous.

“Well, once you make all the wrong ones…” He pushes off the table and slides deftly into the booth across from her. “What can I say?” he takes a swig from his stein which prompts her to take a drink as well, “Some call me clever, but I’m just…practiced in the art of weighing options.” His eye stares into his drink as he dons a more serious, almost mournful expression. “Options like ‘bad’ and ‘worse’. That’s life for you.” He rubs the back of his neck, glancing sidelong at the door, “or maybe I’m just paranoid…Barth, the barkeep, says I’ve got more in common with the raven than anyone else.” His eye snaps back to her face when she doesn’t say anything. She must have looked confused. “The rowdy one? He spends his time scouting for guards. Obsessively, even.” She vaguely remembers the skeletal bird flying in from the streets after them earlier. “He raises hell whenever they come by. Even the sight of the Count’s crest drives him wild.” He laughed half-heartedly, “oddly enough, I don’t think anyone really trained him to be that way.” He looks at the magician for a moment, “though, I supposed we’re all trained to be that way.” There’s sympathy in her dark, doe eyes…or maybe it’s pity. Either way she looks somber and almost like she’s lost. True, she’s unfamiliar with this part of the city, but something behind her eyes felt like she’s missing something, and it makes her melancholy.

CRASH! The raven bursts through a dusty window overhead and loops in the air with a guttural shriek. It beats itself against a string of bells and the tavern erupts into chaos, knowing exactly what it meant; palace guards! Patrons were clawing their way out every door and window, playing cards scattered forgotten on the floor. Armyah and Julian share a brief look of panic and rise swiftly to dive out of the booth. Grabbing her arm, he rushes her to the back door leading into the alley. The night is cold now and thick mist from the canal covers the ground. The doctor casts a frantic glance up and down the alley before pushing the fortune-teller into the shadows, covering her with his large, lanky frame.

“Armyah, listen to me…” Her blush from the proximity faded with the harshness of his voice, “go back up that road.” Her head follows his arm pointing up the street he was referring to. “Take a left, a right, then a sharp right and you’ll reach a round street. It’s long, but it’s a straight shot and it’ll take you as far as the marketplace.” He clasps his gloved hands on each of her shoulders. “You’ll be able to find you way from there, yes?” She nods hurriedly, and he led her to the mouth of the alley. “Up the road, left, right, sharp right, round street. Good luck.” With one last concerned glance at her face he releases her, and she darts up the road. He watches as her small figure disappears into the fog completely before he slinks into the shadows himself to escape.

Oil-slick rats vanish into the gutters and the apartments have their shutters locked. She casts a quick glance back down the ally, but Julian was already gone. The street had fallen silent and still, it was if Armyah was the only living thing in sight. Left…then right. Spectral alley cats scatter to the shadows as she whipped past them. The stone path is broken and winding, narrower and narrower until she reaches a very sharp right. A round, open street. This must’ve been the one the doctor was referring to. She slows her pace to a jog, heaving with exhaustion and her mind racing. She had always been wary of the palace guards, but she had never outright feared them. Even if this road did take her to the shop, even if she wasn’t spotted along the way, there was a good chance she would find them waiting there for her. Should she turn back? Should she try to find Julian? She wasn’t watching her footing lost in her thoughts, she trips over a vagrant’s knees and falls hard. She almost just jumps up and keeps on running, but their uniform causes her breath to catch in the throat; it was a stark white rabbit. She couldn’t believe it and by the look on the guard’s face, they don’t believe it either. How did they find her so soon? However, judging by the fact he was on the ground he wasn’t looking for her…he was hiding from her. Across the street, the ornate door to a carriage swings open and a dumbfounded Portia stares in disbelief at the pair tangled in a heap of limbs on the cobblestone.

“By the Gods…” she breathes. The Countess peeks her head out of the carriage and her ruby eyes go wide.

“Armyah?” she blinks rapidly, “Where on earth did you come from?” Portia points in the direction in which the magician came while Armyah and the guard unravel themselves from each other. “Uncanny…why, we only just arrived,” the Countess explained, “I agonized over choosing the right spot to hide and we finally settled on this one.” She turns to the rabbit guard, “Ludo, take the reins. We will be returning early.” The guard shuffled to the driver’s seat, still eyeing the fortune-teller in wonder and Portia hustles her inside. The interior was elaborately decorated with gold and white filigree and the seats were a luxurious red velvet. She settles tentatively into the plush seat; the Countess was eyeing her with delight. “It is extraordinarily rare that anyone should exceed my expectations, Armyah.” The magician’s face glows red with a mixture of embarrassment from the praise and anger as she remembers why she was there in the first place: The Countess’s little “test”. “I apologize for what must have been a tedious trial to a magician of your prowess.” She pulls a silken pouch from her waist and passes it graciously to the younger woman. Her heartbeat beats at a hummingbird’s pace as she pulled the drawstring. The silk falls away to reveal an oxen figure…the Emperor card. She can almost feel the deck at the bottom of her bag react to its return. “I can only wonder...if you are the apprentice, then how proud the master must be.” The Countess’s knowing smile makes the magician fidget. Though she had won the game, it was she who was being eyed as if she were the prize. Staring down at the Emperor, she can’t help but feel as if he and the other Arcana were making a joke out of her. “Do take this time to rest, Armyah,” the Countess places an elegant hand on the fortune-teller’s knee, exposed by the length of the lent dress, “it will be a while before we arrive, and a feast will be waiting for you.” The magician’s stomach twists with the very thought of food, “and a bath, if you will agree to it.” Armyah looked down, her palms and shins were filthy from falling over the rabbit guard. She nodded absent-mindedly and looked out of the window to the misty night as the carriage lurches into action, the sharp sound of hoofbeats echoing. She was a fool to think she could leave so easily, she must’ve been there for a reason. It was either sheer dumb luck or divine intervention that caused her to trip over the very person she should have been looking for just as the Countess’s carriage was mere feet away. She was almost naïve enough to say it was destiny that brought her to his point, to be the Countess’s private investigator to bring her husband’s murderer to justice.

The murderer…her thoughts shift to Doctor Devorak. To Julian. She tried to deny it, but a part of her hoped that he had got away safely. It was awfully kind of him to give her directions on how to get back to the shop, especially when he knew she came from the palace originally. He certainly didn’t look like a murderer. Then again, what do murderers really look like? Do they typically have charming smiles and eyes that gleam with mischief? Or have billowing shirts opened past their navel, hair the same color as on their heads speckled across their chest and all the way down…Armyah blinked rapidly, flushing and shaking the intrusive thought away. Realizing where they were, the white monolith loomed over the carriage as they approached. The Countess was turned toward the window with a serene smile and Portia was picking at her nails in comfortable silence. They arrive at the massive door to the palace and a host of servants sweep the magician away as soon as she steps off the coach. Tightly flanked on both sides, she was led through the halls and past her guest quarters and to a bathing hall. A servant moves to remove her dress.

“No!” Armyah exclaimed. All hustling freezes and a half dozen eyes stare at the magician who shifts anxiously, “I’ll do it…thank you.” A moment’s hesitation, but the servants bow politely and leave her to her bath. She disrobes and pads over to the large marble tub. Like everything else in the palace, the bath chamber was beautiful and ornate. The steam from the perfumed water seemed to beckon her closer and she gave in. With an almost sinful groan, the magician sunk into the pool and let the day’s tension and filth melt away. She is caught off guard by the sound of someone clearing their throat. Forgetting herself, she stands and whips around to the intruder. Portia was leaning casually against the doorway with a bundle of lavender fabric.

“Milady is waiting for you in the dining room, she’d like if you would wear this.” She set the new outfit on a tiled bench against the far wall and threw the other girl a cheeky smile. Then it fell. “Oh Armyah…” she whispered pitifully, “what happened?” The magician glanced down and noticed her breasts were exposed and with them, her scars. She quickly sinks back into the water self-consciously.

“It’s nothing…” she mumbles. Taking the hint, Portia simply nods and slips out of the room, leaving Armyah to her thoughts and the softly sloshing water. She reaches for the oils lined on the edge of the tub. Choosing the one scented with rose water, she uncorks the vial and pours a generous amount into her palm and washes her hair and body thoroughly. Satisfied with her bath, she exits the pool and crosses the luxurious bathroom, leaving a small river in her wake, to the bench Portia left the garments on. She wraps the beautiful silk robe around her petite frame and the gown falls to her ankles. She ties her mass of dark curls into a knot of the top of her head and steps into the beaded white slippers that were left for her as well. When she exits the bath chamber, Portia is waiting outside, fingers tapping awkwardly against the wall. Armyah doesn’t look at her.

“Soooo…” Portia searches for something to say to ease the tension, “you look a little trip into town today, huh?” She winks at the magician, “meet up with anybody special?” Armyah turns away, blushing at the insinuation, causing Portia to snort with laughter. She claps a hand on the fortune-teller’s back and leads her briskly toward the dining hall. “Don’t worry, your secret is safe with me.” If Portia only knew the secret she was keeping, she may be less inclined to keep it to herself. The grand doors of the dining room swing open to reveal an expensive feast, piled high upon the long table. She’s immediately overwhelmed by the sumptuous smells of Vesuvian spices before her.

“Why, if it isn’t my champion of the hour, fresh from the bath,” the Countess was already seated at the head of the table. A servant seats Armyah in her usual seat and fills the goblet in front of her with a pale rose beverage. The Countess raises her already full glass to toast, “to Armyah, whose talents have exceeded my highest expectations.” Armyah was still a little miffed about the game, but right now she was just looking forward to digging into delicious food. “Let us be strangers no longer and may this be the beginning of a valuable friendship.” The magician flushed, no one said anything about friends. She thought she was only here to catch the Counts murderer. ‘Alleged murderer,’ she reminded herself. “I look forward to a long and fruitful partnership with you. I’m sure you will not disappoint.” Her ruby eyes gleam and she drains her cup in on swift motion, setting it down gently once she’s done. Armyah takes a sip, the delicate floral taste reminds her of the Countess’s perfume. “Tomorrow, we will dine together with my courtiers. They are most eager to make your acquaintance.” The magician gulped, having to impress people is definitely not her specialty. “I have no doubt they will find you absolutely charming. They will want to know everything about you but choose wisely what you wish to tell.” Also not one of Armyah’s strong suits, she has a habit of not thinking before she speaks when she’s nervous. “I am also going to be telling them the news of the Masquerade, I know they’ll be excited.” The magician only nodded as she chewed her food, the ways of the court were foreign to her. Thankfully, the Countess with be with her; she trusted the woman to not allow her to be too much of an embarrassment. “Portia and a retinue of our loudest servants will be going to town tomorrow to make the announcement. She has asked that you go with them.” She looks to the servant who only winks in response. “We must ensure there is a sufficient audience for our final spectacle,” the Countess’s wicked grin is unnerving, “When the doctor hangs, he will hang for all to see.” Armyah immediately thinks of Julian, bathed in the warm, welcoming light of the tavern, swinging from the gallows. Her heart grows cold at the image, but she is careful not to let it show on her face. The Countess waves her graceful hand dismissively.

“But these are tomorrow’s matters,” she smiles brightly at the magician, “tonight, Armyah, I have questions.”

“Questions?” she asked apprehensively. She’s startled by the sudden attention; the Countess was watching her so carefully.

“Yes, I wish to become more familiar with you if we are to be working so closely.” Now she remembers the toast to their “friendship”, but she never expected the Countess to have any interest in who she was. Frankly, Armyah doesn’t know much about herself aside from the last three years. However, the Countess asked simple questions: How was she enjoying the city, her daily goings on, her favorite thing to eat. The anxious magician only provides one-word answers and doesn’t ask anything in return. She isn’t sure if the Countess could tell she was nervous, but she didn’t elude to it if she did. “You are a woman of few words, Armyah. Are you tired? Or perhaps shy?” The fortune-teller’s face tinged red. “No worries. Portia, please escort our friend here to her chambers.” Servants whisked away her empty plate and Portia was at her side in an instant. “I do hope you have a pleasant evening, Armyah.” The Countess leaves with one last wry smile.

“Well, that was an eventful day, huh?” Portia laughed warmly, “Come on, I’ll walk you back to your room.” Armyah nods gratefully and follows after the servant’s brisk footsteps. The hallway is void of any life besides the magician and her escort. Their footsteps echo as they walk side by side. “Things are a lot more interesting around here since you showed up,” Portia said, smiling, “Did you see the look on Ludo’s face when we found you both on the ground?” She talks about the guards as if they’re old friends. Possibly she knows all the servants at the palace well.

“Do you spend a lot of time with the other servants?”

“We work together pretty closely,” she nodded, “it’s my job to know who and what’s happening in the palace.” Portia winks conspiratorially at Armyah as they arrive at the door to the guest room. It seemed as if the staff came during the day to tidy up and placed a fresh pitcher of water on the desk. Incense burned by the window, the hazy swirls of wood and spice made her a bit homesick; Asra always burned incense at the shop. Portia looked as if she was dying to ask the magician a question, but she hesitates. She smoothed a paper on the desk and Armyah recognized it as the ones she took from Julian’s desk in the library.

“You looked concerned…” she urges.

“Who me?” Portia tries to play off her apprehension before sighing in defeat. “It’s just…I don’t know. There are other suspects, right?” She wrung her hands nervously, “sure, many people loved the Count, but, between you and me, I think he had a lot of enemies too.”

“Enemies? Like who?” Armyah couldn’t imagine anyone speaking out openly against the Count. Portia shakes her head and runs her hands down her skirt.

“I wasn’t employed at the palace when it happened,” she explained, “I’ve only heard rumors of what went on that night. Just…” She pauses as if she’s not sure how to continue, “keep your eyes peeled for anything suspicious, alright?” Smiling slyly, Portia leans in toward the fortune-teller, her voice low, “you know…if you’re not too tired yet, I could show you around the palace. There’s a lot of interesting things on the palace grounds and maybe I could show you some secrets?” Her smile is teasing, but her eyes are genuine.

“Show me the secrets,” Armyah couldn’t help but giggle, it felt as if she were sneaking out past curfew.

“I knew there was something I liked about you,” Portia linked her arm around the magicians, “I can tell we’re going to be great friends.” Armyah liked the sound of that, the thought didn’t leave a bad taste in her mouth like when the Countess said it. “Oh, where do we want to start? There’s the mulch pile, the Freaky Foyer, the servant’s quarters…” Portia tapped her chin in thought until her face lights up. “Oh, I know! Come on, I’ll show you the really good stuff!” She led the fortune-teller down the hall with a bounce in her step. “You’ve already seen most of the palace itself,” she pushes open some swinging doors and leads the pair into a vast kitchen. A person in a flour-dusted apron lifted their head and smiled at the sight of their fellow servant.

“Portia! Still one duty for the night?” they asked while waving cheerfully.

“Not exactly,” she replied, “I’m just showing Armyah around the place!” The chef tossed her a roll from across the counter and she caught it without looking, she turned to the magician, “This is the kitchens. If you ever find yourself hungry at midnight, the door’s always open. Just make sure you don’t ruin Hestion’s breakfast prep.” She pockets another roll with a wink and slides one to Armyah while the chef isn’t looking, “I’m not responsible for any harm that might befall you.” They exit the kitchen and Portia leads them down a small hall to a painting of the two white hounds. A pile of pomegranates spilt out at their feet, “This is a secret passage I like to use to get to the veranda. It saves a lot of time when you’re in a hurry.” She grips the edge of the frame and swings it open, revealing a hidden archway. The servant glances over her shoulder at the other woman, “think you could help us out with a little light?” Smiling, Armyah focused her magic as an orb of warm light materialized from her fingertips and float around them like fireflies. Portia’s blue eyes are alight with wonder, “wooooow…would you look at that? You’re pretty good at this magic stuff.” They pass through the arch into a larger dusty passage. The walls were lined with paintings of various animals, all pure white with glinting ruby eyes. Armyah shivers involuntarily; the eyes looked as if they were following the duo, watching them. “This used to be the Counts ‘Menagerie Gallery’, but no one goes in here anymore. They say there’s a ghost wandering these halls. Some say a voice will call out your name as you’re walking by and if you follow it you’ll never be seen again!” Armyah looked to the girl dubiously making the servant laugh, “Servants are always popping up after shirking their duties like ‘Ooooh! The Gallery Ghost got me!” She places her hands on her hip to imitate annoyance, “and then I’m like ‘okay, but if you’re never seen again then how come I’m seeing you?” The magician laughs heartily at Portia’s story, “Turns out they fell asleep in the larder and wanted to blame the ghost.” She led Armyah to the veranda where dozens of servants were hanging out, socializing after a long day’s work. Portia greeted every single one by name as they passed, she really did know everyone. Portia led her down the stairs to the garden, the very steps she had run down earlier that day after the two costumed guards.

“Sometimes, when I’m not working, I like to explore around here,” Portia tittered excitedly, “Never know what you might find.” She points off to a small mound in the distance, “if you go to that little hill over there, you can get a real good look at the stars.” She smiles brightly at the magician. “Especially on clear nights like this.” They entered the maze that lead to the fountain that Armyah had stumbled upon her first night at the palace. Portia walk briskly and with confidence, obviously well acquainted with the winding paths. “I know it’s getting pretty late, but I’ve got one last stop before the end of the tour,” she winked and grinned mischievously…her smile looked almost familiar. “I think you’re really going to like it,” the servant takes the fortune-teller’s hand and leads her through the twisting hedges to a crumbling old arch, the very same arch she had encountered in the maze while chasing the guard earlier that day. The door was still there, but it was even less visible in the dark. Armyah could feel a faint whisper of magic licking at her skin, beckoning her closer to the arch. She took a hesitant, involuntary step toward it. Reaching out to the swirling wisps of magical energy. Her hand passes through the arch, but it disappears into nothingness. Snapping her outstretched arm back and clutching the formerly gone hand to her chest. She looks bewilderedly at the woman next to who only laughs. “You want to go through?” The magician looks skeptically back at the portal and nods slowly. Portia, still giggling, takes her by the hand and pulls her through the archway. In an instant, they are no longer in the garden, but in a brightly lit hallway inside the palace. They can hear the faint chatting of servants in the distance. “Isn’t that amazing?” Portia gripped Armyah in excitement, “I bet there are portals like this all over the palace that lead to lots of different places on one’s seen!” Her smile is contagious, the fortune-teller couldn’t help but grin back at her friend. “This palace has a lot of secrets…” the servant took her hand once again and pulled her down the hall. She was walking backwards so she was still facing Armyah. “Maybe you can help me find more,” she winked, “I bet a great magician like you would have no problem finding them all.” She turned back around, still leading her friend by the hand. “But I’ve kept you long enough. We’ve got an early morning tomorrow.” Armyah groaned at the thought of waking up at sunrise again causing Portia to laugh. She led the magician back to the guest room and paused just inside the door. “Thanks for coming with me, Armyah,” she smiles warmly, “I’m really excited you’re here. I think we’ll have a lot of fun together.” She pulls Armyah into a tight hug, her arms are strong. It catches her off guard, but she returns the gesture. “Sorry,” Portia chuckled, letting her go, “I’m a hugger.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Arymah smiles back, “I don’t mind.” She wouldn’t say she was a “hugger” as well, but physical contact doesn’t bother her. She was happy that Portia and she were good enough friends to be able to offer the affection. The servant bid her good night and turned to leave.

