Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: And we're live.
Hey, good morning.
[00:00:05] Speaker B: Good morning.
[00:00:06] Speaker C: Good morning everyone.
[00:00:08] Speaker A: G'day.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: G'day. How Aussie is that?
Good morning everyone. Welcome to the Camera Life podcast brought to you by Lucky Straps and all of us here at the camera life. It's the 25 July. It's currently 09:00 a.m.
australian eastern Standard Time. We're in Victoria in Australia and this is episode, I've forgotten already, episode 23 of the camera Life.
If you're watching along and you've stumbled across this podcast or our channel, please make sure that you subscribe and hit the like button and tickle the little bell to make sure you get notifications. We run our podcast every week. Thursday, 09:00 a.m. aesthetically coming to you live. And these recordings are obviously on the YouTube channels for the camera life and for lucky straps.
[00:01:01] Speaker A: Now editor Seb says he's receiving us loud and clear. It's positive feedback.
[00:01:06] Speaker B: That's my son.
[00:01:08] Speaker A: Well, that's an editor.
[00:01:11] Speaker B: Yep. So, runs in the family.
[00:01:13] Speaker C: I'm waiting for your cat to type something.
[00:01:16] Speaker B: Yeah, maybe for my iPad.
Speaking of that Aussie accent and that Aussie photographer, we're joined today by Greg Carrick who is a Victoria Melbourne, out of Melbourne based photographer with a history in photojournalism.
And he's a very clever man because like me, he shoots Fujifilm mostly at the moment.
In fact, we even our daily carry is even the same camera, the Fujifilm XC Four. So welcome to the show, Greg.
Great to have you on board.
[00:01:49] Speaker A: Thanks.
[00:01:50] Speaker C: Thank you very much, Greg.
[00:01:52] Speaker B: And of course we're joined by Jim and Justin from Team Lucky Straps. Morning, guys. How you doing?
[00:01:58] Speaker A: Hello. Good morning.
[00:02:00] Speaker B: And we might just kick off with catching up with Greg. First of all, unless, Jim or Justin, you have any pressing news you want to jump straight into.
[00:02:11] Speaker A: No pressing news here. Just packing camera straps.
[00:02:16] Speaker B: Yeah, fair enough.
Okay, Greg, why don't you tell us a little bit about your photography life, your journey into photography, what got you started and what you self over the decades and what you're doing now.
[00:02:32] Speaker C: Well, cast your mind back at ease to the early seventies.
And I was going through high school and back then a teacher said to the whole class, this is reality. One third of you going to go on to tertiary studies, one third of you are going to go out and get a job and one third of you are going on the dole.
And that's exactly what happened.
[00:03:00] Speaker B: That went straight to the heart. Inspiration.
[00:03:02] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah.
Because back then to get to tertiary, you had to pass what was in HSC.
So form six or year twelve, you had to do that successfully to get into tertiary. Nowadays you got all sorts of paths available to you, which is much better, I think.
And I wanted at that stage to be a photojournalist, using my camera for media.
I didn't pass, so that door shut immediately. There was no other way to get into it.
So I cast around just looking for a job and ended up being accepted to do a printing apprenticeship in a newspaper company. I had no idea what I was getting into. I turned up on my first day at work, nice clothes, which was totally ridiculous because by the end of the day I was black with ink.
The big newspaper presses, they're bigger than the house, they are double story. They're longer, wider than house, and they're incredibly noisy and really dirty. Ink just floats through the air with these things.
But yeah, I did my apprenticeship in printing with newspapers and I've been involved in newspapers pretty much ever since. Now, what's this got to do with photography? Well, it comes into it, but in the newspaper industry, you name a job in it and I've done it and I'm not kidding, because in the end I've actually owned and run a couple of local newspapers.
So I had to do every stage of that trade, including photography. So I was able to pick up my cameras again and use them for work, use them in that industry.
So, long story short, I ended up, there was a battle of local papers in my area.
A bigger mob came in and there wasn't room for me with my smaller paper and them big conglomerate. So I said to them, you do the paper, I'll take photos. They said, yeah, that's fine. They didn't want to battle either.
So I ended up for years then being a photojournalist at last, and it took decades, but I got there in the end and didn't have to do tertiary after all.
[00:05:50] Speaker A: So you found a way around the system. That's awesome.
[00:05:53] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. If I can't take photos for newspapers, I'll make my own newspaper.
[00:05:59] Speaker D: That's nice work, by your way.
[00:06:02] Speaker B: Can I just dial back a little bit there, Greg? Ask. So what, what was it that appealed to you back in, in high school? What was it that appealed, what was the appeal with, with photojournalism?
[00:06:13] Speaker C: Well, I had cameras at that stage when I was very young. My father gave me his box brownie, which I still have, and it didn't get a lot of use because, you know, I was a kid and film's expensive and all that sort of stuff. But when I was a teenager, I ended up going to a local camera store in Frankston, where I grew up and didn't have a lot of money, so I bought the cheapest SLR I could find, which was at that stage of Mamia something 500 and a lens. And I had that for several years. Eventually got a bit more money, ended up then with a olympus om one, which I still have as well. And that was a beautiful camera.
I really enjoyed taking photos.
I didn't do any formal courses about it, and they were more almost street type photography that I was gravitating towards, and that sort of stayed with me. I still love doing that. And street photography and photojournalism are fairly closely linked because both of them try to capture reality without manipulating things.
So, yeah, you can do street portraits and all that, where you talk to people and have them set up and you can do all that sort of thing, but usually it's very candid. And photojournalism has pretty strict rules about that. You're not allowed to manipulate things when taking the shot and also post processing, you're not allowed to get rid of things, add things, all that sort of stuff. You're pretty much limited to cropping.
And that style of photography really suited me down to the ground. So when doing photojournalism, you had to be able to cover all sorts of situations in one day, like a wedding photographer, you'll go along and your whole day is all about the wedding. It's all about capturing the best you can of that scene.
But you imagine doing an event like that, a formal sort of thing, and then getting in your car and driving to do a football match, and then getting in your car, driving to do a community event, then getting in your car. And because you just got a call, there's been a bad accident down so and so, and you have to drive there and photograph that.
So you have to be able to cover all sorts of genres in one day with one set of gear.
And doing that for years taught me a heck of a lot.
And it was good in the sense that you become very flexible, you, very adaptable, you have to think on your feet, you have to do things and get things right, because there's no second chances.
You can't say to people at the football match, oh, can you kick that again? I missed it, you know, but it also means it's hard to develop a style. And some people say, oh, to be a successful photographer, you have to have a style. You can't do that. When you swipe switch switching and swapping between genres at the drop of a hat.
So there's good points and bad points about it.
[00:10:00] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. Quick, quick shout out to Woody, Woody Mallory from Virginia, USA. Hey, Woody, good to have you here with us.
[00:10:07] Speaker D: Hey, Woody.
[00:10:09] Speaker C: Wow, what time is it over there?
[00:10:11] Speaker A: It'd be about four. Yeah.
[00:10:14] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:10:15] Speaker A: Perfect afternoon viewing.
[00:10:16] Speaker B: It is perfect afternoon viewing.
[00:10:19] Speaker A: Super interesting to hear you talk about it from that perspective. That being obviously, it's almost like you're a technician, you're a camera operator. You need to be a skilled camera operator in any situation as opposed to an artist or something like that.
But I'm sure it probably feels that way. I've felt that way before where you don't have a style, but maybe other people could see your style developing because you were so immersed in the work that you were doing. Maybe you didn't see it, but. But maybe other photojournalists could see it. I don't know. Is that something that you ever talked about other photojournalists with?
[00:11:00] Speaker C: Yeah, it is a bit of a small world with photojournalism, and we don't often get to meet because we're working different areas, different days, that sort of thing. And also real contract. I wasn't on staff.
[00:11:14] Speaker A: Oh, okay.
[00:11:15] Speaker C: So I really, really went into the newspaper offices, I worked from home, I went out to do the jobs, came back home, did the processing, emailed them off.
I could count on one hand the time I met my bosses, you know, but, yeah, it's very hard to self critique in no matter what you're doing, because you're so focused on doing certain things, you're not outside yourself, whereas everybody else is. So they see things and you'll work quite differently than you do.
[00:11:53] Speaker B: And Greg, obviously the process for you, for photojournalism, I mean, today you could probably speak more to this, but today, photojournalism is. Sorry for anyone listening. I've got people doing construction work outside my window.
[00:12:08] Speaker A: Literally, we can barely hear it. It's no good. I mean, it's all good. Not no good.
[00:12:14] Speaker B: Thanks, Greg. Sorry. You know, pretty much anyone with a smartphone can contribute to photojournalism these days. And often you see smartphone footage of events that suddenly take place. But when you are shooting film, I imagine that there'd be considerable time pressures to get back, process the film, print the film, and that obviously all takes time for chemical processes and the like, let alone the hands on time.
How did you cope with that, you know, end to end process?
[00:12:47] Speaker C: Well, it's funny because back in the film days. Okay. People had that expectation that things would take a bit of time. So to them, getting something instantly meant several hours, and that was fine, whereas nowadays that's not acceptable.
[00:13:06] Speaker D: They wanted in seconds.
[00:13:08] Speaker C: Yeah. But the process evolved. It wasn't film. Bang. Digital.
There was an actual evolution from film to digital, because when I first was doing photojournalism with film, I would then, yeah, you have to get your, develop your next, make prints, scan them into your computer, and then get them to the client.
And then scanning improved. And all of a sudden you could get your whole role scanned onto a CD and that was quicker. Everything was done for you.
You could either give them the CD then, or email.
You could get them off the CD, put them into your computer, because computers were also developing at the same time.
I remember doing it before windows. So you had dos and you were trying to find programs that could handle pictures, which was so the kids playing along at home.
[00:14:20] Speaker B: DOS was like one of the earliest.
It would be a stretch to call it an operating system.
[00:14:27] Speaker A: I was like, which one of us is going to explain this to people?
[00:14:30] Speaker B: I can't remember what DOS stands for. I'm sure someone knows, but basic disk operating system. Yeah, there you go. Basic commands and functions for computers use DOS.
[00:14:40] Speaker C: Yeah. So when Windows came along, it was an absolute revelation and we thought it was incredibly amazing and freeing. There are windows and Mac.
I won't talk about Mac because I didn't get into Mac till later. I put up with windows for way too long.
But the programs that then started to come out were, yeah, they really changed the industry. You had Adobe coming along, starting to make Photoshop.
Before that, you had other WYSIWYG programs that sort of ended up being swamped by Adobe, then disappearing into the ether.
But Photoshop was in a battle as well. There were other programs that were also trying to be the industry standard, and it took years, really, for Photoshop to become dominant.
So there was a big mix of people using different programs.
[00:15:50] Speaker A: Greg, were you a, would you say you were an early, early adopter of digital, or were you a holdout? Were you a, were you a. I'm going to stick with film until, well, forever. Like, which end of the spectrum were you on? Or somewhere in the middle?
[00:16:04] Speaker C: More an early adopter?
Some of the real early digital cameras that came out were like with three megapixels and stuff. They were fantastic because you got to think about the end use of your photos. The end use of my photos was, it's going to be printed in a newspaper. So you could give them the highest quality photo you wanted. It's still going to be ink on newsprints.
[00:16:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:33] Speaker C: So, yeah, that's right. So three megapixels was fine and there was nearly Conica minolta, the dimage.
They were absolutely amazing things.
They had a zoom range from like 18 to 270 or something, built into this little plastic thing. Um, took macro shots as well. Uh, really light, compact, brilliant, brilliant cameras. I've still got one. Um, and eventually, uh, yeah, digital developed. And you ended up with, um, six megapixel, early Nikons, the D 40 or whatever.
And at the time, six megapixels was pretty much more than enough. You're very comfortable with that size. You could do a lot with it.
When processors sort of evolved and you ended up with things like twelve megapixels, we thought, who on earth would want twelve megapixels?
That's ridiculous. You know, six megapixels is enough and now look where we are.
[00:17:49] Speaker A: It's crazy. It's crazy now. I mean, I've been, we've been obviously pretty closely involved in this canon five reals launch and they launched the r1 at the same time, which is their first flagship professional camera in the new mirrorless system. They sort of held out for a fair while to release that. They're a little bit behind the other brands in having a flagship mirrorless.
[00:18:13] Speaker B: They're waiting for the Olympics.
[00:18:15] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. And probably for the camera to be ready in their eyes for professional use. And the Internet has exploded because it's 24 megapixel, whereas everyone else's flagship now is 45 to 50. And the Internet is absolutely hammering cannon for the fact that there's not enough megapixels in this professional body. And I've been. I want to make a video, but I also, I haven't had time because of what we're doing at the moment. But I think maybe, maybe the general world has lost sight of what a flagship body always was for photojournalists. And then despite the fact that Sony have got the a 150 megapixels and Nikon have the Z nine, which is 45 megapixels, that wasn't always the focus of those bodies. It was about speed and reliability and speed of delivery, high ISO performance, all that sort of stuff. And, yeah, I'm a bit confused about why everyone thinks it's kind of a failure of a camera when its buffer depth is double what Nikon and Sony's are. You can shoot a thousand raw frames without hitting the rover. Yeah, it's in at 40 frames a second.
