EP37 Greg and Jim Talk All Things Photography

[00:00:03] Speaker A: Good morning. [00:00:04] Speaker B: Morning. [00:00:05] Speaker A: Is there anyone out there? Good morning and welcome to the Camera Life podcast brought to you by Lucky Camera Straps out of Bendigo Victoria. This is episode 37 of the podcast and it's the 7th of November. Can you believe how close we are to Christmas, Jim? [00:00:23] Speaker B: It's crazy. Yeah. [00:00:26] Speaker A: Yep. Welcome back, Jim. Good to have you back on the show. [00:00:30] Speaker B: Thank you. [00:00:31] Speaker A: You've been recovering from some, some procedures recently. So you've been feed up playing video games all day from what Justin tells me. Yeah, lots of resting, lots of resting, lots of PlayStation. Whatever it takes. [00:00:47] Speaker B: Yes. [00:00:48] Speaker A: Are you, are you a gamer? Do you like playing games? [00:00:51] Speaker B: Ltd. Yeah, I've. Yeah, in and out every year or so. Maybe in for a couple of weeks and then yeah, move on. Yeah, not so much. [00:01:01] Speaker A: I play a fair bit of video games. We're a big gaming household. Nintendo. [00:01:07] Speaker B: Yep. [00:01:08] Speaker A: Always have been, always will be. You've got a tattooed on my arm. So you've got Mario. That's how. [00:01:15] Speaker B: Dedicated, committed. [00:01:17] Speaker A: Yeah. It's the only tattoo I've got. It's the only thing I have. So welcome if you're listening along at home or at work secretly while the boss isn't looking. Welcome to the show. As you'll notice, Justin isn't with us today, but we do have Jim back which is amazing. Wonderful to have you back, mate. Where is, where's Justin? Where's he at? [00:01:39] Speaker B: I think he's in Vietnam. [00:01:40] Speaker A: He is in Vietnam. Know if he went to Hanoi? [00:01:44] Speaker B: I, I actually don't know any of his plan. [00:01:47] Speaker A: No, I don't think he had any plans. I'm surprised if he even got there. So he's currently in Hanoi now. He does plan to dial in at some stage where he hopes to based on whether his Internet is up to it. So Justin and Yena are currently in Vietnam traveling and just for, for leisure, not necessarily work related as far as we know. It's currently. What is it now? It's currently 5am in Hanoi. Might be a bit early to expect him to dial in. [00:02:17] Speaker B: Yeah, I didn't even get an airport photo from him. [00:02:20] Speaker A: You didn't? No. [00:02:22] Speaker B: So if he, if he didn't send the photo, it mustn't have happened. [00:02:25] Speaker A: Did you drive him to. I do. I know. You wouldn't have driven him to the airport. There's no airport in Bendigo. [00:02:29] Speaker B: Well, there is. Doesn't fly to Vietnam though, just to see. [00:02:31] Speaker A: No, no, I didn't, didn't think it would, but yeah, look, it's, it's early in Vietnam, in Hanoi. Anyway, 70 humidity at 5 in the morning. Yuck. Couldn't do it. [00:02:46] Speaker B: No, thank you. [00:02:47] Speaker A: No. I remember when I went to Japan a couple of times in the summer or it was just after summer. It was like September. It was still kind of warm, but the humidity was killer. [00:02:57] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I've only been in winter in Japan, so it's different. [00:03:02] Speaker A: Yeah, it's really like. It's just oppressive. And Kyoto was worse than Tokyo. Much worse. I don't know why. It must be to do with the mountains. We'll just blame the mountains. Anyway, we're off topic. Photography podcast. So Jim, you've been recovering recently. I don't imagine you've done much photography. Although we did recently see a little video snippet of you holding a camera in your hand. [00:03:25] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:03:27] Speaker A: Have you been able to do any other camera work? [00:03:30] Speaker B: No, not. Not really. I'm sort of. Yeah. Pretty a little bit limited at the moment. I'm just trying to focus on. On rehab. So I haven't shot for a little while. [00:03:41] Speaker A: Yep, fair enough. Do you miss it? [00:03:43] Speaker B: Yeah, I do actually. [00:03:45] Speaker A: Are you aching for it? Like is it. Is it an itch that you want to scratch, that you want to get back into it or is it. [00:03:51] Speaker B: Yeah, I do, I do. I enjoy. I think it's maybe starting. It will seem. Seems a little daunting, but I think once I'm in. And then your head's just kind of just flowing. Yeah, it'll be good. Good to get, you know when your. [00:04:06] Speaker A: First, first gig is. [00:04:08] Speaker B: Do you have any moment? No. [00:04:09] Speaker A: Booked? No, no. Fair enough. [00:04:13] Speaker B: Oh, I've got some stuff booked in next year. Sorry, but. [00:04:16] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah, no, yeah, I meant like this year. [00:04:19] Speaker B: Yeah, no, not at the moment. [00:04:21] Speaker A: So what is it? 7th of November? It's like six or seven weeks till Christmas. For those of you listening along at home that have young kids. All my kids are mostly grown up adults, but they still behave like kids sometimes. Well, they are my kids. They're more less enthusiastic about Christmas as they get older. Now you've got a daughter who's younger. [00:04:43] Speaker B: Yeah, she's five. So Christmas is big. [00:04:46] Speaker A: Christmas is huge for a five year old. [00:04:47] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:04:50] Speaker A: I'm off topic again. I do want to share this video that Jim sent through to me. Let me share my screen. We'll just get this out of the way first, Jim. [00:04:59] Speaker B: Yeah, let's do it. [00:05:01] Speaker A: Let's share a screen. Allow. Here we go. This is from Lucky Straps recently. If anyone can see that. Can everyone see that? There's Yelena, there's our man Jim. [00:05:28] Speaker B: And. And Justin. Well, obviously he's behind the. He's holding the iPhone. Yeah. [00:05:32] Speaker A: Yep. Where was that, where was that shoot done? [00:05:37] Speaker B: There's a. This is the old multi story car park in Bendigo. So it's not as nice as the new multi story car park, but it's far greater for photo shoots and stuff like that. And as soon as Justin kind of mentioned that he wanted to do a shoot, I knew that that was. Would be a good location at that time of day. So. [00:05:59] Speaker A: Nice. [00:06:00] Speaker B: There's some good. Yeah. Shadows and a bit of backlight and stuff like that. [00:06:04] Speaker A: So now you were doing that shoot for a special reason and I'm going to share that reason. Do you want to talk us through why you guys were up on the rooftop in the wind? [00:06:12] Speaker B: Well, like you, Greg, I've got my new. I probably can't see it because I've got the black on black, the lucky camera straps merch that's come out. So we're now live on the website with that and yeah, we just wanted to. Yeah, I was able to shoot all the merch so we can get it online so that we can let other people enjoy it as well as. As much as us. [00:06:39] Speaker A: So these are the shots from the shoot from that video you guys just watched. For those of you listening along to audio podcast, Lucky Straps have just announced or just launched their apparel merchandise line which at the moment offers a range of hoodies in different colors and some T shirts which Justin and Jim and I have been wearing for a number of weeks now. And Yelena. And they're now live now. When Justin and I went to beef up to the Bright festival of photography, we had lots of people asking about merch, which was great. So it'd be interesting to see Jim, what, what the orders are like when they come through. [00:07:18] Speaker B: Yes, yeah, yeah, we, we had a little website issue the other day so it's all sorted now so we'll hopefully be good to go. [00:07:30] Speaker A: Very nice. I do like this relaxed hoodie. [00:07:33] Speaker B: Yeah, it's very comfortable. [00:07:35] Speaker A: Yeah, I've got a black with gold hoodie I think. But yeah, no, they're very nice. Yeah, we, I think Justin gave a few away at bfop. Yeah, a few T shirts and hoodies and bits and pieces which was great. So, yeah, so if you're, if you're in the market for some new summer T shirts or a hoodie for nighttime shoots, check out the Lucky Straps page and pick up some merch. [00:08:09] Speaker B: So yeah, that was a little bit of photography that I'VE done recently. It was actually all those photos. [00:08:16] Speaker A: Yep. [00:08:16] Speaker B: Sorry, I was gonna say both Justin and I shot them. So Justin was shooting the R6 Mark 2. [00:08:22] Speaker A: Yep. [00:08:23] Speaker B: And I had the Z8 with. And we both had 51.2, so. And they've actually all been processed with the. The same lightroom preset, so. [00:08:33] Speaker A: Yep. [00:08:34] Speaker B: Color profile seems to work pretty well. [00:08:37] Speaker A: Yeah, no, they're good shots. They're really good looking shots. [00:08:41] Speaker B: Justin was teasing that you could definitely tell which was the better ones. [00:08:46] Speaker A: Yeah, I can't tell. [00:08:47] Speaker B: Yeah, I can't tell either. [00:08:49] Speaker A: No, he's got to justify all those camera purchases somehow. [00:08:54] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:08:55] Speaker A: You know, and unfortunately I told him. [00:08:57] Speaker B: That the cannon shots were, you know, they were okay too. Yeah, that was. The nickel was better. [00:09:04] Speaker A: Very cool. All right, so that's enough plugging Lucky Straps for the time being. We do have a bit of a task to fulfill today. But Justin, I don't know if you guys were watching. For anyone that was watching last week and anyone that follows along on our YouTube channel, you know that Justin loves a photography challenge. So he's recently kind of retired, I guess, from doing events and weddings with Jim and Justin. Wedding photography. So now, Jim, you're soloing mostly the weddings and you've also got your own boudoir photography business in the works. And so Justin's been trying to. He's been a bit of a lost child. He's been trying to find his direction and what his new focus is for photography. What you know, he's obviously been doing some mountain bike stuff, which is amazing. And he's working exclusively with a couple of brands there to help promote their bikes. But when we were at the Bright Festival, one of the workshops that Justin did, it was actually a two day workshop and it was storytelling through photography. So it was looking for taking a bunch of images and being able to condense your images down to just a handful. I think 12 was the brief for the BFOP workshop. And so over the course of the weekend, Justin had that project in mind while we're away and took a bunch of shots. And you can see those shots are actually on the Lucky Straps website in the blog that I wrote about BFOP and Lucky Straps involvement at bfop. All of the images are from Justin's Storytelling Through Photography project that he completed for the workshop. And I think it's great to have. We talked last week a lot about having challenges and getting involved in a whole range of different things to help motivate and inspire photography. But Justin has given Jim and I Access to his Dropbox and his current selection of 12 photos that he's done sort of in the past week. And so I want to bring those up. Should we bring those up now? [00:11:12] Speaker B: Yeah, let's do it. [00:11:13] Speaker A: Might as well. Let's see if I can share this screen. Share screen. Oh, no, window. Here