“Oh! I almost forgot!” Portia whipped back to the magician, “Milady would like you to join us into town tomorrow for the announcement.” ‘Announcement?’ Then, Armyah remembered the Masquerade. They would be going to the town square to publicize the return on the beloved festival. Waving their goodbyes, Portia shut the large door behind her to leave the other girl alone in the empty room with her thoughts. With a heavy sigh, she kicked off the beaded slippers and let down her still-wet hair. She looked toward the nightdress she had brought herself and considered changing, but she definitely favored the silken robe given to her. Crawling under the plush duvet and snuggled into the comfortable bedding. It didn’t take long for her to fall asleep, she was exhausted from running around all night. She drifted off with images of a certain red-headed doctor behind her eyelids.

Next chapter will be out a lot sooner that this one was. Let me know how I’m doing!

Tag list:

@julians-chest-hair

#the aracana game #the arcana #julian devorak #julian x apprentice #portia devorak #nadia satrinava #count lucio #asra #muriel #what once was

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sublimeheartwizard · 3 years

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Choosing a High-Resolution Graphic Design Monitor

A graphic monitor is one of the most important pieces of hardware a design professional can buy. Look for the right technical specifications, including color accuracy, screen size, panel type, resolution, and more. Use our guide below to streamline the process of buying a professional graphic design monitor. Or see how ViewSonic put it all together into making professional monitors.

Those new to graphic design may not place picking a graphic design monitor at the top of their priority list, but it might be the difference between success and failure. Graphic design is all about creating designs that leave lasting impressions and communicate a message to the viewer. In essence, it creates a bridge between the designer and the viewer.

If you’re a graphic designer, then you know the ins and outs of the world of graphic design and the significance that presentation plays. Getting positive reviews on any form of graphic design work is all about how the design is visually presented.

What Are Graphic Design Monitors, and What Are They Good For

Would you design graphics with your shades on? Probably not. Portraying the wrong colors on-screen is exactly why having the wrong monitor can be perilous to your work. As such, obtaining a high-resolution graphic design monitor is one of the best ways you can ensure that your work will stand out visually. Needless to say, this is one investment you definitely want to make for the sake of your career path as a graphic designer.

The Drawbacks of Graphic Design Monitors

Before getting into the areas you should be looking into prior to purchasing an ideal graphic design monitor, let’s consider the drawbacks.

Oftentimes, when it comes to purchasing electronics, customers are duped into purchasing products with unnecessary features. Of course, avoidance of this issue is easier said than done. That said, it’s understandable. In today’s well-marketed and materialistic world, it is easy to find yourself wrongly swayed. Though, if you read up on graphic design monitors, the following factors should help keep your decision-making on the level.

Design Don’t ever select a monitor simply because it looks cooler than the others. A monitor that is very slim may look attractive, but that’s pretty much as far as it goes. The graphic drawing pen monitor’s internal specifications are what determines how well it will perform, not the exterior. As they say, “don’t judge a book by its cover”, so too, don’t judge a monitor solely on its looks.

Bloated qualities Built-in speakers, a good range of USB ports, and a proper TV Tuner shouldn’t distract you from considering a monitor’s internal setup. Even though these are great features for a monitor to possess, they do not guarantee an overall high-quality product.

Response time If you are a certified graphic designer, as opposed to a professional gamer, response time shouldn’t really matter. Basically, the response time determines the time delay when a rapid action takes place on the screen. For gamers, as many actions are taking place on-screen within short periods of time, a good response time ensures the gamer’s ability to play at the proper speed, without lags on screen.

What to Look for in Potential Graphic Design Monitors

Serious graphic designers want a display that not only brings an optimal level of performance but also includes a high resolution. In today’s world of wireless connections, a good display is properly wired with the newest routes for connectivity. After all, the world runs on the ability to remain connected and linked. When it comes to purchasing the right monitor, a serious graphic designer knows that there’s more to it than simple numbers. That’s part of what makes ViewSonic’s VP line of monitors so attractive.

As with all other technology, purchasing a monitor requires you to do some background reading. While there are quite a few selections out there, unless you know the exact specifications, you might end up purchasing an LCD that doesn’t present your work with justice.

The following provides you with a list of things you want to consider before finalizing any monitor purchases.

A graphics drawing tablet used for sketching new images or tracing old ones. Also called a "graphic tablet," the user contacts the surface of the device with a wired or wireless pen or puck. Often mistakenly called a mouse, the puck is officially the "tablet cursor." For sketching, either the pen or puck is used. For tracing, the puck is preferred because its crosshairs, visible through a clear glass lens, lets you precisely pinpoint ends and corners of detailed drawings. Most tablets allow parts of the tablet surface to be customized into buttons that can be tapped to select menus and functions in the application. Digitizer Mode and Mouse Mode Tablets typically support two modes of operation. "Digitizer mode" creates a one-for-one correspondence between tablet and screen. Wherever the tablet is touched, the screen is drawn in the exact same location. In contrast, "mouse mode" moves the screen pointer (cursor) relative to any starting position on the tablet surface, just like an ordinary computer mouse. The Output Is X-Y Coordinates When drawing or tracing on the tablet, a series of x-y coordinates (vector graphics) are created, either as a continuous stream of coordinates, or as end points. See pen tablet, tablet PC and touchscreen.

What Are All-In-One Personal Computers?

All in one Pc is like conventional desktop computer systems in terms of features and functionality. The only difference between an all-in-one vs. a desktop PC is the number of components. While desktops are comprised of the computer case plus a separate monitor, all-in-ones combine the display and the computer into one package. This consolidation gives the all-in-one computer system a smaller profile than a desktop computer system.

What Are All-In-One PCs?

The earliest form of computer displays used large cathode-ray tubes. Because of the size of the displays, computer systems were comprised of three key components: the monitor, the computer case, and the input devices.

As the size of the monitors decreased and the computer market consolidated into IBM-compatible and Apple-compatible product lines, computer companies started to integrate the computer case into the monitor to create all-in-one designs. These first all-in-one computer systems were still large and cost more than a standard desktop setup.

The most successful of the all-in-one personal computers was the Apple iMac. The original design used the cathode-ray monitor with the computer boards and components integrated below the tube.

With the advent of LCD monitors for displays and mobile parts getting smaller and more powerful, the size of the all-in-one computer system has decreased dramatically. Now, the computer components can be easily integrated behind the LCD panel or into the base of the display.

All-In-One vs. Desktop PCs

Buying a desktop offers several advantages over purchasing an all-in-one PC. Many all-in-one PCs feature processors (CPUs), drives, memory (RAM), and other components designed for laptops. Such architecture makes the all-in-one compact, but they also hinder the overall performance of the system. Typically, these laptop components will not perform as well as a desktop benchmark.

Another challenge with all-in-one computers is the lack of upgrade options. While most desktop computer cases can be opened to install and replace components, all-in-one systems feature a closed design. This design approach typically limits the systems to having only their memory upgraded.

With the rise of high-speed external peripheral connectors such as USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt, internal upgrade options are not as critical as they once were, but they still make a difference for some components such as the graphics processor.

All-In-Ones vs. Laptops

The all-in-one is smaller than a desktop, but it still is tethered to a desktop space. Laptops, conversely, move between locations and supply power through their battery packs. This portability makes them more flexible than the all-in-one.

Because many all-in-one PCs use all the same components as laptops, the performance levels are mostly identical between the two types of computers. The only advantage that an all-in-one PC might hold is the size of the screen. While all in one drawing Pc generally come with screen sizes between 20 and 27 inches, laptops are still generally restricted to 17-inch and smaller displays.

All-in-one systems used to be less expensive than laptops, but with technological advancements, the tables are now almost turned. You'll find many laptop computers for less than $500 while the typical all-in-one system now costs roughly $750 or more.

How Wacom Tablets Work

Let's get our definitions straight here, folks: Unlike the iPad, the Kindle Fire or the Nook, online teaching graphic tablet is not your average tablet PCs. Nor do they strive to be -- they're graphics tablets (also called pen tablets), devices generally used in the graphic design industry or by digital artists that allow a person to draw by hand, capturing an image or graphic in digital form. The information is displayed on the monitor of a connected PC or Mac.

Sounds a little complicated, but imagine this: You're working at your computer when the fancy strikes you to doodle a picture of a cartoon chicken eating broccoli. (Doodles don't have to make sense.) You use the pen and paper next to you. After sitting there for a day or so, it's absent-mindedly put in the trash, only to decompose slowly in a landfill, your artistic genius never recognized.

Unacceptable. Wacom tablets, which comprise many different models that we'll detail in this article, are designed so you can digitally doodle straight into your computer (among far more important tasks). Basically, they're the technological mating of a computer mouse with a pencil and a computer monitor with a college-ruled notebook.

Not a perfect analogy. But graphic designers, artists, illustrators and many other hobbyists and professionals need a device that allows their hand-drawn work to be digitized or their digital image to be manipulated with an old-fashioned hand. The technology powering Wacom tablets provides a few advantages over click-and-point navigation. The pen, or stylus, that comes with the tablets can communicate much more effectively. Its pressure-sensitive system will let you determine things like how thick or thin a line should be, and it can instantly capture handwritten notations. The tablet communicates with the pen, plotting its location in microseconds as it makes your adjustments on screen.

Graphic designers could benefit from the ease of turning concepts into digital reality. A photographer might like to be able to manipulate an image by hand more carefully. And pretty much everyone thinks it's cool to have their hand-written notes or doodles appear on their computer in the time it takes to put pen to paper.

Unlike an iPad-like tablet, Wacom offers several different lines and models. Let's first take a look at the technology and hardware that's common to all of the tablets to grasp exactly how a Wacom tablet functions.

We really have to start with the pen; Wacom refers to the pen's system as Penabled Technology. Sure, it looks like a regular pen but inside lurks a digital chip, a modulator and a transmitter. All of those components work in a complicated manner, but we can break it down: The tip of the pen tells the tablet what to do. And it's done with magnets! Well, not exactly. The sensor board of the tablet has a magnetic field, and the pen produces its own magnetic field -- and energy -- from it. (That's why no batteries or power adapter is needed.)

The magnetic field emanating from the pen is recognized by the sensor board. From that, it can track the pen's location, pressure and speed. The sensor board itself is made up of a lot of little antenna coils, but it also has a control board that monitors the coils to determine where the current is (i.e., where the pen is). And that's what tells your computer that you want to add a moustache to the picture of your sister that you're photoshopping. Wacom calls this patented technology EMR, or electromagnetic resonance technology.

It's a little different if an LCD screen is used, which is the case with the Cintiq line of tablets. In that case, backlighting or a component that gives off its own field could disrupt the pen's magnetic field. As such, all metal or problem parts must be tightly shielded to block out the field. The metal frame around the LCD screen -- which undoubtedly affects magnetic fields -- is accounted for in the control board, which recognizes a "weak" signal from the pen and corrects it so it follows a predictive course.

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amandaallen · 3 years

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A Brief Guide On How to Build a Live Video Streaming App

In recent times, people are more engaged in online activities. Mobile devices are now used for professional broadcasting, making video content readily available to viewers across many devices.

According to a study, by the end of 2021, the live video streaming app market will reach $70 billion and beyond. Having a piece of this lucrative and upcoming industry is everyone’s dream.

And by 2023, it is predicted that 2.72 billion users would watch on-demand or live videos on mobile devices. The figure rose from the data of 2019 at 2.16 billion users with a CAGR of 6% growth rate. These statistics only make up for a minuscule portion of this massive trend.

However, developing a live video streaming app is not as easy as it sounds. Understanding how to make a live streaming app involves meticulous planning. Let’s dive in deeper and explore the concept of these apps and understand what it means to deliver these apps.

What is a Live Video Streaming App?

Live video streaming apps are simple applications, which allow users to capture videos and broadcast them simultaneously. These apps are growing in numbers because of high-speed internet connectivity and advanced camera technologies. Developing a live video streaming app can boost sports broadcasts, TV stations, news channels, and similar outlets with a massive collection of live events and content to share.

Such apps also drive influencer marketing, business marketing, entertainment, and people’s online interactions. These are some live video streaming apps that are very popular today:

Facebook

Periscope

Twitch

Kuaishou

Bilibili

Douyu etc.

People use Facebook Live regularly, whereas Twitch is another popular platform for broadcasting gaming sessions. It means there are different types of video streaming apps for various objectives.

Types of Live Video Streaming Apps

Before learning how to make a live streaming app, you should know the type of app to create. There are three common live video streaming apps:

#1: Live Broadcasting App

These are arguably the most sought-after live-streaming apps. These apps also let users broadcast live video and sound recordings to other users who access this stream. The apps are also the source of many online influencers. Popular live video broadcasting apps are YouTube Live, Twitch, Periscope, and Livestream.

#2: TV Live Streaming App

This type of live streaming app allows the user to watch TV online. This facilitates the users to enjoy content made specifically for TV without compromising on switching to different platforms. The seamless experience and service are the key benefits of this type of live streaming application.

#3: Video on Demand (VOD) Streaming

VOD apps enable users to plan and watch favorite shows online whenever they want to. Some common examples are Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Hulu.

Why Is Mobile Streaming So Important?

However, before plunging into how to make a live streaming app, consider some mobile streaming statistics to get some idea about live streaming and its relevance.

Over 50% of all videos playing worldwide originate on mobile phones or smart devices, and the growth will continue in the coming years.

By 2023, the video will make up for three-quarters of mobile traffic.

Sports enthusiasts prefer to watch matches on mobile devices and smartphones. Over 30% of sports fans stream matches to their tablets and phones.

How to Make a Live Streaming App?

There are many approaches to build live video streaming apps. Developers can be creative, but technology rules. Before creating an app for live streaming with an online host, you must understand the essential technical aspects of the broadcasting game.

Step#1: Define Audience and Niche

Do not create an app-based only on assumptions. Instead, you must know the real needs of users, their opinions, and expectations. Plan accordingly, and hold discussions or interviews with users to detect early challenges.

Consider the potential fields like sports and news, video games and cartoons, personal content, academic content, live tours, meetings, conferences, etc.

Early feedback can set your vision right. Moreover, you can secure the first batch of loyal beta users.

Step#2: Determine Monetization Strategies

Ultimately, the purpose of having a live stream video app is to monetize it and make revenue. The three most popular ways of monetizing streaming apps are:

Paid apps that charge users when they download an app

Premium apps that offer a free app, but only with limited features. Other premium features can be accessed only upon payment

Advertisements that run ads on an app for the advertising fee

Step#3: Study the Requirements of Streaming App

There are specific characteristics of streaming performance that you would want to ensure.

Internet connectivity: Internet speed influences the ability of the platform to download content on-demand. Minimum requirements would be 2 Mbps for streaming standard-definition movies. Thus, consider internet speed greater than 2Mbps for YouTube streaming services.

Computing architecture and cloud hosting: Cloud services are the best to store video content as it provides ease of access to video content. Consequently, imagine a platform that scales right from the start. This would prevent complex data migrations in the final stages.

Network: Video streaming sites would scale up eventually, though they may not expand fast. Implement a network for content distribution into this service. A live-streaming app is also a scalable tool to manage a large volume of online traffic using the CDN.

Step#4: Choose a Trusted Platform

You must choose the right platform viable for live video streaming content, hosting, and storage. Always select a reliable provider.

Do not compromise with quality because of price. Sometimes, paying a little more can give you excellent performance, which also ensures traffic growth. Users cannot tolerate low-resolution videos and slow streams.

Step#5: Design UI/UX

Besides choosing a viable live video streaming, you have to create brilliant UI/UX for a live video streaming app.

Technology is a crucial part of this equation. In this exceedingly competitive industry, your app should have an outstanding design with an exceptional user experience. Hence, you should invest in attractive UI/UX design. Take a minimalist approach instead of a mixed-up interface.

Step#6: Develop & Test the MVP

Your mind may be bustling with dozens of development ideas for the app, but testing with the help of a Minimal Viable Product (MVP) proves to be more effective. MVP is a lightweight variant of the original app and contains the necessary features & functions. It is a simple tool that would help you to get easy feedback from users.

Live Video Streaming App & Tech Stack

Like other apps, you must decide on the programming languages, messaging queues, databases, and development elements. Pay attention to these three critical areas:

1) Streaming Protocol: Video streaming requires two protocols – RTMP and WebRTC. While RTMP protocol ensures HD streaming, WebRTC emphasizes real-time communication.

RTMP is best for broadcasting live concerts, conferences, and meetings. WebRTC is the technology behind video-calling platforms such as Zoom, Google Hangouts, BeLive, etc.

The most significant advantage of RTMP is that you can transmit good-quality audio and video. However, it is expensive for long-term processing where there could be a lag of 10 to 20 seconds between the capture screen and the viewer’s screen. Contrarily, WebRTC offers superior speed and compromises on the quality of transmission in case of inadequate bandwidth.

2) Streaming Platform: It is imperative to choose the right streaming platform viable for video content streaming. Amazon Web Services, or AWS, is a perfect solution. It delivers all the tools for online streaming, host application and provides the content to users.

3) Content Delivery Network: CDN is a critical choice, which ensures the performance and availability of live streaming for users. Amazon Web Services CloudFront is a great option that powers different streaming services like Netflix. Amazon Chime is another option for real-time WebRTC streaming and video rooms.

Live Video Streaming MVP Features

These features are necessary to build a dynamic MVP for live streaming:

User Registration: A simple format of user registration to open an account with valid credentials

Live Streaming: Enables the user to broadcast and records live streams to users who subscribed to the channel.

Search: The search box allows users to search content by popularity, topic, channel, trending, interests, or location.

User Profile: It shows the personal information of users with profile pictures.

User Gallery: Gallery organizes and stores recorded videos on the user’s profile.

Rating/Commenting: Live video streaming apps thrive on their social engagement. So, you must include a rating/commenting system to allow users to review and leave feedback.

Conclusion

Now that you have an idea to get started take the process ahead to build a live video streaming app. Since the path to developing these apps pose technical challenges, it is better to choose a top-rated mobile app development company with dedicated mobile app developers to realize your idea.

#livestreaming #mobilelivestreaming #livestreamingtv #livestreamingapp #uxdesign

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theeurekaproject · 4 years

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Chimera

Questions ricocheted around the Revelation at the speed of light, but Lyra’s head spun too fast for her to even really register any of them. It felt like her weirdness-detecting meter was broken—so much had happened in the past few days that her mind had just stopped noticing these bizarre situations. It all still felt like a fever dream, and she half-expected to be woken up at any minute by some drunken draft dodger or homeless streetwalker screaming at her to get out of their territory. That was it, it had to be. Any second now, the distant hum of the spacecraft’s life-support systems would fade into the buzz of neon lights, the lingering scent of lavender would transform into the odor of cheap perfume, and Imperial white would turn to Cantator black.