[00:19:40] Speaker B: I think the big thing with, with the megapixel count is that, you know, for, for well over ten years, camera brands have been telling us that it's all about megapixel and autofocus and if anything, it's dumbing us down as to what good photography is. That's a whole nother story. But we've been to, we've been marketed ad marketed at relentlessly for over a decade about this megapixel race and it's only now just starting to kind of fall off a bit. It's less of a selling point. It's definitely there still, but it's not so much about. This is our top stat or spec for this camera. Yeah, it's just starting to fade off again. And I think it's brave of canon to ignore that. I mean, and they're just as responsible for it as any other brand, but it's brave of them to ignore that and focus on, you know, operability, professional performance, deliverability, speed of use and the sort of features that someone, like, someone that, you know, is working in. Greg's past industry of photojournalism needs.
They need faster. Yeah. Fast reliability. They don't need it to be billboard size necessarily.
[00:21:00] Speaker A: Yeah, because, yeah, everyone's sort of forgetting there's all these little, and maybe it's canon's fault for, like you say, they, they push, when they've got it, they push the megapixel thing hard and, and maybe not pushing these specs enough to reviewers or putting reviewers in a situation to really capitalize on these new enhancements. But like, it's got 100% autofocus coverage of the entire sensor. Like, Sony don't have that on any of their cameras. Nikon don't have that on any of their cameras. You know, so we've gone from DSLrs where, you know, your autofocus coverage was this, remember that? And then, and then you get a pro body and it was this, and then all of a sudden it's the entire, it's literally the entire frame. You can focus on any point in the frame.
Yeah, there's, there's so much to that camera that's getting pushed aside and I'm really, I would, what? I would love to because Jim's an ex photojournalist as well. Greg, you're an ex photojournalist, but I'd love to hear, like right now in 2024, I'd love to hear from some photojournalists that are looking at these cameras that use these cameras and be like, are you disappointed in 24 megapixel or do you not even care? You know, like, is that because where are news photos going now that obviously you had these?
They're going on the Internet. They're going on a smartphones, you know.
[00:22:18] Speaker D: Like, as long as they're sharp, like, they don't need to be, you know, they're sharp and they've got, you know, enough ISO range, which they're all going to have now.
[00:22:27] Speaker A: And for the one in a million photos that maybe ends up on a billboard or something, obviously, maybe more from the Olympics that end up in larger formats. But even still, with the quality of 24 megapixels, if it's a good photo. Yeah, surely. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe I'm, maybe I'm not in touch with it.
[00:22:47] Speaker C: But what you send to the papers will be between three and six megapixels.
So what do you need all these extra for? Oh, cropping. But, you know, you're trying to get, you're trying to get the whole shot in one shot. You don't really want a crop.
[00:23:09] Speaker B: Yeah.
So if you do, there's, you know, there's.
What's the AI driven software? And, you know, it's got the megapixel upscaler.
[00:23:20] Speaker A: Yeah. And the denoise, which canon's got built into this camera now, but no one's really been able to test it to see whether it's useful.
[00:23:28] Speaker B: You know, they've trained these things to fill in the pixels.
[00:23:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
Which should be only on that rare occasion where you capture something brilliant but you weren't in the right, you know, sort of almost luck that you caught it, and then you're like, oh, it'd be great to blow this up or whatever.
[00:23:45] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:23:46] Speaker A: But like you guys say, if ideally you're framing the shot correctly.
[00:23:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:23:51] Speaker A: From the.
[00:23:52] Speaker B: And if you are doing photography for high gloss print magazines, the few that still, you know, circulate, you know, you're not running around with an r1.
[00:24:02] Speaker A: No. Well, that's what the fives for, you know, like. Yeah, it's. They've got the both accounts. Anyway, I just, I went into a dark hole of YouTube videos yesterday and I was just, I was, like, arguing with my computer for a while. I thought about making a video on it, but maybe, maybe this is enough.
[00:24:15] Speaker B: To get film that for us, mate.
[00:24:17] Speaker A: I might do that in a reaction video. Just, just while I've derailed the show. I might as well bring it. Woody's actually got a question, which I'm sure we're going to get into this at some stage anyway. But, Greg, what is your preferred camera system? Woody's a Nikon user.
[00:24:33] Speaker C: Which, Greg are we talking about?
[00:24:35] Speaker A: Oh, that's a good. That's a good question.
[00:24:37] Speaker C: Which one would you both do it?
[00:24:39] Speaker A: But. But you both can answer.
[00:24:40] Speaker B: We can say it in unison.
[00:24:43] Speaker C: I was a Nikon user. Okay. I used. I always had a twin camera setup, so I'd have two. Not two nikons with different lenses. Because you didn't want to swap lenses when you're out there working.
So I'd have a double sling and you cheat sheet. Shoot. You'd literally drop that camera and pick up the other one.
And I used Nikon's for several years before.
Yep.
[00:25:12] Speaker A: What was you guys.
[00:25:14] Speaker D: I was gonna say, what was the last one you used?
[00:25:16] Speaker A: That's what I was gonna ask.
[00:25:19] Speaker C: They were APSC.
They were the, you know, the 5300s, things like that.
[00:25:25] Speaker A: Okay. Did you ever use the D 500 that the sort of that final pro aps C that they brought out?
[00:25:31] Speaker C: No, I switched to Fuji by then.
[00:25:33] Speaker A: Okay. There's a pretty good camera, that D 500. We still got one.
[00:25:37] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So then I. The Nikons were good. I did enjoy them. Uh, funny looking back on those photos now, to me, they're very noisy.
[00:25:53] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:25:54] Speaker C: The Nikon images weren't anywhere near as clean as. As when I switched to Fuji. Now, I don't know why. It's just the way it was.
[00:26:07] Speaker A: Advanced advancements in. In that crop sensor technology.
[00:26:10] Speaker B: Maybe over magic. Ah, it's the unicorn sprinkling.
[00:26:18] Speaker C: Yes. Dairy dust on the sensor.
[00:26:20] Speaker A: We've. Greg, we've lost your. We've lost your camera. Lost your image.
[00:26:25] Speaker D: Yeah, just.
[00:26:26] Speaker A: But we can still hear you, so that's nice.
[00:26:29] Speaker C: Yeah. So then I switched to Fuji, and that was because it. They reminded me of my Olympus o m one. They had all those manual dials. And although the Fuji. The Olympus, the shutter speed was on just behind the lens. Unusual placement, but.
[00:26:46] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:26:47] Speaker C: I was so used to doing everything manually while the camera is up to my eye, that, uh. Yeah, the pasm dial on the Nikons. That's all I had. So that's what he used. But, uh, when Fuji came out with their system of an ergonomics, I just took to it like a duct of water.
[00:27:04] Speaker B: You.
[00:27:05] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:27:05] Speaker B: What.
[00:27:05] Speaker A: What was the first Fuji you bought? Like, what was the camera that made you switch?
[00:27:10] Speaker C: Ah, the other Gregg's. Not love. It's fun. I picked up an X 70 and, uh, a very strange camera to use as a photojournalist. But I tried.
[00:27:23] Speaker A: You were still. You were still working as a photojournalist when you switched. Oh, I thought you might have switched afterwards.
[00:27:29] Speaker C: No. No. So I had my nikons, and I went out with them, but I took my Fuji X 70 as well, and I just trialed that, see how it would go. And the image quality coming out of it was absolutely brilliant. I loved the ergonomics of using it. So from there, I went to an xt two and an Xh one, and that replaced my Nikons. No longer used nikons. I had the XT two, xh one. Different lenses on. On the sling still. And that was my working gear.
[00:28:03] Speaker A: Yeah. Nice.
[00:28:06] Speaker C: And I still have both those cameras.
[00:28:09] Speaker B: Do you have a number of times now, yeah.
[00:28:12] Speaker A: We need to see these cameras. That's a lot of cameras.
[00:28:16] Speaker B: What's the head count of?
[00:28:18] Speaker C: Uh, yeah, I have gotten rid of some.
[00:28:23] Speaker A: Camera addict. I sold one.
[00:28:25] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah.
But I sold one.
I did sell my X 70. In the end, it took years. In fact, I had two. My first X 70 fell apart from use. So I replaced it and I tried the X 100. I bought the v when you could buy them.
And of course, everybody's raving about the X 100 v.
I used it for two years. I never. It never jolt with me. I never enjoyed it. It was a good tool, but it never inspired me at all. I must be a weirdo. No. No.
[00:29:08] Speaker B: You know, I had the same experience because my first Fuji was the X 100. The original.
[00:29:13] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:29:13] Speaker B: And I. And I sold that, unfortunately. I love that camera.
And I picked up a v. Or was it the four? I think it might have been the four. And I owned that for. For less than six months. And it just didn't click. It didn't click with me. I don't know why. It just didn't feel the same. And, I mean, I had an X 70 and an X T three.
[00:29:33] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:29:34] Speaker B: At the time, or four, but, yeah. And I sold that really quick as well. So you're not a weirdo. Well, we're both weirdos.
[00:29:43] Speaker A: No, you guys just talk enough.
Yeah. Jim, you've got sitting there the original X 100.
[00:29:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:29:51] Speaker A: Yeah, the v. No, no, it's not the v. It's quite a few series before that. And it's. It's a little bit worn, but. Yeah, I think it's worth hanging on to that camera.
[00:30:03] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely.
[00:30:03] Speaker C: Yeah.
Yeah. So the X 100. Yeah. Didn't fit. I ended up replacing that with the XE four.
[00:30:12] Speaker A: Mm hmm.
[00:30:13] Speaker C: And the XC four can either be an X 70 or an X 100, depending on what lens you put on it.
[00:30:19] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:30:20] Speaker C: And the XE four is just beautiful camera. Yeah.
But for working? Yeah, for working.
[00:30:31] Speaker A: Sorry.
[00:30:31] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:30:31] Speaker A: Yeah, it does have a viewfinder.
[00:30:33] Speaker B: Yeah. Digital only. Doesn't have the hybrid. No X 100 or the X Pro.
[00:30:39] Speaker A: And is the viewfinder on the side like a range finder style? Yeah. Yeah, I want one of those.
[00:30:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:30:45] Speaker A: That looks cool.
[00:30:46] Speaker B: It looks a lot like a compact Leica.
[00:30:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:30:50] Speaker B: Mine's mounted up there. I can't show you at the moment because it's all wired up. But it's a great little camera. And it takes all the Fuji.
[00:30:58] Speaker C: It's got the full flip up screen, like, there's 70.
[00:31:01] Speaker A: That's cool. So I wonder, how old is that camera? Like, is it due for an update or is it fairly recent? It's you for an update.
[00:31:10] Speaker B: About three to four years almost.
[00:31:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:13] Speaker B: Three years at least.
We're due for an update of the XE range. We're also due for an update of the X Pro. I think we talked about that last week a little bit. But the X Pro three was the last one. And that. Gosh, I went to the launch of that in Sydney. That was at least four years ago, I reckon. Probably just on. For just before COVID Yeah, it was on the.
It was pre Covid.
Um, it didn't sell as well. I don't think the X Pro three. I think they. They overpriced it. They over specced it in terms of. Not the big focus was on the finish, like the. This special alloy coating that they put on them. And you could opt for. I think there's three different colors and two different finishes of one of the colors, at least. And it was scratch resistant, but it was a fingerprint magnet at the same time.
Gorgeous camera. Yeah, that's it. The Duraco. So wonderful camera. It just.
It missed the mark in terms of.
They went too heavy on the, you know, the look and the appeal, which is a big part of Fujifilm's brand, is how good the cameras look.
But I think the.
I think everyone just assumed it would be a great camera to take photos with. The marketing wasn't great, and then pandemic hit and missed opportunity for it.
[00:32:27] Speaker A: If an X Pro four comes out, I'll definitely be looking at it and seeing whether I can offload the Q three to something a lot more affordable and probably a little bit more flexible. Because you know what? I bought the 28 mil lens for my canon system, which they've got this little pancake lens, I can't show you.
[00:32:48] Speaker B: Yeah, I saw that on your. I saw it on your vlog when you went to Sydney last week.
[00:32:53] Speaker A: It's awesome. It's really lightweight. It makes the five reals a very lightweight sort of camera that's obviously very, very powerful. I'm using it for my webcam at the moment. And yeah, that lens is awesome. But I can't. And I assume Fujifilm can do this. I don't know why you can't do it on a canon camera, but the way I like to shoot, if it's not, if I'm not shooting manual for like something professional or whatever, if I want to kind of have it in an auto mode, I want to have the shutter speed set to auto, which you can do on the Q three, the ISO set to auto.
I want to control my aperture and then I want a dial that's easily accessible for exposure compensation. That's just how I like to do auto. I know I can pick the camera up and it just take a photo and it'll be exposed correctly. Whereas sometimes with manual, if you go on from outside, inside to outside and stuff like that, you kind of.