we go. Let's share this window. All right, can everyone see those? Let me go back up to the top. So this is Justin's pool theme. Let me just read his notes quickly. Sorry. So these are all unit straight out of camera JPEGs that Justin shot with his Canon R5 Mark 2 and his 50 millimeter 1.1.2 prime lens. And the question that he has posed to us is, are these just happy snaps or did I find something more? Do these, you know, tell a story? And so we're going to go through the images and how do you think we should handle this, Jim? Like review one at a time or go through them and then maybe go. [00:12:18] Speaker B: Through them and then I can go back and we'll go through. [00:12:22] Speaker A: Make sure I'm on the right page. Yep. So a little tugboat in water. Fawn and Nash, they're his nephews? [00:12:35] Speaker B: Yes. [00:12:36] Speaker A: Yep. Is that his sister? [00:12:41] Speaker B: I think that's Justin's mom. [00:12:43] Speaker A: Oh, well, she's very young looking. [00:12:47] Speaker B: That's Nash. [00:12:48] Speaker A: That's very cute. So you're probably starting to pick up a bit of a theme here. For those of you watching along. [00:13:04] Speaker B: That'S just your sister. [00:13:07] Speaker A: Okay. [00:13:10] Speaker B: The half in the pool shot. [00:13:12] Speaker A: Yeah, that's great. He must have been right at the edge of the pool. Oh, that's wonderful. [00:13:17] Speaker B: He was probably knowing Justin, he was in the water. [00:13:21] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:13:22] Speaker B: He wouldn't would be too faced about jumping into a pool with a camera. [00:13:27] Speaker A: Yep. That's very cool. [00:13:31] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:13:36] Speaker A: So for those of you watching along and those of you listening along. I'm sorry, this is a very visual process. We're going through a range of photos that Justin has shot with his Canon R5 Mark 2 and the 51.2 millimeter lens. He's looking at storytelling through collection of images. In this case, it's 12 images. And I think you can see there's a very strong. Obviously a pool theme, maybe weekend, Australian weekend in the sun kind of thing. The kids are very. This is before getting in the water, it's Justin's mum. And here they are getting ready to go for a swim. [00:14:13] Speaker B: I think that's my favorite photo. [00:14:19] Speaker A: Yeah. We'll go back from the top. Sorry. We'll just go slowly through them. So we've got the tugboat. We've got the boys getting ready. That looks like a remote control. I wonder if there's a car or a boat in the water. [00:14:30] Speaker B: I think that's the first boat, the little tugboat. [00:14:33] Speaker A: Oh, wow. Oh, that's cool. [00:14:35] Speaker B: Yep. [00:14:36] Speaker A: I kind of want one. That's a wonderful shot. I love the way that the cheeks. [00:14:42] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:14:42] Speaker A: Cheeks being smooshed and the sun creams being wiped. I think it's really. It invokes a lot as an Aussie kid of having to stand still and. [00:14:53] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:14:53] Speaker A: And then having to do it with my own kids and appreciating their frustration, but still getting frustrated with it. Yeah, it's a very Aussie thing to do. Slather that on. Do you remember in the. I don't know. Maybe you're not older. Do you remember Hyper color zinc? [00:15:11] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. [00:15:12] Speaker A: Yeah, we used to wear that to the local pool. You get like the thick color. It would take like three showers to get it all off because it was just probably terrible for you. [00:15:22] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't think it'd be great. [00:15:24] Speaker A: No, I really like that one, but only because it's got a dog in it. [00:15:28] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a great shot. [00:15:31] Speaker A: I think this is my favorite. I think that's a wonderful shot. You can kind of put yourself in in his place. [00:15:41] Speaker B: Yeah, I think. Yeah. And it looks like it's probably wide open too, at one point too. [00:15:48] Speaker A: Yeah. Because this is all very soft here. I mean, it is a Canon lens, but. [00:15:53] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:15:53] Speaker A: There's a sharp plane you can see that sort of travels across here, this lower third. So good framing on Justin's part, even if he was in the water. [00:16:02] Speaker B: Yeah, I. I think he was probably definitely in the water, but went too far. [00:16:07] Speaker A: Sorry, guys. Yeah, that one's cool too, that one. Couple more. Yeah, that's nice. There's that still just little, you know, being wrapped up by mom. And that's very cool. Yeah, I think for me, this. This shot here, which is number eight, is probably my favorite. And you were happy with the sunscreen one? Sunscreen one, yeah. That's a wonderful one, too. So do you think that Justin's images tell. Tell that story. Tell a story. What do you see? [00:16:51] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, I think that pool party kind of Sunday at, you know, the grandparents house kind of story is what I'm. What I'm getting from it. [00:17:02] Speaker A: Yeah. And if you can remove yourself from the context of knowing Justin and the boys and the family, do you still say the same story? [00:17:13] Speaker B: Yeah, I think so. Like, I Think he's included, you know, like the mom on the lawn. Yeah. You know, there's some sort of extra context that, you know, you maybe wouldn't necessarily think to include. [00:17:28] Speaker A: Yeah. Like, here's Yelena. [00:17:31] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:17:31] Speaker A: Here's Justin's sister, who's his dad. I sh. [00:17:34] Speaker B: Justin's dad. Yep. [00:17:35] Speaker A: Yep. So it's a family day. [00:17:37] Speaker B: Yeah. I think the only photo for me that repeats is probably the. The last two. [00:17:44] Speaker A: Yeah. They're a bit too close, aren't they? [00:17:46] Speaker B: Yeah. Just. So maybe if there was. Maybe there was something else that was. That would, I guess, also tell the story. But that's probably the only photo that kind of repeats. [00:18:02] Speaker A: Which one would you keep in your. In the group? This one. [00:18:08] Speaker B: Oh. [00:18:09] Speaker A: Or does this one tell enough? [00:18:12] Speaker B: I think that one tells enough for me. [00:18:13] Speaker A: Yeah, I kind of like that one better. [00:18:15] Speaker B: Yeah. I think it also sort of highlights this, you know, the small. The smallness of the feet and. [00:18:22] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:18:23] Speaker B: You know, against mum's body kind of thing. [00:18:25] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I think that. Something different in there. [00:18:30] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:18:33] Speaker A: I think he. He did replace this one. He did have a different one in. But, yeah. Because we were going to show it on here, he opted to not include it. So maybe that's why there's two. That's similar. [00:18:44] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:18:44] Speaker A: Because I think there was one where it was probably too revealing. [00:18:48] Speaker B: Yeah. You know, fair enough. [00:18:50] Speaker A: Yeah. But still. Yeah. I really like this. This is really wonderful. It reminds me of those, you know, how often people who. And, you know, we did it with our own kids when they were newborns, even taking photos of their feet and hands because of that size, and you're never going to have that again. Like, it's going to. They're going to grow up so fast that remembering that, you know, a newborn's foot's like that. [00:19:14] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:19:15] Speaker A: You know, I think there's something really special about photographing children's feet when they're little. But, yeah, I think it's a good collection. I think he's hit the mark. [00:19:28] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:19:29] Speaker A: I think he's definitely told a story. He's. There's. There's a really nice. And I guess having grown up doing similar things, it kind of. It invokes this kind of whimsy of what it was like as a kid. As a kid, when you knew you were going to. Either, you know, whether it be family or we had family friends who lived nearby who had a pool, and if we were going there, that was pretty cool. Like, we got pretty excited and. [00:19:53] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:19:53] Speaker C: And. [00:19:54] Speaker A: Yeah, you'd spend the whole. You Know, afternoon and evening in your bathers with a towel wrapped around you. [00:20:00] Speaker B: Yeah. Get dry and then you get wet again. [00:20:04] Speaker A: Yeah. Like, you just. You know, especially on warm days where you just. You're running in out of the pool and hot concrete and all of those feelings come out of this, this storytelling for me. [00:20:17] Speaker B: Is there anything that you don't, I guess, don't like, or could. [00:20:25] Speaker A: I think this is good. I think it's slightly overexposed. [00:20:28] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:20:29] Speaker A: But, you know, it's a JPEG challenge and he was standing in a pool, so I'll give him. Cut him some slack. No, I think they're all good. I think they're all really good. This. No, this one's. I mean, this one is very. There's kind of a few with the sun cream theme. [00:20:45] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:20:46] Speaker A: So we've got this, which is wonderful. I'd probably put this one first. [00:20:53] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:20:53] Speaker A: And then this. This one, it's got the dog in it, so I guess there's a different element here. And. Yes, another sunscreen shot, but. [00:21:02] Speaker B: Come on, that's the dog. Yeah. The dog's the hero. [00:21:05] Speaker A: The dog's part of the. Yeah. [00:21:06] Speaker B: Yep. [00:21:08] Speaker A: But, no, I think they're all good. I think. Yeah. Maybe this one. I mean, he's shooting jpeg. He's in a fool. The kids are jumping. [00:21:15] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:21:16] Speaker A: You know, maybe it's sort of half a frame too soon, but. Yeah. But for anyone that watches this. Sorry, for audio listeners, it's been a bit of a tough sell for you guys. But for anyone that watches this or is watching now or watches this down the track, jump in the comments and let us know what you think about Justin's selection of 12 images for storytelling. We've acknowledged that 11 and 12 are very similar. I like them both, But I think 12 would be the keeper. I just want to point out again to people that look at this later that Justin had to replace original number 11 image because it was too revealing and he didn't want it to be such a public thing because this is his family. But, yeah, that's what he's been up to. I think it'll be interesting to see. How do I stop. Stop sharing my window? Be interesting to see what he comes up with while he's away, because he's going to have his eyeballs and ear balls completely assaulted with. With imagery and sound. And, you know, I mean, I've never been to Vietnam. Have you ever been to Vietnam? [00:22:28] Speaker B: No, I haven't. [00:22:29] Speaker A: No. I remember my parents went a couple of years ago. I mean, they were On a