Lyra closed her eyes tight and opened them again, only to see the glittering, ascetic luxury of the Revelation once more. She was still the picture of upper-crust perfection—she was clothed in a gown the Imperatrix had personally gifted her, wearing jewelry expensive enough to support her forever if she dared to run away and pawn it, and sitting amongst people from a range of castes she never thought she’d meet. Acidalia sat in front of her, talking to David about some complicated war Lyra had only ever heard snippets of from T, while the others interrupted the conversation occasionally to add bits and pieces of information and insight. Lyra herself stayed silent, mostly because she had no idea what she could possibly offer this conversation.

“This is dangerous territory,” Acidalia said wearily, rubbing her forehead like she had a migraine. “You’d think after all this time, people would learn that forming never-ending, complicated webs of alliances is a recipe for disaster, especially combined with that imperialistic, militaristic attitude Cadé claims the Alliance has.”

David scoffed. “People never learn from their ancestors’ mistakes. If they did, nobody would be in the mess every one of us is trapped in right now.” Alongside him, his daughter nodded, looking a strange combination of bored and annoyed that Lyra never associated with meeting literal honest-to-god space aliens.

“Well, we’re not really in a mess, are we?” Athena, one of the Scientias, asked. She’d already somehow managed to get her lipstick smeared all the way down her chin and on her bright white teeth, though she hadn’t eaten anything or touched her face. It looked absolutely ridiculous, but Lyra assumed she had a high enough status that the others didn’t want to mention it. “I mean,” Athena clarified, “outside of our own war, that is. What can they do, make us listen to them?”

Acidalia sighed. “Well, yes.” “Bullshit,” Athena said. “You’re the Imperatrix Ceasarina—or, at least, an Imperatrix Ceasarina—of Eleutheria. They have to listen to what you say.”

“That isn’t how diplomacy works.” Acidalia frowned. “I have no way of knowing if Cadé is telling the truth or if this is all entirely made up. Keep in mind that, according to him, the governing body behind their delegation has no idea that they’re even here. There’s a very real possibility that he could just be utterly mad, or that he’s a radical politician with no real, substantial support simply making absurd claims to invoke pathos.”

“So you can just say no to him,” Athena said patronizingly.

“No, not exactly. Because if he was telling the truth, Eleutheria could be facing a military unlike any other we’ve ever dealt with, and then either they crush us, or we waste countless resources getting them off of our planet. Perhaps I’d have taken the risk of denying him if we were in peacetime, but the great Eleutherian army is already divided in two, the government is a barely functioning mess, and half the citizens hate the other half with a passion I’ve never seen before. If we declined their ‘offer’ of an alliance and we were attacked by this hypothetical enemy…” Her voice trailed off, and though it never wavered, she didn’t look exactly the same as before. She wasn’t shaken, really, but perhaps slightly less confident, and that worried Lyra supremely.

“Well, I, for one, am not going to be bullied by these interstellar assholes,” Praetor Andromeda declared, as if it was that easy. Her one glowing iris made a click-click-click noise like metal on metal when she rolled her eyes. “They may claim to have fancy technology, but they’re definitely bluffing. If they don’t have Eleutheria’s biotech, how can they have weaponized black holes? Those aren’t even possible.”

“That is true,” Acidalia ceded, “but they’ve always been far more advanced than us in regards to physics. They do seem to lag behind in biology, but that’s not what’s important right now.” “And, um,” the other Scientia—Carina?—said, “weaponizing black holes is kind of technically possible.” Andromeda’s eyes widened, casting a fluorescent blue glow on the floor. “What do you mean by that?”

“The math does check out.” Carina shrugged. “I—well, I’d hardly know, I’m a student, really. But they’re definitely not too outlandish. And, theoretically, if they existed, they’d be too powerful to face up against. All of Terra would be torn to shreds, and most of Mars, too, at the very least.” “Is there any way for us to get weaponized black holes?” Andromeda asked. “Hypothetically.”

“No,” Acidalia said quickly, “and even if there was, I would never green light that. If these massive forces of destruction are real, the galaxy most certainly doesn’t need another one.”

“It’s war. Creating massive forces of destruction comes with the territory.”

“We do not need to go from leveling cities to leveling solar systems,” David argued. “As if nuclear bombs and the like aren’t already bad enough. Have you ever seen Star Wars: A New Hope? Look at what happened to Princess Leia’s planet! Acidalia’s right—nobody needs more of that.”

“Maybe Acidalia should keep her mouth shut about what’s ethical and what isn’t, seeing as she let her brother kill himself to save her own skin,” Ace snapped suddenly, glaring at Acidalia with a gaze sharp enough to cut steel.

Lyra was sure her eyes almost bulged out of her head, but the Imperatrix herself seemed to take it in stride. “We can debate the ethics of war and self-sacrifice another time,” she said, smoothly transitioning to another subject. Ace looked like he wanted to say something, but Lyra shot him a look, and he closed his mouth. It wasn’t that she didn’t want Acidalia to be held accountable for her actions and the role she had in T’s death, but it seemed unwise to bring that up now, and insulting royalty was never a good idea. Ace was lucky nobody straight-up arrested him on the spot.

With Acidalia’s statement, the rest of the room quieted somewhat, though Ace continued to stare angrily into space. Andromeda kicked at something on the floor, clearly irritated, and an awkward silence fell over the leaders.

“So what are we gonna do?” Athena asked eventually, breaking the unsteady quietude.

“Right now, I think our priority should be shutting down the insanity happening in Appalachia at the moment,” Acidalia replied. “Once we secure the capital, we’ll have more resources to allocate to dealing with the massive war the rest of the Via Lactea may or may not have gotten itself into. I’m going have to address the potential alliance at some point, but I can’t do much while we’re actively fighting a battle.”

“You make it sound much simpler than it is,” Andromeda cautioned, gesturing at the window. “Imperatrix Ceasarina though you may be, you’re still no Praetor.” “I’m actually the Commander in Chief of the entire Eleutherian military, technically speaking, but that’s irrelevant. I’m not trying to tell you how to do your job, but I maintain that it needs to be done. We have to get Appalachia and we have to do it quickly, and if there’s anyone alive who can do that, it’s you.” The compliment tacked on at the end was clearly an attempt to pacify Andromeda, but it seemed to work, and she relaxed slightly, placated.

“All right, but you’re going to have to be lenient on me,” Andromeda said. “If I have to use unorthodox methods—“

“Andy, don’t,” David interrupted, and he and Acidalia both stiffened. Lyra glanced at Cressida, Ace, and the Scientias, who seemed just as tense as the others. For a brief instant it seemed like Acidalia and Andromeda were about to start arguing again, then the atmosphere shifted, and Acidalia’s eyes went wide like she’d had a sudden realization.

“What is it?” Andromeda asked—well, more like demanded, really.

“I just had an idea.” “Yeah, no shit. What’s the idea?” Acidalia bit her lip. “It’s absolutely mad.” “Great.” “It’s almost certainly a war crime.” “Even better.”

David shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t like where this is going. I will not have my daughter be the child of a convicted war criminal.”

“You can’t get convicted of war crimes if you don’t lose the war,” Andromeda shrugged. “What is it?” “Before I say anything—“ Acidalia began. “Will you stop running your mouth and spit it out? You’re going to give me a goddamn heart attack from the anticipation. I swear to God, you are the worst,” Andromeda interrupted. She held something in her hands—an elastic hair tie, or maybe a rubber band—and twisted it around her fingers, fidgeting, like she simply couldn’t wait to hear what horrible plan Acidalia had concocted in the past five minutes.

Acidalia swallowed, looking like she was reconsidering even mentioning whatever she was about to say. A moment passed, then two. Then, with a pained voice, she announced simply, “I am a Cipher.”

Lyra had no idea what that was supposed to mean, but evidently Andromeda and David understood, because they looked at each other, wide-eyed.

“That’s genius,” Andromeda said, her features lighting up like a Saturnalia tree.

“That’s horrible,” David countered, looking shocked that Acidalia even dared to suggest it.

Everyone else just kind of stared at each other, and Lyra was relieved to see that she wasn’t the only one in the dark. Even the Scientias looked bemused, which wasn’t a feeling often associated with the caste of knowledge. Cressida tugged at her father’s arm, asking a question in rapid Martian Anglian, but he didn’t answer her. Eventually Acidalia seemed to sense that they needed an explanation, and she rose from her place in her organic white chair, which suddenly looked much more like a throne than it had before.

“To cipher is to encode,” she said, but she didn’t look at them. Her big brown eyes focused on something outside the window, a distant speck of light a million parsecs away, and Lyra got the feeling Acidalia was trying to avoid her gaze. She wondered why. It didn’t seem like the Imperatrix should have to worry about anyone’s judgement—especially not a Cantator’s.

Athena just stared. “Your point?” “What I’m about to say may be somewhat shocking,” Acidalia said, though her tone never wavered, and she didn’t look at all like she was about to drop a bombshell. Still, Ace tensed, and Lyra couldn’t blame him. If she were in his position… well, she might not be very enthusiastic to hear any more life-changing statements by Acidalia, either.

“With all due respect, we just met space aliens. I doubt there’s anything that could shock me any more than that,” Athena dismissed with a wave of her hand. “Now you’ve just made me curious.”

“Well, if you insist.” Acidalia sighed. “The Ciphers are rulers, first and foremost, but we are scientists, too. Eleutheria is much more of a technocracy than you may have anticipated, and the strength of the Imperial family comes not only from wealth, but from scientific skill. More specifically, people like my mother and I are both Imperatrices and geneticists, and that’s why we’ve been able to rule over Eleutheria for as long as we have. If you genetically modify each and every citizen from birth, you’re quelling rebellions before they even begin. Everyone in this room bears the marks of a society so focused on futurism that they’ve given up on ethics, myself included.”

For a minute, nobody said anything. Lyra only half-knew what Acidalia was talking about—she’d heard, vaguely, of biology and genetics, but she hardly knew what a cell was, let alone the intricacies of the human genome. Then Athena said, quite loudly, “so that means we’re mutants?”

“In a sense,” Acidalia said, “though I’m afraid that it’s probably not half as cool as what you’re thinking of. Let me give you an example: you’re a caste Scientia, correct?”

“Yeah,” Athena said, “so?”

“So…” Acidalia trailed off, and Lyra could almost see gears turning in her head. “So you have a very high IQ. Some would argue extraordinarily high, higher than human nature is supposed to permit. High enough that the negative effects—anxiety, depression, mood disorders, psychosis, and schizophrenia—almost cancel out any benefit it ever may have had. How many of your elders suffered from incurable mental illnesses?”

Athena went silent, her easygoing façade disappearing like a mask falling off her face. “Oh, god. My mother. I never met her, but while she was alive, she was supposedly out of her mind. I always wondered if that was why I was so bad at numbers—my family was just stupid. But you think it’s because she had an artificially inflated IQ or something?”

“I know four people with psychotic disorders,” Carina offered. “I always thought that seemed kind of like too many people for such a small sample size, but I never put the pieces together. Why would Eleutheria want to drive their scientists crazy?”

“They don’t. It’s an unprecedented side effect of an experiment that was done one time on one small group, and then extrapolated to everyone forever. You’re researchers, too, even if you’re not in biomed, and you know how disastrous improperly applied science is. But the Eleutherian perspective on science and society extends far beyond just the intelligence and resultant mental illness of the Scientia caste—it permeates every aspect of our civilization from the top down, and the Ciphers are—supposedly—the ones in charge of it all.”

“So they built us to fit in the boxes they made,” Athena said, sounding half-enraptured. “You’re saying that they intentionally modified everyone just to fit into a caste?”

Acidalia nodded. “That’s why I don’t even have to look at you and Carina to know that you probably have all sorts of inconvenient diseases that would make it difficult for you to do much of anything physical. Asthma and allergies, chronic fatigue, weak muscles and soft bones, immune systems that will lose their metaphorical minds over a grain of pollen or cat dander but will turn the other cheek when faced with influenza. Scientias weren’t built for fighting, and I mean that quite literally. After all, if the smartest members of the population are also the strongest, you’re setting yourself up for a revolution. That’s too risky.”

“I was always sick as a child,” Carina said softly. “Is that why?” Acidalia nodded. “Almost certainly. It’s like that with every other caste, too—Labora are incredibly strong, but also prone to deafness, blindness, and other conditions that make communication much more difficult in the absence of sign language and Braille, because you can’t form rebellions—or even unions—if you can’t speak to one another. And the only group of people who are exempt from this are the people who were born to rule society itself. Have you ever seen a noblewoman who’s anything less than brilliant and beautiful?”

“Long story short, the propaganda isn’t lying when it says power is in the Ciphers’ DNA,” Andromeda said, looking far less concerned about all this than Lyra was. Despite being a Cantator, a child whose existence wasn’t approved of by the government, she almost felt that something was crawling underneath her skin, like her body wasn’t exactly her own.

Maybe it wasn’t. She’d never meant anyone else whose hair grew in a natural fluorescent pink. That couldn’t be normal, could it? She’d inherited it from one of her parents, and where did they get it from? Pre-Eleutherian humans didn’t have hair that looked like liquid fruit-gum amoxicillin. Even Lyra, who had an abandonment certificate instead of a birth certificate, was affected by the Ciphers and their encoding of genes. And if they’d managed to make her hair the same color as strawberry-flavored antibiotics, what had they managed to put into her head?

“So how can we weaponize this?” Athena asked, having apparently already gotten over the revelation that the government had effectively been poisoning her to keep her scrawny and weak her entire life.

“I can edit the genome of anything,” Acidalia said, “including microorganisms. I’m a walking source of made-to-order bioweapons. It’s not a complicated science—in fact, any standard Biologica could probably do it—but what makes me different is the fact that I have training and education and an expensive lab, while any Biologica who looked too deep into genetics would probably find herself dead before her research even made it to publication.”

“Yes, so let’s stop talking and do it already,” Andromeda snapped, clearly bored. She’d probably heard this discussion a thousand times, to the point where she was sick and tired of even hearing people talk about it. “What do you think would work best? I’m partial to something as infectious as the common cold and as lethal as rabies, myself.”

“Rabies would never work, it’s too slow-acting,” Acidalia dismissed. “Besides, I am in no way agreeing to dropping virus bombs out of planes, if that’s what you’re suggesting.”

“Why not?” “Because that would start a cascade I have no way of shutting down. At least with nuclear attacks, radiation disperses over time. Infectious diseases only amplify, becoming worse and worse with every new case. Innocent people would almost certainly die.” “Well, the needs of the many—“ “Don’t you dare. I’m not murdering civilians for the sake of winning a war. They didn’t sign up for this, and it’s not their conflict to fight. They don’t deserve to die.” “By that logic, neither do half the soldiers we’ve killed.” “Soldiers know what they’re doing when they join. The two aren’t comparable. Even disregarding the ethics of targeting civilians, though, the effects of such a drastic attack would be felt for miles around. It could kill millions. It could bring about the end of days. Eleutheria was born from the ashes of a world killed by a pandemic, and I won’t let that happen again. No more world-destroying, civilization-ending smallpox missiles.”

“Then what are you proposing?” Andromeda’s voice was as cold as the gaze from her electric iris, and Lyra was suddenly more afraid of her than she’d ever been before. She sounded so icy, so inhuman, that it was hard not to flinch away from her uncanny-valley eyes.

“There are ways to localize plagues. It uses ridiculously outdated technology and it’d be a very risky mission, but it’s far better than killing innocents.”

“Not if it kills you.”

“I’m one person. I’d much rather risk my own skin than doom millions of others unfairly.” Acidalia didn’t say unlike you, but the way she looked at Andromeda made it abundantly clear.

Andromeda narrowed her eyes. “If you want to kill yourself, that’s fine with me. But I’m going to need to know what to put in the obituary.”

“You don’t need to write an obituary, because the planet thinks I’m dead anyway. Remember, Alestra killed me. I have nothing to lose. If we win, we win, and if I die, nothing happens. It’d be wonderful if I could come back from the dead proclaiming the news of a Revolutionary victory, but if I’m killed for real, people will be none the wiser.” Acidalia sounded incredibly blasé about her potential imminent death, and Lyra had to wonder if it was all due to T’s untimely demise. The Underground was a sick, twisted, violent place, and she’d lost enough childhood friends to know how the Imperatrix felt. When a loved one died, it was so easy to slip into a toxic, self-sacrificial mentality borne out of survivors’ guilt and the first stages of grief. Even monarchs weren’t immune to the challenges and feelings that came with being human.

Equally empathetic and disturbed by the sudden realization that the Imperatrix Ceasarina was, in fact, as human as any other, Lyra sat back and tried to focus again on the task at hand. Localizing a plague seemed impossible. Diseases—well, they replicated. It was their nature. She’d seen it a thousand times. One person would fall ill, and maybe they’d get better, or maybe they’d slowly decline until their body just crashed and they died. And sometimes that was it—one body, one burial, one half-empty bottle of ineffective antibacterial pills. But there were other times where one sick person turned into ten turned into a hundred, and symptoms swept through crowds of people like wildfire. Lyra had been a victim of such an event; her throat had swollen up, almost but not quite enough to suffocate her. She made it through. Many had not.

It didn’t discriminate, the sickness. It killed the slavers and slaves, the criminals and police, the powerful and anyone who dared to oppose them. It was a silent, lethal force that lurked in every dark corner and every abandoned medical base. She couldn’t imagine how dangerous it would be if it was weaponized. How do you fight against an enemy you can’t even see?

“How would you make sure it would only hurt the people it’s supposed to?” Lyra asked, feeling nervous. Addressing the Imperatrix so casually still felt wrong.

Acidalia still looked uncomfortable, but she answered anyway, sounding as proper and elegant as ever. “Several centuries ago, when Eleutheria was far smaller and the populace more easily controlled, there existed a laboratory of sorts called the Terminal. It was built for the sole purpose of providing medical care to the city-state, but technology progressed and my ancestors gained more power, and, like many scientific endeavors, it lost its original mission after years of experiments of dubious ethicality. After several wars and a near-uprising, the Terminal’s purpose shifted from noble scientific research to citizen control, and you can now use it as a method to dispatch deadly pandemics or lifesaving cures to whichever portions of the city you’d like.”

“How?” Athena asked, looking suspicious. As if Acidalia had a reason to lie to them, Lyra thought.

“It’s built into Eleutheria itself. The city’s grown around the Terminal for the past few hundred years. Or, to put it metaphorically, it’s like mycelium; the actual structure is the flowering fungus, but it has an invisible network of hyphae that reach under the surface,” Acidalia said, somewhat unhelpfully.

Athena looked completely bemused, which made Lyra feel slightly better about not knowing what mycelium was. Acidalia didn’t seem to sense that they hadn’t gotten the metaphor, because she didn’t explain.