You're doing a lot of setting changes. And when I'm just traveling and stuff, I like it to be a bit more simple. You can't do it on the five reals. It's really weird.
[00:34:00] Speaker D: It doesn't have like an auto ISO setting.
[00:34:02] Speaker A: You could just see you have to put it on aperture priority and then auto ISO. But then you can't customize the dials in aperture priority to where you want the exposure compensation to be.
It sort of automatically selects what it thinks aperture priority is. Whereas when you're shooting with the Leica, it's not in aperture priority, it's just you can select if you want the shutter to be in auto, the ISO to be in auto, or the aperture to be in order. Like they're all independent. It's not a mode, it's just.
What do I put? Does Fujifilm have that? Can you just set the shutter to auto on that dial on the top?
[00:34:37] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
[00:34:38] Speaker A: That's nice.
[00:34:39] Speaker C: And so put on auto, uh, you can put your aperture wherever you want on auto or aperture priority. You've got your exposure compensation dial right here.
[00:34:51] Speaker A: Right there?
[00:34:52] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
[00:34:52] Speaker A: Do you shoot in some of the manual or in. Sorry, I was just gonna see whether you. Do you shoot manual or do you put it in an automatic mode of some sort? Or how do you like to do it?
[00:35:02] Speaker C: I'm so used to shooting manual from the film days. That, that's just how I work.
[00:35:08] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:35:09] Speaker C: It doesn't mean auto is bad.
It's just I'm so used to having control over everything, including nowadays I use third party lenses, dumb lenses. They're not connected to the camera. So.
Yeah, manual focus as well. So I'm sort of doing manual everything.
[00:35:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:35:32] Speaker B: Just because I'm old with, with my fujis. I'll do manual aperture because almost every lens has a manual aperture ring. I think every current lens now does.
[00:35:45] Speaker A: And I love the, yeah, the clickies.
[00:35:48] Speaker B: The clickiness of the, that's the pancake 27 mil. Sorry. There's a machine outside, but the, the shutter speed, the aperture and the ISO, I control those all manually. I use autofocus, but I can switch. It's so fast and quick to switch your settings and dial in based on the light and the situation and.
[00:36:12] Speaker C: How.
[00:36:13] Speaker B: You want to freeze time.
[00:36:13] Speaker A: So I think it might be because I shoot everything manual in every other situation and always have wedding, sports, everything else. I think it's just a mindset thing where if I, if I want to be a little bit less, I don't know, a little bit more relaxed, where I'm just strolling around and just taking photos and not thinking about it too much. It might be that that's what I really liked about using that way. And that's how I shot with the Leica the entire time that we traveled in the States. I used manual focus a lot, but I just really liked not having to worry about my exposure. The only thing in my mind with the exposure was, was what aperture? How much depth of field do I want? And then do I want it, the photo to be lighter or darker? And I just didn't, didn't worry about the shutter speed or the ISO. I just didn't, didn't think about it. It was, it was nice. A little bit, yeah, a little bit less on my mind.
[00:37:07] Speaker B: So, Greg, other Greg, other GC, what, what sort of projects and work are you invested in at the moment?
[00:37:17] Speaker C: I'm glad you asked. I have a listen.
It's funny, as a prelude to that, now I'm retired, I've had to go through a whole process of learning why I want to use a camera.
Because for years I've taken photos for other people.
Okay. So all the photos I take have to please other people.
That's the client. They give me money for it.
Now. No one's paying me to take photos for them, so I have to take photos for myself. And that's been a long process of trying to figure out what type of photography I actually like. And it might sound strange, it's taken me a couple of years, so I've tried different things.
I like street photography, so I went on street photography binge and developed a style that I find really suits me. And to do that, I had to invent a new way.
Well, I call it a new way. We all know the exposure triangle.
I worked with the exposure square.
Now to get that.
Fujifilm is good for this because everything's manual. So I was out on the street in Melbourne doing street photography. So the style I wanted was a bit blurry, a bit grainy. So I thought, right, I have to have a low shutter speed. So I went down to one 8th of a second, then I thought, okay, I want most things in focus, so I want a zone focus. So I was on, say, f eleven, and then I like grain in street photography. So I was very high ISO.
Now, high ISO, slow shutter speed means everything's really bright. So I had to get around that.
And with, with me only wanting, I set my shutter speed, I set my aperture, I set my ISO. So what could I adjust? I didn't want to adjust any of them, but I still had to control light. So I had to invent a fourth thing to do, and that was variable nd filters.
You have your exposures triangle set, and you slap on a variable nd filter. And that's the only thing I changed when I was doing street photography. I just changed how much light was getting into the lens. So that's my exposure square, and that's.
[00:40:15] Speaker A: A fun way to shoot. It's just so simple, you know, like mindset wise, it's like I was saying before, I just want to change the exposure compensation. This is, it's, it's, this is even simpler. Again, you've literally just got one thing to twist and that's your control.
[00:40:28] Speaker C: That's all I changed. I just moved the variable nd and ended up with a whole series of photos I put in a book.
And like, there's one there, so they're blurry, they're grainy, they're high contrast black and white. And I wanted as much. I was also rebelling, okay? Because you go on YouTube and everybody says, and in the whole photography world, these are the rules you got rule of this, rule of that, you must not do this, you must do that. And I was looking at, I made a list of all these things that we're supposed to do, and I threw them all out and I did the exact opposite. So people would say, got to protect your highlights. Okay. Don't want to blow things out. So I went out there and I made them look like a bomb had gone off.
Really bright highlights, blowing everything out. Really dark, deep blacks that you could no longer pull anything out of. I wanted that because that is what you see on the street. You go for walking Melbourne at dyes, you've got really dark places. You got bright light shining at you and you're told, oh, you need to control that. Why? That's reality. You know, the lights are so bright, you have to squint. So I wanted that in my photos.
So I was trying to break as many rules as I can that people were telling me to do, and I ended up with photos. The best photos I've ever taken. Really.
And I love it. The freedom of doing that.
It. It became more art than just photos. Yeah. Taking photos for other people, that's good.
[00:42:27] Speaker D: It's good that you found a refund. The fashion, it's definitely.
I resonate with that, with just taking photos of other people that you often don't know. It's just a tool. It's like, I'm sure you don't pick it up. You know, a lot of people wouldn't pick it up after. After hours.
[00:42:44] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:42:46] Speaker C: And I'm also in a photo group out here, Yarra Rangers photographic society. And every month we have, we're given a topic, and then an outside person comes in and judges or evaluates. So we have evaluation lights every month on certain topics.
And pretty much without fail, the people evaluating go through all those rules. Rule of this, rule of that, particular highlights, blah, blah, blah. And I'm throwing in pictures that break all those rules, you see? And they're staring at my photos and some comments. One judge looked at one of my photos and said, this is a joke. This is a waste of my time.
[00:43:35] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:43:36] Speaker C: Which I loved because that was exactly what I was, you know?
[00:43:40] Speaker D: Yeah. You're there for the art, not for.
[00:43:43] Speaker C: Yeah. Not to tick a box of. Yeah. What a photographer should be doing.
[00:43:47] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:43:48] Speaker D: That's awesome.
[00:43:49] Speaker A: Yeah. Is it a good photo or not a good photo? Don't worry about anything else.
[00:43:52] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:43:54] Speaker C: For me now, a good photo is something that I'm happy with. Don't care about anybody else. I'm not taking photos for anybody else except me. So if I'm happy with it, it's good.
[00:44:05] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:44:07] Speaker C: Then I went to another project, which I call no light photography.
Low light photography is one thing, but no light.
I like doing seascapes, so what I do is, uh, maybe after one of my radio shows here goes till midnight. So I do my radio show, jump in the car, I drive down the peninsula to, uh, cape shank or Flinders or somewhere, and there'd be no moon, and I know there's rocks out there, and there's waves coming in. I can hear them.
So I take, uh, GFX 50 r and put it up on a tripod, and I wouldn't be able to see what's in front of me.
And I would take an eight minute exposure just to gather enough light, and then I'd see, oh, okay. The rocks are over there. And adjust my camera composition to suit.
Take another eight minute shot, and the camera can gather enough light to see. There's no hope of your eyes seeing what's in front of you, so you have to use the camera like that. And I'm getting photos that, to me, I haven't seen before, because who in their right mind would take photos in the absolute dark, you know?
So I'm having a lot of fun doing. Yeah. No light photography like that.
[00:45:38] Speaker A: That's. That one's super interesting. I've got a few questions from me, trying to justify gear purchases. Do I need to buy a medium format camera to try this technique? Is that what you're telling me? I have to go and buy a GFX?
[00:45:53] Speaker C: Absolutely not.
But I find they do process things a lot better.
The larger sensor.
[00:46:04] Speaker A: What do you do for the eight minutes?
[00:46:08] Speaker C: Stand around, try not to fall in the water, because, yeah, I have been in situations where I'm. I'm at. You have to time the tide. Okay. You can't do it at high tide. You have to do it low tide because you're out there on the rocks trying to photograph other rocks. There's waves coming in and out around you.
And there are times when I'm. I'm precariously set up on a rock, and there's. There's waves and water coming all around me, and I know the tide's going to come in soon, and I can't really see anything.
So it's a bit of fun in that sense.
[00:46:45] Speaker A: Where can we see any of these photos? Have you got any of them on. On the interwebs somewhere that we can look?
[00:46:51] Speaker C: Yeah, I've got a YouTube channel with some of these things. Yeah, we'll drop the.
[00:46:57] Speaker B: We'll drop the link to Greg's YouTube channel in the. In the comments. Yeah.
So anyone can check it out. Don't go now.
[00:47:05] Speaker C: Stick around.
[00:47:07] Speaker B: Stay safe.
I've seen some of Greg's work because I'm Greg and I follow each other on socials. But also Greg and I are both members of a Fujifilm community here in Australia, the Fuji Xos Facebook group.
And I often marvel at some of Greg's work. In fact, in his early days of street photography, I.
I convinced Greg to provide some photos for a shotkid article that I was preparing around the early days of the pandemic. So when the pandemic first hit and the world went into shutdown the first time, you know what? We were collecting photos from photographers who had gone out all over the world to show the impact. And Greg supplied some images from those days. And that was kind of my first introduction to Greg's work as a photographer.
[00:48:00] Speaker C: I had fun doing that.
I went into Melbourne on the first lockdown and wandered around Melbourne from dawn till probably almost lunchtime, taking photos during a weekday. And the city was deserted.
It was absolutely staggering.
So I'm glad I took that chance because historic time.
[00:48:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:48:28] Speaker C: And to me, those photos J Melbourne, that, in a way, you'll never see it.
[00:48:33] Speaker B: Yeah, hopefully.
[00:48:35] Speaker C: Yeah, we hope.
It was like on the beach. Remember that film back in 1959 showing your age, mate, end of. End of the world?
[00:48:46] Speaker A: Did they have films back then? I thought it was just. Yeah, they just didn't. They put them up and then someone played piano while you watched the silent.
[00:48:54] Speaker C: In part of the film, they actually came to Melbourne and it was the end of the world, apocalyptic time. And Melbourne was empty and. Yeah, it was like that.
[00:49:03] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:49:04] Speaker A: So this isn't the best way to show off your work. Oh, it's YouTube photos on YouTube. But I just. I just wanted to have a quick look. And this.
Yeah, that's so cool. So were these. Yeah. Four minute exposure.
Four minute exposure. So you couldn't see anything. You would just set it up. Focus based on, like, zone focus, like.
[00:49:27] Speaker C: Yeah. So with the manual focusing on the Fujis, you can see where your focus point is. They've got a sort of slider down the bottom of the screen. You can see whereabouts the focus is.
So I remember, like, that photo, you see the horizon, the light there. All I could see with my eye was just a tiny spot of it.
I couldn't see the rocks or the waves or the clouds. You just have to wait for the camera to show you in the end.
[00:50:02] Speaker A: Wow. It's a very interesting way of shooting. The closest you get to it is night sky photography. You know, you can see the stars. You can usually see the horizon line. What you know, you know, anything that's black isn't the sky. So you sort of work around that, and then you. Then you do trial and error, you know, like, yeah, this is. This is less feedback than that. Yeah. Oh, that one is awesome.
[00:50:29] Speaker C: Now, that one, I'm standing on the edge of a rock, and the dark.
[00:50:36] Speaker B: I'd be spending that eight minutes trying not to move.
[00:50:39] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And. And hopefully, you. You're not gonna. Yeah.
[00:50:43] Speaker B: Tripods to.
[00:50:44] Speaker C: Gonna fall in.
[00:50:45] Speaker A: I was gonna say, what sort of tripod are using that also to get, like, stability over eight minutes?
Is it. Is it a big, beefy tripod or some.
[00:50:54] Speaker C: Tripods are another. Another beef that I have.
[00:50:59] Speaker A: Tell us. Tell us about tripods.
[00:51:01] Speaker C: Yeah, look, there's. There's reviewers on YouTube that specialize in tripods.
[00:51:07] Speaker A: Really?
[00:51:07] Speaker C: And they are just reviewers. They're not photographers.