bus tour kind of thing. So they were, you know, mostly sheltered from the rawness of it. But I remember them saying just how busy and noisy many parts of it seemed. [00:22:46] Speaker B: Can be overwhelming to begin with for sure. Yeah. [00:22:49] Speaker A: Yep. But it was like my first time to Japan, like that was really. I loved it and it was like a. As a street photographer, it was like stepping out into a, you know, a fever dream. But it was overwhelming. There was so many people and so much noise. Did you find that when you went to Japan the first time? [00:23:13] Speaker B: Yes and no. I think Japan was different because it was so clean. Yeah. Whereas I found. We went to Cambodia the first time. That was. We'd gone straight from Australia to Japan, then to Cambodia. So that was. We've gone from kind of cold to hot and then just. That was a huge cult like shock to the system of, you know, the. The difference of I guess the two countries. So. [00:23:40] Speaker A: Yeah, I guess Japan's more organized chaos. [00:23:42] Speaker B: Yes, Yep. [00:23:44] Speaker A: Orderly chaos. Yeah. [00:23:46] Speaker B: And, you know, everything's very modern and. [00:23:48] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yep. Yeah. Be good to see what he comes up with. I don't know if he's going to have a chance to dial in, but hopefully we hear from him before too long. Something I wanted to talk to you about, Jim, because, you know, you and Justin have run a professional photography business for well over a decade now. Would that be right? Justin and Jim for 10 years and yeah, we. Now you've been going solo for about a year. Would it be. [00:24:18] Speaker B: No, I've heard. Oh, Justin sort of been slowly cutting back for about six years. [00:24:25] Speaker A: Oh, okay. All right. [00:24:26] Speaker B: Yeah, it's been a while. [00:24:28] Speaker A: Yeah. So you guys have had, you know, expectations and the need to make sure that your images are stored correctly and backed up. And I'm in a position where, you know, I'm running my new MacBook. I went out and bought a new SSD for it because I wanted it to be all quick with lightroom. [00:24:46] Speaker B: Yes. [00:24:47] Speaker A: Now I'm not shooting professional weddings and I'm not shooting many paid gigs these days. Most of my photography is for reviews, obviously for my own enjoyment when I do street and. But mostly for reviews and product shots and things like that. So my need for backup isn't as dire or as, you know, essential, but I still want to have a backup that's away from home, not attached to my SSD or my computer. Do you. Did you guys ever look into like cloud services? Do you still. Do you use a cloud based storage for your images at the moment? [00:25:23] Speaker B: No. Don't we don't use a cloud. Well, you don't. No. So like we run a physical off site. [00:25:31] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:25:32] Speaker B: That's. I don't know what Justin does now. I know he's still got like a RAID on site and some. And different sort of external hard drives. Yeah. And I've sort of got similar here, but I also run a physical off site. [00:25:46] Speaker A: Okay. And so you're. So you set Lightroom to just do an automatic update to the off site drive or is it all managed through third party software? [00:25:57] Speaker B: That's. It's full manual. So I download directly to my MacBook to sort of for the fastest working speeds for the working drive there and then sort of make up my backups from there. I've got another. An imac that then sort of runs the RAID and sort of our older. Different sort of. Yeah. Older backup hard drives. So yeah, that's kind of running that. Whereas my iMac, the MacBook Pro. Sorry. Is sort of what I work off. [00:26:31] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:26:32] Speaker B: And then. Yeah. Also plug in for the off site and I just leave that in the car. So it's sort of the house burns down. I've got a copy. [00:26:41] Speaker A: Yep, yep. Fair enough. Because I was looking at different options for. I was looking at cloud storage because I was thinking, well, I could go out and spend 200 bucks on another SSD or more, 300 bucks or whatever. [00:26:56] Speaker B: It's going to cost very expensive. [00:26:58] Speaker A: But I like them for the speed and I'm not doing massive batches either, you know, so. But I was looking at some different options, you know, whether it be Dropbox or Google Drive or just stick with Adobe's Creative Cloud cloud storage. And I just wanted to know if you had any experience with those or if anyone listening does, feel free to jump in the comments or shout out and let us know. [00:27:28] Speaker B: I use Dropbox for sharing but not for physical storage, like backup storage. [00:27:36] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:27:37] Speaker B: And some clients prefer that, that you're not restoring on a cloud. There's no less chance of security breaches and stuff like that. But yeah, it's probably low level risk. [00:27:50] Speaker A: Yep. Yeah, I guess so. Yeah, for me it is. Yeah. Because I, you know, on my. When I had my imac running, I had, I had three lacy drives. They were hard drives, so spinning disks and they were great. But two of them have since failed. [00:28:11] Speaker B: Okay. [00:28:14] Speaker A: And so when I set up this MacBook, I opted to go with a bit of a clean slate. I started a whole new Lightroom catalog because the other one I had was 8 years old and it was kind of, it was Messy. [00:28:27] Speaker B: Huge. [00:28:27] Speaker A: I thought, Yeah, I thought, I've got that backed up twice. So if I need to. Actually, it's very rare that I need to go back and pull photos from, you know, old experiences. And. Yeah, I was just trying to work out what to do with. With backing up files. So I looked into. So Adobe, my current Lightroom plan. It's Adobe Photography plan. So you get Lightroom and Photoshop and you get 20 gigabytes of cloud storage, but you can upgrade it, you can double the price. So that's about 15 Australian dollars. You can go to like almost 30 Australian dollars and you'll get two terabytes of cloud storage. Yeah, and that's 30 bucks. That's per month. And I thought that extra 15 bucks is actually quite good because A. I like the fact that it's paid monthly and much as many people don't like. [00:29:21] Speaker B: Lightroom subscriptions, I definitely don't like them. [00:29:26] Speaker A: Yeah. But, yeah, so around 15 bucks a month will get me two terabytes and you can upgrade that. But interestingly, on their website, there's a. There's a 1, 800 Australian 1, 800 number to call if you want to go above 2 terabyte. So you actually call them to us. [00:29:44] Speaker B: Have you looked into it at all? [00:29:45] Speaker A: I haven't looked. No, I haven't. I haven't called them to ask because there's no. I couldn't see any pricing. I'm sure if I did a Google search I'd find it. But, yeah, I didn't see any pricing on that. It's kind of more call and discuss, I think, you know, they want you to call so they can discuss business plans and. Because if you're looking at adding 3, 5, 10 terabytes of storage to the cloud, then your needs are fairly big. You're dealing with big files. Chances are you're a professional photographer or a videographer. [00:30:14] Speaker B: Yeah, it would. I'd need a fair bit of storage, unfortunately. [00:30:17] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:30:18] Speaker B: Even if just storing JPEGs or something like. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do need to be pretty big. [00:30:26] Speaker A: Yeah. So. And that's the other thing. Do I. Do I bother keeping RAW files on my cloud or do I just use it for JPEG backup? [00:30:35] Speaker B: Probably, I think JPEG backup. But I'd want to have a copy of the RAWs, or at least the RAWs that you like, that you want, that you culled, you know, from the shoot. Yeah, I'm not sure, like, when you shoot street photography, are you shooting a lot and getting like. [00:30:54] Speaker A: No, not really. [00:30:55] Speaker B: 10 images or are you sort of quite calculated and. [00:30:59] Speaker A: Yeah, it's more calculated because. Because it. And I don't shoot in burst, so I don't have to scroll through countless photos to work out which one I like the best. It's more about being in the moment and making sure you've got everything set up, your compositions right, the lights in the right angle and the right person walks through. It's very unlikely that I'll take multiple shots of that scene. [00:31:21] Speaker B: Yeah. If I'm. [00:31:22] Speaker A: If I feel satisfied with the composition I got, then I'll move to the next spot, you know, so, you know, a street walk. I might come back with, say, 200 shots over a couple of hours. [00:31:34] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:31:34] Speaker A: And then, yeah, I might get 10. I might get none that I want to keep out of that. It just depends on, you know, what the situation was and how the images turned out and. [00:31:47] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:31:48] Speaker A: You know, all that sort of stuff. [00:31:49] Speaker B: Do you ever revisit them or anything like that? You know, look back? Sometimes I do and sort of go, oh, maybe I missed this the first run. You know, the first time I went through it. [00:32:00] Speaker A: Yeah, I. I did that with my. My first trip to Tokyo. I was so excited to be there with a camera. I took over. I was only there for seven days. I took about seven and a half thousand photos because everything was just, you know. You know, it's like everything you lay your eyes on, it's just like, oh, my God, that's art. Oh, my God, that's amazing. Like, you know, there was just so much to see, and I was so excited. And then I created a kind of a photo book and I wrote my own blog at the same time, which I was posting photos to my blog about my travels. But I kept going back and doing. Yeah, revisiting and doing new collections. So, you know, like, how, you know, like, albums have an A side and a B side, and people always sort of felt like the B side was the less attractive songs or the less, you know, appealing. Well, I kind of had, you know, the B sides. Tokyo 2015, the B sides. And then I ended up having the C and the D sides and the E sides because I just. I kept going back and seeing. And I think as my editing skills improved as well, you know, and as my. The way that I look at images and the way that I see a value in something that previously I thought was sloppy work, actually, as a street photographer looking at it with a different kind of set of eyes on it, I saw opportunity to sort of, you know, have another go at it. And sometimes it was simple, as, you know, I didn't like the colors in the first few runs when I looked at them, so I went back and converted it to black and white and, you know, played around with contrast and exposure in Lightroom and came out with images that I absolutely loved but I'd completely disregarded previously. [00:33:47] Speaker B: Yeah, that's good. I think, sometimes revisiting things. [00:33:52] Speaker A: Yeah, I think so. Especially years later, because it will teach you a lot about what you were thinking at the time, too. [00:33:59] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:34:01] Speaker A: And how you chose to edit them back then and that sort of thing. And I think also. And what I try to do now, I try to be more calculating