“So what you’re proposing,” Athena said, “is getting into the Terminal and creating some nightmare plague that would only affect Nova bases?” Acidalia nodded. “Well, more specifically, adolescent and adult men in those Nova bases, as that demographic composes the majority of their army. It’s not perfect—rare as they are, female soldiers exist, and there are doubtlessly many women in non-combat roles that nevertheless have great impact—but it’s the same philosophy about cutting specimens, isn’t it? It’s far better to cut carefully and with patience, even if you wind up removing less than what you wanted, because you can always go back and cut away more. But you should never try to cut more than you need, because once it’s off, there’s no way of getting it back on again.”

Her tone of voice suggested that everyone spent their spare time playing with “specimens” of some unknown kind, and Lyra wondered just how involved the Ciphers were in medicine and biology. She tried to picture Acidalia wearing a lab coat and blue latex gloves like the scientists she saw on the posters for disaster holos, but the image was too ridiculous for her to keep it in her mind’s eye for very long. It was hard to imagine the Imperatrix wearing anything other than elaborate white dresses and platinum jewelry.

“That’s suicidal,” David said simply, looking very put-off by the suggestion. “Ethics aside, you’re going to get yourself killed. The only entrances to the Terminal were built eons ago, back before the starscrapers were thousands of floors high, and they’re all located in places that are considered horrible areas even on the best of days. And today is definitely not the best of days.”

“I know,” Acidalia replied.

“Well, I’d volunteer to take you on a little tour of the worst places on all Terra,” Andromeda offered, “but it’s been years since I was last down there. And even when I was a kid, it’s not like I saw too much of the surface anyway. Besides, it’d be stupid to have us both go on a mission so risky.”

Lyra thought that sounded like a flimsy excuse to avoid having to go on a dangerous expedition, seeing as Acidalia and Andromeda were certainly not the only two important people in charge of the Revolution, but Acidalia seemed to agree with the Praetor. “I’ll have to go alone,” she not-quite-shrugged.

“No you don’t.” It took half a second for Lyra to realize that those words had just left her mouth, but she found that she couldn’t stop herself from talking. “I know those streets. I was raised there. I could show you the whole city if you wanted, and I can most definitely get you to the Terminal.”

Acidalia raised an eyebrow in surprise. “You know that place?” “It’s where I stumbled across your brother. Or, more accurately, where he and Ace stumbled across me. You know—where Cassandra lives. I’ve worked there for my entire life. Up until a few days ago, I’d never even left the island. I tried, but I couldn’t get past the River Orientalis.” She cracked an awkward smile.

“I’m not saying no,” Acidalia said slowly, “but you’re… fifteen?”

“Sixteen,” Lyra corrected. In truth, she was probably not sixteen. She could count her age in summers, but everything before five or six years was fuzzy and nebulous, and she could just as easily have been fifteen or even younger. But that made her sound much more immature, and that was not how she wanted herself to come across.

Acidalia bit her lip. “You’re so young.”

“You’re barely twenty.” Lyra’s heart practically spasmed in her own chest, and she nearly flinched away from Acidalia’s steely brown eyes, half-surprised by her own boldness.

“You grow up quick in the Underground,” Andromeda shrugged. Lyra guessed that she was only agreeing to the plan so Lyra could take her place as the sacrificial lamb, but that wasn’t here nor there.

Acidalia shrugged, and something about her posture reminded Lyra of a surrendering dictator waving a white flag. She had an air about her that gave every expression and every action an uncanny amount of weight—all she had to do was breathe, and she captured the attention of everyone in the room.

“I suppose if it’s the only option,” Acidalia ceded, “but I will never be comfortable with dragging innocent people into a war that isn’t theirs.”

“I live on this planet, too,” Lyra reminded her.

“It isn’t the same. This is not your responsibility, and you don’t have to make this sacrifice. There is a high possibility we could both die from this mission.” “I’m a Cantator. Death doesn’t scare me.”

“Then that’s one thing we have in common.” Acidalia offered Lyra hand, which she took. The Imperatrix’s skin was clammy and cold, and a thin crust of blood stuck around the edges of her perfectly manicured nails. Her fingertips were red and raw, like she’d been scrubbing at them until the skin started to peel, perhaps in an effort to get the clotted blood off. Lyra didn’t remark on it.

“A Cantator and a Cipher. I sure hope you survive, because the propaganda department will have a goddamn field day with this,” Andromeda laughed. “Good luck.”

Lyra almost wanted to snap at her. The Praetor wouldn’t be so jovial if she was the one about to go on a suicide mission. But that would have been wasted time, and this whole conversation had been long enough already. There were more important things to do than yell at Andromeda.

Like deliver a living biological weapon, who also happened to be Imperatrix Ceasarina Acidalia-Planitia Cipher, to an ancient laboratory buried in the middle of a war zone so she could program a plague to kill her own mother’s soldiers.

This is going to go just wonderfully, Lyra thought.

#on the edge of eureka #POV Lyra #Acidalia #Andromeda #Lyra

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sambart93 · 7 years

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2017.05.03 Marker Light Blue Deeper Review!

I got to see my beautiful Hiroki-kun again on stage <3

Official Website here Official Twitter here Press Coverage 1, 2, 3 Other Related (e.g. Opening/Dance) Videos: 1, 2, 3, 4

Cast and Characters (Character’s Actual Name / Japanese Pronounced and Written Version)

CLOUD BLUE GAKKOU/SCHOOL Jyounin Tatsuki as Saphir/Safaia Sugie Masahiro as Verite/Berute Oguri Ryo as Honette / Onetto Furuhata Keisuke as Affection/Afekushion Iwa Yoshito as Tendress/Tandoresu Tanaka Hiroki as Chasete / Shasutate

RED Seto Keita as Rubis / Rubi- Shiokawa Wataru as Dignite / Digunite Hattori Muo as Passion / Pashion Masui Kento as Courage / Kura-jyu Domoto Shouhei as Beaute / Bo-te

CORINDON GROUP Sueno Takuma as Corindon Katou Mao as Walter / Warute-ru Hagiwara Naruya as Guillaume / Gyo-mu Akaba Mio as Thibaud / Chibo- Sugamoto Ikumi as Doudou / DuDu- Yoshizawa Tsubasa as Ghislain / Gisuran

SCHOOL COUNCIL Okita Kouhei as Horace / Orasu Watabe Hiroki as Roro/Roro Sono Kazuki as Nicholas / Nikola Uchino Futo as Anton / Anton

NON-SPOILER REVIEW

Overall: This is my second Odd Entertainment production. While it wasn’t as good as Soul Flower (see review here), this play still had a lot of charm. I really enjoyed the world and the action was great and I like how the story came together. The costumes were awesome, the use of the stage was great, all the characters were interesting and I enjoyed it! The only place where it really lagged was that the set up and introduction took quite a long time in my opinion. So getting to the action took time. But it was good! Rating: 7/10

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STORY

We follow students who go to a special magic school BUT have never been to the outside world because it’s too dangerous and because they all have magic powers, they’d probably be killed instantly if they went out. One day, very strangely, they get a transfer student (something that has never happened before) and it appears he doesn’t even have a power, or at least the powers haven’t awoken yet. The boy also doesn’t have any memory of who he is, how he got there nor what he did before he went to the school. On the other hand, the Corindon Group are trying to find a magic thing can Corindon needs and wants in order to become all powerful. This leads his men to the school, but what will happen and who is this new guy?!

Did I make it interesting enough for you? Good!

Onto the SPOILER REVIEW!

So I already stated the tiny negative in the Non-Spoiler section so I don’t need to comment about that at all, so lets get to all the good and juicy stuff!

I was SO freaking excited to see this stage for some reason! Just the fact it’s from the same guys who did Soul Flower - which I freaking loved(!) - and it was Hiroki-kun again and not ONLY Hiroki-kun but past actors that I’ve seen Oguri Ryo and Higawari Naruya! And then the freaking visuals came out and Hiroki-kun was doing a BLONDE role again and he was FREAKING adorable in it! I was so ready for this. So naturally my expectations going in were crazy! I’m glad for the most part I was happy and enjoyed this!

Again Odd Entertainment managed to take a simple story and just make it so much more. Also the characters are all so realistic, none of them are the same, they all have their own traits and personalities and they each have their own charm!

Speaking of the story, I really liked how it all came together. First we have three different groups of people; Blue, Red and Corindon group, and how they so perfectly come together e.g. Corindon group is searching for the magic power while also using and manipulating the Reds to help them and then turns out the magic power is actually TWO people, one from Blue and one from Red so they all end up at the same place together. I am not doing this story justice so I’ll just go full spoiler on the story right now:

So Saphir is the transfer student who doesn't remember who he is or where he came from but he turns up at the school with only a letter on him telling him to go there. So everyone in the school wants to know who he is and why his powers haven't awakened yet regardless of his age. Some are naturally hostile to him but slowly and surely he manages to win everyone over and become everyone's friends. Meanwhile Corindon is ordering Red and his group to find Saphir and only says that Saphir has something that will help them become strong. In reality he wants Saphir because he's magical and he wants him in order to become the ultimate ruler and most powerful man in the world. So Red infiltrate the school and kidnap Saphir who ends up in Corindon's lair. Naturally Blue want to save their friend to try to break in and get him back but on the way, one by one, they get killed. Slowly the Reds realised how evil Corindon is and change sides, well most of them and turns out Rubis is also part of the magic power Corindon wants. A long time ago the power split itself into two so it would be safe from being used for evil, creating Rubis and Saphir and if them two come together with the help/control of Corindon then something very bad could happen. It was originally just Saphir but he saved Rubis as a child and decided to transfer part of his power into him. Neither of them remember their past until they meet back in the present. So in the end it’s most of Blue and Red fighting (and dying) for their life to save both Saphir from being tortured and killed for his power, and to keep Rubis safe also, as well as stop and destroy Corindon and his group.

Sound decent enough?

So the story is technically simple; two powers make an ultimate power, evil lord on the rise. BUT when you add all the friendship and the magic actually being people who have a history and connection and evil guys turning to the good side and such, it becomes so much more and is so much deeper (no pun intended) in story!

Okay now onto the next thing!!

I super, super, super love what the did with the actual stage! They had two massive slabs on either side of the stage that they would rotate when the scene changed. It would be the school gates or the school dorm with sofas, or it could be the back of a building with a bench or it’d be full of chains and show the Corindon den/hide-out; it’s really creative yet the actually assembling and such is so simple!

The action was really good too but like Onigiri (same theatre it was at too) there were a bit too many people and things on stage at once for my worries and anxiety not to be like ‘PLEASE don’t hurt yourself or fall off!’ and luckily no one had any trouble which is a lucky godsend because seriously, anything could’ve easily gone wrong. As expected it wasn’t like Touken Ranbu stage/musical and 2.5 level of choreography and speed but it was still great and the weapons and such were interesting =]

I also really loved the costumes and the hair and the visuals in general were amazing! I wanted EVERYONE’s bromides! I ended up only buying Hiroki-kun’s (and Domoto’s for a friend) BUT if I had had the money I would’ve definitely bought:

And now onto the characters themselves... ready for an essay? If it wasn’t already xD

ACTING/CHARACTERS

CLOUD BLUE GAKKOU/SCHOOL

Jyounin Tatsuki as Saphir/Safaia: I get the feeling this actor is a big deal but I have no idea who he is. Just the way he holds himself and talks, it came off like he’s probably one of the more popular actors and of course as the main character too in this. But in all honesty, his character was the most boring in terms of personality but that’s probably because he spent the entire stage being like who even am I?!’ and ‘hey guys lets all be friends! I have no past or personality so I’m a good neutral for everyone to be friends with’ is the impression I got from him. Also we all know the MC is always the least interesting character xD *google* oh fuck he’s in TsukiUta!!!!... no wonder he felt like he was famously known as a stage actor! Dammit my spidey senses were right that he’s a big deal...

BUT getting away from the air he gave off and his character, during the curtain call when he actually could be himself; he was totally adorable! He kept messing up his speeches and stuff and just so naturally and automatically slapping himself on the cheek when he messed up and everytime everyone cracked up laughing xD

Sugie Masahiro as Verite/Berute: So you see his visuals and you just imagine a stereotypical glasses character right? Like Tezuka (TeniPuri) or William (Kuroshitsuji). And he IS like that and all stoic and such BUT as you get to know him, he can fight and he’s super nice and tries to help Honette out a lot. And his and Honette’s sword fighting practise scene was great! I really enjoyed those scenes with him and Honette, you can tell they’ve been friends for a long time. Also his hair was fabulous xD

Oguri Ryo as Honette / Onetto: I got to see Oguri in action for the third time! He always does amazing with the action scenes and every time he’s played a different character too. This time we got the cool and mysterious, quiet guy who is obviously badass and could woop your butt within seconds if you tried to start a fight with him. I love his solo sword fighting practise around the back of the school before Verite joined him and they then practised together <3 But his and Chasete’s death scene broke my heart... I’ll get to that later... his power was fire if I remember correctly.

Furuhata Keisuke as Affection/Afekushion and Iwa Yoshito as Tendress/Tandoresu: I’m going to put these two together because they’re twins in this, Affection being the younger brother even though Tendress is the ‘’weaker’ one. Their power is super cool! It’s like Kamen Rider W where both of them have to be present in order for the power to work! So what happens is Tendress goes into a sleep state while Affection uses the power to attack. So yeah, exactly like Kamen Rider W xD I love how they always held hands together (of course xD) and Affection always tries to protect his brother. Also their death is sad; they’ll laid against a wall with their hands against each other =[ they were cute!!

Tanaka Hiroki as Chasete / Shasutate: Now to this little cutie! Freaking Hirokikun you guys! (A compuslory bigger photo for him obviously <3)

Once again Hiroki-kun did a somewhat different character. This character is a right queen! He’s very manipulative and gets people to do what he wants. He has poor Orasu under his thumb and when Chasete tells him that he doesn’t like him (because Orasu is in LOVE with Chasete) Orasu just breaks down and finally realises Chasete was just using him! It’s such a good scene! Also before this scene we get Orasu being a bit sexually frustrated and Chasete just pins him down on the sofa and then when Orasu gets really angry he switches it around so he is on top of Chasete and starts to unbutton his vest! =O

Also when Chasete corners in on Saphir and tries to seduce him too! Oh my!! Seriously I am all for this type of Hiroki o_O this is the second time I’ve seen him do a BL role and I loved it xD cannot wait for his scenes to be on DVD!

But oh me, oh my his death scene! So it ends with him and Honette fighting together and they’re both obviously killed and while on their last breathes, they’re back to back while sat on the floor and Chasete just says ‘I want to sleep / Yasumitai’ and Honete is like ‘yeah just sleep here’ and then obviously they both die =[ it was so sad!

Chasete’s power is basically Manipulation (how is that not surprising xD) and so he can like control people like a puppeteer. It’s pretty cool ^_^

Also Chasete is just pretty as all hell!

I love when Saphir kind of sees through Chasete’s evilness and is like ‘you’re just insecure... be MY friend’ and Chasete breaks down and opens up to him <3 such a good scene!

Hiroki-kun as usual entertained me and made me happy that I’m following his career <3

RED

Seto Keita as Rubis / Rubi-: I’m going to be honest, I wasn’t interested in this character all that much until towards the end. For most of the play he’s just following orders and it becomes clear to the rest of the group that he’s been brainwashed and deluded into thinking Corindon is a good person and he truly believes that Corindon is wanting this power for everyone. But when he learns that he’s the other half of the power and finally believes that Corindon is mean THAT’s when he gets interesting! Visually he looks cool anyway but his character development and story wasn't the most interesting for me.

Shiokawa Wataru as Dignite / Digunite: Ahhh I’m sorry! I don’t really remember this guy =S I remember he’s one of the first Reds to turn good and all but I found the rest of the Reds so interesting that he just kind of fell behind =[ I’ll have to wait for the DVD to make an opinion of him. Sorry guys!

Hattori Muo as Passion / Pashion: I LOVED this guy! As soon as he came on stage, I was like YEAH! He’s so energetic and so raring to go and he has a lot of energy and reminds me a lot of those larger/taller roles, for example Momo from Tenimyu or pretty much any role the actor Shouhei (from Tenimyu, Sengoku Musou, and others) -- do you understand what I mean? I really, really liked him! His death was so sad =[

Masui Kento as Courage / Kura-jyu: This baby is adorable!!! I wanted to take him home!! But his storyline is so sad!!! He gets brutally killed off straight away and THEN Beaute uses his appearance as like a facade when he wants to attack the others! Seeing and evil Courage was upsetting! his death guys, his death hit the feels! And he’s so tiny and cute!!! ... oh shit you guys ... I’ve just googled... he’s not much younger than me!! Holy *dead* he was in YowaMushi! He plays Mizuta!!! OH MY GOD!!! I love him in YowaMushi!!! I remember googling him immediately when I saw him in YowaMushi!!!! OH MY!!! Damn now I do wish I’d bought his bromides to support him!!! OOOOO! He did the Alice play with Keito too?!?! DAMN!! *dead* look look look!

Domoto Shouhei as Beaute / Bo-te: This guy... I know my friend Josie follows his acting troupe/group (acting right? not boy band right? xD) and so she told me about him and so naturally my brain was like “focus on him on stage!’ and me oh my I got SUCH a delight from him. Not only do the Reds come in from the side doors at one point, but also he walked down my aisle and do not trust these pictures, they do not do him justice; he’s SO much more prettier in real life!!! I was in love... love at first sight with this character! His character was also super interesting! He ends up just turning on his group and being one of the two TRUE bad guys and his magic is awesome; he can change his appearance and it’s like image magic where he can creative nothing out of thin air so long as he’s seen it before!

When they came in from the theatre doors that one time, one (I think Dignite) was talking to the crowd and saying that one of the audience members was beautiful, and Domoto flicked his hair back and was like 'of course I'm the most beautiful though' and then Passion turned to him and just shook his head at him very slowly xD Beaute paid no attention to it xD And then in another scene on stage he mentioned his beauty xD Seeing him in his usual out of costume self is absolutely hilarious that he would do such a ’beauty’ role because he looks so different and normal out of costume! I mean look at him normally and then relook at his character photo! So different!

No wait, I take it back. He is VERY pretty even normally... But seriously guys as THAT character, he really is beautiful!

CORINDON GROUP

Sueno Takuma as Corindon: This guy was a good decent bad guy! I don’t have much to say about him just because he’s the stereotypical bad guy and he does it very well. But it was great how he managed to get one group to follow his orders without that group finding out his real motive nor that he had another and his own group doing his bidding too. Also the slight torture scene with Saphir being tortured and tied up by the chains and Corindon electrocuting him(?) was very interesting xD

Katou Mao as Walter / Warute-ru: I have a love-hate relationship with this character. On the one hand I thought he was completely badass and his giant sword weapon was awesome and he kicked butt and I love how when he got really serious he would take out his hand from under his cloak and throw his cloak back so both his arms showed as he fought. BUT (I’m going to be really super shallow now) he just wasn’t pretty enough as this character. In fact, I’d say he looks AWFUL in his pictures (so he’s not photogenic BUT) If you google him he looks great normally! Anyway getting away from my shallowness... he was a badass character and was totally cool and I loved his fighting weapon.