[00:51:10] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:51:11] Speaker C: And I was listening to one years ago, and he recommended a certain tripod, which I then went out and bought. And in the end, I thought it was a heap of junk, so I had to do my own research. I ended up with a freewell tripod. Travel tripod. Very light. I'll show you that later. But, um, basically, uh, even though it's a light travel tripod, I'm using that to hold up my GFX 50 r and lens and doing eight minute long exposures. And it's rock solid. There's. There's nothing wrong with it.
I do have a really beefy tripod in my studio at home, but I find it's very heavy. Two and a half kilos on its own. And lugging that up and down cliffs and stuff in the dark is a pain in the neck.
This travel tripod, that's where I was standing on the rock.
This travel tripod weighs less than a kilo. And a lot of people would say, you wouldn't trust that it's too flimsy. But I'm using a medium format camera on it.
[00:52:24] Speaker A: Right.
[00:52:25] Speaker B: I mean, if anything, the camera weights. The gravity of the camera is kind of scanting it a bit, isn't it?
[00:52:31] Speaker C: So, yeah, it's a free bowl.
I bought it. They didn't give it to me. Yeah. It's carbon fiber, and it's got a really great way of opening it. You turn the whole thing, one click, one.
[00:52:50] Speaker A: One cookie.
[00:52:51] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:52:52] Speaker A: That's cool.
[00:52:54] Speaker C: And the other thing about it I like, the head is an amazing design, because normally, nowadays, there's a.
Some people, like, pan ed. Some people, like, tilt ball heads. Okay. This has both.
It has a ball head. Which, um.
Uh. Where is it?
[00:53:19] Speaker A: You sure you're not sponsored by these guys? Serum, if you like, or something.
[00:53:25] Speaker C: I had to buy this with my own money. But it's got a ball head, but it's also got a pan and silk head all built into one thing.
[00:53:34] Speaker A: It's Arca Swiss compatible for players.
[00:53:38] Speaker C: Yeah.
And in fact, the plate it comes with, it is also designed to hold a phone.
So I did a YouTube on it.
[00:53:48] Speaker A: Is that that handle thing? Can you remove that handle thing just if you were traveling in it and you want to be. Yeah, yeah.
[00:53:54] Speaker C: Whole thing screws off.
[00:53:57] Speaker A: I think I'm sold.
[00:53:58] Speaker B: Yeah, it's absolutely for viewers and for Greg. It doesn't take much to convince Justin to spend.
[00:54:04] Speaker A: I'm a sucker.
I'm trying to become one of these YouTube reviewers so I can justify buying stuff.
[00:54:10] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:54:13] Speaker A: But the difference will be I'll buy it and not just get it given to me and have an affiliate link.
[00:54:18] Speaker C: But, yeah, that is a very important point because I found, okay, how much bias is there in YouTube videos of people reviewing stuff? And to me they're always bias.
[00:54:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:54:33] Speaker C: If there's reviewers out there who get stuff sent to them for free, and quite often they get to keep it. So they rev about this stuff next week, they rev and about the next thing, you know, there's no reliability in them at all. Yeah. I simply don't trust them.
[00:54:47] Speaker A: It's. It really is a shame that that's how everything has ended up. Speaking of that, what sort of camera straps do you use, Greg?
Just kidding.
[00:54:58] Speaker C: Do I get kicked off if I say the wrong thing?
[00:55:03] Speaker D: There's something wrong with the stream we lost, Greg.
[00:55:05] Speaker A: It is crazy that the review. It is a review industry now, and it doesn't mean everybody is part of the review industry. There are photographers out there that are putting content out that genuinely sort of use the gear, have a passion for the gear and stuff. And also not too much of a slight to the people that say review gear almost for a living because there are some that put a lot of work into, I'm thinking, more on the YouTube side of things, not so much written. There are some that put a lot of work into those videos. Who comes to mind is his name's on Gordon Lang.
Oh, yeah. Very, very factual. He does almost all the camera. You know, he's not kind of like pushing this, pushing that.
It's like. It's just he goes through all the specs, he does some tests. It's a factual review that goes for 30 minutes or whatever.
And then he does the same for the next camera and the next camera. And it's quite clear that while he's living, is made from reviewing cameras now, I hope. I mean, he puts a lot of work into it. I assume he makes money out of it.
He doesn't sort of seem to be constantly pushing, you know, the next thing or a link to a, you know, an affiliate link or anything like that. So, yeah, there's. There's definitely people out there doing it in a less biased way, but there is also a lot of people just sort of, hey, I got this bit of gear sent to me and it's great. You should buy it.
[00:56:38] Speaker C: Yeah, they're blatant about it. They do an unboxing and then tell you how good this. You haven't even put a camera on it.
Yeah, but as far as bias goes, people like me who only review stuff that they're bought and used, we also have bias because we don't want to look like mugs. I've spent, you know, $500 on this of my own, money that I'll never get back. And I want to say it's good because otherwise I'm a moron. I've spent all this money on a dodgy thing, you know? So we have a bias built in as well.
[00:57:19] Speaker A: We got a call coming in.
[00:57:20] Speaker B: Hello? Call.
[00:57:23] Speaker C: I hate phones. I just hang up on it.
So, yeah, there's always bias.
[00:57:31] Speaker A: That is a true thing. And you see it very strongly in if someone asks a question on the Internet, because sadly, I do end up in these areas that are full of comments and I'm, like, reading through Reddit or something like that, and someone will ask a question and the answers that always get given. And this makes sense because people have. That's what they bought, but they always recommend the camera they've got or the bit of gear they've got. Like, oh, you should buy the Leica Q three. It's the best camera there is. And he's like, okay, what about the x 100? Oh, I haven't tried that one. But you should buy what I've got. It sort of becomes, yeah, you recommend what you've used, which it makes.
[00:58:09] Speaker D: Makes you feel better, though.
[00:58:10] Speaker A: Well, you went through all the research and paid the money for it, so you feel like it was the right choice, and it's probably the right choice for someone else. But it does mean. Yeah, you're right. There's always a bit of a bias there. If it's gear that you've got.
[00:58:22] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:58:23] Speaker A: Confirm your own decisions.
[00:58:25] Speaker B: Definitely.
[00:58:26] Speaker C: So if we're still talking about my projects.
[00:58:30] Speaker B: Yeah, of course.
[00:58:31] Speaker C: Then the other project I've got, which has been ongoing, is weird lenses.
Okay, now I do this.
[00:58:42] Speaker B: How many lenses have you got, mate? Sorry? How many lenses? We never got an answer to how many cameras either.
[00:58:49] Speaker C: Not as many cameras as I have lenses.
[00:58:51] Speaker B: Yeah, okay, sorry, interrupted.
[00:58:54] Speaker C: But I find cameras can be expensive. Lenses are incredibly ridiculously priced, especially when you're doing something like the GFX system.
So what are the alternatives? And because I'm now unemployed, not working for anybody, I can choose what sort of lenses I use to get what sort of photos, because I'm only here to please myself. So I'm using a lot of old lenses that might be a bit strange. Like here I've got a lens of a slide projector.
Now if you think about it, projector lenses are made to do the opposite of camera lenses. A camera lens collects light from in front of it and focuses behind. A projector lens collects light from behind it and focuses that front.
So to put a projector lens on a camera is asking it to do something that it wasn't made to do. So what sort of photos do you get from it?
You get brilliant photos.
They're amazing and they're so simple.
This might have one element in it as opposed to, you know, nine elements in six groups or whatever.
And they're a lot of fun to use because they're totally experimental.
You have to adapt them to your camera. So with the GFX, I basically have a helicoid which allows focus in and out. And then I get 3d printed amounts that the weird lens can go into. And then manta, the helicoid.
[01:00:45] Speaker D: So have you made this, these like the 3d printing or is this something.
[01:00:50] Speaker C: You'Ve got from somewhere else? My son in law does makes them for me on spec.
[01:00:58] Speaker B: He stays in the family as long as he keeps.
[01:01:00] Speaker C: Yeah, that's right.
[01:01:02] Speaker B: With new toys. Right.
[01:01:03] Speaker C: And I end up with a great collection of weird lenses just to experiment with on my GFX. Right now I've got a 1100 year old lens from a Kodak fellow's best pocket camera, which is very pancake. That's it at the end, just that little bit.
The rest of it is adapter. And then helicoid.
[01:01:30] Speaker B: So how does the helicoid focus?
[01:01:33] Speaker C: It just moves it and out and.
[01:01:35] Speaker A: Fancy word for a screw.
[01:01:37] Speaker C: Yeah, basically. Um.
[01:01:39] Speaker B: And how do you manage aperture or you don't?
[01:01:42] Speaker A: Yeah. Are they fixed aperture lenses?
[01:01:46] Speaker C: It depends on the lens. Like this one is fixed aperture. It's wide open.
[01:01:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:01:50] Speaker A: Okay.
[01:01:51] Speaker C: It's 2.8 or something.
There's no aperture control on that.
[01:01:58] Speaker A: 2.8 or something.
[01:02:02] Speaker C: This lens from the old Kodak camera has a little metal circle plate with holes drilled into it.
And that's your aperture. And that's what it was like on the old camera.
[01:02:19] Speaker B: So you, you, as you dial it.
[01:02:22] Speaker C: A different, a different appears.
[01:02:25] Speaker B: Aperture appears.
[01:02:26] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. And they're labeled one, two, three and four. There's, there's no f stop type things.
[01:02:32] Speaker A: It's just. Yeah.
[01:02:33] Speaker C: Setting one, setting one, setting two. Like Allen Cromwell, different sized diameter holes.
So it depends on the lens you use as to, to how much control you have in that lens.
[01:02:47] Speaker B: That's fascinating.
[01:02:48] Speaker A: So tell me, what does that lens look like? Have you taken many photos with it? Like, how is it, you know, if we put it through an MTF chart test setting, what sort of contrast, micro contrast are we getting in the corners? You know, is it, you get the.
[01:03:00] Speaker C: Exact same photos that you would have got on the old bellows camera, right? So, yeah, you get a photo, but forget about sharpness. There's no such thing.
It's, you're getting a digital photo that looks like it was shot 100 years ago.
[01:03:20] Speaker A: Really?
[01:03:21] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:03:21] Speaker A: And then do you use the Fujifilm simulations with that as well? Or do you edit your photos afterwards? Like, how are you e shooting jpeg or raw?
[01:03:31] Speaker C: I always shoot both. Just by habit.
[01:03:34] Speaker A: Mm hmm.
[01:03:36] Speaker C: I try to use the JPEG. If it's not good enough, then I'll go to raw. And then you got more dynamic range and all that sort of stuff. But the, just because that old lens on digital camera doesn't mean it's going to be any better than when it was on a film camera, because that old lens has one element in it.
Okay, so you got one piece of glass that you're relying on.
There's no corrections involved, there's no coding even. There's nothing. It's just a piece of glass.
[01:04:14] Speaker B: That's really exciting, Greg.
[01:04:15] Speaker A: It's a very cool idea.
[01:04:17] Speaker C: Back in the day, that was pretty much state of the art. And one of those cameras was taken to the top of Mount Everest to cover that trip way back in the day by explorers, you know, so, um, people relied on those sort of things and they did the job. Nowadays we're all about corner to corner sharpness and blowing up things 400% to pixel people. And it's just crazy with these adapters.
[01:04:47] Speaker D: And stuff that you're making. Are you like, are you selling them to people or you know.
[01:04:52] Speaker C: Uh, no. Uh, not really. I mean, I could.
It wouldn't be hard to sell this one because there are so many of these cameras and lenses out there that people would try it.
[01:05:04] Speaker A: That's what I was going to say. It needs to be, obviously, needs to be a common, fairly accessible, cheap lens to make it worthwhile.
[01:05:11] Speaker B: I don't know, making the files accessible so people can print their own.
[01:05:16] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:05:17] Speaker B: Really. You know, there's sites dedicated to where you can upload your files and people can. You can offer free or purchase, put them behind a paywall where people can download the files and just print their own stuff.
[01:05:30] Speaker A: Print their own even. Yeah. Make them a few dollars, make them accessible. But, you know, put that money into the next lens you have to go and track down.
[01:05:37] Speaker C: Yeah. There's so many things you can do with old lenses, like the Helios 44. Two world famous lens, millions of them made. They're like Volkswagen beetles, but. And so easy to take apart, which is a good thing because that lens is known for its swirly bokeh.
But you can pull either the front or the back element off very easily, turn it round, put it back in, and you get incredibly slowly bokeh with, with focus just in the middle. And you get incredible effects from that sort of thing. So they're great lenses to experiment with. Yep.
[01:06:17] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:06:19] Speaker C: You won't get that from a modern lens.
[01:06:21] Speaker B: What would. What it would cost to pick up one of those today?
[01:06:25] Speaker C: The old Helios?
[01:06:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:06:27] Speaker C: About $50.
[01:06:29] Speaker B: Wow.
[01:06:30] Speaker C: 50 to 100 australian if you look into the lens.