now with. On my imac, I kept every photo I took. And now that I've moved to this and I want to keep everything running smoothly and keep it very minimal in terms of, you know, not bulking up on storage just for the sake of it. I'm very selective about deleting the photos as I import, you know, whereas in the past I would. I would keep them, but my labeling and tagging system was useless. So very rarely could I find stuff without scrolling through months and years of, you know. So it's. Yeah. Kind of my own worst enemy with that sometimes. But, you know, it's not like I have to find images for a client. [00:34:51] Speaker B: No. [00:34:51] Speaker A: In a pinch. But, yeah, it is interesting. And, you know, looking into this whole cloud storage thing, I'm thinking, well, if it's 15 bucks a month extra on top of my Lightroom photography plan, which I know is nothing over a year, what's that going to be? I can't do the math. 100, 180 bucks over a year, which is, again, not bad at all. It's good. Or do I just buy a really good quality SSD that's going to last me two to three years for about 2, 300 bucks, you know, so I'm kind of in that. The pros and cons stage of thinking about cloud storage, you know, or do I. Is it good having cloud storage? Because. Especially for JPEGs, because they'll transfer quickly and then they're technically off site. [00:35:47] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:35:48] Speaker A: You know, so there's. [00:35:50] Speaker B: Yeah, I like having my own backup. But, yeah, I think maybe for what you're doing, maybe the cloud is a better. A better system. [00:35:58] Speaker A: Yeah. And then I thought about maybe just doing Dropbox, although I find Dropbox is kind of expensive in comparison. You said you use Dropbox for sharing, I imagine, with clients and. [00:36:12] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. For sending sort of commercial work and stuff like that it seems to be super easy. You can just send, you know, send a link and they can just download them. Super. [00:36:20] Speaker A: Yeah, super fast. I don't know how that, how easy that would be with a Adobe Creative Cloud platform that, you know, people can access them if you, if you want them to. But what do you know roughly what Dropbox costs? [00:36:36] Speaker B: I actually, I should know and I don't. Yeah, that's just a cost that comes in. [00:36:42] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. [00:36:43] Speaker B: I don't even know what, like what plan I'm on or how much. [00:36:47] Speaker A: Yeah, I like the idea of Dropbox because it is universal and you don't need a Google account to access files and yeah, you know, all that sort of stuff anyway, so I'll continue the exploration of that one. But if anyone's listening and you have ideas about data storage for your photos, what do you do? Do you do backups or you just trust your. Or do you just purely use your computer built in storage? Have you explored cloud storage options? What do you think? Let us know because I'm really keen to find out what people are doing and you know, just get some options, get some ideas. So please share. There's editor Seb, that's my son. What's Jim's method for backup? Does he use Dropbox for that too? No. If you are listening son, Jim said he uses hard drives and he's got a RAID system at home. Is that right? [00:37:58] Speaker B: Yes. Yep. So I got a RAID as well as just a number of external drives so for different. Various different things. So running the smaller drives for like a working backup and then some larger external hard drives for long term backups as along with the raid and then also an external. [00:38:23] Speaker A: External copy. [00:38:24] Speaker B: External copies, yeah. So but I'm sort of working drive is, is my, is my MacBook Pro. [00:38:31] Speaker A: Yeah. Because it's the fastest. [00:38:32] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I did buy an SSD when I bought this as sort of. The plan was to work off both but it got full and then it sort of got too. Yeah, it's just easier to work on just straight off the MacBook for me. [00:38:46] Speaker A: Yep. Oh, I didn't share that comment. Sorry everyone, this is Seb editor. Seb is my son. We're pretty sure. What's Jim's method for backups? Does he use Dropbox for that? And then Seb continues with apologies, father. Thanks Jim. I love hearing about other people's setups. [00:39:05] Speaker B: No worries. Thank you. Thanks for watching and Paul. [00:39:10] Speaker A: Paul Henderson. G'day Paul. Good morning. I wonder about cloud storage as well, but does it, does it lock you in. As it gets harder to shift, I do use the 1 TB that comes with Office 365 for my absolute favorites. [00:39:24] Speaker B: Yeah, it probably does lock you in a little bit or just makes it harder to. If at some point you need to doubt move it. [00:39:31] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And I do worry about things. Some drives, you know, like Google, there's all this talk about AI learning and sites are using. I think Facebook might be using images, your images for. To train its AI. And I imagine Google's got something similar going on because they have obviously Drive and Google Photos or Google Images. Sorry. So, yeah, it is interesting too, whether it's. It is actually safe as well. And yes, once you're in there, it's kind of like, well, how do you move it all to another cloud service? How does that. [00:40:11] Speaker B: Yeah, it's probably the same as running a hard drive, though. If you've got a hard drive and you need to. It's getting old or you're concerned about it or you just want to make a backup, you've still got to transfer it. Like it's still. [00:40:22] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:40:23] Speaker B: Tedious task. Yep. [00:40:26] Speaker A: You want a good Internet connection for that. [00:40:28] Speaker B: Yeah. I haven't had many clients ask about it, but one client was specific that they didn't want anything on a cloud service. Yep. And they specifically asked about my backup and. Yeah. And they mentioned that they definitely didn't want it on a cloud. [00:40:47] Speaker A: Maybe they've been burnt before by something. [00:40:49] Speaker B: Yeah. I think that they were just very conscious of, you know, their face and likeness being out. [00:40:57] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:40:57] Speaker B: You know, on the Internet and stuff like that. So I think they're very sort of private people and wanted to keep it that way. [00:41:02] Speaker A: That's fair. And so did you. Do you deliver their files just on a stick on a USB or a drive? [00:41:10] Speaker B: Yeah, Yeah. I think I even like drove it to them. Can't remember if I drove it to them or posted it. But. Yeah, usb. Sort of old school. [00:41:19] Speaker A: Yep. [00:41:21] Speaker B: Yep. [00:41:21] Speaker A: Yeah. But it works. [00:41:23] Speaker B: Yeah. Not even. Yeah. Not even like a Dropbox download and then get rid of it. [00:41:26] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what I used to do with. When I was doing paid gigs. I'd just put it onto. I'd give them two USBs, especially if it was a couple. [00:41:38] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:41:38] Speaker A: Here's one few and he's one for you. So, you know. And what's the. Is the. Do you guarantee that you will hold a copy of your client's photos for them? And is there like a duration? Is it part of your contract? [00:41:52] Speaker B: No, it's not. We haven't deleted anything where we think we're. Well, we hope we're pretty good at our backup system that we kind of implemented in the early days and I'm very grateful that we did kind of do a good job of it. Yeah. You know, labeling and everything like that. Had a couple of things, you know, you do make mistakes and having multiple backups, like having three copies of everything is a must because one time I went to look for something, it wasn't on the raid but it was on the external because it had obviously accidentally been deleted off the RAID and it was moved or something like that. [00:42:36] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:42:36] Speaker B: Or. Or it wasn't in the right spot for whatever reason. But we had the images, they just weren't exactly where they needed to be. So. Yeah, having the multiple copies kind of saves potential. Yeah, yeah. Issues. Yeah. But we don't worry about. [00:42:54] Speaker A: Right, Sorry. [00:42:55] Speaker B: Sorry. [00:42:56] Speaker A: No, I was just gonna say I do worry about RAID systems because they're quite old technology. I guess it depends on the quality of the system like anything else. [00:43:07] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:43:08] Speaker A: And how many drives you put in it and all that sort of stuff and. And the cost is quite prohibitive. Prohibitive. Prohibitive. [00:43:15] Speaker B: Yes, prohibitive. [00:43:16] Speaker A: You know what I mean? [00:43:17] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:43:18] Speaker A: Big upfront. [00:43:19] Speaker B: Ours is very expensive and then we expanded it and yeah we've. Last year we. In our old office we used to get power outages quite a bit. [00:43:28] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:43:29] Speaker B: And we lost a few drives and like we'd get power outages. The electrician to come in for the bakery and just flick the power off because he didn't know what that switch does. And yeah, we lost multiple drives that day. [00:43:42] Speaker A: Oh wow. [00:43:44] Speaker B: So you know, now I've got a ups. So. [00:43:47] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, that was when the office was the. The old walk in fridge. [00:43:53] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. The old core room. So yeah, the Cor room. [00:43:56] Speaker A: That's it. [00:43:56] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:43:57] Speaker A: Yeah, I visited that place once. [00:43:59] Speaker B: Yeah, it was very cool. Need to go get our sign actually. It's still out the front. [00:44:03] Speaker A: Is it? [00:44:04] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:44:05] Speaker A: That's funny. [00:44:06] Speaker B: Been a bit slack. [00:44:07] Speaker A: I'm sure it's on Justin's to do list. [00:44:09] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely. [00:44:13] Speaker A: Very good. Okay, well that's giving me some stuff to think about. I mean the cost isn't too bad for, for Adobe but it's just a. [00:44:24] Speaker B: Compounding cost I think is, you know, every year that's. [00:44:30] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:44:31] Speaker B: Locking you in. [00:44:32] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that is a problem. And you know then once your. All your stuff's there, they put the price up. It's easier just to keep it with them. Than to move it and. [00:44:39] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. [00:44:40] Speaker A: But I want something that's reliable and that's, you know, photography centric. So they kind of get what they're not. Compressing files or, you know, whatever. Yeah, just because it's just a storage drive, not a photography cloud service. [00:44:57] Speaker B: Do you use JPEG Mini? Speaking of compressing? [00:45:00] Speaker A: No, I don't use JPEG Mini. [00:45:03] Speaker B: What's that? I'm probably going to stuff up the description of it, but it's an awesome little plugin. We