Hagiwara Naruya as Guillaume / Gyo-mu: This character kind of fell under the radar. I really like d the actor in Soul Flower and I kind of expected him to play a bigger role but he really only just popped up here and there and didn’t really bring much to the table, I think he was just a mad scientist that could only come in handy once Corindon got his hands on Saphir.

Akaba Mio as Thibaud / Chibo-: This guy reminded me of... someone... I can’t quite place my finger on who but he was very much like a BDSM type military guy. Do you understand? He also had this whip which was his weapon and he had tight clothes on and such so you get me right?! He was fairly interesting but had a much smaller role than the others so also kind of fell under the radar.

Sugamoto Ikumi as Doudou / DuDu-: This guy was the stereotypical big bony guy who’s pretty dumb and brings comic relief and does stupid things. Except his comedy really didn’t hit all that well with half of the audience. I really enjoyed his stupidity but I didn’t really hear anyone laughing at him which is a shame.

Yoshizawa Tsubasa as Ghislain / Gisuran: I LOVED this guy! Everything from his visuals to how his character is mysterious and quiet but very deadly when he fights, he was good! It’s a shame he was easily overpowered when the Blues got serious though. But I did enjoy his ninja-esque feel and his had the part of clothing that covered his mouth to be more ninja and quite like and he only spoke when he absolutely needed to so overall he was pretty dang cool! Also the actor himself is cute xD

SCHOOL COUNCIL

Okita Kouhei as Horace / Orasu: This poor guy, he was so easily manipulated and used by Chasete but then when he got his heart broken and he goes kinda mental was creepy but very well done.

Watabe Hiroki as Roro/Roro, Sono Kazuki as Nicholas / Nikola and Uchino Futo as Anton / Anton: I’m going to put these guys together. They’re all relatively young and they all had not so much time on stage and they were definitely the cutest because of how much younger they were and I have to say the sweetest out of them all was Roro because he got kidnapped and traumatised thanks to Corindon, also Roro is just like Saphir in that his powers haven’t awoken yet so he’s there to support Saphir when he;s like ‘where is my power?!’. These three did a very good job!

And I think I’ve finally done it!

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AFTERSHOW

I went on opening night and at the end, instead of an aftertalk or a handshake, we got to take pictures of the whole cast on our hpones so here’s some shots I took ^_^

The last two shots were of the cut outs in the lobby ^_^

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GOODS

As you can see I stayed Hiroki-kun central BUT as previously mentioned, if I had the money I definitely would’ve bought some other’s bromides <3

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And we’re done! Another down... a billion 8 more to go (seriously I am SO far behind >.<)

#tanaka hiroki #domoto shouhei #domoto shohei #jyounin tatsuki #oguri ryo #iwa yoshito #masui kento #hagiwara naruya #odd entertainment #stage #stage play #review #舞台 #マーカライトブルー #yoshizawa tsubasa #marker light blue #marker light blue deeper

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thatfanpersonyep-blog · 7 years

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Roads and Jet Lag- Pt. 1

Jasper: OK I'm very tired and worried bc I think one of my friends might be in a fight right now and so I decided to write something Wolfstar. I am going into this with no plan, I’m just going to write. Edit: This turned out really long and so I’m making it into parts. If this is something you like, please let me know! If it doesn’t do well, I probably won’t continue it. Asks are open!

It’s really really unfair that this piece of junk pickup broke down on an abandoned back road. It’s even more unfair that technically, Remus knows exactly how to fix it. He’s done it before, his beat up hand me down is having issues more often than it’s running smoothly. And this is how Remus John Lupin, self-taught mechanic extraordinaire, has to pull over and wait for someone to drive by. And hope that person has a wrench.

Sirius is driving, well speeding really, down an old back road, blasting MisterWives, and generally feeling invincible when he sees the truck on the side of the road. He spares a brief, very brief, thought for serial killers who lure unsuspecting passersby to their untimely and frankly usually quite gruesome deaths, before deciding to pull over anyway. What’s the worst that could happen? Haha very funny. His inner monologue does seem to have a rather dry sense of humour.

He sits in his car for a moment, unwilling to leave the safety of his air conditioning for the dry Nevada heat outside. He steps outside anyway and is about to walk up and knock on the window when he realises there is someone lying in the bed.

Oh god they appear to already have murdered someone, Sirius thinks as he jumps up into the bed to get a closer look. But no, this person seems to be breathing perfectly well. Since he has been convinced this individual is indeed still occupying the earth, Sirius takes a moment to look him over. And damn is he glad he stopped. Attractive Stranger is tall, taller than Sirius, which admittedly doesn’t mean much as Sirius comes in at about five foot one on a good day. He has this mess of curly dirty blonde hair and Sirius has always had a thing for hair that isn’t quite blonde but isn’t quite brown. Mostly he just likes to run his fingers through it and pull. Anyway, the most important fact about Attractive Stranger is that he is shirtless. And boy is he shirtless. Sirius doesn;t quite know why AS didn't just stay in his car with the A/C on, but he for sure is not complaining. You see, AS has abs. Like actually, real life, right there in front of him, abs. And now all he can think about is how attractive Attractive Stranger is and he really should have been thinking more about waking him up.

It really isn’t Remus’ fault he fell asleep. He was sitting in the bed of his truck on the spare blanket he keeps in his truck, and just generally being unbearably hot, so he took his shirt off and balled it up to use as a pillow. And then all his jet lag caught up to him and he fell asleep. And when he woke up, there was a completely random person standing over him, staring. And then Remus was staring too because holy hell random stranger is cute. He had dark hair that appeared to be about shoulder length, although it was currently pulled up into a bun with a few strands falling loosely around his face. And his eyes are grey. Which Remus has never seen nor heard of outside of books, and he kind of always assumed it was made up by writers to make their characters stand out. But, this dude honest to god has grey eyes.

It occurs to Remus then that he should probably be yelling or something. For all he knows Hot Stranger is a murderer. But he’s pretty cute and Remus might be willing to let him murder him. But not without at least getting his name.

“I’m terribly sorry, but who the fuck are you?” he asks in as polite a voice as he can manage when his tired self thinks it’s about seven hours later than it actually is in this godforsaken place.

“I’m Sirius Orion Black”

Remus laughs a bit at that.

“That’s the best you can come up with?” he asks as he pushes himself up onto his elbows and looks at the stranger. “I would’ve thought murders picked more mundane names, but I suppose it doesn’t really matter.”

It occurs to Remus then that this person definitely doesn’t have a western accent.

In fact...

“London?” he asks at the same time the stranger says

“Wales?”

They smirk at each other and Remus dips his head in acknowledgement and tries to keep his face impassive as he waits for the stranger to make a move.

He definitely isn’t expecting that.

#wolfstar #remus lupin #sirius black #remus x sirius #sirius x remus #m x m #fanfic #drabble #oneshot #work in progress #jaspers writing #roads and jet lag #pt 1 #fluff #confusion #au #wales #welsh remus #english sirius

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sailorrrvenus · 5 years

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Why I Ditched My Nikon Kit for Sony as a Wedding Photographer

Changing camera systems is not something to be taken lightly. As a die-hard Nikon fan since I first got into photography, I didn’t think I would ever consider switching away from them. And yet, here I am, sitting with no Nikon kit in sight having just shot my first wedding entirely on Sony kit and no regrets.

My entire career as a professional photographer has been forged with a Nikon. I knew my D750 inside out, knew how it would meter differently in different lights, when I had to adjust things, without even looking. It was comfortable to use and yet, as my way of working has changed, and my photography has grown, the camera hadn’t quite kept up.

What’s wrong with the D750

Well, nothing really. The D750 is a fantastic camera, and for the price it’s regularly available at (under a grand pre-owned), I still think it’s one of the best all-around DSLR cameras on the market for the money. Its dynamic range is incredible, the ISO performance is fantastic and it’s a monster when it comes to focus in low light situations.

And yet, as my shooting style has evolved certain aspects of it have frustrated me at times. The buffer is pretty dire, even with fast cards in it, shooting RAW to both cards the camera chokes after 10 shots. Now for weddings, this doesn’t matter for 90% of the day, but the 10% it does matter, it started to irk me.

Similarly, the max shutter speed of 1/4000th of a second. Not a problem, unless, like me, you like to shoot wide open. My most used aperture is f/2 and after this blazing hot summer we’ve had, I was having to push the aperture higher than I’d have liked to, in order to stop highlights being blown.

Shooting in Liveview on the D750 is another letdown — the AF is awful and slow, it hunts back and forth. It’s fine if you have the time to wait, but if you’re trying to catch a moment, you’ve got no chance.

Why not the D850?

So surely my obvious choice is to upgrade to the D850 right? Bigger buffer, using even faster cards, better Liveview, touch screen focus etc. That fixes all of my concerns right?

Well yes and no. It’s a bigger camera, physically, plus I don’t need 42 megapixels for a wedding. XQD cards are expensive, with not even the sole-manufacturer of them (Sony) adopting them. Making it an expensive upgrade path, especially as I like to shoot on two identical cameras.

Sure I’d get some of the benefits that I wanted, but it wouldn’t solve all of my issues. Liveview is better than the D750, but it’s nothing special.

Mirrorless is where all cameras will end up

I did a lot of research before I made the decision to change, I tried friends cameras, I checked all the boring things like ISO performance against my Nikons and most of all, I looked into the AF accuracy and speed, because that’s what’s key as a documentary wedding photographer, capturing moments the instant they happen!

Where mirrorless used to lag behind, it’s now not the case, with AF points covering the entire frame, dual phase and contrast detect pixels making Autofocus lightning fast and the addition of Eye-AF on the Sony’s is a game changer for me. It sounds so simple, it detects the closest eye to your focus point and tracks it. But just how accurate this is and how well it tracks around the frame has to be seen to be believed.

And let’s face it, the whole idea of a mirror having to physically move to take a photo, is just, well, behind the times in this digital age.

WYSIWYG shooting, What You See Is What You Get, is where the future is and is what makes mirrorless systems a pleasure to use. No more checking to see if any highlights are blown, you know whether they are or not *before* you hit the shutter button. Real-time exposure preview through both the viewfinder and the rear screen mean no more chimping, you know what you’ve got straight away.

A week of using the Sony a7 III and the DSLR seems dated.

So how is it vs the D750?

The D750 is a fantastic camera, and for the price it can be picked up for these days, I still have the opinion that it’s one of the best buys for an all-around DSLR in most parts of its performance.

And of course, it’s an absolute monster when it comes to low light performance. And that’s where the Sony misses in one way and wins big in the other.

It loses on low light AF. It’s just not as good as the D750 at locking focus when it gets dark, period. So you might want to think about an AF assist beam, a low power video light, or pre-focussing (which is what I do for dancing shots anyway).

But when it comes to ISO performance, the Sony smashes even the mighty Nikon. With native ISO going all the way up to 51200 (which is a horrible horrible mess, but still) at any ISO that you’re likely to use, the Sony wins. Sony has even managed to get even more dynamic range out of the A7 III than the D750, which was already an impressive camera in that regards.

The D750s ultra-deep grip is better in the hand, admittedly, or at least when holding it to your face, but with me not using the viewfinder, I find the Sony sits really nicely in my hand. Although a little front-heavy with fast Sony glass attached.

There’s no weight saving once the lenses are attached, so if you think a plus of switching to mirrorless is a reduction in weight, think again! Similarly, if your work is predominantly studio based and you use flash all of the time, you’re not going to get many of the advantages of that a mirrorless system would give you. They all vanish when you introduce flash and you’re metering for exposure anyway.

But when you’re working in natural light, zebra lines highlighting the parts of the image that will have blown, or focus peaking helping you manually focus combined with being able to see the exposure before you take the shot, are simply fantastic.

Shot on the Sony a7 III

What it’s like to use

The body is smaller, the grip is quite deep though and it feels comfortable in the hand. If you don’t use fast lenses, then you may get some decent weight saving out of the switch. But connecting up a 35mm f/1.4 Distagon or 85mm f/1.4 G Master is definitely not a light combination. Maybe a hundred grams lighter than my equivalent set up on the D750.

It feels nice in the hand though, the lens sits nicely on my hand, I think a bit of weight helps stabilize the camera a little. But if you’re thinking about switching just to save weight, and you’re planning on adding a fast aperture lens. Stop, step back, and think again. It won’t be lighter!

Shot on the Sony a7 III

The AF is incredibly fast, the D750 was no slouch, but the Sony impresses me again and again. Eye AF which I thought was going to be a bit of a gimmick. Is quite simply, incredible, it’s fast, accurate and tack sharp.

Full silent mode is great if a little weird to begin with, and you have to understand the technical limitations. In certain artificial lighting, it will create banding across the image. You might be able to avoid it by shooting in multiples of 1/50th (1/60th in the USA) due to the frequency lights flicker. But if you notice it, you’re better off disabling silent mode under those lighting conditions. Similarly, it can’t be used for particularly fast moving subjects, or they will appear to stretch across the screen. This isn’t an issue with the Sony, it’s just a technical limitation of how electronic shutters work vs mechanical shutters. So you have to learn when you can use silent, and when you can’t.

Shot on the Sony a7 III

I’m the first to admit, I’m not a fan of Electronic View Finders. The one on the A7 III is good, the EVF in both the A7R III and A9 is better. But I still don’t really like them. Don’t ask me why, I just don’t, I think it’s to do with my eye being so close to a screen, I just don’t like it. Whereas others rave about it. So it’s definitely down to personal tastes.

So is it a problem? No, because that’s the other thing with mirrorless that has changed how I shoot… I don’t use the viewfinder. Not only does it eat up batteries faster (due to internal heat generation), but also, I just find shooting in LiveView better. It’s freeing, it allows me to get the camera into angles I’d otherwise struggle, creating new creative opportunities. There’s a mode for bright sunlight, which works great, probably increases battery drain a bit, so I turn it off when not needed.

And the big thing for me, as a social photographer. I’m not hiding my face behind a camera, I’m able to engage with my clients while shooting. Making them feel more comfortable, which creates better connections, which makes for better photos. And that is what we all want.

Shot on the Sony a7 III

How was it at the wedding?

So I switched kit a week before a wedding, and I will admit, on the run up to it. I was thinking “Is this sensible? Am I going to be used to using these by Saturday? Will I deliver the same quality that my clients expect?”.

Any worries were completely unfounded, once set up how I wanted them to be, they’re a dream to use. So easy! Focus points covering the whole screen and being able to tap the screen to select them is a dream, the AF was quick and accurate all day long, it even surpassed my expectations late on for the dancing.

The silent shutter meant I could shoot even more discretely for most of the day (I had to turn it off in the barn to avoid banding) and the expanded buffer vs my D750 meant I never had to worry about the camera choking. Combined with the fact that I could see the exposure before pressing the button it was a dream.

Shot on the Sony a7 III

Let’s put this into perspective…

I’d had the cameras for a week. And this was the most confident I’d ever felt shooting a wedding.

Shot on the Sony a7 III

So you’d recommend I switch to Sony then?

No. Well, maybe.

It depends, doesn’t it? If you shoot predominantly studio work, then you lose some of the benefits straight away. No WYSIWYG for you, obviously. And you don’t need it. Super fast AF, well, you don’t need that either for the most part as you know the distance, you can prefocus.

Social and lifestyle photography? Maybe. I’m not going to say Yes, because it’s a very personal decision and what feels right for me might not feel right for you. But I think it’s worth checking them out certainly.

Shot on the Sony a7 III

Some of the more dreamy portrait work? Maybe not… The A7 III has a very weak low-pass optical filter (or Anti-aliasing filter). A low-pass filter softens the image, mainly to prevent moiré but also because sometimes a slightly softer image is just more pleasing to the eye. As it is the A7 III delivers incredibly sharp images and for some styles of photography, that might actually be too sharp.

Ultimately, it’s not a camera for everyone. Kit doesn’t make you a better photographer, or somehow able to better frame an image in your head. But for me, it’s made it easier to translate the image in my head, into an image to deliver to a client.

Shot on the Sony a7 III

Specific advantages of the Sony

Bullet points time!

Silent shooting – brilliant, just brilliant, especially for couples shoots when you’re potentially invading their personal space a little. It’s a bit less intrusive without a rapid clicking of a shutter!

A HUGE buffer – I get 50 images in a row at 10fps before the camera even starts to choke!

Real-time exposure preview with zebra stripes on the blown highlights – nail that exposure every time!

Eye-Af (this is seriously insane)

Focus points covering the whole viewfinder

Focus Peaking so manual focus is easy

Brilliant battery life – I shot the whole wedding with 1 battery in each camera!

Shot on the Sony a7 III

Your thoughts?

Whether you agree with me, disagree, are considering the switch or have tried to switch and found you hate mirrorless! I’d love to know why! Please drop your thoughts below.

About the author: Andy Dane is an award-winning wedding photographer, lifestyle blogger, husband, and father based in Norwich, UK. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. You can find more of Dane’s work on his website, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. This article was also published here.

source https://petapixel.com/2019/03/15/why-i-ditched-my-nikon-kit-for-sony-as-a-wedding-photographer/

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pauldeckerus · 5 years

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Why I Ditched My Nikon Kit for Sony as a Wedding Photographer

What’s wrong with the D750

Why not the D850?

So surely my obvious choice is to upgrade to the D850 right? Bigger buffer, using even faster cards, better Liveview, touch screen focus etc. That fixes all of my concerns right?

Sure I’d get some of the benefits that I wanted, but it wouldn’t solve all of my issues. Liveview is better than the D750, but it’s nothing special.

Mirrorless is where all cameras will end up

And let’s face it, the whole idea of a mirror having to physically move to take a photo, is just, well, behind the times in this digital age.

A week of using the Sony a7 III and the DSLR seems dated.

So how is it vs the D750?

And of course, it’s an absolute monster when it comes to low light performance. And that’s where the Sony misses in one way and wins big in the other.

Shot on the Sony a7 III

What it’s like to use

Shot on the Sony a7 III

How was it at the wedding?

Shot on the Sony a7 III

Let’s put this into perspective…

I’d had the cameras for a week. And this was the most confident I’d ever felt shooting a wedding.

Shot on the Sony a7 III

So you’d recommend I switch to Sony then?

No. Well, maybe.

Shot on the Sony a7 III

Specific advantages of the Sony

Bullet points time!

A HUGE buffer – I get 50 images in a row at 10fps before the camera even starts to choke!

Real-time exposure preview with zebra stripes on the blown highlights – nail that exposure every time!

Eye-Af (this is seriously insane)

Focus points covering the whole viewfinder

Focus Peaking so manual focus is easy

Brilliant battery life – I shot the whole wedding with 1 battery in each camera!

Shot on the Sony a7 III

Your thoughts?