[01:06:33] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:06:33] Speaker C: But you can go to an op shop and you'll. You might see an old Zenit sitting there. It'll have a helios sitting on it and you get it for 20, $30, you know.
[01:06:42] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:06:42] Speaker C: Well, a camera.
[01:06:44] Speaker B: Yeah, that's pretty cool. I've seen. I've seen examples where people have gone into, you know, op shops and more so in the states than here, but even still. And, you know, they've, they've found likers, like classic like us. Yeah, that'd be a drink with a $50 sticker. And they've just picked up crazy, crazy bargains.
I've never had such luck. So I've stopped going into that.
[01:07:10] Speaker C: Yeah, op shops are good.
The op shops around here know me. They got me on speed dial.
[01:07:17] Speaker A: He's back.
[01:07:19] Speaker C: We got some camera gear. Come and get it.
And people give you things.
So many times over the years, people have said, oh, we're cleaning out, you know, grandfather died, we're slowly going through the house we came across this camera, Baghdad. They don't know what to do. They give it to me.
[01:07:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:07:38] Speaker C: And there's, you know, old Pentax film cameras and lenses and stuff in there. And I've got a whole heap of these things at home because people just don't know what they're doing.
[01:07:48] Speaker B: Them.
[01:07:49] Speaker C: They giving them away.
[01:07:51] Speaker B: And once you have a reputation.
[01:07:54] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:07:54] Speaker B: That you're after these things, people go, oh, you've got to get rid of this camera. I talked to Greg Carrick, he'll take it off your hands.
[01:07:59] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I never say no because you never know what's going to be in that bag, you know?
[01:08:04] Speaker A: Yeah.
Sounds like you need to have a garage sale at some stage.
[01:08:09] Speaker C: Yes.
[01:08:12] Speaker D: Are you looking for some more cameras, Justin?
[01:08:15] Speaker A: No, I'm not. No. I probably need to get rid of stuff, too. I was actually. I think they. Have you guys heard of that happening? I think I've seen it somewhere, but like a. Like a sort of a swap meet for photographers. Is that a thing in Melbourne? Yeah, because I've got a heap of stuff that I. It's too hard to sell it on marketplace because it's probably not worth enough money to, you know, to bother putting this ten dollar thing or whatever. But if I could take a few tubs and a table to a, you know, to like, a hallmate on a Saturday and everyone else is there too, and you just sort of sell stuff cheap, just to clear out the cupboards and someone finds what they've been looking for.
[01:08:52] Speaker C: I guarantee you'll come home with more than you went with.
[01:08:57] Speaker A: You're right. But still. I still want to do it. Is. Yeah. Is that a thing? Have you guys heard of it?
[01:09:02] Speaker C: I haven't been to one, but it does. I have heard of them.
[01:09:06] Speaker B: Maybe we should like car boot sales and markets. Yeah, I remember I went to. There's a. I don't know if it's still on. Years ago, used to go to the Dalesford, um, market. Used to be on a Sunday at the train station. At the train yards.
[01:09:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:09:19] Speaker B: They still do that.
[01:09:21] Speaker A: I don't know if they still do it.
[01:09:22] Speaker C: Not sure, probably, you know, fruit.
[01:09:24] Speaker B: There'd be like, local farmers selling produce and people selling old tools. There'd be like, tables of old tools.
People selling stuff they've made, but they'd often just be trash and treasure.
[01:09:34] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:09:34] Speaker B: Sometimes you'd see some camera gear in.
[01:09:36] Speaker A: Those places, but I think we need to do a photography specific one.
[01:09:40] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:09:42] Speaker A: Oh, it's so much junk that someone else might want old soft boxes and things that I bought while we were shooting weddings to try out different techniques and stuff like that. Now they're just all sitting around doing nothing.
[01:09:53] Speaker D: I still got the high slot.
[01:09:55] Speaker C: I had one guy used to run a camera store and it died pre Covid, and he ended up having a whole lot of stock left over. And he contacted me one day and said, oh, I'm trying to clear out my garage, come around.
I got darkroom equipment, new in boxes, never used, in lodges and all sorts of stuff.
[01:10:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:10:20] Speaker C: That. I thought, this is absolutely brilliant. I probably won't end up using it, but someone will end up one day with a brand new enlarger never used.
[01:10:28] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:10:31] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:10:33] Speaker A: That's very cool.
[01:10:34] Speaker B: That is very cool.
[01:10:36] Speaker A: If you had to go and buy one.
[01:10:38] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:10:38] Speaker A: They wouldn't be cheap.
[01:10:39] Speaker B: No, not at all. Even just finding a quality 1 second hand would be a task.
[01:10:45] Speaker A: Hmm.
[01:10:47] Speaker C: Now can I have a rant?
[01:10:49] Speaker A: Sure.
[01:10:50] Speaker B: Let's do it.
[01:10:52] Speaker A: I've seen, I've watched a few YouTube videos, so I'm reading.
[01:10:55] Speaker B: What's the rant, mate? Come on.
[01:10:57] Speaker C: Okay. I hope no one from Fujifilm was listening.
[01:11:02] Speaker B: They're not a sponsor yet.
[01:11:06] Speaker C: I got this JFX 50 R, which I think is going to be a cult camera. I love it. Uh, it's. It's an absolute joy to use, but I'm not a professional anymore.
I can't afford the lenses. The price of GFX lenses is ridiculous.
Uh, it's probably okay if you. If you're working with them, using them all the time, getting lots of money for your work. But as someone who's not a professional anymore, getting a GFX lens, crazy. I've been able to afford one, and that was the cheapest. 35 to 70.
[01:11:44] Speaker B: Yep.
[01:11:46] Speaker C: Because it's a. It's about a next step up, though. I wanted a wider angle. 20 to 35.
It's over $3,000. I think it's close to $4,000.
[01:12:00] Speaker B: It's 4100 at the moment.
[01:12:04] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:12:05] Speaker B: Australia.
[01:12:05] Speaker C: How can you afford a wide angle lens? That's ridiculous. So what I've had to end up doing is hunting for old vintage film camera lenses to cover the same range.
[01:12:20] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:12:21] Speaker C: So I've got a appendix 18 to 35 here from the SLR days and just the Pentax adapter to go on the GFX.
This cost me.
Well, this cost me nothing. It was in a bag that someone gave me, you know, but they're less than $100 to buy secondhand. This is 18 to 35 mil.
I have to use this for wide angle on my GFX, because Fujifilm do not make a cheap range of lenses for the GFX. They make a cheap range for the X. What, the X C. They're called, what.
[01:13:02] Speaker B: I call them the Fuji Krons.
[01:13:04] Speaker C: That. No, the XC.
[01:13:06] Speaker B: Oh, the XC, yeah, they're not the XF. The X entry level.
[01:13:11] Speaker C: Yeah. Real entry level plastic type things, you know, but really cool optics still.
[01:13:15] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:13:16] Speaker C: I wish Fujifilm would make a GFX C range of lenses.
[01:13:21] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:13:22] Speaker C: So, you know, you can pick up a wide angle lens for a $1,000 rather than $4,000.
[01:13:27] Speaker B: I recently wrote a, grievously wrote an article for shock, and I don't think it's been published yet. It's about, I don't know, the Fujifilm birthday one, because Fujifilm's just turned 90 and they've only been in the digital game for twelve years. Or, sorry, the X digital game. They were the first consumer ready digital camera on the market. But the X series and GFX is only about.
Was it 2016? At Photokina, they announced the fifties. So that's only six years. Um, and at the moment, what, a couple of years ago, they went through what Greg was saying, where they launched a. I think the 35 was first f two Fuji cron. They launched, then they did the 23 f two Fuji cron, then they did the 50 f two and the 16 f 2.8. Now, these were half the price of the. Of the kind of f 1.4. Yep. Wide at wider apertures.
And when I wrote this article, I said, I think that in the next ten years, before Fuji hits 100, they need to work on a cheaper range of GF lenses. GFX lenses with that same.
I guess, you know, same sort of. Here's what you can get. You know, you can get a 55 mm 1.7 for almost four grand, or we can get you a 50 mil f 2.8 or f 3.5 for half the price, or, you know, whatever it may be.
But yeah, the GFS, the GFX lenses are pretty expensive. The one that I reviewed, which was the 500 mil, granted, it's a whopper.
You could use it to jack up a car that was over six grandd. The. The 30 mil tilt shift was a very. Obviously, it's a very specialist lens.
That's an f 5.6, that's 6800.
[01:15:16] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:15:18] Speaker A: Cheapest. What's their cheapest lens? Like? Their cheapest prime? What's their. What's their nifty 50 equivalent lens, not a teleconverter.
[01:15:27] Speaker B: They've got a 50 f 3.5 for 1650 at the moment. That's.
That's Fujifilm's price. You'd get it. You'd get it cheaper. It's an older. It's. Yeah, it's an older lens. It was an earlier. And so a friend of.
Friend of ours that's in the Fuji group, he's got the 50 r, or at least he had it. I don't know if he still owns it. I think that was the first lens he picked up for it, because it's a relative pancake in terms of gfs, GFX lenses. And it looks perfect on the 50 r. It looked like a, you know, rangefinder with a fixed lens.
[01:16:01] Speaker C: It's a sweet lens.
[01:16:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:16:03] Speaker A: I saw it in at the Fujifilm. What's their thing called?
[01:16:08] Speaker C: Their specialist house of photography.
[01:16:10] Speaker A: House of photography. I went in there and had a little look.
[01:16:12] Speaker B: Oh, you did?
[01:16:13] Speaker A: I did, yeah. You got me.
I have a thing for Fujifilm and I do. I would love to try the GFX system, but even in there at the house of photography, I said if I was going to get one, I would want something like that 3.5 sort of normal lens, a smaller lens.
That's what I would sort of be looking to. And the guy actually put on a massive standard zoom. I can't remember which one it was, but it was quite. It was pretty heavy. It's very front heavy, which I hate for something that would be. Yeah, I want to move around with. And he was like, oh, you wouldn't want to get that if you were investing in a camera like this. And I was like, okay, yeah, yeah. But it was still like, I don't know, maybe I didn't explain clearly what I was looking for, but, yeah, I sort of wanted to feel what it was like with a light, a lighter lens, but, yeah, I didn't think that lens would. Would be $1600, though. I thought it might be like 800 or something. A cheaper price.
[01:17:22] Speaker B: That's on the house of photography website. If you went into a store, you'd pick it up in a sale for a tops, probably.
And they do. They often do cash back. And when they do cash backs on GF stuff, they're often pretty hefty. Cash backs, yeah. Because you are paying a premium upfront.
[01:17:41] Speaker C: Yeah. They have a lot of room to move on those lenses because they're like expensive cars. There's a lot of profit margin.
[01:17:48] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:17:49] Speaker C: These lenders. There's a lot of profit margin, so.
[01:17:52] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[01:17:52] Speaker C: Your cash back. So you might get 800, 900 back. You think? Wow. That was what they were making.
[01:17:57] Speaker A: Plus, why don't you just make that the price all the time?
[01:18:02] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah.
You'd sell more.
[01:18:05] Speaker B: Don't get started, Justin. You sell products too.
[01:18:07] Speaker A: Yeah, I know. We don't do cash.
[01:18:10] Speaker B: It's a rabbit hole. That's a rabbit hole.
[01:18:11] Speaker D: Yeah.
[01:18:12] Speaker B: But it is interesting because the. But the GFX, right, they've only got 19 lenses, and that includes two teleconverters and two tilt shift, which is fascinating that for a fairly new brand, as in the GFX range, it's only six years old, to already have two tilt shifts. I mean, one of them is almost seven grand.
GFX is architectural, like. Yeah, architectural workforce. It's a pro body. Yeah. But having said that, Fujifilm, when they released the most recent one, which was the GFX 100s Mkhdem, which I reviewed, that's their cheapest and most compact medium format, especially for 102 megapixel sensor. And the marketing and the press release and the video that they streamed, it was actually our friend Charlie Blevins, who's going to be joining us at some stage on the podcast. Charlie works for Fujifilm Australia. He was the one that had the camera in his hand when it was first revealed to the world. They filmed it in Sydney in a restaurant or something overlooking the beach.
And throughout that whole presentation and all the marketing, it was about accessible medium format, or they don't call it medium format because there's some debate over the formal size cropped medium format, not large, larger format.
And they. The whole marketing thing was around accessibility. So they've reduced the price, they've reduced the size, they talked about accessibility, portability, ease of use, and it was. It was all of those things. It was still a very big camera with a gaping, you know, gaping hole in the front of it and a massive sensor. But they're really pushing for medium format to be more than just an architect's workhorse camera.
[01:20:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:20:02] Speaker B: They want it in the hands of more and more people if they're going to invest in a sensor range, that, and I think they'll ditch 50 megapixel. I think they'll stick with. I think they'll just. This is my producer. Hundred just go to. They'll stick with hundreds because it's cheaper to produce one. One sensor with matching chip for all.
[01:20:19] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[01:20:21] Speaker B: Like what they're currently doing, they're trying to bump everything up to 40 megapixel in the X series and, and people.