run everything through it. It strips all the excess data out of JPEGs. Usually pulls about 30 to 40% out. And it's just all the stuff that's not there. No quality loss, no size loss. [00:45:28] Speaker A: Well, that's good. And is that on the Lightroom plugin? [00:45:32] Speaker B: You can plug it into Lightroom. We've had. We had issues a while ago, so now I just run it standalone. [00:45:39] Speaker A: Okay. [00:45:39] Speaker B: I just drop it. You can just drop a whole folder in there or multiple folders. It just goes and does its thing. You can even set it to sort of pixel, like long ledges and stuff like that. There's also. [00:45:52] Speaker A: Yeah, okay, I'll look into that. [00:45:54] Speaker B: So, yeah, that's. If you want to compress some size without losing any quality, do recommend that. Definitely not sponsored. [00:46:02] Speaker A: Definitely not. No. We are sponsored by lucky straps. You can just tell about T shirts. [00:46:07] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:46:08] Speaker A: Let me just make a note of that. JPEG Mini, you reckon? [00:46:11] Speaker B: Yep, it's. It's really cool. [00:46:16] Speaker A: Cool. Oops. [00:46:17] Speaker B: And it's a. I'm pretty sure. Purchased at once and no. Yeah. [00:46:25] Speaker A: Recurring costs, no subscription or anything like that. It's just. [00:46:28] Speaker B: No, I reckon that they maybe updated it like three years ago and that was maybe a new cost and it was like half the cost or something like that. And then. Yeah. And like it wasn't dear. So. [00:46:39] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. All right, I might look into that. I think I need to clean up my workflow in general because like I said, my tagging and labeling is terrible. [00:46:49] Speaker B: Because sometimes what are you doing on like import? [00:46:52] Speaker A: They just go into the All Photos folder. [00:46:55] Speaker B: Yeah. Do you do like by date or. [00:46:58] Speaker A: I mean, I can search by date because I can go into the, you know, the metadata and. Yeah, because sometimes I'll be doing like a review or I might be doing an article about, say, a bunch of Fujifilm lenses. Surprise, surprise. And I'll need some images shot with particular lenses so I can use the Lightroom filtering attributes. [00:47:20] Speaker B: Yeah, metadata. [00:47:21] Speaker A: Yeah, the metadata. Yeah. To, you know, look for things shot with that lens and that camera and. [00:47:28] Speaker B: Yeah, okay, so there's workarounds. [00:47:30] Speaker A: Yeah, there is some stuff there. Yeah. I mean it hasn't been a massive problem. And like I said, I'm on a fresh drive. You know, I've only got, you know, a couple of hundred gigabytes if that maybe 100 gig total on this new drive so far. But yeah, and I think just being more mindful about what, what data do I actually need to keep, you know, and trimming those photos up front and even then after I've decided on the, especially if it's for an article, once I've got the 20 photos that I'm likely to use in an article and I've, you know, exported them as JPEGs in the size that we need for the Safe a shot kit or for Lucky. And once I know that those are those, those images are definitely been approved and they're good and they're in the article and it's published, I might go back and delete, you know, a bunch of the other ones. I didn't even use the similar to the ones I did use and just keep it really clean. [00:48:33] Speaker B: So when you're importing onto your hard drive, there's no like do you name your folders or anything like that to sort of, you know, maybe if you're shooting. [00:48:42] Speaker A: Yeah, I'll create folders in my catalog. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I will do that for particular jobs like bfop. I created folders for bfop one for each of the cameras that I used while I was there. And, and I've caught up on those a couple of times when I've done write ups about bfop. So yeah, I, I do, I do name. I just need to become more consistent about it. [00:49:06] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:49:08] Speaker A: And because often the editing stuff for me, you know, I know it's different for different genres, but the editing stuff for me, I try to keep it as minimal as possible because, you know, I mean, product shots are different. But my street work and travel work and just my general photography stuff, I'd rather not be sitting at a desk editing. I'd rather be out taking more shots, you know. Got another comment here from me Pop now. Is that right? Yeah, me Pop Now. Lightroom is great for keywording. It makes finding images later easy. [00:49:45] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:49:45] Speaker A: See that's another thing I want to. [00:49:46] Speaker B: Get into is that you can do it on import. [00:49:50] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Add them. Yeah. So when you import a, when you guys do a shoot and you import the contents of a card, what is your procedure? Jim? [00:50:03] Speaker B: It depends what job it is. If it's a wedding, it'll get its own catalog specific to that couple, which is just found a lot cleaner on the other end of getting rid of images and finding images if you've got it. Yeah. Everything's kind of contained to that specific job. Commercial works sort of similar. And then for my boudoir stuff, it's all in the same Lightroom catalog. [00:50:32] Speaker A: Yep. [00:50:33] Speaker B: Which is maybe. Yeah, I'll see how I go with that. So it's a new, I guess, change to not. Not doing everything as its own catalog. And then I guess importing using, like, the American date system, so like year, month, and then the day, and then, you know, a small description about what it is. If it's, say, BFOP or like the Lucky Apparel shoot the other day. [00:50:56] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:50:57] Speaker B: And I find for me, that's kind of the easiest way to quickly find things. [00:51:01] Speaker A: Yep. Okay. [00:51:03] Speaker B: Yeah, I guess I have it. Yeah. A little bit of memory of maybe what, you know, when did I shoot that? [00:51:08] Speaker A: Yeah. Yep. I. I remember when I was on my. Had my imac and had, you know, I think I had 80. Have around 85, 000 images on the drives associated with that computer. You know, finding stuff was needle in a haystack sometimes because I just. I would import it and, you know, get onto the editing and move on to the next thing. And I wouldn't take the time to sort of make sure that it was locatable, you know. [00:51:37] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:51:38] Speaker A: In these ways. So I'm trying to make some fresh new habits now that I've got this new setup and we can go from there. [00:51:48] Speaker B: Nice. [00:51:49] Speaker A: Yeah. Before we jump to some news, some sort of associated news, but did you have any topics that you wanted to cover off? [00:52:00] Speaker B: I don't think so at the moment. I'm sort of. Yeah. Been laying low. [00:52:04] Speaker A: So you're in limbo still a bit. [00:52:07] Speaker B: I'm a little bit. It's a little frustrating. [00:52:09] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Your time will come. [00:52:13] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:52:14] Speaker A: Your time will come. Let's jump to a bit of news. [00:52:19] Speaker B: Okay. What do we got? [00:52:21] Speaker A: Well, let me share this screen. We've recently talked, before we jump into that little bit of a preamble. So we recently talked about. And it's been a topic for a lot of people, not just in the photography world, about how AI is impacting images. Now, obviously, AI is a tool that's used for a whole range of different things, but we're seeing it more and more in photo editing. So, you know, Lightroom has some AI elements. Like the new Denoise function. It uses AI learning And then yesterday I finished up, I wrote a review for a new software that's coming out, I think today called Apaty, which is made by Skylum. Now Skylum does Luminar Neo, which is a really popular AI powered photo editing app. And Apity is, takes a lot from that, but it's very portrait specific. And I found it really interesting that with that software I could do very basic edits, but I could also do things like completely remove blemishes, change the shape of someone's eyes, change the shape of their nose, the width of their cheeks. I could add makeup. And it all looked very natural the. [00:53:43] Speaker B: Way that it did. And this was just AI generated things. [00:53:46] Speaker A: AI generated. Yeah. So I was taking portrait shots and the only thing that looked a bit weird was you can move people's eyebrows up and down. And so the way that if, but if someone had a fringe, which obviously I don't. If someone had a fringe, it would confuse the part of the fringe for the eyebrows. So it would sort of create like two sets of eyebrows. But regardless, it was very impressive, very powerful, not overly cooked. Like it's not like it was ridiculous, like it wasn't doing anime eyes, you know, big. What is it? Puss in Boots from Shrek. But it brought up this kind of. And I, and I mentioned this in my, in my review that AI is a slippery slope, like especially when it comes to face and body altering. [00:54:34] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:54:34] Speaker A: Now I know photographers have been doing it forever. As long as, like as long as Photoshop's been around, people have been changing the shapes of people's body, especially in portrait for fashion and those sort of commercial jobs. And plenty of photographers have gotten in trouble for it. And I think making it that readily available is a slippery slope, especially around changing a models the facial structure or body shape. You know, in, in this, if you, if you did like a standing shot, you could shrink their midriff. Like it was specifically targeting pulling in a waist because you know, a thin waist is what everyone desires and all of that sort of stuff. And I, I have a lot of ethical and moral dilemmas with that stuff because I think as a photographer, if you take a photo of someone, if you get a model or a subject and take a photo of them and you're not happy with the way that their body or face structure looks in the shot, well then that's on you for choosing the wrong model. And I don't think that manipulation of a person's facial structure or body shape is appropriate. I know there's a place for it, and some clients will even want it. If you're doing, you know, shoots for clients, they might even want you to kind of make them look a bit trimmer and that sort of thing. I don't know, because I don't do that sort of work very often. But this is just an example, I guess, of what software is able to do. And there's another software app called Photo AI that will basically take a selfie you've shot on your phone. It's a desktop application. So you take a selfie on your phone, you import it into your computer, and the desktop application will put you in whatever location scenario you want to be in. And you can have lingerie models standing on either side of you. You can make it look like you're riding in a limousine. You can make yourself look tanned and buff. Like it really is the full AI manipulation treatment that we kind of see the negative stories on. And that's just. Obviously, I think that's going way too far. Like, there's fun in it. But there's also a lot of issues that have arisen