very bad
By Valery
Rated 1 out of 5
Date: 2023-05-26
Bought at 21.The picture from the camera was immediately displayed incorrectly. Long time contact with support of Portkeys.At some point, the support service stopped responding altogether.I decided that I would have to put up with the incorrect display of the picture.After a while, the cooler began to squeal. When recording an interview, it was necessary to turn off the viewfinder so as not to spoil the audio track. And after a while, the viewfinder stopped working altogether and turned on. For two years, the viewfinder worked no more than 5 hours.Connecting the power supply is nonsense!
A sweet prosumer/mediocre professional EVF
By Frazer
Rated 4 out of 5
Date: 2021-03-06
I bought a Komodo, and am still disappointed that my RED EVF won't work with it. So I bought this thing. It's not great, but it's pretty good. All the functionality is good, my only complaint is that the color accuracy is mediocre. I looped out of my Flanders DX series monitor and attempted to calibrate the Portkeys by eye to match. I spent about 15 min, and felt like I exhausted the reasonable possibilities. Right out of the box, it was pretty far off, but by manually setting the color balance and tuning tint, saturation, brightness, backlight and chroma a bit, I was able to get it to something that seems close enough to make acceptable judgements for exposure and color temperature (knowing that I'll be grading it later, anyway). I figured there was a pretty good chance I'd return it, when I ordered it, but there aren't a ton of options, so I’m going to keep it. I don't recommend buying this and NOT doing a manual calibration -- if you don't have a trusted, color critical source to attempt to match it to, you're not going to get much accuracy. I could tell you all my settings, but I have no idea what the tolerances are, unit to unit, so my EVF may not calibrate the same as any other one. Also of note, is that the optical design is such that you can’t really see the whole frame, simultaneously — you loose one side or the other. However, there’s an option for underscanning, so you can shrink the picture inside the frame to allow you to see the entirety of the image well. I find that 75-85% is about right. Yes, that means I’m essentially throwing out 15-25% of the OLED’s resolution, but it still feels like it delivers acceptably high resolution imagery. One of my friends bought the Kameleon, and we compared them, briefly and unscientifically, and while I didn’t do a calibration on it, the ability to represent highlights and shadows seems comparable (I’d put money on the display and basic chip set being the same in both EVFs, manufactured by a third party). The optical design is better on the Kameleon, but I find the self-closing eye-cup annoying, and inability to loop out SDI and the fact that the power and SDI connections are on the bottom to be problematic. The moral of the story is that there’s not a ton on the market, so it’s kinda the Portkeys or the Kameleon or the Blackmagic (if you can deal with it’s stupid bracket). This is way better than the pixely phone screens with a clip on lens that comprise the majority of prosumer EVFs, that's for sure, but it's well short of color critical. Oh, and if you want to use it with a Komodo, you need a breakout box for connectivity so you can plug the control cable in ($400 Wooden Camera B-box) -- it doesn't control Komodo menus without that.