Whether you agree with me, disagree, are considering the switch or have tried to switch and found you hate mirrorless! I’d love to know why! Please drop your thoughts below.

from Photography News https://petapixel.com/2019/03/15/why-i-ditched-my-nikon-kit-for-sony-as-a-wedding-photographer/

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gryphon1911 · 5 years

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image © NikonUSA

All thoughts and ideas are my own personal beliefs based on years of working in the photo industry. While they may not be 100% right, or you may not agree with them all, they are just that, opinions that are open to interpretation, speculation and debate. Please feel free to comment on any aspects of the post in the comments below. Be aware though that I will not tolerate being spiteful or hate. We can debate, but in a manner that is conducive to a healthy conversation. I'm telling you now that I will delete your posts if you get combative or out of line.

Introduction

There has been a lot of hype and speculation surrounding the new Nikon mirrorless camera. Rumor sites have been buzzing for months and fanboys have made it out to be the next coming of Jesus and haters have dismissed the camera as an utter failure even before the official announcement. To say that this is a polarizing camera is an understatement. Even after people have gotten their hands on them, we are getting reviews and opinions based on a limited amount of time shooting with the cameras. That is nothing new if you have been around the tech blogs, and especially the photography forums. We are going to stay away from that kind of talk and look at the camera from my perspective. A years long Nikon SLR/DSLR shooter as well as an ex-Fujifilm and a current Micro Four Thirds/Olympus shooter. August 23, 2018, Nikon announced the following cameras, lenses and accessories for their new z-mount, 135 sensor size (FX in Nikon speak) mirrorless camera.

BODY

The Nikon Z6 is the all arounder, 24mp camera. Could be considered the mirrorless version of the D750. MSRP is $1999 body only or $2599 with the 24-70/4 lens. If you bought during launch and got a camera/lens bundle, Nikon discounted the FTZ adapter by $100. The first launched Z7 is the high megapixel camera, 45mp. Your almost D850 but mirrorless option. Price is $3399 body only or $3999 with the 24-70/4, same FTZ adapter discount as with the Z6.

LENS

Nikkor S-Line 24-70mm f/4 Price $999 Nikkor S-Line 35mm f/1.8 Price $849 Nikkor S-Line 50mm f/1.8 Price $599

ACCESSORIES

Battery Grip - release date TBD FTZ Adapter - allows for full function of ~90 existing Nikon f-mount lenses and potentially manual use of D type and older lenses. Price $249 or $149 if purchased with a camera and lens combo.

The Tech Stuff

Let's dive into the technical aspects of the new cameras.

Camera Body

What I'm looking for from the Z6 is to see if it can handle the job of what I bought the D750 for. Just so you have an idea in your head of the Z6 and how it compare to other mirrorless cameras on the market. Series of images below were pulled from CameraSize website. After these images and comparisons, we'll get into the initial thoughts on the camera itself.

front Nikon DF / Nikon D750 / Nikon Z6

top Nikon DF / Nikon D750 / Nikon Z6

all with the Nikon 50mm f/1.8G attached (Z6 has FTZ adapter) Nikon DF / Nikon D750 / Nikon Z6

native f-mount cameras have Nikon 50mm f/1.8G Z6 has native 50mm f/1.8S in middle adapted 50mm f/1.8G on far right Nikon Df / Nikon Z6

front view Nikon Z6 / Olympus OMD EM1 Mark II

front view Nikon Z6 / Olympus OMD EM1 Mark II / Fujifilm XH1 / Fujifilm XT3

similar fields of view Nikon Z6 - native 50mm / Nikon Z6 - adapted 50mm / Olympus OMD EM1 Mark II - M. Zuiko 25mm f/1.8

Lens Lineup

Out of the gate three lenses were announced. A 24-70/4, 35/1.8 and 50/1.8 The 50mm was not initially available during pre-order. My initial testing will bring me to one initial decision. Can the native 24-70/4S hold its own in IQ versus the veteran f-mount 24-70/2.8G. If IQ is something that is a wash, I can do without the f/2.8 on that lens and replace it.

Accessories

I did not get anything else outside the FTZ adapter, so I have nothing first hand that I can report on in this regard.

Why the FTZ Adapter Matters More Than You Might Think

While it is always the best option to use the native mount lenses for a given system, in the early stages of the release, only so many lenses can be made to go along with the cameras. Nikon makes some great lenses in the f-mount space and if you are like me, you have a large library of those lenses. Seems like Nikon listened and put out an adapter that is quite versatile. Full functionality for lenses that are AF-S had AF-P and E or G type lenses. Nikon has a full list of what they consider compatible on their website and I recommend checking that out. I've used quite a few f-mount lenses on the FTZ and Z6, more detail on that later, but just as a teaser, I've been very happy with the experience so far. If the f-mount lenses is CPU enabled, the FTZ adapter has the ability to use the aperture lever of the lens to shift exposure for you. THis is done via a lever arm within the f-mount side of the adapter. This could make a potentially stop down metered, manual focus lens a fully meterable lens that just needs to be manually focused. If the lens does not have a CPU, then it can still be mounted to the FTZ adapter. You change the aperture value by using the aperture ring on the lens. The only issue is that there is no way built into the camera for the aperture value to be recorded, except the widest aperture that is in the non-CPU lens data menu in the camera. I challenge Nikon to either update the Z cameras firmware to allow a command dial to match the aperture ring value manually or to create another adapter for those non-CPU lenses with an aperture feeler arm to record those values from the lens directly.

Future potential

With the new z-mount, Nikon engineers are claiming that it is possible for them to make lenses that are fully functional as fast as f/0.65. They also claim that the communication bandwidth in the new mount can handle quite a lot and should be sufficient for all they want to do in the future, potentially for the next 100 years.

Performance

Here, we are going to be looking at overall system performance, native and adapted lens performance optically and AF/MF, metering. Overall System Performance From powering on to waking from sleep the system performs well. One of the biggest issues I had early on with the Fuji X system was power on and wake from sleep. Lost a lot of potential images because of the lag. The Z6 is not that way at all. That is one of the first things that I look at when evaluating a new system. Is it as quick to power on as a DSLR. No. Is it going to make me lose the opportunity to grab an image. No, I've never missed a shot. That is from powered down to powered on. Waking from sleep is actually faster. Even the menu diving, touch screen interface is quick and snappy, getting you setup how you want quickly. Auto Focus AF-S performance is very quick with native lenses and just as good and possibly just a little bit slower with some adapted f-mount lenses. This is really lens dependent. Sometimes while using the 24-70/4S, I did not realize that the camera had focused. It was that quick and quiet. The other thing is that the AF confirmation is not a dot in the bottom corner like it is on a DSLR. The focus box is red, and then turns green when AF is acquired. I didn't notice too many issues with AF locking that a DSLR would not have had an issue with either. Contrast detect AF systems need good contrast and there were some times, like when trying to get images of the umbrella girl fountain below that it did hunt or could not get focused. I set the AF point on the statues face and there was enough shadow and low contrast that the system did struggle a little. Post processing allowed me to pull the shadows up in post processing.

Nikon 24-70/4S Z-Mount 1/320, f/4, ISO 100 @ 70mm

Then we look at the street image below where I just composed and fired straight off on the lady with the bike. AF point on her face and the camera nailed focus with no issues. Focus more was S-AF.

Nikon 24-70/4S Z-Mount 1/160, f/5.6, ISO 100 @ 54mm

AF-C performance might take some time to get a full accounting. I do not have a lot of upcoming shoots where I can really push it and test it like I would with the other DSLRs in my stable. I will say this. I was never a fan of fully automated AF like the AUTO AF or 3D AF on the DSLRs from Nikon. I much preferred to use the single point AF or the D9/D25 in AF-C modes. The Z6 doesn't change my mind on that either. Going forward, I'm most likely going to use the same tried and true AF modes I've always used on my Nikon cameras, and will do it happily. I did get a chance to shoot some dogs running about at a local dog park. Far from a definitive test, as I only got to check out single point and dynamic area AF using the Nikon 300mm f/4E PF on the FTZ adapter. I did get some shots, but I still have a lot to learn about the AF system. I've heard from some that I should have used the wide area S or L for tracking and would have gotten a better hit rate. Will post future impressions when I get a chance to use those other focusing modes. I also shot at high extended, which might have been an issue as well.

Nikon Z6 & Nikon 300mm f/4E PF + FTZ 1/320, f/4, ISO 1100

Nikon Z6 & Nikon 300mm f/4E PF + FTZ 1/1000, f/4, ISO 4000

Nikon Z6 & Nikon 300mm f/4E PF + FTZ 1/1000, f/4, ISO 3600

Manual Focusing On native lenses, the ring that you would normally associate with manual focusing is actually a programmable function ring. By default Nikon set it up to be manual focus, but it can be exposure compensation or aperture values. This is a focus by wire system, meaning that the focus ring is not directly hard wired to the gears that move the glass elements. Instead, it sends electrical signals to the motors to tell them what to do. This allows variable speeds on the focus to occur. Some people may looks this, but for video, this could be an issue as it makes it difficult to hear impossible for the lens to do a pull focus consistently. Focus Peaking This is one thing that I wanted to test out quite a bit. Having used adapted lenses on Micro Four Thirds a lot, I use focus peaking with yellow highlights. I setup the Nikon the same way. I like having the peaking and it makes manual focusing much less of an issue. On the Olympus using adapted lenses, you must press a button to activate the peaking feature, then it stays active until you press the shutter and if you power the camera off or it goes to sleep, you must press the button you assigned to peaking to re-activate. Nikon's solution is, in my opinion, much better. If you are using a manual focus lens with the FTZ adapter, the peaking is on and stays on. If you are using a native Z-mount lens, then the peaking kicks in when you manually focus, either by selecting it or whenever you use the focus ring. Thank you Nikon for making this solution work the way I think is best. Here are some manual focus only lens sample images.

Nikon 135mm f/3.5 AIS 1/500, f/5.6, ISO 100

Nikon 135mm f/3.5 AIS 1/640, f/4, ISO 100

Nikon 135mm f/3.5 AIS 1/250, f/8, ISO 100

Nikon 135mm f/3.5 AIS 1/250, f/4, ISO 100

Viewfinder The viewfinder is excellent and the best EVF I've had the pleasure of using. It is crisp and clear, low levels of smearing when moving quickly following subjects. I used the camera in bright sunlight and had no issues with the eye sensor getting tricked and turning the EVF off while I was looking through it. While not specifically about the viewfinder persay, I do want to mention the modes switching between the EVF and the rear LCD. There are 4 modes. EVF only, LCD only, Auto Switch and Prioritize Viewfinder. They are all pretty well described, so I will not go through a description of all of them. However, I use prioritize viewfinder. What this mode does is keep the viewfinder as the main display, but when you want to review images or hit a menu option, the rear LCD is employed at those times. For those who want to shoot off camera flash, here is a tip for you. Get familiar with d8 - Apply Settings to Live View in the custom settings menu. This option switches between the EVF showing you a real time view of what the exposure settings will do to the image versus a standard bright view. Why does this matter? In a DSLR, the optical viewfinder shows you just a through the lens view of the scene. If shooting portraits indoors and you are using your shutter speed to kill the ambient light by shooting at 1/200 or faster shutter speeds, the EVF view would be very dark and hard for you to see your subjects and frame accurately. Use the d8 option to switch between these 2 modes. I'm familiar with this from shooting portraits on the Olympus M43 cameras. Olympus added an option called S-OVF, which basically does the same as what I've described above. It simulates the view so that it always looks bright and "normal". You can also put this menu setting in the "i" menu or the My Menu section. I placed mine in the "i" menu. Rear LCD Again, another great display here. The big issue with some - it is only a tilt screen and not fully articulating. For me, any articulation is good. Fully articulating is better for me with video modes, but I have an external monitor for that kind of work. F-Mount Lenses I've Tested On The Z6 Tamron 70-200mm f/2.8 VC (generation 1) - some jittery movement if the AF is way out of focus, but much better and more consistent if the focus is not that far off. Exposure functionality is 100% ZhongYi Mitakon Creator 85mm f/2 - meters perfect (Stop down metering required) but does not record aperture values used, manual focus (this lens auto focus' in the opposite direction of the other Nikon manual focus lenses. Nikon 20mm f/3.5 AIS - meters perfect (Stop down metering required) but does not record aperture values used, manual focus Nikon 28mm f/2.8 AIS - meters perfect (Stop down metering required) but does not record aperture values used, manual focus Nikon 135mm f/3.5 AIS - meters perfect (Stop down metering required) but does not record aperture values used, manual focus Nikon 35mm f/2.8 Nikkor-S Auto - Nikon lists this as incompatible, so I did not try it out. Nikon 55mm f/3.5 Macro - meters perfect (Stop down metering required) but does not record aperture values used, manual focus - great macro option. Nikon 105mm f/2.5 - meters perfect (Stop down metering required) but does not record aperture values used, manual focus Nikon 300mm f/4E PF VR - perfect AF and exposure metering Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8G - perfect AF and exposure metering Nikon 28-85mm f/3.5-4.5D - perfect exposure metering, but just manual focus Nikon 80-200mm f/4.5-5.6D - perfect exposure metering, but just manual focus Nikon 50mm f/1.8G - perfect AF and exposure metering Nikon 300mm f/4.5 AI - meters perfect (Stop down metering required) but does not record aperture values used, manual focus Nikon 200mm f/4 Pre-AI - meters perfect (Stop down metering required) but does not record aperture values used, manual focus Nikon 180mm f/2.8 ED AIS - meters perfect (Stop down metering required) but does not record aperture values used, manual focus

Nikon 24-70mm f/4S 1/60, f/4, ISO 4500 @ 54mm (hand held)

Batteries The Z6/Z7 cameras use the newer EN-EL15b batteries. These are very similar to the EN-EL15a, except that allow for in camera USB-C charging. I have spare EN-EL15a batteries as well as some third party ones, so I tested them in the Z6. Results are as follows - prices of the battery when I bought them : EN-EL15a - same performance as the EN-EL15b ($60) Bower - worked fine to power the camera, about 2/3 of the longevity ($20) RAVPower - worked fine to power the camera, about 3/4 of the longevity ($25 - 2 batteries + charger) ProMaster - worked fine to power the camera, about 3/4 of the longevity. ($25)

Nikon 24-70mm f/4S 1/60, f/4, ISO 2800 @ 62mm (hand held)

Ergonomics

Feel In The Hand The camera feels good in the hand. The grip is deep enough to feel secure if holding the camera in one hand. Some people have had issues with reaching the 2 function buttons next to the mount, but I have had no such issues. I might have longer fingers than most, though or perhaps my grip on the camera is different. The little thumb grip is a nice touch as well. My pinkie fingers does fall off the bottom of the grip, but to be honest, it is not really bothering me that much with the current lenses I am using. I might see about getting an l-bracket or similar thing if I find myself using larger lenses. The way I feel about these things is that I'd rather have smaller and add on to make it larger than have something larger that you are stuck with the size. Button Placement The buttons feel familiar to me, coming from a Nikon DSLR. The power switch is still around the shutter release button. Love it there. The exposure comp, ISO and movie record button are just behind the shutter and the same setup as in the D500/D850. That's good for me as an owner of the D500. The AF joystick is great, too as I have become enamoured with it since having it on the D500. I've setup the center press of the AF joystick to reset the AF point to center position. I've also setup the OK button in shooting mode to be the punch in zoom, used when I need to verify focus. I did this because I use zoom view quite a bit and the OK button is easier to reach than the + magnifying glass button. Some people want to have the rear LCD used as a touchpad for AF points. My Olympus cameras have that and I did not like it and turned it off. Too much accidental touching and it just didn't feel right to me. I appreciate the joystick implementation of the AF point selector. I like having the AF modes as a button on the camera body, like on the Df or D500, but the Z puts it in a menu option. This is easily accessible through the "i" button and since the menus are fully touch compatible, switching is quick and easy, but it will take me some time to get used to going into a menu option instead of just pushing a button and turning a dial. Drive modes are accessed via button at the bottom right of the camera body. Again, like the focus mode, I would have preferred to have it like on the D500 or Df as a button and command dial turn or a dedicated switch. Perhaps higher end bodies in the future will have this. Don't get me wrong, it is a perfectly usable setup, it is just different than what is in DSLR land and will take some time to get used to working this way.

Nikon 24-70mm f/4S 1/30, f/8, ISO 3600 @ 31mm (hand held)

Image Quality - Stills Nikon is my favorite camera as far as IQ goes. Great dynamic range, love the colors and the files are very pliable in both JPG or RAW configurations. There has been some mention of banding and it certainly is true that it is there...but you really need to push the exposure to over 5 stops to run into it. I cannot honestly say that I have very had a need to push it that far. Even if you did, there are post processing options that will help with correcting that banding issue, so all is not lost. The Z-Mount 24-70mm f/4S lens is a great lens. It focus' quickly and the zoom is stiff enough to prevent zoom creep. It is very sharp even wide open. I could shoot this lenses at f/4 all day and all night with no issues. It is very similar in the way that I can shoot my micro four thirds lenses wide open without sacrificing image quality. The benefits of a good contrast detect AF systems helps with this too by eliminating AF accuracy issues with a separate PDAF module. No surprise, though if you are familiar with our reviews - I like to let the images speak for themselves. Check them out below!

Nikon 70-300/4.5-5.6E AF-P VR 1/320, f/5.6, ISO 4000 @ 300mm

Nikon 70-300/4.5-5.6E AF-P VR 1/320, f/5.6, ISO 8000 @ 300mm

The image below is at ISO 18,000. Just wanted to point that out and it is not a typographical error.

Nikon 70-300/4.5-5.6E AF-P VR 1/320, f/5.6, ISO 18000 @ 300mm

Nikon 70-300/4.5-5.6E AF-P VR 1/320, f/5.6, ISO 1600 @ 300mm

This image below shows off the IBIS a bit. Hand held and shot using the rear touch screen to activate the shutter release.

Nikon 24-70/4S z-mount 1/24, f/4, ISO 250 @ 24mm

Nikon 24-70/4S 1/100, f/5.6, ISO 100 @ 56mm

Nikon 24-70/4S 1/80, f/5.6, ISO 125 @ 70mm

Nikon 24-70/4S 1/60, f/5.6, ISO100 @ 38mm

Nikon 24-70/4S 1/200, f/5.6, ISO 100 @ 70mm

Nikon 24-70/4S 1/60, f/8, ISO 100 @ 54mm

Image Quality - Video Nikon provides both 4k and 1080p video options. 1080p gives you the ability to shoot in 120fps for some cool slow motion effects. No grading, sharpening on the video below, shot in 1080p 30 and 1080p 120, basically straight out of the camera. I'll probably go back and grade, sharpen and then republish for a side by side. Slow mo and transitions in Premiere Elements 2019.