recently. Even here in Victoria, there was a school where a bunch of kids got in trouble for making AI fakes of their teachers and female classmates in compromising positions. But they looked real, apparently. So how do we protect against that as visual creatives? And we've talked about that on the show a couple of times. But Google are now doing a thing where. Let me just. And I'm sure that people will work out a way around this. Let me just share the screen. Google Photo. Okay, so Google Photos will now reveal when an image got AI editing. So they're going to. They're going to develop a way. When you bring up an image in Google search, it will tell you whether it was AI generator or whether it had AI modifications, either partially or wholly. So it's for Google Photos. But the new feature will roll out next week. This was only written a couple of days ago and will notify users of AI manipulation images they pass through Google Photos, which I think is a good thing. I think that being able to label and we've seen this in use, and especially with the recent dumpster fire of a US Election where each. Well, I think one side created fake photos of Taylor Swift, of Kamala. Kamala. Kamala, Kamala. How do you say. [00:58:13] Speaker B: Sorry, you're asking the wrong person. [00:58:15] Speaker A: Rambling. You know, where they've created these fake images. Whereas what Google is looking at doing is stepping in and making some means of notifying users of the photos. That actually these have been tampered with. In essence, these aren't real, these aren't natural, or they've been altered significantly. And I wonder how that will go with. Should you say, edit a photo using Lightroom and you do use the AI noise reduction or noise cleanup tool, whether. Or recognize those as being AI modified. [00:58:49] Speaker B: I wonder if it'll tell you what's done too, you know. [00:58:53] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:58:53] Speaker B: Because it might be something simple like that that's just cleaning something up versus a full. A full image that is not real. [00:59:03] Speaker A: Yeah. And I wonder whether, you know, I know that if you. If you use photo AI, if you. Sorry. If you use Denoise AI in Lightroom, the file name changes to say AI Denoise Applied or something like that to the end of the file name. So that means it's baked into the metadata. [00:59:22] Speaker B: It's similar to when you take an image out of Lightroom into Photoshop. It stops being a RAW and it starts being like a TIFF or it doesn't resave itself as a raw. [00:59:32] Speaker A: Yep. [00:59:34] Speaker B: It's probably the same sort of thing. It has to because it's essentially. It's a new photo, it's a new file. [00:59:40] Speaker A: Yep. So, yeah, so this will be. It'll apply a label in the AI Info section of an image can be found in the detail view. The new labels won't. Here we go. What's this? AI info. I wish that would stop doing that. It's hurting my head. Generative AI. Is anyone else freaking out over that or is it just me? [01:00:08] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:00:10] Speaker A: So according to Google, they'll also specify if a photo is made of or contains elements from several images stitched together through AI technology. So it'll be interesting to see how that impacts images that have been edited with Pro software. I imagine it will stay the same because I imagine it's probably going to be, you know, people like Adobe and who else makes software anyway, editing software places, you know, will have kind of the certification process built into there when it adds metadata. But yeah, I thought it was interesting. I think it's important and I know that there's this new certification standards that some Fujifilm and Leica have jumped on board with it, maybe Hasselblad and I think other companies are looking at getting on board. And it's basically certification to certify that in the metadata that a photo shot with a Fujifilm camera was actually shot with a Fujifilm camera. It is a real image. It's not AI manipulated. So I think the more that companies get on board with that stuff I think the better it is because it also protects our professional, you know, our images from being used in creating other images. [01:01:29] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:01:30] Speaker A: Or. [01:01:30] Speaker B: Yeah. Being put. Put out as real and when they're not, I guess. Or if they've been manipulated. [01:01:37] Speaker A: Yeah. Anyway, I just thought that was. That was interesting because it is a bit of a hot topic, I think and I think there's a lot of. There's a lot more work that needs to be done on protecting our work, but also people from receiving, you know, deep fake kind of images. But yeah, that was that bit of news and here's a bit of news for you. Yeah, let me just change screen and find another one. Want to get your thoughts on this beast? So Nikon has announced the development of. Not necessarily the. That it's definitely going to happen but they are developing Nikkor Z28 to 135F4 and it's a power zoom lens. [01:02:31] Speaker B: Morning Justin. Justin saying hi. [01:02:34] Speaker A: Hey, good morning boss. Where'd it go? Oh, did you bring it up? [01:02:42] Speaker B: Yes, sorry. [01:02:44] Speaker A: Morning boys. I wonder if he's got enough juice to dial in. We'd love to have you on the show. We'd love to tell you where you went wrong with all your photos, mate. So Nick, on Z Power zoom. I was really surprised when I saw that this was a power zone. Does Nikon do many power zooms of this nature? [01:03:02] Speaker B: No, not that I know of. Like yeah, it's probably. It's more of a video. [01:03:08] Speaker A: Well, I thought that too. I wonder how. I wonder what the noise from the motors is like if it's for video. But what I thought was really funny was the fact that it's got this wide intelli photo switch like on an old school camcorder. You can either control it from the lens or from dedicated custom buttons in camera. But it's an interesting choice. [01:03:40] Speaker B: It's. It's very odd. [01:03:43] Speaker A: It's obviously a big lens. I mean it's got a foot. [01:03:47] Speaker B: It's probably quite heavy to have the motor and stuff in there to drive all the units. [01:03:51] Speaker A: Yeah, I guess. I know Fujifilm does one I think one power zoom lens but it's a really cheapy kind of. It's. It's more for kind of entry level. Just want a simple zoom approach. [01:04:07] Speaker B: Well that's. That's the last time I've seen it like it as the powers like any kind of zoom that was not manual. [01:04:15] Speaker A: Yeah especially with that. That TW it just took I think my first Sony. Was it my Sony. One of my first Sony cyber shots. Digital cameras had a T and a W button because it was a built in lens. Yeah, it was one of those silver ones. They were kind of long and they took the long weird memory sticks, the Sony sticks. But yeah, I think this will be interesting. [01:04:40] Speaker B: Justin saying he's very tired and he has almost no Internet. [01:04:43] Speaker A: Oh yeah, we weep on holiday in bloody Vietnam. I feel so bad for you. [01:04:50] Speaker B: How hot is it there and how is. How's the humidity? [01:04:54] Speaker A: Yeah. Because according to the weather forecast, I looked it up this morning, it was 69 humidity. What does he said? Interesting that Nikon went all internal whereas Canon's new hybrid lenses take the optional power zoom thingy. [01:05:16] Speaker B: I think that would be a better. A better move. [01:05:19] Speaker A: Can you explain that to me? [01:05:22] Speaker B: So I think what he's saying, I haven't seen this but I'm assuming what it means is that you can add on like a power zoom motor that would then do your zooming in and out for you. But it's essentially like a manual lens otherwise. So you can zoom it in and out with your hand. I haven't seen it, but I'm assuming that that's what it is. What are you saying? [01:05:48] Speaker A: And I think we went over those last week. I think there's three lenses that are all the same size, the same build. Gosh, he's got a lot to say this morning. [01:05:56] Speaker B: Yeah, it's like he's on the show. [01:05:58] Speaker A: I know. Guessing that new lens has a lot to do with Nikon buying red. Yeah, you're probably right. Probably. [01:06:05] Speaker B: Yeah. We just need to see if they if it's the mount is for red or if it's for Z. [01:06:12] Speaker A: Let me just double check if it said this is only a development announcement so no hands on experience. Yeah, it's to further expand, I think believe it's to further expand their offerings in film and video. So cinema. And probably yes, it'll work with Nikon Zed, but probably also have the potential to have a red camera with the Z mount in the future. So we'll see. We'll watch this space. But 28 to 135 power zoom. You'd want it to be fairly quick, wouldn't you that motor to. [01:06:53] Speaker B: How would you though? [01:06:55] Speaker A: Well, I guess in cinema you don't necessarily. [01:06:58] Speaker B: But no, you probably want to be slow. Probably not like even my. My 35 to 150 it's. You can't sort of really zoom it really fast. It's quite a smooth zoom. It's quite good because you can use it cinematically. [01:07:13] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. [01:07:14] Speaker B: If you use a shooting video. [01:07:16] Speaker A: Yep. Yeah, it's an interesting kind of entry. Justin said the Canon's 24 to 105F 2.8 takes a zoom motor, but it's not built in, so it's a separate attachment. I didn't know they did that. Yeah, that's interesting. Well, that was most of the news I kind of had today. It's been a bit quiet. [01:07:43] Speaker B: Everyone's probably gearing up for black, you know, sales, Black Friday and stuff like that. [01:07:48] Speaker A: Yeah. When's that happening? That's. That's coming soon, isn't it? [01:07:51] Speaker B: End of the month. [01:07:52] Speaker A: I've started to see a few little. [01:07:54] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:07:54] Speaker A: Sites saying, get in early. Yeah. Black Friday sale start in March. I haven't looked at any of the sales yet, but I've started to see some indicators that's coming. Does Lucky Straps do a Black Friday sale? [01:08:06] Speaker B: Yeah, we definitely do. [01:08:08] Speaker A: Oh, stay tuned, viewers. [01:08:09] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't know when that's launching, but I'd say it'll be. Yeah, in a couple of weeks. [01:08:16] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, it's hard to know what the boss overseas completely shirking his responsibilities, leaving us in the dark, quite literally. [01:08:25] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:08:25] Speaker A: I'm using a candle because I can't afford to pay electricity. Yeah. Interesting. I have a little bit of photography news tonight. I'm going to a touch and Try event. I don't know if they call it that anymore. I should probably clarify that. [01:08:45] Speaker B: What are you touching? And trying. [01:08:47] Speaker A: What am I touching? It's at ted's in Melbourne. They have. They often have new camera release events where you can go and see them. And this one's with Fujifilm. No surprises there. [01:08:59] Speaker B: Is it a Fuji camera? [01:09:01] Speaker A: It is a Fuji camera. It's to. It's to part of the roadshow to show off the new Fujifilm XM5, which is surprisingly. And I reviewed