Area51 Tether Co is a company making USB C Cables, USB 3 cables, and other camera tethering accessories for photographers. In this video, I share my thoughts on the USB C Cables from Area51, and compare it to the cables I have from Tether Tools.
Transcription was done by Descript‘s automated transcription services which means it’s an AI-generated transcript. The transcript may contain spelling, grammar
It’s not every day that I’m tethering and what I mean by that is connecting my camera to my computer so that every time that I am taking a picture, it goes directly to my computer in real time. But when I do, I’ve always used tether tools. And today I want to talk about a new line of USB cables for tethering that I’ve never heard of until recently area 51 tether co let’s get into this.
Hey, this is Scott Wyden. Kivowitz a storyteller with a camera talking about all the things photographers like you and I are thinking about. And in this video, we’re going to talk about area 51 tether co and they’re tethering cables. And the series, as I said, in the beginning of this video, I’ve always used tether tools. And the reason for that is because as far as I knew, they have always been the standard when it comes to tether products, tethering products like cables and accessories and things like that. And the thing I reel up about their USB cables, besides from how FIC and sturdy these are, is that they were bright orange. So they always stood out on a photo session so that your clients and other people on set would not trip over the cables cause they’re very visible, but I was just given the opportunity to review the area 51 tether coal cables, which as you can see are not orange.
They’re actually red. They still stand out, but they’re not actually as bright as the tethered tools cables, which might have an advantage of not being so obtrusive on set, but still visible because typically cables are black and hard to see. But before I get into that, I just want to say how pleased I was to see that they use a compostable bag. This bag will literally dissolve when it’s in the ground. So no worries about pollution and things like that. You just throw it in your compost pile. I also want to say thank you for the personalized note. That was a very kind of you to send me a personalized note along with the products. So here is what I received besides from the note and a sticker. I received this, which I’ll talk about in a little bit, I’ve got a USBC to a USB, a micro, a right angle, micro B.
This is what I would need actually for my Nikon D eight 50 to get the photos to my computer. And then as a 13 foot cable, they also sent me a USB female extension to USB C male, which means that I can take any USBC cable, like the one that came with my Nikon, Z six, plug it into this. And now I have a 13 extension going anywhere to my computer. So the first one I’m going to open up is the USB three version of the cable, the USB micro be right angle to USBC because that’s almost what I have with my tether tools, cable. This is actually a USB 3.0, not a USBC, but it is the same USB, a B micro right angle on this end. So I want to compare these two because they’re the most similar. And I think this is a 20 foot, even though this is a 13 foot, not a big deal.
Now I will say that while their shipping package was compostable, I kind of wish that they went the same route for their product packaging. This is just a regular plastic bag. Yeah. There’s some, you know, paper cardboard, there’s some metal staples. They could have gone the same route if they chose to. As soon as they took it out of the bag, I smelled something. This has a sort of chemical smell to it, which I’m assuming will go away once it’s been in the air, but there’s a nice thick Velcro strap to keep this thing sturdy. And it does a wrap around, no, it doesn’t even wrap around the cable. It’s just, it’s just a Velcro strap that you can keep it bundled up when you’re not using it. Kind of like what I’m doing with a twisty tie for this one. So thickness wise is basically the same as my teller tools.
Cable, the material is different. The tether tools is like a hard plastic. This is kind of like a rubberized. It kind of has this sort of little bit of squish to it. And some texture you can grip it. Whereas this is just like sort of slippery and hard plastic, nice gold connections, a very long USB cable. Now, because I only have a tether tools comparable of this one sort of comparable. The tether tools is USB three. This one is actually USBC to USB three. I am going to do a test is a nonscientific test. I want to see the speed difference loading. Let’s say 10 raw files and maybe a video file from a Nikon D at 50 straight from the Nikon T at 50 copying pewter using the tether tools cable, and then using the area 51 cable. I’m just going to toward the screen and go by the time I’m not going to actually use a scientific app or anything like that, to really determine the speed.
I’m just going to go with how long it takes to record it doing it. And that’s my test. As far as quality goes, this definitely feels like high quality cables. I’m going to have to, you know, really put it to a test with tethering and and see how well it does that way. But from what I can tell, just off the bat, these should hold up just as well as the tether tools cable do. So I just finished testing the comparison between the tether tools cable in the area of 51 cable. And I, again, I had to tell the USB 3.0 version because, well, that’s what I had in the tether tool side. Now here’s my results with the tether tools cable, I was getting an import of a whole bunch of raw files and video files from my Nikon D at 50, at seven minutes.
And 52nd import is straight to Lightroom. Now this is Lightroom the cloud version, not Lightroom classic. I wanted to be independent from Lightroom classic because that has its own slow down components to importing. When I switched over to the area 51 cable, I got an import time of seven minutes and 26 seconds. So it was a little bit faster than the tether tools cable, which isn’t a big difference, but when you’re importing tons of files, every second counts, and the good news is when you combine all of the the Daisy chaining. So I have the Daisy chain right here. I’ve got the extender connected here. There was still, no difference was still to seven minutes and 26 seconds for the same amount of same photos and same videos. Now it is worth noting that while it is downloading from the camera at USB three, with both cables, the area 51 is going to a USBC port.
Whereas the tether tools cable was going to a USB three port. That itself might be why this cable was running faster because USB-C has less bandwidth concerns in USB three. Now at the beginning of this video, I told you, I would talk about this little thing, and this is actually a cable support or a cable sling or something like that, whatever you want to call it. But here’s what it does. Basically you’d have a setup, right? Whether it’s your camera tethered to something, let’s say your camera is sitting on top of a camera stand or a tripod or something like that. And you’ve got all this whole setup going on and I would show you what I have right now, but I’m currently using my camera stand. There are two ways that you could use this. You can either use it with the Velcro around whatever the object, and then you could take the smaller end, the USBC end and actually stick it right through that grommet.
And it actually fits in. You can run your cable and then it’s, it’s, it’s in there, right? It’s in there snug. It’s not coming out. And if somebody trips over it, it’s not, it’s going to pull this before. It’s going to pull your camera. The other option is to go the reverse route. And if you have, let’s say a hook or something attached to your camera stand or wherever, you can actually hook it in there using the grommet. And again, I don’t have that in place. I’m just going to hold it there. And then you can run the cable either side through the big Velcro part. Now I feel like the Velcro part would be more secure because it’s actually looping. And then this is a closed thing. And you just got to make sure it’s the USB C end because USB 3.0 with a right angle of this is not going to fit.
This is a lot of cable. This will not fit through this grommet. So you have to go with the smaller side of whatever will fit simple product. That is actually quite powerful. So overall I am impressed by area 51 tether code. Their products are well-built. They run fast, even with the extension. It’s, it’s transferring data super fast. And it seems like it’s a really built, built, well, nice quality, the rubberized material. It’s a little bit more textured than the competition, and I can’t wait to see how it holds up. Next time. I do a tethered shoot with a client. Thanks, Arie 51 tether co for sending me the product to review. I appreciate it. If you like this video, click that subscribe button below. Right now. I publish new videos every Monday and Thursday, whenever possible. You don’t want to miss it.
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