GEAR MINI TESTS
Accessories, kits and add-ons that couldmake your working life easier – all reviewed and rated to help you decide where to spend your hard-earned cash
WORDS ADAM DUCKWORTH & TERRY HOPE
PADCASTER VERSE £260/$359.99 www.padcaster.com
SPECIFICATIONS Compatible devices: Smartphones and small tablets up to 13.4cm/5.31inwide Supplementary threads: 12 1/4in - 20 threads for accessories Cold shoemounts: 4 Aluminiumframe: Doubles as a fully featuredmount for GoPros, DSLRs and smartphone gimbals X-PODheight: 27.94cm/11in Weight: 453g/16oz
What Padcaster does extremely well is to deliver all-in-one solutions straight out of the box, saving you the effort of hunting around to source all the individual bits and pieces to create a kit. The company did it with the eponymous product, which turns an iPad into a studio camera, complete with tripod, mic and even autocue, and now its smaller sibling, the Verse, gets you filming with your smartphone. With the Verse Mobile Media Kit everything you might need is included in the box. There’s a useful mini tripod complete with ball head, the X-POD, at the base, that doubles as a handle if you squeeze the feet together. This screws into a polished aluminium frame with handles at both sides to enable steady holding and a sturdy adjustable clip holds pretty much any smartphone, including the likes of the giant iPhone Plus. Everyone knows that the built-in mic on a smartphone won’t deliver professional quality audio, so there’s a mic complete with dead cat and shockmount, plus a cold shoe for it to sit in. You also get the cable to connect this to the headphone socket in your phone, which raises an issue with iPhone 7 onwards, since they don’t have headphone sockets. So you’ll need
an adapter to allow you to connect via the lightning socket. I was using a Samsung S7 Galaxy and so didn’t have a problem. You could also look at using an external recorder, but this will complicate things. What I really liked about the design of the Verse was that it had been so well thought through. The X-POD, for example, features a 3200MaH power bank in one of its legs to enable you to charge up your device on the move. And the enabling all kinds of accessories to be attached, from lights through to supplementary microphones. There are also cold shoe mounts. In short, the kit is designed to get you going, but you can add to it as you go along, so it will grow with you. I can see all kinds of uses for a the Verse, from the run-and-gun documentary filmmaker to those creating corporate film projects, and for a relatively small outlay this will turn a well-specified smartphone into a decent filmmaking device. TH PROMOVIEMAKERRATING: 8/10 Pros: All the leads and connections youmight need are included Cons: You can’t connect themic directly to iPhones from the 7 onwards frame comes complete with no less than a dozen fixing points,
BELOW Like poetry in motion, the Verse turns your phone into a complete filmmaking kit.
“In short, the kit is designed to get you going, but you can add to it as you go along, so it will growwith you”
116 PRO MOVIEMAKER SUMMER 2018
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