it for ShotKit. It's a great little camera. It's tiny. It's like the size of my X70, which is here quite little. So that's the X70. I don't have the XM5 anymore. I had to send it back. So that's my X70. Compared to my hand, you can see it's tiny. Right. So the XM5 is about the same size. It's got the X processor 5. It's got a 26 megapixel sensor. But its focus performance is currently faster than any of the Fujifilm flagship X cameras. Because this is the newest camera. It's the same sensor as the flagship cameras, but they tweaked the firmware and the focus. Performance in this entry level camera is the best in the X series range at the moment. [01:10:00] Speaker B: And it's like a. It's a small sort of point and shoot. [01:10:04] Speaker A: Yes, well, it's interchangeable lens but so it takes all the X series lenses. [01:10:12] Speaker B: Must be like all lens and. [01:10:17] Speaker A: Yeah, it's tiny. It's actually. I might have a photo of it anyway. It's. I'll see if I can find a photo of it. X M5. So the XM series has always been an entry level series for Fujifilm where they've tried to sort of coerce people away from smartphones and into their first digital mirrorless camera. Which makes sense. It's a market that they want to get involved in. Let me just quickly bring this up. Present share. So here it is here. XM5. Very classic Fuji look. It doesn't have an EVF. It's tiny. Yeah. So there it is with Chris Nichols. That's with the 15 to 45 XC kit lens. So that's a really plastic. It's got a plastic lens mount and everything. It's. I wish they'd do away with it but.x processor, five 26 megapixel x trans 4 sensor. The rear screen's a little dull, but especially because there's no evf so it's hard to compose in bright light. But yeah, it's tiny. But because they're going to do a firmware update, I should explain further. They're going to do a firmware update with. It's got a film simulation dial too to appeal to filter people. [01:11:42] Speaker B: Cool little looking little camera. [01:11:44] Speaker A: Yeah. It's even got a separate mic port for the hot shoe. This is the thing I didn't like is that it's got to pop out the screen because it's. It's intended for sort of content creators. It's got good video, it's got a vlog mode. The screen flips out and rotates 180, which for me I don't like because it instantly doubles the footprint of the camera. [01:12:05] Speaker B: Yeah. And I found you'd rather just like a tilty screen rather than. [01:12:08] Speaker A: Rather a tilty screen. [01:12:09] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I'm with you. [01:12:13] Speaker A: So I shot this with a 27 millimeter pancake and the SN5 just standing next to the skate ramp. The focus and the tracking performance was so amazing. So that's. That was with face. I think that was with eye tracking. But it stuck with her even though she put her face down. But I Want to see if I've got. Yeah, there's another one. That was a fun afternoon, Sam. Oh, there I am. I just want to see if I've got the photo of it. There we go. [01:12:48] Speaker B: That's. [01:12:49] Speaker A: That's the XM5 on the new Fujifilm 500 mil f 5.6. Yeah, that's the camera. That little black thing at the end is the camera. There it is there. That's how little it is. But yeah, it's got the best autofocus performance because they're about to do a firmware update in the coming weeks that will bring all of the other flagship cameras up to speed. Oh, we've got a special guest, ladies and gentlemen. Let's bring him on in. Hey. [01:13:17] Speaker C: Yeah, I'm trying to make sure my things work. Can you hear me? [01:13:25] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I can hear you. Hear us? [01:13:29] Speaker C: Yes. [01:13:31] Speaker B: Cool. [01:13:32] Speaker C: Look, it's Vietnam. Why is this all backwards? Oh, that's hard to hold. [01:13:38] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:13:39] Speaker C: Anyway, look at this. [01:13:40] Speaker B: Wow. This is me. [01:13:43] Speaker A: What city are you in? [01:13:45] Speaker C: Ho Chi Minh. [01:13:49] Speaker B: How long are you there for? [01:13:51] Speaker C: We don't know. [01:13:53] Speaker B: Yeah, so do you over there. No plan. [01:13:56] Speaker C: No plan yet. We've got two nights booked in this terrible place. We got changed. We got. I look rested and cultured. We arrived at. I don't even know what time last night. The plane was late. And then they changed our. Where we were supposed to be staying. They were like, oh, there's a problem with the air conditioner, so we'll send you to this other building. And it was all just weird, you know, it's like. [01:14:24] Speaker B: Yeah, that old. [01:14:24] Speaker C: Very weird. That old stitch up. Exactly. Yeah, this is lovely place. But you can't stay there. We've got a different place for you. [01:14:31] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:14:32] Speaker C: And they're like, it's okay, it's a three bedroom. Well, we don't need a three bedroom. We want the place with a nice, nice room. Anyway, I'm here. The Internet, I don't think it's very good. Can you guys hear okay? [01:14:47] Speaker A: Yeah, no, it's good. [01:14:49] Speaker B: Pretty good. [01:14:49] Speaker A: Yeah, it's not bad. Okay, and so what plan? No plans at all. [01:14:59] Speaker C: No, we'll go somewhere like. So we're gonna do about half the time in Ho Chi Minh and half the time somewhere else. Probably mid midway up the country like Ho an or Hu. Like. Yeah, flying to Hoan or Hue or somewhere like that. Maybe get trained somewhere. That's. That's our loose plan at the moment. [01:15:18] Speaker B: Cool. [01:15:19] Speaker A: That's a cool adventure. [01:15:21] Speaker C: Yeah. Take some photos. That's the thing. [01:15:23] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:15:23] Speaker A: So did you just. What. What gear did you decide to pack in the end? [01:15:27] Speaker C: I took the Q3, the R5 Mark 2, the 50 mil 1.2. Which is so heavy. Yeah, so heavy. And the. What else did I take? I took the 50mil 1.8 as well. In case I want to walk around with a lighter lens. Yep, the 28 mil. [01:15:53] Speaker A: So you pack two of the same lenses, basically. In case you need a lighter one. [01:15:58] Speaker C: In case I wanted to. What I want to do is come away with a really good feeling for what the canon with the 28 is like versus the Leica with the 28. [01:16:08] Speaker A: Okay. [01:16:10] Speaker C: Yeah. I might even do a photo walk with both of them, which will be annoying. And shoot photos back to back and actually see. [01:16:19] Speaker A: Yep. [01:16:19] Speaker B: Yeah. What are you gonna do with the 250s? [01:16:23] Speaker C: I will just take, like. I'll only take one out at a time. So it's just if I want to head out and I don't want to carry the heavy thing, I think I'm going to buy that new Canon 1.4 50 and then have all the 50s. [01:16:36] Speaker A: You're going to buy it there in Vietnam and then have them all there at the same time? [01:16:39] Speaker C: No, it's not out yet, unfortunately. But if it was out, I would have. I would have bought it to bring it over here. I think it would be perfect. And then I would probably end up getting rid of the other two. I would imagine so. Interesting. [01:16:53] Speaker A: Get rid of the 1.2 only. [01:16:56] Speaker C: Only if the 1.4 is good enough. [01:16:58] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:16:58] Speaker C: So far reports are that. That it is pretty good. I didn't. It's always hard to know. The 1.2 is pretty special. [01:17:05] Speaker B: Yeah, they're awesome. [01:17:07] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. We're talking about the images you and Jim shot for the. The merch straps. Merch. That was. You both shot with a 51 too? Yeah. [01:17:17] Speaker C: I forgot to tell you, Greg, it's up. It's live, it's all. [01:17:20] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:17:20] Speaker C: So it's available for purchase. Oh, good job. [01:17:25] Speaker A: Yeah. We did a plug for you while you're away enjoying your holiday and. [01:17:29] Speaker B: And Greg could definitely tell which is with the inferior Canon images. [01:17:35] Speaker C: Interesting. [01:17:35] Speaker A: They're a bit soft. They were a bit soft. We've got a comment in the. In the. In the comments we've got from David Mascoro. Hey, David, I believe this is towards you. Do you use a guide there, Justin, in Vietnam? I assume so. [01:17:51] Speaker C: I haven't planned it at all, but I did actually think I might look into something what we would normally do rather than like a photography Guide or something like that. Or for a trip we would usually jump on smaller stuff like usually food tours. We'll try and find someone that runs a quality more kind of low. Like it's hard to find which tours, which food tours are good and which aren't. Sometimes you just gotta risk it and see what. How they go. But yeah, find someone that can show you around, but not necessarily from a photography perspective. And then I usually find my own stuff during those tours. But I did see when I was reading about photography in Vietnam, I did see someone recommend a photography tour and I did think maybe there is a guy that runs it a tour in. In Ho Chi Minh. And I thought I'll put it on my maybe list in case I'm looking for something to do. I haven't really done that before, so. [01:18:52] Speaker B: Pretty cool video. [01:18:54] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. I did bring my little video camera, so hopefully I'll make a video or two while I'm here. Yeah. [01:19:01] Speaker A: So with your phone you took four cameras. Yeah. [01:19:06] Speaker B: Your iPad as well. [01:19:08] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:19:09] Speaker A: That's five. [01:19:10] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:19:10] Speaker C: Because we flew Jetstar and everything's optional on Jetstar and I couldn't bring myself to pay for the entertainment. Pay the optional extra. [01:19:19] Speaker A: How long was your flight? [01:19:21] Speaker C: It was eight hours, but it was delayed by an hour. It was eight and a half hours and it was delayed by an hour sort of at the start and then, you know, then when we landed, there's no gate to pull into and all that sort of stuff. But then long customs lines, the usual. [01:19:38] Speaker B: Yeah, usual. [01:19:39] Speaker C: That, that was all sort of. Okay. It was the. When you're looking to check into a hotel at after midnight and they're like, oh no, not this one. And yeah, like Jim said, it's that it's a classic, classic scam. They just book places out and then just send you wherever. [01:19:58] Speaker B: Yeah. You were the last guy to check in, so they sent you down somewhere else. Yeah, they're full. [01:20:04] Speaker C: Yeah, Watch out. Watch out for that. Because it was through booking.com, who I book with all the time, but they've got a lot of listings that are basically Airbnbs now. And it's very hard to tell the difference between. This one had a lot of good reviews, but yeah, I don't know. Got to be. Got to be watching. [01:20:26] Speaker A: Yep. [01:20:26] Speaker C: Chat for those scammers. [01:20:29] Speaker B: David also said it is a good view. David said my daughter and I were going to visit Vietnam, but Covid came along. I heard the ways to see thing by train or motorcycle. [01:20:39] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. We wanted to do