Ordered directly from England for $130. Shipped extremely fast, had in hand in one week. So far very happy. Keys have a nice feel. Keyboard size is trim enough to fit directly in front of a tangent panel. It's been very difficult to find a backlit USB mac specific keyboard for the theater. Everything is wireless on the mac now, and we needed USB for our extenders.
Originally purchased a Moshi Luna, which I loved but it's form-factor was too large and tall for our console. This one is perfect, and has the benefit of having resolve specific shortcuts on the keys! Only bummer was the company only sells a mac UK version (No US). If ordering a PC version they have both US and UK versions. Ordered directly from England for $130. Shipped extremely fast, had in hand in one week. So far very happy.
Keys have a nice feel. Keyboard size is trim enough to fit directly in front of a tangent panel. It's been very difficult to find a backlit USB mac specific keyboard for the theater. Everything is wireless on the mac now, and we needed USB for our extenders. Originally purchased a Moshi Luna, which I loved but it's form-factor was too large and tall for our console. This one is perfect, and has the benefit of having resolve specific shortcuts on the keys!
Only bummer was the company only sells a mac UK version (No US). If ordering a PC version they have both US and UK versions. Yes, I'm using one as well and it's pretty good. A number of caveats:. the inscriptions are in about 2-point type, so abandon any thought of being able to read them during an edit/color session. the keyboard is adjustable in three different brightness levels (plus 'off'), and I use the lowest one.
unfortunately, every time you reboot the computer the keyboard goes back to the brightest mode. on the Trash Can Mac, when the computer is sleeping, it occasionally refreshes the USB bus for no reason except annoyance, so the keyboard will light up for a minute or two, then go out. For this reason, I made black cloth covers for both my keyboard and my Tangent Elements panel when I'm not using the system.
I actually use the keyboard the way I did on Baselight, with the keyboard in back of the color panel. It's a bit of a stretch (ahem) to use, but I can function. If I had to type for long periods of time, then I'd move it to the front.
Link for the product is here: I have zero connection to the company except as a satisfied customer, but bought one at cost (about $80) at their booth at Cinegear Expo over the summer. List price is $130, but you can get it for $100 from B&H Photo/NY. This was funded through kickstarter. I fed back to mark brown, suggesting the need to set the brightness, the need for ideally d65 light, or changeable lighting. They were going to send a development unit out but I got really busy so never chased it up. I sent them the ebu room spec for reference. I have asked for a plain, non software specific version but that was not available.
So i guess i will be looking at other options. Cherry mx do them??? Worried about glare. Seems good d65 LEDs are affordable now so the keyboard could contribute to the bias lighting slightly. I never liked the mac laptop keys on a plate keyboard and still drag my white bucket of dirt version around.
Editors keys are ok. Bit hit and miss. They sold some truly awful hdmi cables for a while, but for budget audio equipment they are good. Click to expand.It's not that critical. The illuminated keys are only bright on their edges, so it's not like the whole thing is lit up. It's so dim, it doesn't affect my perception of the picture at all. I think for a $100 keyboard, you're not going to get precise D65 white levels.
If you wanted to go absolutely wild, you could just live with a black keyboard and buy an external (or ceiling-mounted) D65 light flagged to just the keyboard surface. But that's an awful lot of trouble. I do like Litlites as a general rule in control rooms, and I throw on a blue filter (kind of like a CTB) to counteract the incandescent bulb, and I run them pretty low on the dimmers. The LED Litlite is about the same color, but as far as I know can't be dimmed yet. Yes, I'm using one as well and it's pretty good. A number of caveats:.
the inscriptions are in about 2-point type, so abandon any thought of being able to read them during an edit/color session. the keyboard is adjustable in three different brightness levels (plus 'off'), and I use the lowest one. unfortunately, every time you reboot the computer the keyboard goes back to the brightest mode. on the Trash Can Mac, when the computer is sleeping, it occasionally refreshes the USB bus for no reason except annoyance, so the keyboard will light up for a minute or two, then go out. For this reason, I made black cloth covers for both my keyboard and my Tangent Elements panel when I'm not using the system.