[01:20:26] Speaker A: Don'T see the benefits. You know, you got the bio z eight buyer, a seven up five reals by a canon. Five reals. I'm at 50 megapixel anyway. And obviously there's other benefits to medium format that aren't megapixels. But when it comes down to choosing a system, that's a very hard sell to be like, oh, it's the same, it's the same megapixels, but trust us, the quality is better.
[01:20:50] Speaker B: Well, maybe your q 360 megapixels. So in terms of the dots on the, on the sensor, your q three is doing better than the fifties mark two.
[01:20:59] Speaker A: Exactly. And with a spectacular lens quality. But it's different. But that difference is a hard sell when it's not, you know, you're looking at it in a shop and you can't really go out and test it in detail and see the difference in those two different systems. Whereas you throw that hundred megapixel selling point in there and people are like, oh wow, okay, this is going to give me a far superior image to what a full frame sense it will give me. And then, then it's an easier, I guess, an easier sell. So it would make sense if they, if they push the whole range in that direction, it simplifies the range. Tell me this, are they going to do any more range finders in that system or is that done well, because.
[01:21:40] Speaker B: That'S what I would. I mean, Greg's got the, the original 50 R.
Beautiful camera. A little slow on the focus. I mean, all GFX's are a little slow on the focus system compared to the X series. You know, full frame cannons blown away.
[01:21:55] Speaker C: In terms of fujifilm, aren't renowned for their autofocus.
[01:21:59] Speaker B: It's improving.
[01:22:00] Speaker C: But then I use manual focus lenses anyway, so I don't care.
[01:22:04] Speaker B: Yeah, there's a couple of rumors circulating and I dislike rumors, but it does lead us nicely as a segue into our news section.
One of the rumors I've been seeing recently is that they're working on a rangefinder style GFX with a fixed lens. So it'll be like an X 100 or like an X Pro with like a, you know, like a. Like that 50 mil. Yeah, GFX.
[01:22:29] Speaker A: Now we're talking.
[01:22:31] Speaker B: So that, that would be an interesting proposition. Pricing would be really important for them.
[01:22:35] Speaker C: And is it gonna be dedicated black and white?
[01:22:40] Speaker B: Well, they did do a monochrome. There is a monochrome, or is it. No, there's an infrared GFX, I think, but it only sold in the states. It's either infrared or monochrome. GFX might have that wrong anyway.
[01:22:54] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:22:55] Speaker B: So there's rooms. I think they'll do 100 r.
You know, there's a lot of love for the rangefinder style at the moment.
[01:23:04] Speaker A: That's the one that might get me.
[01:23:06] Speaker B: Yeah. I think 100 R would be a nice proposition because the 50 R was stole after an X Pro model. Basically, it looks like an X Pro on steroids and it's a gorgeous camera and I think 100 R would be in the works. Like I said, I think they'll just stick with 102 megapixel chip sensors. Well, it makes sense in terms of, you know, cost to produce and tooling and machining and just the amount of unicorns that they have to employ to sprinkle the dust on the sensors.
But, yeah, I think 100 r would make sense for them. I think they'll drop the 50.
[01:23:47] Speaker A: What do you reckon? So what's it. What's the price of a hunt? The cheapest hundred? Is it the s two or whatever?
[01:23:54] Speaker B: That's the.
[01:23:56] Speaker A: Let me just.
[01:23:58] Speaker B: Retail.
[01:23:59] Speaker A: I'm just trying to think of what a fixed lens camera would sell for, so.
[01:24:05] Speaker B: Well, this is an interesting point that you've raised. So $8,700 Australian at the moment for the brand new GFX 100s Mk two. It is the smallest and lightest GFX, I believe, especially with 100 mega tube sensor. So they're saying $8,700 is more accessible, which. It is the cheapest of the range so far. And, you know, as production improves and more and more people buy them, then the cost reduces and all that sort of stuff, you drop a. You drop a. Even if it is, say, that 50 megapit, that 50 millimeter 3.5, which is what it was, 1600. So you're looking at about.
We'll say we'll square it off at ten grand.
That's a big chunk of money. But.
[01:24:54] Speaker A: But this thing, where is it?
[01:24:58] Speaker B: Yes. Yep.
[01:24:59] Speaker A: This, this was. What was this? Ten grandd?
[01:25:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:25:04] Speaker A: An M eleven. An M eleven with the same sensor is 14.
[01:25:08] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:25:09] Speaker A: And then. And then a lens that's equivalent is another eight or ten or something.
[01:25:13] Speaker B: But you see that little red dot? That little red dot on it makes people lose all sense.
[01:25:17] Speaker A: I know, but what I'm saying is, is there some way they can justify the fact that this rangefinder fixed lens might actually be cheaper than an interchangeable lens body? You know, could we see it as a six 9990 thingy? Type, you know, to try and entice people to buy it for TikTok like they did with the X 100.
[01:25:37] Speaker B: Yeah, it's an interesting. The X 100 is a powerhouse. It's a compact power. It has the same sensor processor and Ibis as an X T five, which is their flagship photography camera, not videography camera, but it does do great videography. But Fujifilm are guaranteed additional sales on an X T five with lenses, so you have to buy a lens, whether, even if it's the kits, the new kit, 16 to 50, you're still spending money on more gear.
[01:26:02] Speaker A: But what's it, what's.
[01:26:04] Speaker B: They won't make any more money on an X.
An X T five, I think.
[01:26:08] Speaker A: Isn't it dearer than X? Yeah, it's dearer than an X 100.
That's what I'm saying. So it's like, you know, that they can somehow basically put the same guts of a camera with a fixed lens together.
[01:26:22] Speaker B: So 65 is 2900.
[01:26:25] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:26:26] Speaker B: And an X 100 mk six is probably around the same 2900.
[01:26:35] Speaker A: Okay. About the same nate, that's about less speed. Like, it loses some features. The X T five is a more powerful camera, correct?
[01:26:43] Speaker B: Yeah, it's more. Well, no, the XT five, same sensor, same chip, but slower readout speeds on the X 100. XD five has a true weather ceiling.
[01:26:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:26:56] Speaker B: It has dual card slots, it has power performance. It has the same autofocus, but I think it's faster. FPS is faster, the readouts faster, all that sort of stuff.
The reason why the X 100 is so expensive, part of it is fame. A little.
[01:27:14] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:27:15] Speaker B: So what?
[01:27:16] Speaker A: Never used to be that expensive.
[01:27:18] Speaker C: No.
[01:27:18] Speaker B: And demand.
[01:27:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:27:20] Speaker B: Like, the demand, I think, is driving it a little bit. Um, and look, why not? Fuji have got to make money. They're not going to make any more money on this camera once it's sold.
You know, they might come to lucky straps to buy a premium leather deluxe wrist strap, but other than that, there's not a lot more to buy. Whereas when you buy a flagship XT, there it is. That's. That's it.
[01:27:42] Speaker A: That's a prototype. Prototype.
[01:27:45] Speaker B: You buy an X T five, you can. You can spend another 1020 grand on lenses if you wanted to.
[01:27:51] Speaker A: Yeah. And I mean, who knows? They might. They might acquire some customers through the X 100. You know, they play with the film simulations and stuff like that. But. But on the other hand, they. They also get people like me. Canon shooter just wants us another body for, you know, a nice compact, high quality. And you just that's your only Fuji Camry that you buy and it just sits alongside the rest of your gear and I'm sure that happens a lot as well.
[01:28:15] Speaker B: Yeah. A good mate of mine, Athel, who will try and get on at some stage, he switched from. He threw a tantrum one day, switched from Fuji to Sony. Won't go into the details. It was too dramatic.
[01:28:25] Speaker A: Just wanted the full frame.
[01:28:27] Speaker B: Yeah, maybe, maybe it's just being a sook. But he jumped to Sony and he invested heavily in Sony, but he then went and bought an x 105. I think he got. It's just his carry around, day to day shooter because, you know, that's what they're for. They're ideal for that sort of stuff in your bag all the time.
[01:28:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:28:50] Speaker B: You know, whereas walking out with his full frame, I think it like got a couple of a seven s or something come over what it was. But working out with these full frame Sony and big heavy glass, that's a different proposition. You got to rethink your bag and, you know. Yeah, but, um.
[01:29:08] Speaker C: And you don't enjoy them.
[01:29:12] Speaker B: Yeah, it's more of it. Especially, you know, if you. If everything's in a camera backpack and you've got to get your backpack off to get to your camera.
Um. I don't know, it kind of changes the whole dynamic of going out for fun shooting.
[01:29:25] Speaker A: There's a solution to that.
[01:29:27] Speaker B: There is a solution to that.
[01:29:29] Speaker A: Well, no, I was actually being serious. There wasn't a camera show, guys. I was actually being serious. The camera bag that I use, the mind shift rotation, I love that bag.
[01:29:39] Speaker B: Is that with the little bum bag bit comes around to the front.
[01:29:43] Speaker A: Let me see if I can show you.
[01:29:45] Speaker B: All right. While Justin's doing that, Jim, I've got a question for you. Last week we talked at length about the lucky Straps canon collaboration with the release of the five Reals mark two Reals, which happened last weekend. And Justin was in Sydney for that launch event. And the reason why Justin was in Sydney is because lucky straps have released a limited edition canon eos five Reals premium leather. It's one of the deluxe straps, is it?
[01:30:14] Speaker D: No.
[01:30:14] Speaker B: No.
[01:30:15] Speaker D: So it's our slim 30.
[01:30:16] Speaker B: The Slim 30.
And we talked about how you can only get that strap. You basically have to buy a very expensive camera strap to get a free camera with it.
Have you got one that you can put on?
[01:30:30] Speaker D: I don't have a canon one, but I've got a non.
[01:30:32] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. So that's this in, in the black and the. What do we call that Claret black one.
[01:30:38] Speaker A: That, that Nikon of yours is focusing, Meldrew. Oh, no.
[01:30:40] Speaker B: There you go.
[01:30:42] Speaker D: Very sharp.
[01:30:43] Speaker B: We talked about how you can only get the special branding strap, the special cannon strap within the purchase of the five reals mark three reals. It's only the first thousand australian purchases and 150 ish.
Have you been, have you been receiving inquiries about people wanting that outside of the, the promo they offer?
[01:31:04] Speaker D: Not, not anymore. No. We had a couple at the start.
[01:31:07] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:31:08] Speaker D: But, um. No, not yet. I'm sure. I'm sure once it. Yeah, it's quite down a little bit, I think once it kind of. It's in shops and.
[01:31:16] Speaker A: Yeah, last time, maybe the emails got worse once they started arriving to photographers and they were posting the pictures on Instagram and everyone was like, hey, where do you get that from? So that starts to spread a bit further because at the moment you can get one just.
[01:31:32] Speaker D: It's blind and has no.
[01:31:35] Speaker A: We can get your own logo on it or we can put the camera life logo on it if you want.
Check this out. This is my backpack. Yeah. You won't be able to see my face cause I'm standing up, but so this, because I'm a dentist. This is mine. Shift. Which mind shift? Part of think tank photo. And they used to operate as their own separate brand. Now they're all on the think tank website and they're this. They're available through most camera stores in Australia, but no one seems to stock them. But it's got this flap here. You just unhook the flap. It's a magnet. And then you just.
And I can fit in this thing. In this kangaroo puppy, I could fit a kitten, probably Greg's cat, maybe. I don't know. Jim's mustache would get in here.
But no, seriously, when I go, when I shoot mountain bikes, they have the r three with 72, 102.816 to 35, 2.8. And my 51.2 and my microphones. Wow. In this kit, can you lean forward.
[01:32:44] Speaker B: Just so we can see inside?
[01:32:49] Speaker A: There's no cameras in here right now. Yeah.
[01:32:51] Speaker B: Wow, that's such a great shot.
[01:32:52] Speaker A: And look, it's magnetic, like, so I don't even zip. You can zip this up, but I don't zip it up. So this lid just magnets down. And then I swing it. Whoop. Swing it back around. This is a magnetic latch.
That. And then. And then I'm often running around again. So you look like a bit of a nerd because you have to wear the waist belt. Like you can unstrap this under strap away. You have to wear the waist belt to be able to, you know, to swing it around. But I can, like, I can be out and shooting instantly and then. Yeah, I usually, if I pull the camera out, if we're traveling or whatever, I either use the camera strap, like, across. But using camera strap across your body with a backpack, isn't that comfortable? It sort of.
[01:33:37] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[01:33:39] Speaker A: It catches on stuff. But I do have this carabiner, which you. Then I just hook a wrist strap to it. So if I've got the wrist strap on my camera.
[01:33:49] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:33:49] Speaker B: Yep.
[01:33:50] Speaker A: When I'm not shooting, it can just dangle here if I don't want to put it away. But most of the time, it's so f, it's so fast to put the stuff in and out of the bag, you can just put it away as well. So that's my.
[01:34:01] Speaker D: Right around with the, with the camera.
[01:34:03] Speaker A: No, no, no. Not for mountain bike. That's only if I'm traveling. If I'm like, what? Wandering. But most of the time, I'd either have it in my hand or put it back away again because. So that's. I either like to go just a camera strap and one body, one lens, and I'm out and I'm just. It's. It's a lot more freeing. I should. I should be back down here.