Final Thoughts

You never know what you will think or feel about a new camera until you get it in your hands and have some quality time shooting with it. Even after a short time with the Z6, I love how it gives me all the stuff I love about shooting a Nikon DSLR mixed with all there is to love about the Olympus OMD cameras. If this is the quality that Nikon has started with, and the trend/trajectory is for this to only get better, then we are in for a great ride and Nikon should have a great stronghold not only in the mirrorless stills market, but also a strong video camera contender. Right now, the Nikon Df is still my favorite camera of all time, but the Z series mirrorless could get close to taking that #1 spot. It will take some time to figure that out. Some additional images for your viewing:

Nikon 24-70mm f/4S 1/400, f/4, ISO 100 @ 70mm McLaren 720s In Green

Nikon 24-70mm f/4S 1/80, f/11, ISO 100 @ 47mm

Nikon 24-70mm f/4S 1/250, f/8, ISO 100 @ 70mm

Nikon 24-70mm f/4S 1/640, f/4, ISO 100 @ 35mm

Nikon 24-70mm f/4S 1/50, f/11, ISO 100 @ 24mm

Nikon Z6 & Nikon 50mm f/1.8G + FTZ 1/50, f/3.5, ISO 250

Nikon Z6 & Nikon 50mm f/1.8G + FTZ 1/400, f/1.8, ISO 100

Nikon Z6 & Nikon 300mm f/4E PF + FTZ 1/1000, f/4, ISO 4500

Nikon Z6 & Nikon 300mm f/4E PF + FTZ 1/320, f/4, ISO 3200

#IFTTT #Blogger

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thegloober · 6 years

Text

See If Chevy’s New Silverado Four-Cylinder Hangs With The Big Boys

The Silverado’s new four-banger takes on pickup engines from Ford, Nissan, Ram, and Toyota.

During the summer, General Motors made the surprising announcement of offering a 2.7-liter turbocharged four-cylinder that the automaker calls the Tripower in its strong-selling Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickups. Now, the company opens up about more of the four-pot mill’s specs in the 2019 Silverado so that we can see how the first four-cylinder, fullsize truck in recent memory stacks up.

The 2.7-liter turbo four-cylinder isn’t technically the base engine in the Silverado. It comes standard on the volume-selling LT trim, but the basic Work Truck, Custom, and Custom Trail Boss still come standard with the old 4.3-liter naturally aspirated V6.

4.3L V-6 w/AFM (6-spd.)

2.7L I-4 Turbo w/AFM (8-spd.)

5.3L V-8 w/AFM (6-spd.)

5.3L V-8 w/DFM (8-spd.)

3.0L I-6 Turbo-Diesel (10-spd.)

6.2L V-8 w/DFM (10-spd.)

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The 2.7-liter turbo produces 310 horsepower (231 kilowatts) and 348 pound-feet (472 Newton-meters), and we are comparing it against the powerplants in the 2018 Ford F-150, 2018 Nissan Titan, 2019 Ram 1500, and 2018 Toyota Tundra. We include two Ford engines below because Chevy’s new mill sits roughly in between the Blue Oval’s offerings. The rest are the base powerplant for each model.

Chevy 2.7-liter turbo I4 Chevy 4.3-liter V6 Ford 3.3-liter V6 Ford 2.7-liter turbo V6 Nissan 5.6-liter V8 Ram 3.6-liter V6 mild hybrid Toyota 4.6-liter V8 Horsepower 310 hp 285 hp 290 hp 325 hp 390 hp 305 hp 310 hp Torque 348 lb-ft 305 lb-ft 265 lb-ft 400 lb-ft 394 lb-ft 269 lb-ft 327 lb-ft

Given the relative lack of displacement, Chevy’s four-cylinder definitely stands up to the competition. In terms of horsepower, it ties with the 4.6-liter V8 in the Tundra to take third place. The four-cylinder also ranks third place in torque behind Ford’s optional 2.7-liter EcoBoost and the much larger, 5.6-liter V8 in the Nissan Titan.

So far, Chevrolet only provides estimated city fuel economy for the 2.7-liter, so let’s see how it compares.

Chevy 2.7-liter turbo I4 Chevy 4.3-liter V6 Ford 3.3-liter V6 Ford 2.7-liter turbo V6 Nissan 5.6-liter V8 Ram 3.6-liter V6 mild hybrid Toyota 4.6-liter V8 Fuel Economy (City) 20 mpg N/A 19 mpg (or 20 mpg) 20 mpg 15 mpg 20 mpg 15 mpg

The new four-cylinder is in at least a three-way tie to lead the class in fuel economy. According to the EPA, the flex-fuel version of the Ford V6 also gets 20 mpg city, which would make the results even closer. Chevy doesn’t have 2019 model year mileage info for the 4.3-liter V6, yet.

The Silverado swaggers into the pickup market:

A truck must be able to work, and with its latest announcement, we now know about the 2.7-liter turbo’s payload and towing capability in the Silverado. Keep in mind, these figures vary depending on a pickup’s configuration, including the drivetrain, cab style, and bed length. The specs below reflect the best possible numbers for a truck with each engine. Details for the existing 4.3-liter V6 in the new Silverado aren’t yet available.

Chevy 2.7-liter turbo I4 Chevy 4.3-liter V6 Ford 3.3-liter V6 Ford 2.7-liter turbo V6 Nissan 5.6-liter V8 Ram 3.6-liter V6 mild hybrid Toyota 4.6-liter V8 Payload 2,280 lbs N/A 1,990 lbs 2,470 lbs 1,940 lbs 2,320 lbs 1,600 lbs Towing 7,200 lbs N/A 7,700 lbs 8,500 lbs 9,740 lbs 7,750 lbs 6,800 lbs

Once again, the Silverado’s turbocharged four-cylinder looks pretty good, here. Its payload is in third place among these pickups behind the Ram’s V6 and Ford 2.7-liter EcoBoost – an optional engine on the truck. Towing appears a bit weaker at 7,200 pounds, which only ranks above the 4.6-liter V8 in the Tundra.

We don’t yet have info for all of the 2019 model year pickups, but the 2.7-liter turbo starts at $38,395 in the Silverado. It’ll be on sale in the fourth quarter of the year.

Gallery: 2019 Chevrolet Silverado

Hide press releaseShow press release

ALL-NEW 2.7L TURBO ADDS TO EFFICIENT, FUN-TO-DRIVE 2019 SILVERADO More torque, higher horsepower and better city mpg over previously standard 4.3L V-6 2018-10-10

Print | Email | Word | Add This | DETROIT — The all-new 2019 Chevrolet Silverado 1500 with the technologically advanced 2.7L Turbo offers full-size truck customers a capable and efficient choice with an EPA-estimated fuel economy of 20 mpg city/23 mpg highway in rear-wheel-drive models.

To achieve both better performance and overall efficiency, engineers made smart choices with engine technologies, advanced manufacturing and the use of mixed materials. The base curb weight of the 2019 Chevrolet Silverado with the 2.7L Turbo is 380 pounds less than the current Silverado with the 4.3L V-6, despite having more interior room and cargo space.

“The new Silverado 2.7L Turbo delivers impressive performance and fuel efficiency,” said Tim Asoklis, Silverado chief engineer. “It’s fun to drive every day — quick from the start, and pulling hard under acceleration. With up to 23 mpg on the highway, the truck is efficient while still offering plenty of capability to tackle weekend projects and trips to the lake.”

Standard on LT and RST trims, the 2.7L engine offers 14 percent more torque and 13 percent better city fuel economy and it is more than a full second quicker 0-60 mph than the 4.3L V-6 it replaces. The Silverado city fuel economy also exceeds the standard 3.3L V-6 engine offering in the Ford F-150 XLT (EPA-estimated 19 mpg city) and matches that of the Ram 1500 3.6L V-6 mild hybrid (EPA-estimated 20 mpg city).

The new Silverado also delivers the largest cargo volume of any full-size truck on the market, so customers don’t have to sacrifice space for efficiency. They’ll also enjoy Silverado’s full-size truck capability and durability. The new 2.7L Turbo engine delivers an SAE-certified 310 horsepower and 348 lb-ft of torque, exceeding Ford’s 3.3L V-6 and Ram’s 3.6L V-6 mild hybrid by 31 percent and 29 percent respectively. The Silverado 2.7L Turbo reaches its peak torque more quickly than Ford or Ram engines in the segment and delivers it from 1,500 to 4,000 rpm. Customers will feel that power as the truck can accelerate from 0-60 mph in 6.8 seconds. Its max towing capacity is 7,200 pounds and there is a 2,280-pound max payload.*

Developed from the outset as a truck engine, the new 2.7L Turbo integrates many different innovative technologies to support engine performance and efficiency, including:

An innovative double overhead cam valvetrain that enables high- and low-lift valve profiles, continuously variable valve timing and Active Fuel Management (cylinder deactivation). A dual-volute turbocharger housing for improved throttle response, low-speed torque and virtually no turbo lag. Chevrolet’s first application of Active Thermal Management, which uses targeted engine heating and cooling across the entire powertrain system to create optimal conditions for optimal fuel economy and recover otherwise wasted exhaust heat for faster engine and transmission warmup. Stop/start technology that automatically stops the engine in stop-and-go traffic for fuel efficiency. The engine was subjected to months of nonstop testing to simulate a lifetime of maximum hot and cold cycles. This is in addition to more than 475,000 validation tests and 1 million miles of real-world testing to deliver the durability and performance Chevrolet truck customers demand.

The 2019 Chevrolet Silverado 1500 offers eight trims paired with six engine/transmission combinations, so every customer can find the right truck to match their unique performance, efficiency, technology and value requirements

*Requires regular cab, available for fleet customers only at this time

ABOUT CHEVROLET

Founded in 1911 in Detroit, Chevrolet is one of the world’s largest car brands, doing business in more than 100 countries and selling more than 4.0 million cars and trucks a year. Chevrolet provides customers with fuel-efficient vehicles that feature engaging performance, design that makes the heart beat, passive and active safety features and easy-to-use technology, all at a value. More information on Chevrolet models can be found at www.chevrolet.com.

Source: https://bloghyped.com/see-if-chevys-new-silverado-four-cylinder-hangs-with-the-big-boys/

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robertkstone · 6 years

Text

War of the Worlds: Tesla Model 3 Dual Motor Performance vs Jaguar I-Pace EV400 HSE vs Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio

“Randy’s just gone off Turn 2,” the walkie-talkie barks. I look up from my laptop. What happened? Our Jaguar I-Pace is most definitely in the wrong place and has come to a stop amid drifting dust.

Today is just getting weirder and weirder—Randy Franklin Pobst never goes off a racetrack. For all the tire marks that spaghetti away from the Streets of Willow’s racing line and loopily disappear at its broken edges, they’re never the graffiti of our resident championship racing driver. Randy is a model of consistency.

A walkie-talkie hisses for a moment, and then … “The Jag suddenly put on its emergency brakes and sent me off the track.” Wait, what? The Motor Trend testing staffers eyeball each other. For the past two hours, Randy had been chasing software curveballs. Even through the metallic fidelity of our Motorolas, the terseness in his voice says he’s getting a little weary of it.

“At least it wasn’t just us,” mutters a Tesla-hatted voice behind me. Earlier, the Tesla Model 3 Performance with Track mode didn’t exactly stop as planned approaching Turn 10, going straight off at 90 mph, then bouncing through the bumpy desert terrain and sagebrush before re-entering the front straight and rolling into the pits, with a blown left rear tire courtesy of its off-road excursion.

We expected some surprises today. Bringing together two trackable battery-electric vehicles to challenge the best classical internal combustion sport sedan in the world right now—the Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio—would be the beginning of a battle for the ages. Who knew it would also wind up a battle in the sages?

Let’s rewind the clouds of dust to earlier this morning.

It’s 8 a.m. in the California high desert, and already the sun has our asphalt stage brightly lit. To our left is “Big Willow” with its white-knuckle turns and village of backstage garages and paddocks needed for Willow Springs International Raceway’s blockbuster, high-speed productions. This, though, is “Streets,” its more intimate second stage. A more technical setting for our trio of performers.

Amid the hiss of tire pressures being adjusted by co-evaluators Alan Lau and Derek Powell—and the rattle-grrrrrrrrr of photo czar Brian Vance’s incessant coffee bean grinding—I’m staring at the cars and unable to piece together a good argument for why the Alfa beats the Tesla around the track or the other way around.

It’s easy to pencil out why the Jag is going to lag behind: Compared to the Alfa, its motors’ combined 394 horsepower falls 22 percent shy of the Giulia’s output, while its 4,946-pound mass renders it 31 percent porkier. Those SEMA-ready 255/40R22 Pirelli P Zeros the Jag is wearing won’t erase the high-heeled physics of its crossover height. The Jag seems a preordained but not dishonorable third place around Streets. But the tea leaves from our real-world testing of the Giulia and Model 3 point in contradictory directions.

Leaf One tilts toward Tesla: The 505-hp Alfa’s 0–60 time is 3.8 seconds; the 450-hp Model 3 clocks at 3.3—its dual-motor AWD launches it like a rail gun. Leaf Two, to Alfa: The Giulia clings to corners like sweaty underwear, pulling a 0.98 g skidpad compared to the Model 3’s 0.95. Leaf Three, pick ’em: The Tesla stops shorter—but fractionally so. Leaf Four, mox nix: Their figure-eight lap times are identical at 24.2 seconds. Time to ditch the tea and grab some of Vance’s coffee.

The cars are prepped, and Randy is good to go. The Model 3’s cooling system is screaming as it pre-chills the battery and dual motors. Belted in, attired in his black helmet, black racing suit, and ever-bright mood, Randy asks the Tesla engineer leaning into the cockpit, “What do I do to set the handling?” The guy taps the do-everything center screen’s icon with the words “Track Mode.” That’s it. Randy raises his eyebrows. The guy climbs out; I lean in to check that our Vboxes are powered up and SD cards clicked in, then give the passenger door a good slam.

The Model 3 whirs away. A minute later it reappears, slaloming past the apexes of the last four corners of Streets. Its tail is drifting dramatically, left, right, left, then it pitchy-hops midway around the last “skidpad” corner and tail-wags onto the straight. Everybody is watching—nobody has ever seen a Tesla handle like this.

Five minutes later, Randy climbs out, I grab the data cards, and Angus MacKenzie starts readying to try it himself.

The fastest EV ever at Streets was the Randy-driven Mitsubishi MiEV at a 1:10.90 … no, not the goofy Google-car you’re picturing but a sleek slicks-and-wings, Pikes Peak racing car we tested in 2014. The Model 3’s time appears on my screen—1:23.90. A production-car EV record. A blink quicker (0.07 second) than the Mustang GT Performance Pack 2. Process that. The Mustang GT PP2.

However, Randy needs to chime in: “It’s very easy to get understeer, the car’s handling is sometimes inconsistent, and there’s something weird happening when I lift off the brake.”

What Randy is feeling is a lingering deceleration after he releases the brake (before he’s moved his foot to the accelerator)—it’s the undepressed accelerator pedal’s heavy regenerative braking setting that’s confusing him during the transition. Compared to the car’s normal “heavy” rate of 0.2 g (matching that of the Jag), Track mode applies a more noticeable 0.3 g’s.

Angus rolls in from his hot laps: “It turns in quickly, especially with throttle lift, but there’s not a ton of feel from the front end. Get to the power too early, and the handling just devolves into massive understeer. The good news is a big lift off the accelerator will get the car to rotate. Roll on the power, and the Model 3 nicely drifts out of the corner. There’s never any sense it’s going to spin. Drive it like a rally car, and it’s fun. But for a traditional race driver, where smooth is fast, I can imagine it all feels a little discombobulating.”

The tall Jaguar goes out next and returns seven minutes’ worth of laps later. I pop out the SD cards from the Vboxes and open the file—a 1:27.00. No MiEV, but not bad for a 5,000-pound, five-passenger crossover that’s quicker than the Golf R and WRX STi. Geez.

“There’s a lot of understeer, and the brakes could be inconsistent,” Randy notes. Those two words—inconsistent and unpredictable—keep coming up during his Jaguar download.

Finally, it’s the big-dog Alfa’s moment to break the EV silence. We hear the Giulia’s bark and baritone as Randy warms the tires. Judgment time. Which will win? Twenty-one thousand gasoline combustions per lap, or software code swarming through silicon chips? The Alfa moves dartlike through the same corners the Tesla just drifted through. Randy pulls in wearing a smile we haven’t seen yet today. Mr. Consistency just laid down a 1:22.78. That’s 1.12 seconds quicker than the Tesla. “It just does exactly what you expect,” he says. “No surprises. Always predictable. Rear-wheel drive just gives me the control that I want.”

Then somebody notices the Alfa’s Pirelli P Zero Corsa AR Asimmetrico front tires. They’re asimmetrico, all right: Half of each tread block’s rubber is gone after two sets of three hard laps. The Tesla engineer points to his car’s Michelin Pilot Sport 4Ss that are at worst scuffed. “We could do that time if we were willing to destroy our tires,” he says. The Tesla’s rubber contains complex compounding across its tread for minimal rolling resistance but stickiness for corners (with foam glued into its interior to reduce noise). The technical investment in this tire—which can generate 0.95 g’s of cornering grip from a 4,078-pound car without significantly damaging the rubber and still deliver 310 miles on a charge—is remarkable.

Nevertheless, the conversation drifts toward imagining sliders on the Tesla touchscreen to fine-tune Track mode or tapping the names of tires you bring along to have their performance characteristics loaded. One idea I like: “Randy mode.” Ludicrous for the road racing set.

Track Mode

Four years ago, I drove our long-term Tesla Model S P85+ to Laguna Seca for a similar lapping day. When I arrived, I unloaded 17 bags of ice from a 7-Eleven along Route 68, plus a dusty roll of bubble wrap I found at Home Depot. We shoved the ice bags under the car until they were stacked up against the battery, then I encircled the car with bubble wrap like a floor-length insulating skirt, taped it to the bodywork, and waited for the car to charge. We had tried to lap the Tesla a few months before, but it couldn’t get to the hilly track’s Turn 11 before it self-limited its power output, due to heat buildup. This time it would start refrigerated.

Thermodynamic experimentation be damned, the Tesla power-limited at just about the same spot anyway. And our photo of the wrapped car touched a nerve with Tesla. The “Teslas can’t lap” rap has remained a thorny issue with Elon’s crew, so a month ago Tesla invited me up to Marina Airport after Monterey Car Week to finally sample its solution.

Rather than a vender-sourced patchwork of stability- and traction-control systems, Track mode is a holistic solution to enthusiast EV driving. It begins with a unified piece of clean-screen, Tesla-written software. Rather than look up tables of approximated data to pick a prerecorded response to steering and chassis angle, the system simulates each tire’s available grip in real time (it estimates the force on each contact patch from the car’s acceleration, braking, or cornering rate). The result is a higher-resolution picture of those patches, exploitable by each axle’s precisely controlled, fast-reacting electric motors; laterally, it’s vectored by individual brake dabs (the differentials are open). Track mode’s agility is like a cat with espresso in its water bowl—but it’s also alert to nervous-looking inputs and decreases the chassis’ cornering angles until they cease.

