Looking at the Tether Tools Case Air was an interesting experience. It promises the same Camranger experience at half the cost, and a significantly lighter package.  (we covered its kickoff here)

I have used the Camranger before on tradeshows and it was very smooth. The Case Air appears to be no different. It provides several nice functions: sending the files you shoot into a tablet/computer; A basic monitor; some focus peaking and so on.

I have to admit that the app does look like a first iteration. The monitor is not as fast as I would have loved it to be and the monitoring features it provides are fairly basic. There is a lag for displaying the live stream so it can not really be used as a monitor and it does not have any of the mid-range monitor features like zebra lines, histograms and level. This is a shame, because it would have been quite cool to run with a tablet as a full fledged monitor.

As it is, I think that the real competition for the Case Air is not RangeCam but a $30 router and a $9 app (see how to make the magic here). We did talk to some of the heads honchos at Tether Tools and they will definitely be looking at how to add more functionality to the app. hopefully before it goes live next month.

To complete the picture, we saw Tether Tool’s Case Relay. Actually, it is the same unit we were using to cover the show. We used a Sony A7II which eats batteries and spits them out when shooting HD, so we looked for a more robust solution. It was Case Relay for us (along with an Anker 20,000mha battery), and you can see a quick demo of it in the video.

The last point I wanna to raise is the fact that Tether Tools is changing. It is slowly starting to deal with software and electronics in addition to their traditional grip-like equipment. I find this fascinating and really want to see where the company will go next.

P.S. use used the Case Relay with a 20,000 anker battery and did not have to swap once during the day. We shot several hours each day, and it would have probably been a full bag of batteries otherwise.