[01:34:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:34:25] Speaker A: One. One body, one lens.
Or if I do need to take gear, this is the backpack I like because I have everything I need quickly accessible. And then in the top, which has way more space for other gear, I've got the drone and, like, batteries and all that stuff. So if I need to, something slower to access is in the top. I'd highly recommend this. This is the middle size. There's a smaller one, which would be great for a Fujifilm kidde, the 20 liter size.
Or there's a bigger one, which I've had that as well, and I sold that. It's got more space for the top, but no more space in the bottom swing around bit. So I ditched it. It was too big. But yeah, if anyone's looking for something to access quicker, I don't have an affiliate link because we don't sell these or anything.
I. We could. Hey, we could probably stock them. I thought. I've thought about it. I just know about shipping camera bags. They're a bit bulky, but I'm sure we could get, like, to stock these probably because I love them. I love this bag. I've got the older edition as well. It's been around the world, like, everywhere that I've traveled. The older one and now this one. It's what I had in Cambodia. Japan. Snowboarding.
[01:35:40] Speaker D: Yeah, much faster.
[01:35:42] Speaker A: Bali across on scooters and stuff, like everywhere.
[01:35:46] Speaker B: Anyway, I found every time I tried, the first time I traveled, I took a big camera sling. No, actually, I took a big camera backpack, and it had one of those where you swing it around, like you take one shoulder off.
And it was so annoying. It was so annoying that you have to kind of open this thing and then you get on the access. Yeah, like that. Pretty much like that. Yeah. It just really frustrated me. And then by the time I had my last trip, I was just shooting with, I think it was the XE four and a 27 mil. Or maybe it was an XT. But either way, that's all I took. And I just had it on a wrist strap, and I just held my camera.
And, you know, I didn't even have a camera bag.
[01:36:31] Speaker A: This is the only other thing that I've used that I used in the States, which is this Bellroy sling. That's not a camera bag, but it was for the Q three if I needed to take it.
Anything more than just the camera, you know, I prefer just have the camera on a strap, but. Or if we're going to a sketchy area where I thought the red dot might make me a target, I would put it in this bag, but I liked this because it's not a camera bag. It was a lot slimmer than your average, like a camera. I looked at the camera like sling bags. They're these big, boxy things, and I don't know, they weren't good at all. This. This easily fit. You could fit if you're a Fuji shooter, like, you could fit in a body. A body and two lenses in there easily. It just doesn't.
[01:37:21] Speaker B: I've got that exact sling. I've got that same sling, and I. Yeah, it's good. I just picked up a new crumpler yesterday. Oh, yeah, it's called the Billy. The Billy I went for. I've got another crumpler, which is a bigger one for everything, but this is really cool. Oh, the cats have been on it.
And, um, it would hold like that. It would hold easily hold, you know, like an XT five with a. With a zoom.
[01:37:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:37:51] Speaker B: Even a 50 to 140. Probably not quite.
[01:37:54] Speaker A: And it's a camera bag or is it just a general purpose sling?
[01:37:57] Speaker B: It's just a general purpose. It's not one of their camera bags. Yeah, I used to have only crumpler because they're australian brands and I like to support local. I used to only have Crumpler and Bellroy australian design. They're made overseas. There's some of these. But Bellroy and Crumpler are both australian brands.
[01:38:15] Speaker A: Yep.
Yeah. Made overseas but made overseas. Australian brands.
[01:38:20] Speaker B: Yeah, australian brands.
[01:38:21] Speaker A: Which is probably the best you can hope for with camera bags. Realistically, it's pretty hard to manufacture those in Australia.
[01:38:27] Speaker B: Yeah.
You know you get it. If you do it right the first time, it'll last forever.
[01:38:33] Speaker A: That's right.
Speaking of. Speaking of. Sorry.
[01:38:39] Speaker B: If Crumpler or Bellroy want to sponsor us then.
[01:38:41] Speaker A: Oh yeah, hit us up.
My sister's just chimed in. Oh, not just chimed in, chimed in ages ago. I just didn't see it. She said the Daylesford market is still on. Lots of stuff still. But you'd probably have more luck purchasing at the mill in Darwin.
[01:38:57] Speaker B: Oh yeah, I've been to the mill. Yep.
[01:38:59] Speaker A: But I assume that's one of those places where it's like there'll be a vintage camera there that doesn't work. But it's nine dollar 90 because it looks cool on your shelf. Is it like that kind of place?
[01:39:09] Speaker B: The mill sells a lot of that sort of stuff. Like decorative, decorative, retro, antique. Some sort of fake antique.
But. But yeah. I'm not necessarily. Although Greg will probably be on his way there soon as we finished here.
[01:39:25] Speaker A: Get a new lens for that.
[01:39:26] Speaker C: I tried the op shop first.
[01:39:29] Speaker A: Yeah, smart.
[01:39:30] Speaker B: Yep.
Nice.
Do we have time to just cover off a couple of quick news items?
[01:39:36] Speaker A: Yeah, Jim and I probably got some work to do, I guess.
[01:39:40] Speaker B: Yeah, I think you might have.
[01:39:41] Speaker A: I'm gonna drop 600 straps out to you soon, Jim.
[01:39:44] Speaker B: Let's.
[01:39:45] Speaker A: Yep.
[01:39:46] Speaker D: Get that done.
[01:39:48] Speaker B: More cannon news, more canon news. Well, this isn't new news.
[01:39:54] Speaker A: Oh yeah.
[01:39:56] Speaker B: So Canon already had. Where have I got it?
Let me go back. One cannon already had a full frame dual fish eye. No, that's the new one. Sorry Greg, all over the shop. Anyway, canon have just announced this new APS C for the seven reals dual fisheye VR lens. So if you create VR content, then you've got a dual fisheye lens. That pretty crazy piece of tech.
[01:40:28] Speaker A: Yep.
[01:40:29] Speaker B: So it's a dual 3.9 millimeter f 3.5 lenses and it captures a 180 degree view.
And I think again, we talked earlier about real estate. I think real estate would be another application for this sort of lens capturing, especially doing, you know, walkthroughs and you know, especially Covid taught us that more and more stuff needs to go online. Well, for that situation, it didn't. A lot of stuff has stayed online. But you know, at the moment, rentals are getting a lot of copying, a lot of flack, because often the photos that they're using to demonstrate the inside of a rental property are either ten years old or they don't really show off the property properly. Whereas this, you could achieve a full walkthrough and film it or even just, you know, get stills content.
And I was trying to think of other applications. Obviously there's applications in the gaming world for Vrdehen, but this sort of content, this sort of lenses is fairly specific.
[01:41:35] Speaker A: I looked pretty closely at the full frame version and still am. I just haven't. It's pretty expensive and I haven't because I've got no professional application for it currently. This one here, the lseries one.
[01:41:52] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:41:52] Speaker A: I can't remember, is it on the screen? No, you're still on the. You can switch tabs by going to. Oh yeah, there you go.
[01:42:01] Speaker B: Yeah, sorry.
[01:42:02] Speaker A: That's the one. Yeah. What was I on the other fish?
[01:42:06] Speaker B: The AP's are the news article the new one?
[01:42:10] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:42:11] Speaker B: Okay, so this is. Yeah, this is the full frame one you were talking about.
[01:42:15] Speaker A: Yeah. And I've looked at it closely and I actually had a really good look at it again the other day because I was watching. So what happened was I was, I was in Sydney for the canon launch and I walked past the Apple Store.
There was a very big line and a lot of people trying on that new Apple Vision Pro. Yeah, everyone, at least ten people in there sitting down with apple experts with the goggles on, testing them out. And then there was a line.
And I know it's only recently become available to test and order. Like you could pre order it, I think. But I think it's only recently become available, kind of to, to purchase and try it on, all that sort of stuff. So it's probably going through a bit of. A lot of people just testing it out, maybe just for curiosity. But it is going to be a thing. I've had the meta quests.
It's quite amazing what it can do. I actually am hopeful that because at the moment I'm going through this thing of. I don't know what photography's for anymore. My photography. If I'm getting paid for it, I know what it's for. It was kind of similar to what you were saying, greg. Like, I know what that's for, but if I get 100 megapixel GFX camera or if I get the new five reals mark, two reals, that takes amazing images.
No one sees them in the detail that I've created them in. They see them on a tiny little phone screen. And I'm kind of hoping that potentially VR goggles are going to give us a way to. Can I have my own gallery that people can view with VR goggles? And I can actually have prints, digital displays that are so large in that virtual space that you can really see the detail.
And obviously that's not for these lenses, because these lens actually create the environment, the virtual environment that other people can see. So the other application is. Is. Yeah, you can. You can have a landscape, a VR landscape you can share with people, and they can actually see it as a video or. Oh, my God. Grant's profile picture.
[01:44:23] Speaker B: Wow.
[01:44:26] Speaker A: It's beautiful, Jim.
[01:44:27] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:44:30] Speaker A: Starter gallery. Honestly, I've thought about it. If I was crazy, crazier than I am. I thought about whether lucky could have like a factory type setting, but the entire like a meter or a meter and a half of the outside and all the walls, you could walk around and photographers could just have their images there. You know, people could bring prints and have a section. Hey, this is your ten meter section. You can put whatever artwork you want there. It can be for sale or whatever, but it just becomes kind of like a border of an actual factory. That's. Anyway, because I don't know what you do with images anymore.
Long way around. I did see, for the VR applications I saw some people have done a YouTube channel called Colin and Samir. They do podcast interviews and stuff like that. They did essentially a walkthrough of their offices and YouTube studio and all that kind of stuff. And even they filmed it with this canon lens that the Yale series, one on a tripod, so you can't move around. But even without the goggles, you can go to YouTube on this after the show. Not now. Go to YouTube, go to Colin and Samir studio tour with VR. And you with your phone can look around their studio from the different tripod positions they've set up the camera while they were filming it. So even though you don't have the goggles yet, but I think people eventually, probably will within the next five to ten years that it's going that way. It seems.
Even now, though, I was thinking like, what can we produce? Where even on your phone? So say, if you were going out, if Greg, if you were going out to do some landscape photography, you might be able to just sit a tripod with that VR lens on it and a microphone. And I can watch you work and talk to me, but I can look around the scene, you know, like it's not just you controlling the angle of where I'm viewing. Yeah, that was kind of interesting.
[01:46:39] Speaker B: Greg works in the dark, so you wouldn't see anything.
[01:46:41] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, you can start that now, Greg. Just flat screen.
[01:46:46] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:46:46] Speaker B: No one would know.
[01:46:48] Speaker D: And every once in a while, just flash on them.
[01:46:51] Speaker B: Just right now I'm on the plains of Africa.
[01:46:52] Speaker C: Just. Just leave the lens cap on.
[01:46:55] Speaker A: Yeah, just. Yeah, exactly. Just imagine and just have some sound effects playing in the ocean.
That's funny.
[01:47:02] Speaker B: That is interesting.
[01:47:03] Speaker A: But yeah, I'm interested in it. I do think there's going to be some sort of.
There's going to be more potential, again, not really related to that lens specifically, but for photographers to share their work through vrdehenite. I think it's a way we can see big prints again, rather than on our little tiny devices. I don't know. What do you guys think?
[01:47:27] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's a subject for another day about what we do with our photos anymore these days. You know, it's. And, you know, it kind of jumps back to Greg's point about, you know, for print.
Three, four megapixel was fine on newspaper and what we see on our iPhone. Do we need 40 6100 megapixel if all we're doing is dropping it on social media? So I think we'll cover that in another, another episode about what we do with our photos.
It's interesting because I'm big in gaming and love video games, and that our whole household is full of nerds and tech, but we've never sort of. My son dabbled a little bit with VR in the early days, but, you know, I've got friends who've bought the VR headset, the latest one that goes with the Sony PlayStation five. I think that thing costs well over a. He uses it a little bit. I mean, he's got the. He's got some income to be able to spend on that stuff. But I know Sony ended production of that halfway through its anticipated life cycle because the sales just weren't there because it is such expensive tech and the check, the tech isn't going to get cheaper until more people adopt it.
[01:48:43] Speaker A: Correct?
[01:48:43] Speaker B: So I think, yes, there's application, and I think what you were talking about is wonderful in terms of seeing work at larger scales without actually having to print.
You can actually even visualize. You know, I want to buy one of Greg Carrick's photos and put it on my wall. I wonder if it'll look good on this wall or will it look good on this wall? And I can actually see it. And some sites that sell furniture and things like that already do that sort of thing where you can take a photo and place the furniture in your own home and see how it looks. So I think. I think that's an expanding business and an expanding opportunity for that sort of work. And again, it's brave of canon to even create one for an five reals, a full frame l series lens, fisheye lens, but then to create one for APS C as well.
[01:49:36] Speaker A: Yeah. That's more affordable. Yeah, there's. There's definitely something there that I think, you know, if I was with one of the other camera brands, I'd be thinking, hmm, are we gonna get left behind a little bit here? Like Canon seem to be considering, you know, they were a bit slow on mirrorless and stuff like that. They're jumping into this, like you say, to have two lenses and one that's actually more affordable.