I actually use the keyboard the way I did on Baselight, with the keyboard in back of the color panel. It's a bit of a stretch (ahem) to use, but I can function. If I had to type for long periods of time, then I'd move it to the front. Link for the product is here: I have zero connection to the company except as a satisfied customer, but bought one at cost (about $80) at their booth at Cinegear Expo over the summer. List price is $130, but you can get it for $100 from B&H Photo/NY.
Imac Backlit Keyboard
Click to expand.Sorry I missed your comment from a couple of months ago. Here's what my keyboard looks like: So there is lettering on the keys above the arrows, and little teeny-tiny symbols for 'bright' and 'darker' (for the key illumination. I'll be honest: I barely can read the 2-point type of the indicia, but since I work in a somewhat-dark room, just having the keys illuminated to the lowest level allows me to function just fine. We used something like this on a Baselight system at Lowry Digital, but I think there were issues with the USB extension and getting power to the keyboard (I think because we were 50 feet away from the system), because it was dark about 90% of the time. While the keyboards don't need a lot of power, they do need enough to light up. I have to agree with Dario.
At first, I though I would prefer the EditorsKeys with the glyphs/symbols against a mostly black background, thinking that would be more readable. Upon seeing it in person, though, the symbols and the tiny text just struck me as very busy and hard to distinguish. While my main goal was mostly just to get a backlit Mac keyboard and Resolve shortcuts were a bonus, the whole combo was so visually busy that it interfered with using it as a regular keyboard. And at $100, I was kinda miffed that the keys caps were adhesive labels.
Perhaps I was spoiled by the MBP backlit keyboards (actually going back to the PowerBook days over a decade and a half ago) that have the lit letters made into the key cap itself, but a mere adhesive label was unacceptable at this price range. Exchanged it for the LogicKeyboard Astra at $130.
While still plastic, it feel solid/heavy and the key labels are built into the material of the key caps themselves such that the entire key cap 'glows'. Much more acceptable design for the price. And while it is indeed more wordy and makes less use of symbols, overall I end up finding it less busy and easier to read.
All that said, YMMV. I'm very happy with the Astra. I'm having an issue with my Avid keyboard from EditorsKeys that perhaps someone can help me with: The quick transition key (the vertical line, backslash) doesn't call up the dissolve dialogue as it should. It seems to tab the playhead back a bit, although I'm not sure exactly what function it's executing. I ordered a mac keyboard and received the one in the picture with the PC icons, but was assured by the EditorsKeys person I emailed that they're the same thing, and that I just needed to follow the 'hybrid keyboard' instructions to remap the command key etc. To use Mac shortcuts.
That seemed to work, but could this behaviour of the quick transition be a Mac/PC thing that I also need to remap? It is set to be quick transition in my Avid keyboard settings, in case that needs saying.
Click to expand.Hmmm, finally someone does a nice looking keyboard and black, and backlit.but, is it wired or Bluetooth? No indication from website. It doesn't make sense that apple can't take their MacBook Pro backlit black key keyboard and make an aluminum (make it dark like upcoming Mac Pro) Bluetooth version of it WITH 10-key. That's what I really want!
But thx for posting, the Moshi is the best looking one I've seen.and I recently got their aluminum capped ends lightning cable, a quality product! If it were wireless I would have thought they'd mention it prominently somewhere, so it may just be wired only. That Logitech keyboard looks nice, but the same size as the current Apple wireless keyboard which is unfortunate, I'm looking for the same thing as the OP but specifically in a wireless keyboard. I may just have to re-evaluate whether I really need the keypad, but I actually type with the keyboard resting on my legs so I need the extra width, though I could get a tray or something I suppose.