As to the heat problem that limited our early Model S lapping at Laguna, Tesla has a solution. Before the car heads out, setting Track mode tempers the overheating issue by launching into a (loud) coolant-chilling frenzy of both the low-temperature battery system and the high-temperature motors. Unlike in the Models S and X, both of the Model 3’s cooling circuits can be merged, allowing the hotter motors to briefly use the giant battery as a heat sink. For how long? Maybe four or five continuous laps. Weekend warrior Derek Powell makes a face. “Track sessions are normally 20 to 25 minutes,” he says, “and there are four or five sessions per day.” I don’t think he’s impressed.

We’ve figure-eighted the Model 3 Performance with and without Track mode. I did a 24.3-second lap sans assistance but a 24.2 with it. A teensy time difference, but to moi at the helm, the car’s cornering attitude suddenly became open to playful interpretation—almost to distraction. As Angus noted during our lapping at Streets, big, drifty angles are more about fun than fast.

Technology

If there were a book simply titled The History of the Sport Sedan, you’d find a dramatic picture of this exact blue Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio on its last page. The story line building up to it would ping-pong between Turin and Munich, and with every turned page there’d be episodes of engineers finding new ways to polish the sport sedan’s ingredients to a perfect gloss. Like this car’s twin-turbo V-6 engine, eight-speed paddle-shift transmission, multilink rear suspension, and 505 horsepower laser-beamed to two rear tires.

Tesla nods, closes the book, and places it on the shelf with the rest of automotive history. Park the Giulia next to the Model 3, and Leonardo da Vinci beside Robert Oppenheimer. The ultimate artist-engineer meets the calculating disrupter of worlds.

The other day, I read Bob Lutz espouse that “Tesla has no tech advantage, no software advantage, no battery advantage. No advantages whatsoever.” With all due respect, Bob, that’s bull. As I sat in the plugged-in Model 3 at the Supercharger station in a Valencia, California, parking lot, I watched a number grow on the car’s multitouch screen. That’s so cool. Just by plugging the charger in, the Supercharge from PerformanceJunk WP Feed 3 https://ift.tt/2NWW5WH via IFTTT

#IFTTT #PerformanceJunk WP Feed 3

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repmywind02199 · 6 years

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Why your next open source project may only be an interface

We are likely to see more open interfaces and metaframeworks emerge, but they have their drawbacks.

What do deep learning, serverless functions, and stream processing all have in common? Outside of being big trends in computing, the open source projects backing these movements are being built in a new, and perhaps unique, way. In each domain, an API-only open source interface has emerged that must be used alongside one of many supported separate back ends. The pattern may be a boon to the industry by promising less rewrite, easy adoption, performance improvements, and profitable companies. I’ll describe this pattern, offer first-hand accounts of how it emerged, discuss what it means for open source, and explore how we should nurture it.

Typically, a new open source project provides both a new execution technology and an API that users program against. API definition is, in part, a creative activity, which has historically drawn on analogies (like Storm’s spouts and bolts or Kubernetes’ pods) to help users quickly understand how to wield the new thing. The API is specific to a project’s execution engine; together they make a single stand-alone whole. Users read the project’s documentation to install the software, interact with the interface, and benefit from the execution engine.

Several important new projects are structured differently. They don’t have an execution engine; instead, they are metaframeworks that provide a common interface to several different execution engines. Keras, the second-most popular deep learning framework, is an example of this trend. As creator François Chollet recently tried to explain, “Keras is meant as an interface rather than as an end-to-end framework.” Similarly, Apache Beam, a large-scale data processing framework, is a self-described “programming model.” What does this mean? What can you do with a programing model on its own? Nothing really. Both of these projects require external back ends. In the case of Beam, users write pipelines that can execute on eight different “runners,” including six open source systems (five from Apache), and three proprietary vender systems. Similarly, Keras touts support for TensorFlow, Microsoft’s Cognitive Toolkit (CNTK), Theano, Apache MxNet, and others. Chollet provides a succinct description of this approach in a recent exchange on GitHub: “In fact, we will even expand the multi-back-end aspect of Keras in the future. ... Keras is a front end for deep learning, not a front end for TensorFlow.”

The similarities don’t end there. Both Beam and Keras were originally created by Googlers at the same time (2015) and in related fields (data processing and machine learning). Yet, it appears the two groups arrived at this model independently. How did this happen, and what does that mean for this model?

The Beam story

In 2015, I was a product manager at Google, focused on Cloud Dataflow. The Dataflow engineering team’s legendary status dates back to Jeff Dean’s and Sanjay Ghemawat’s famous MapReduce paper in 2004. Like most projects, MapReduce defined a method of execution and a programming model to take advantage of it. While the execution model is still state of the art for batch processing, the programming model was not pleasant to work with, so Google soon developed a much easier, abstracted programming model called Flume (step 1, Figure 1). Meanwhile, demand for lower latency processing resulted in a new project, with the usual execution model and programming model, called MillWheel (step 2). Interestingly, these teams came together around the idea that Flume, the abstracted programming model for batch, with some extensions, could also be a programming model for streaming (step 3). This key insight is at the heart of the Beam programming model, which at the time was called The Dataflow Model.

Figure 3. Figure by Eric Anderson.

From the story of Beam’s origins emerge a set of principles:

There are two degrees of innovation: programming model and execution model. Historically, we have assumed they need to be coupled, but open interfaces challenge that assumption.

By decoupling the code with an abstraction, we also decouple the contributor community into interface designers and execution engine creators.

Through abstraction and decoupling (technically and organizationally), the speed at which the community can absorb innovation accelerates.

Consider these principles in the case of Keras. Despite TensorFlow’s popularity, users quickly realized that its API is not for everyday use. Keras’ easy abstractions, which already had a strong following among Theano users, made it the preferred API for TensorFlow. Since then, Amazon and Microsoft have added MxNet and CNKT, respectively, as back ends. This means that developers who choose the independent open interface Keras can now execute on all four major frameworks without any re-write. Organizations are consuming the latest in technology from all the brightest groups. New projects, like PlaidML, can quickly find an audience; a Keras developer can easily try out PlaidML without learning a new interface.

The Serverless story

The Serverless Framework’s open interface vision has, like Beam’s, evolved and was not immediately apparent. I remember seeing the announcement of JAWS (Javascript AWS) on Hacker News in 2015, the same year Keras and Beam began. Months later, the JAWS team presented their AWS Lambda-specific framework at Re:Invent. It contained scaffolding, workflow, and best practices for Lambda, Amazon’s function as a service (FaaS) offering. But Lambda was just the first of several proprietary cloud and open source FaaS offerings. The JAWS framework soon rebranded itself as Serverless and supported the newcomers.

Serverless still wasn’t a single open API interface until August 2017, when Austen Collins announced Event Gateway, the “missing piece of serverless architecture.” Even today, Serverless doesn’t offer their own execution environment. Gateway specifies a new FaaS API that abstracts and can use any of the popular execution environments. Collins’ value proposition for Event Gateway could have been taken from Keras or Beam: “Any of your events can have multiple subscribers from any other cloud service. Lambda can talk to Azure can talk to OpenWhisk. This makes businesses completely flexible...[it] protects you from lock-in, while also keeping you open for whatever else the future may bring.”

The driving forces

As a venture investor, I find myself asking the skeptical questions: are metaframeworks a real trend? What is behind this trend? Why now? At least two forces are at work: cloud managed services and an increased rate of innovation.

Cloud-managed and proprietary services

Virtually all of Google’s internal managed services employ unique, Google-specific APIs. For example, Google’s Bigtable was the first noSQL database. But because Google was shy about revealing details, the open source community dreamed up their own implementations: HBase, Cassandra, and others. Offering Bigtable as an external service would mean introducing yet another API, and a proprietary one to boot. Instead, Google Cloud Bigtable was released with an HBase-compatible API, meaning any HBase user can adopt Google’s Bigtable technology without any code changes. Offering proprietary services behind open interfaces appears to be the emerging standard for Google Cloud.

The other cloud providers are following suit. Microsoft is embracing open source and open interfaces at every turn, while Amazon is reluctantly being pulled into the mix by customers. Together the two have recently launched Gluon, an open API that, like Keras, executes on multiple deep learning frameworks. The trend of cloud providers exposing proprietary services behind open, well-adopted APIs is a win for users, who avoid lock-in and can adopt easily.

Looking forward

With cloud offerings on the rise and the rate of complexity and innovation increasing, we are likely to see more open interfaces and metaframeworks emerge, but they have their drawbacks. Additional layers of abstraction introduce indirection. Debugging may become more difficult. Features may lag or simply go unsupported; an interface may provide access features that the execution engines share, but omit sophisticated or rarely used features that add value. Finally, a new approach to execution may not immediately fit in an existing API. PyTorch and Kafka Streams, for example, have recently grown in popularity and have yet to conform to the open interfaces provided by Keras and Beam. This not only leaves users with a difficult choice, but challenges the concept of the API framework altogether.

Considering the above, here are some tips for success in this new world:

For API developers: The next time you find yourself bikeshedding on an API, consider (1) that it is an innovation vector all its own and (2) work with the entire industry to get it right. This is where the community and governance aspects of open source are critical. Getting consensus in distributed systems is hard, but François Challot, Tyler Akidau, and Austen Collins have done a masterful job in their respective domains. Collins, for example, has been working with the CNCF’s Serverless Working Group to establish CloudEvents as an industry standard protocol.

For service developers: Focus on performance. The open interfaces are now your distribution channel, leaving you free to focus on being the best execution framework. There is no longer a risk of great tech stuck behind laggards unwilling to try or adopt. With switching costs low, your improvements can easily be seen. Watch benchmarking become the norm.

For users: Become active in the communities around these open interfaces. We need these to become lively town halls to keep the APIs use case driven and relevant. And try the different back ends that are available. It’s a new efficient freedom available to you, and it will incentivize performance and innovation.

For everyone: Consider helping out the projects that are mentioned in this post. Open interfaces are still new, and their future depends on the success of the pioneers.

Continue reading Why your next open source project may only be an interface.

https://ift.tt/2KIWXJe

#FEED 10 TECHNOLOGY

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csemntwinl3x0a1 · 6 years

Text

Why your next open source project may only be an interface

We are likely to see more open interfaces and metaframeworks emerge, but they have their drawbacks.

The Beam story

Figure 3. Figure by Eric Anderson.

From the story of Beam’s origins emerge a set of principles:

There are two degrees of innovation: programming model and execution model. Historically, we have assumed they need to be coupled, but open interfaces challenge that assumption.

By decoupling the code with an abstraction, we also decouple the contributor community into interface designers and execution engine creators.

Through abstraction and decoupling (technically and organizationally), the speed at which the community can absorb innovation accelerates.

The Serverless story

The driving forces

Cloud-managed and proprietary services

Looking forward

Considering the above, here are some tips for success in this new world:

For everyone: Consider helping out the projects that are mentioned in this post. Open interfaces are still new, and their future depends on the success of the pioneers.

Continue reading Why your next open source project may only be an interface.

https://ift.tt/2KIWXJe

#FEED 10 TECHNOLOGY

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awesomeblockchain · 6 years

Link

General Stanley McChrystal was responsible for the U.S. Army in Iraq and Afghanistan. In his book Team of Teams, he talks about the rude awakening he had when he saw how disadvantaged his centralized command was compared to the decentralized networks of Al-Qaeda in Iraq and Afghanistan. McChrystal quickly recognized he needed to reimagine how teams were built and empowered. He understood that innovation, insights, and awareness happen at the edges of networks, not in the center. That is why it is critically important to empower the edges of those networks with information, resources, and feedback loops.

Captain David Marquet immortalized that same lesson in his book Turn the Ship Around! He's the source of the doctrine -Move authority to information; don't move information to authority."

We are witnessing the same decentralizing trend in large organizations, powered by the arrival of blockchain or distributed ledger technology (DLT). This trend is going to affect every industry and every business function in the years to come. And hundreds of thousands of blockchain-based technologies are going to emerge onto the market to fuel it.

Coinbase cofounder Fred Ehrsam suggests -There will be a Cambrian explosion of economic and governance designs where many approaches will be tried in parallel at hyper speed." Indeed, in 2017, we saw more than 442 crypto startups get funded through token sales.

Just as the evolutionary process requires some lifeforms to fail while others succeed, the best products and platforms won't necessarily win. What makes one product win - or survive - instead of another? In Darwinian terms, it is the ability to adapt to a changing environment. In the world of organizations, the function responsible for ensuring the ability to adapt to changing environments has a name: marketing.

Peter Drucker, the legendary management consultant, once wrote that, -Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two - and only two - basic functions: marketing and innovation." If Drucker is right, it stands to reason that an organization's marketing function should match and complement the innovation function. After all, it is at least as important.

What I am proposing is that this era of decentralized, crypto-based technical innovation requires an equally decentralized, crypto-based marketing function that enables adaptation: a decentralized marketing organization (DMO). The purpose of the DMO is to partner with the decentralized technology organization (the innovation part of the business) to create a -crypto-customer."

A crypto-customer is different from the customer of a traditional organization. In a decentralized network, the overall value (i.e., market cap) of the protocol loosely trends to Metcalfe's Law. That is, the most valuable customers are the people who engage most deeply with the protocol and bring in more nodes to the network. So an effective marketing strategy for a decentralized project will enable a series of multipronged demand pulls that target the wide array of roles that play into protocol adoption - developers, designers, token buyers/investors, social media influencers, regular users, partner integrations, etc.

All of these customers engage with the protocol because they believe in the value of the associated token. The more a token holder believes in the expected future value of the token, the more likely they are to hold on for dear life (HODL) and the more likely they will evangelize.

So token holders are naturally and intensely motivated. They will engage in activities they think will drive the utility and value of the token higher in the long term. One might say they are marketers without knowing it, which is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, token holders have the same motivations and incentives as the project's marketers. On the other hand, because they are stakeholders, not employees, they cannot be -controlled" or guided as a traditional employee can be.

Marketers who are employees in a centralized organization are accountable to the leaders who judge their results and decide their compensation. In a decentralized project, many of the people executing marketing tactics do so without any guardrails. Their compensation doesn't come from a boss, it comes in the form of market response to their aggregated activities, as measured by the appreciation in the value of a crypto token.

Hence, marketing is syndicated well beyond the traditional boundaries of the organization. Formerly the -edge" of the marketing network was simply rank and file employees responsible for marketing activity. Now, the edge is the network of token holders who need to actively market the decentralized project to the next set of potential customers. The upshot: the formal organization, or -core," is accountable to the edges of the network.

Token holders view themselves as brand ambassadors and may feel that, no matter what type of marketing activity they engage in, it is, by definition, on brand. This combination of motivation and no direct accountability means the execution of low-cost innovative activities has the potential to explode in quantity, run the gamut in quality, and be aimed everywhere and anywhere.

A DMO's many responsibilities

Anyone can blog about a project. Anyone can create a video about it. Anyone can host an event about it. Those are all positives. At the same time, these activities present risks, including:

Inconsistent messaging and look-and-feel stemming from many voices creating confused or even contradictory messaging about the purpose, vision, and value of the token and project

Wasted energy going after less-desirable customer segments or low-value objectives

Feature delay stemming from differing points of view about the primary use case and target customer, leading to confusion and infighting (look no further than Bitcoin Core vs. Bitcoin Cash). To be sure, one of the benefits of an open-source project is the ability to -fork" it and create a new, better alternative. But premature forking can make it hard to reach critical mass adoption. And that kind of delay can be lethal in a fast-moving, dynamic, noisy marketplace.

For the reasons above, the marketer of a decentralized project has goals in common with a traditional chief marketing officer as well as goals that are unique to a DMO:

Like in a centralized marketing organization, a crypto-marketer must:

Avoid total marketing chaos through the creation and communication of a strategic marketing plan

Ensure brand clarity and message discipline with well-thought-out brand and messaging platforms

Maintain and encourage the passion of the people most vested in the success of the project with a well-planned and inspired communication program that highlights momentum, new features, and benefits

Uncover the active and latent needs of current and future token holders

Aggregate those needs for assessment by the core technology team

Help the technical team prioritize protocol development against expected increase in utility and value, weighed against cost/time to deliver.

But a crypto-marketer also has some unique challenges. They must:

Identify and build a developer audience that sees the value in building on the core protocol

Inspire effective execution of marketing activities by token holders using 100 percent influence and 0 percent authority

Create a marketing infrastructure to enable any token holder to leverage a set of brand assets that support consistent messaging and visual identity with the absolute minimum amount of friction

Identify and analyze the token holder-driven marketing activities that produce effective outcomes

Rapidly disseminate the learnings and know-how to other motivated token holders for reuse, where applicable

Propagate the belief that token HODLing is the utmost sign of commitment and dedication.

The first part is not easy, but it is doable. An experienced marketer who has had a leadership role in an organization and had a broad range of responsibilities, including planning, budgeting, brand communications, go-to-market, product, community, PR, influencer relations, developer relations, analyst relations, content, and lead generation should be able to help you. It is the second part, however, that provides the greatest opportunity for growth.

When it comes to marketing innovation, the best ideas tend to occur at the edges of a network. After all, that is where the interaction with the evolving market is most intense. Yet, while the best marketing ideas tend to emerge in locations that are far away from the -group think" of those in the core, the mechanism for funding and executing those ideas tends to sit in the concentrated areas of the network. This leads to friction in terms of meetings, approval processes, communication lags, and internal selling.

In the -Age of Accelerations," as Tom Friedman calls it, the projects that figure out how to identify, cultivate, and activate their token holders to drive marketing outcomes as quickly and effectively as possible are going to significantly increase their odds of success.

The tech behind a DMO

How will all of this actually work? To be honest, that question is probably at least slightly ahead of the technology. At the same time, like a jigsaw puzzle on a floor, we are starting to see the pieces of an eventual DMO emerge. As my CEO at Sprinklr, Ragy Thomas, used to say, -Think future back."

A DMO tech stack will have a number of elements. Here are some of them:

Decentralized autonomous organization platforms

Decentralized idea-generation and voting platforms

Decentralized prediction engines

Decentralized artificial intelligence

Decentralized bots

Decentralized gamification engines

Decentralized content management

Decentralized marketing tools

These technologies will serve as the nervous system for the DMO. The ability to create organization-wide governance systems that are enforced by blockchain-based smart contracts is not just possible but is in development (albeit in the early stages). Projects like Aragon, DAOstack, Colony, and District0x are all pursuing the vision of enabling the back-office functions of global, decentralized organizations to work with less friction, lower costs, and greater agility.

[This article is an edited excerpt from the author's new online book, Decentralized Marketing Organization: How Crypto-Marketers Can Increase Token Value by Empowering Community Members.]

Jeremy Epstein is CEO of Never Stop Marketing and author of The CMO Primer for the Blockchain World. He currently works with startups in the blockchain and decentralization space, including OpenBazaar, Zcash, ARK, Gladius, Peer Mountain and DAOstack.

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