[01:50:00] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:50:01] Speaker A: That. That quickly. Uh, it's interesting. They're obviously. They're obviously seeing something. Working on something with Apple.
[01:50:08] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:50:08] Speaker A: That. That we don't know yet, I think. Well, yeah, yeah.
[01:50:13] Speaker B: And it will be interesting to see how the vision process.
I know in America there are lots of funny memes and YouTube videos.
[01:50:20] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:50:21] Speaker B: Of people driving their cyber truck on autopilot whilst wearing the apple vision. Probably. Surely that's not real doing gestures. Yeah, I don't know. Well, it could be. I mean, they have self driving.
[01:50:34] Speaker A: That's true.
[01:50:35] Speaker B: Over there as long as you're driver's seat.
[01:50:36] Speaker A: And it does have pass through. Like the. I mean, it's. It's still. But you can walk around with them on, like, you can see the world. You wouldn't.
[01:50:44] Speaker B: I don't know if they real. They're just influencers trying to be trendy, but walking around, you know, the streets doing their little hand gestures and swiping things and.
Yeah, I think it's be good to see some sales numbers on that to work out where it's heading or if it's, you know, an investment that apple didn't read. Right, let's jump to one more quick piece of news and then we'll do a wrap.
[01:51:11] Speaker A: Yeah, it sounds good.
[01:51:13] Speaker B: This one here, let me just share this with everyone watching along at home.
Everyone say that us sues. Surprise, surprise. Adobe for hidden fees and confusing cancellation process.
[01:51:33] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:51:34] Speaker A: Whoa. As in us government.
[01:51:37] Speaker B: Yes. It's the Federal Trade Commission.
So let me just read the quick, the quick bit. It hasn't been a good couple of weeks. Software giant Adobe, the Federal Trade Commission, this is in the US, is suing the company for violation of us consumer protection laws. What it deems hidden termination fees and an overly complicated process to cancel your dope services.
The complaint centers around Dope's creative cloud offering, which bundles various software products like Lightroom and Photoshop.
Greg Carrick, do you use Lightroom or Adobe products?
[01:52:12] Speaker C: No, I, apart from being an early adopter, I'm an early Exeter. As soon as they started to meet the idea of annual subscriptions, I dumped them.
So yeah, I don't like that idea at all. I prefer to buy something once and that's it. It's mine.
[01:52:35] Speaker A: And then pay. If there's a legitimate upgrade that you deem worthy, you'd pay for the upgrade as an independent cost. Yeah. So what do you use now?
[01:52:47] Speaker C: I use affinity photo instead of Photoshop.
It does more than everything that I used Photoshop for anyway.
Similar sort of interfacing.
So yeah.
Bought that for I think for $80 some years ago.
And that's it.
[01:53:15] Speaker A: Wow.
[01:53:15] Speaker D: How does it handle the GFX files?
[01:53:18] Speaker C: Perfectly fine.
[01:53:20] Speaker A: Yeah. Great.
[01:53:21] Speaker C: Yes.
[01:53:22] Speaker B: I remember the days of going into like a camera store or even JB. This is years ago and there'd be a big box for Photoshop and it was, it was crazy price.
[01:53:34] Speaker A: It was like 1500.
[01:53:36] Speaker B: Yeah, it was. And it was like the most expensive thing in the shop.
[01:53:39] Speaker A: Yeah. But it was also really easy to download in pirate.
[01:53:42] Speaker C: No.
[01:53:47] Speaker A: It was, it was, it was an interesting change that they made because I definitely think a lot more people pay for it now than they used to because like you say, it was prohibitively expensive. It was something that, that professionals and graphic designers and stuff could afford to buy. Then some people got it on a student discount and then everyone else had to, had to try and find a way to get it, you know, and.
[01:54:11] Speaker C: As a business it's like leasing a car, you know, it's deductible and all that sort of thing, but private person, forget it.
[01:54:19] Speaker A: Yeah, it sort of. So it got more people to pay, but yeah, no one sort of calculated that long term, hey, over five years, this is a fair bit of money.
[01:54:30] Speaker B: You know, like I think this lawsuit or this federal legal action would be interesting to see. I mean, there's a lot of this stuff going on in the states at the moment.
It's kind of a contradiction in process, really. But they created a system to allow monopolies like this to control the market and how consumers used it. And then now they're suing them for, for making the most of those freedoms.
But it is interesting. I mean, I think everyone's had an experience, not just photographers, but in any kind of subscription service, trying to get out of it where you just can't find it on the website. How do I cancel this bloody subscription, let alone stop them taking it out of your credit card or off your payPal? So it'll be interesting to see, I think.
I don't think it'll change much, to be honest. I think they'll make some, some minor adjustments and they'll, you know, they'll still make you jump through a few hoops to get rid of it and then they'll hound you to come back. They've got your email address. They're going to hound you to come back and stay with us. Here's 10%, here's 20%.
It's a business model. I mean, you know, lucky straps does it. If you've put stuff in the cart and you've walked away from your cart. You know, every company does that because it's an effective tool to optimize sales. And, you know, that's fine.
It's just the way of e commerce.
So, yeah, we'll stay tuned on that. We'll see what happens and we'll keep you updated. I think we'll wrap there because we're just approaching 11:00 a.m. here in Goodall.
[01:56:03] Speaker A: Yeah, I need to have some breakfast, Victoria.
[01:56:06] Speaker B: Yeah, me too. Just before we wrap, just a couple of little things, a little bit of housekeeping.
If you're watching along, please leave some comments. If you watch after we've had finished our live recording, still add comments. We'll try and get to them in the following weeks.
We go live every Thursday, 09:00 a.m.
and stay tuned for, obviously, for future guests. But most importantly, I want to thank Greg Carrick for giving us his time this morning and talking about his fascinating career and interesting projects and amazing ingenuity around.
Is it retrofitting? Is that the term? Retrofitting? Old lenses, literally, it's retrofitting, isn't it? Yeah, old lenses to modern tech. I think it's fascinating and I think it's, keep doing what you're doing. Break the rules. You know, I think it's an important lesson for every photographer to solidarity. Get some t shirts made up to, yeah, to learn the rules. Know the rules, but please break them. You know, that's how creativity is born. And that's how we see amazing and fascinating applications. Like what, what Greg's doing with vintage lenses, with projector lenses.
[01:57:25] Speaker C: It's fascinating.
[01:57:27] Speaker B: Really clever.
[01:57:28] Speaker A: The nd filter, the night, you know.
[01:57:32] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:57:33] Speaker C: The night.
[01:57:33] Speaker A: Photography exposure square. You've gotten me excited to go and try some personal projects. I just need to come up with clever ideas and as I say, pick.
[01:57:43] Speaker C: Up your camera, take it for a walk and have some fun.
[01:57:46] Speaker A: Exactly.
[01:57:47] Speaker B: Absolutely. Absolutely.
[01:57:49] Speaker A: While we're doing little updates and wrapping up. I promise I'm working on it. It's up on my whiteboard still. We will get onto audio podcasts, so Spotify and other podcast feeds soon. I'm almost there. So once I'm up, we'll do all our back catalogs so far, and then after that, each week they'll be up within a day or two of us going live on YouTube so you can listen with audio as well.
[01:58:14] Speaker B: And on that. Sorry, the.
The last three episodes of the podcast aren't appearing in the standard video list on YouTube. When you join the channel, they're only in the live list. Yeah, right.
[01:58:26] Speaker A: I'll fix that up.
[01:58:27] Speaker B: Sorry.
[01:58:28] Speaker A: No, that's right. Because the other thing is Yelena's got the Instagram page back up and running the camera life on Instagram. So you can follow us there. We'll do updates whenever we're going live because we might. We're going to go live every week, but then we might be getting some additional shows coming on board. If we get guests at particular times, random shows and things pop up, maybe there's a fujifilm announcement we have to live watch and talk about it.
[01:58:53] Speaker B: We're working on maybe a Jim, Greg and Justin in the one place all sitting on bar stairs.
[01:59:00] Speaker A: I was thinking about that yesterday.
I'm going to have to buy some stuff. But yes, we need to. We need to do that as well, so.
[01:59:07] Speaker B: Oh, you seem so shook up about that.
[01:59:09] Speaker A: It's tough. There's. Yeah, there's lots. There's lots happening. But, yeah. Keep in touch with us on Instagram for updates when things are going to be happening. Yeah.
[01:59:19] Speaker B: So thanks once again to Greg and for his time and for his sage advice and wisdom. Thanks to Jim for joining us from the workshop.
And Justin, good to see you back home.
Greg Stubbings has said, thanks, blokes.
[01:59:38] Speaker A: Oops.
[01:59:39] Speaker B: Oh, you.
[01:59:40] Speaker A: We did at the same time.
[01:59:41] Speaker B: Thanks, blokes. That's a lovely profile picture, Greg.
[01:59:45] Speaker A: Thanks. Number. Greg. Number three.
[01:59:47] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:59:47] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:59:49] Speaker A: Nice to have you come. Any other Greg's out there. That would like to chime in.
[01:59:52] Speaker B: Please join in. Please join in.
And just before we sign off, I just want to share a slightly photography related joke.
So the joke is, Justin and Jim and Greg, where do sad rainbows go?
[02:00:13] Speaker C: Prism.
[02:00:14] Speaker B: They do go to prism, but it's only a light sentence and they have time to reflect on their age.
[02:00:19] Speaker A: Oh, no.
[02:00:21] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a terrible joke. I've delivered that joke over the last 24 hours about 17 times and my family hate me for it. I love that.
[02:00:30] Speaker A: I love that. It's terrible.
[02:00:33] Speaker B: It is terrible. But look, it's right on. 11:11 a.m. we're going to call it quits there. Justin, any parting words or things to look forward to from lucky straps? Just quick?
[02:00:43] Speaker A: No, not at all. Although I didn't even put it up. I've got this thing. If you do want one of our camera straps, which you don't need to buy it, but, you know, if you want one, go and check them out. You can actually scan the QR code near Greg's head and yeah, over there. If you scan that code, you'll get 15% off on a newly set up code. The code's adjusted, but if you scan the code, it'll be automatic. You'll get 15% off any of our camera straps or belts. We're going to be introducing codes for Greg, Jim and me. So that way you can vote with your purchases as to which person on the podcast you like the best. They'll all get the same discount. I might make my 1% more just to try and get ahead.
[02:01:26] Speaker D: Some will get packaged nicer.
[02:01:28] Speaker B: So at the moment, Greg characters. So does Greg Carrick get all the royalties for the. For these? They're in his. They're in his little box.
[02:01:36] Speaker A: Well, they are in his box. Yeah. Well, for the thousands of orders that we get, be sure to appropriately compensate.
[02:01:48] Speaker D: I feel like we have, what, some news. I don't. I don't know if we've mentioned it, but. Justin, down the bottom of the screen over you. Yes, there's a new lucky logo.
[02:01:57] Speaker A: That's true.
[02:01:58] Speaker D: It's not, as it been mentioned.
[02:02:00] Speaker A: It hasn't been mentioned. We'll probably need to do a whole nother show on nice.
[02:02:03] Speaker B: It's meant to be a no no.
[02:02:05] Speaker A: It'S not a surprise. I put it on the website like over a month ago. But we've got some, might have some new merchandise coming. We got some new things happening with the new logo. It was kind of it. I mean. Anyway, we'll talk about this offline because it's a soft launch. We were, we actually celebrated by not celebrating our ten year anniversary in April. So this year is kind of a new, you know, the new birth of a new lucky. And this logo is kind of the start of it.
But yeah, that'll, we'll discuss, we'll go over the ten year history of lucky straps in another episode and where we're heading from here.
[02:02:42] Speaker B: Yolanda's just said the discount codes will be the true calculation of which camera is better. Fuji Nikon or camera or canon.
[02:02:47] Speaker A: That's true. That is true. You might have to put logos over who, what team we, you know, get t shirts.
[02:02:54] Speaker B: I heart if we get Greg Carrick back on, his whole screen will be filled with brands.
[02:03:01] Speaker A: Vintage lens brands.
[02:03:03] Speaker B: Vintage lens. All right, we're going to call it quits there, guys. This is the Camera Life podcast. We're signing off on episode. What did I say it was? 23.
[02:03:12] Speaker D: 23.
[02:03:13] Speaker B: Thanks for joining us live. If you have, thanks. For those that have commented, make sure you watch our back catalog, like and subscribe all of that hoo ha. But above all, thanks for having me. Yeah, thanks, Greg.
[02:03:24] Speaker D: Thanks for coming on, Greg.
[02:03:25] Speaker B: Been an absolute pleasure and a delight.
I've learned a few things from it, which is wonderful. And stay tuned for next week's episode. But above all else, get out with your camera and just have some fun. As Greg says, the other GC, not me. And have a safe weekend and a great week ahead. Yeah, thanks for joining, everyone.
[02:03:44] Speaker A: Bye, everybody.