a motorcycle. A four day Motorcycle trip up north. But when we added everything up in our itinerary, takes so long to get around. Um, it was basically going to be to do the four, four day motorcycle trip. Was going to take our entire 10 days basically in transit to get up there and get back. Um, so we were like, no, I think we want a slower pace trip with a lot more walking around and looking around than that. But we do want to jump on a train and, and I ride scooters and stuff. So I'll probably rent a scooter. Once we get out of Ho Chi Minh into one of the smaller places like up around Hoi An, I think is, is pretty safe for me to scooter around. [01:21:22] Speaker A: And what, what about public transport options? Like you know, I don't know what Vietnam has. [01:21:28] Speaker C: I don't know either other than the trains. They've got the trains that run up the coast which are very popular like from, you know, north to south, et cetera and they sleeper trains and stuff and they're longer journeys. Yeah, but are you talking about around the city? [01:21:42] Speaker A: Like around cities like, you know, do be great if you could jump on the back of a motorbike with your camera. [01:21:48] Speaker C: Well, this is the thing. You can, you can. And also, sorry, I bought one more lens. I forgot to say I actually brought specifically the 24-105 F4 Canon lens for two reasons. One, because of what you said, we might end up on motorbikes and I might jump on the back of a motorbike for a food tour or something and I want to just be able to shoot while I'm going. And I thought that would be a very, a very easy way to be able to take a lot of photos from the back of the bike having that variety. And also after we had on. Who was that great street photographer from the other week from, from Australia? [01:22:29] Speaker A: John. [01:22:31] Speaker C: Is it John. John street, that's right. [01:22:33] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [01:22:33] Speaker C: How do I forget that name of street photography? Yeah. When he talked about just walking around with like a super zoom lens and his photos look great and I was like, okay, maybe I need to give that a try one day. But I think, I think primes are my thing. But I'm going to give it a go. He inspired me. [01:22:49] Speaker A: Very cool. And so what time is it there now? It's quite early, isn't it? 6:00am 6:00am and is it hot already? [01:22:59] Speaker C: Look, it's hot where I'm standing because I'm on the balcony. I wanted to show you guys the view but there's 1, 2, 3, 4 split systems. Absolutely. Just pumping hot air at me. So I don't really know how hot it is out there, but it feels hot where I am. You see the sweat? [01:23:21] Speaker A: I can. [01:23:22] Speaker B: You're liking a hot box. [01:23:24] Speaker A: We appreciate your sacrifice. [01:23:27] Speaker C: Wow. The view was good in our apartment. [01:23:30] Speaker A: Yep. And so can you show us the view? [01:23:34] Speaker C: Yeah, I want to drop this camera over the edge, but, yeah, so. [01:23:40] Speaker A: Oh, nice. [01:23:41] Speaker C: It's like maybe a school or something. I don't know. You guys can see. [01:23:47] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Yeah. It looks like a school building, doesn't it? [01:23:50] Speaker C: Yeah, it looks like a school building. And then. Yeah, it's actually. It's a really nice view. [01:23:56] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:23:57] Speaker C: And I think there's a river on the other side of this because the other. Yeah, behind this building, because the other place we booked had a river view, so it's around here somewhere. [01:24:10] Speaker A: Or maybe the river was a scam, too. [01:24:13] Speaker C: It might have been. [01:24:16] Speaker B: AI photos. [01:24:17] Speaker A: Yeah. AI Rivers. [01:24:22] Speaker C: Very cool. So did you. Did you guys get my. You looked at my submission for this week's photo challenge? [01:24:30] Speaker A: We did, yeah. [01:24:31] Speaker C: Okay. [01:24:32] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:24:33] Speaker C: Oh, good. Because I just. I need to make sure that I'm done. [01:24:35] Speaker A: That. [01:24:36] Speaker C: That's week two in the books, and. [01:24:37] Speaker A: I think you've done well. We did talk about how image 11 and 12 were similar, but I did mention how you had to replace image 11. [01:24:46] Speaker C: Yeah. And image 11, the original image 11 was. Was the one that made the whole series, unfortunately. [01:24:53] Speaker A: Yep. [01:24:53] Speaker C: So fair enough. Sound sounds like I've pulled the same scam that my hotel place did. [01:25:00] Speaker A: Yep. [01:25:01] Speaker C: I just had to switch it out last minute, and it's not as good. [01:25:06] Speaker B: Different favorite photos. [01:25:07] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:25:08] Speaker C: Did you. [01:25:09] Speaker A: Yep. [01:25:11] Speaker C: Interesting. [01:25:12] Speaker A: Oh, hello. Oh, the dog in the room, all of a sudden, how she got in. So my favorite was of your nephew with the water up to. [01:25:22] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:25:22] Speaker A: Here. And there's a very thin focal plane. [01:25:25] Speaker C: Yeah, that's the 51.2. 1.2. That'll do it. [01:25:28] Speaker A: Yeah. Oh, we wanted to know, were you in the pool with the camera or were you on the edge? [01:25:32] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, yeah. My dad. My dad's going, so that that camera is waterproof. Is it? And I was like, not really. Splash proof A little. [01:25:43] Speaker B: I did say to Greg, I was like, he's in the pool. I know. I know Justin, and I know that he's in the pool. Jim knows Justin started making a bit of a name for himself. When we photograph weddings. If there was water, he had to be photographed from inside it, regardless of if it was worthwhile or not. So we would always be shoes off. Or. [01:26:04] Speaker C: Yeah, look, it was partially about trying to get a good photo, a different photo, but it was a. There was. It became a little bit of an element of, like, showmanship, of, you know. [01:26:15] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:26:16] Speaker C: Shoes off, go the extra mile. You get in the water, you get the camera low down to the water and get a cool shot that someone else might not get. [01:26:23] Speaker B: And then that's also usually pretty hot, too. [01:26:26] Speaker C: That. Yeah, exactly. But that did eventuate into, like, Jim getting in swimming pools with the bride and groom. I got into a dam with the bride and groom. [01:26:36] Speaker A: Wow. [01:26:37] Speaker C: Yeah, it escalated. [01:26:41] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:26:43] Speaker A: Nice. But no, we thought. We both found that it kind of invoked memories for us, too. The story of, you know, those sort of hot days where you're excited to be going to the pool, whether it be family or friends or local pool or whatever, and your parents, you know, putting sun cream on and then even as a dad, doing it to my kids. And there's. There was all these sort of sensations around that. The smell of sun cream and the idea of just wanting to get in the water and. [01:27:15] Speaker C: Yeah, I think. I think they're the bits that often get missed, and I miss them. Those. Those shots that, you know, even if you're just taking some family shots at an event like that or that wasn't an event, it was just a swim. But they're the shots that, you know, you probably wouldn't normally take, I think. Yeah. And that. That's what I'm trying to make sure that I incorporate into this challenge. [01:27:41] Speaker B: Yeah, I think, as well, you know, those in between photos, like, for me, the. The photo of Nash getting some sunscreen on, you know, that's every kid ever has had, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [01:27:59] Speaker C: It is just, like, grumpy. [01:28:02] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Do I have to do this? [01:28:04] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. But looking at it, you almost, you know, close your mouth tight in anticipation of not getting sun cream in your mouth. You know, it's. That there's something really. Yeah. There's lots of memories attached to that. [01:28:17] Speaker C: We've all been there. [01:28:19] Speaker A: We have all been there. Aussie kids, for those of you that are listening, outside of Australia, did your parents smear sunscreen all over you? David's also dropped in a comment. My dad and brother serve there. Chu Lai and Danang Da Nang. I wanted to see where they served. Both are gone now. [01:28:44] Speaker C: You haven't visited yet, David? [01:28:47] Speaker A: They were going to visit, but Covid came along. [01:28:49] Speaker C: Oh, that's right. That's right. [01:28:50] Speaker A: Yeah. So it's early hope. Yeah. [01:28:53] Speaker C: Make the trip, David. I mean, my first 12 hours have been wonderful, but I think it's going to be scared. Well, I mean, I put it. It's borderline scared. It's not, you know, like, we've got a place to stay. [01:29:06] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:29:07] Speaker B: Did you get pet scanned by the taxi drivers? [01:29:09] Speaker C: No, we use Grab, which is basically the, you know, a different brand of Uber. [01:29:15] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [01:29:16] Speaker C: And it was great. [01:29:19] Speaker B: Very good. Very good. [01:29:21] Speaker C: Yeah, we're excited. Hopefully next week I'll have some more photos. Some better photos, maybe. Not better. Different. [01:29:28] Speaker A: Yep. No. I'll explain what your challenge was at the start of today's podcast and talk about how you have been lost creatively for so long that you. New project. [01:29:45] Speaker C: Wandering in a desert. Yeah. Of. No. Of bad photos. [01:29:50] Speaker A: Bad photos. But I think it's a good challenge. I think. And I think your first set of photos are great. I think they really told a story and took us there too, because I think, because we've, you know, we've all experienced that kind of scenario for the most part in some form or another. So I think it's good. I think you hit the mark. [01:30:11] Speaker C: Thanks. Solid C plus effort. [01:30:14] Speaker A: I wouldn't go that far. Oh, there was some compositional issues and some exposure problems, but the story's great. [01:30:26] Speaker C: It's so hard shooting level photos when you know you can't touch them. Like horizon level photos. [01:30:33] Speaker B: There was one photo that bugged me and then I was like, oh, yeah. [01:30:36] Speaker C: You can't crop it, can't touch it, can't do anything. [01:30:40] Speaker B: The one of jumping into the pool, I'm like, it's so wonky. And I wouldn't. I'm like, normally Justin is really good at. [01:30:47] Speaker C: Yeah. I'm telling you people, it'll open your eyes, shoot straight out of camera for a while and you'll. You'll realize you kind of suck at photography. All the things that you notice in. When you're editing, you notice when you look at the JPEGs and you're like, I can't. [01:31:04] Speaker A: I can't change it to anything. [01:31:06] Speaker B: Yes. [01:31:07] Speaker A: I went on a photo walk last week with a fellow Fujifilm street shooter And I said us the challenge of black and white JPEGs. [01:31:18] Speaker C: And I saw that photo you posted. [01:31:21] Speaker A: Oh, the lady getting ready for the Cup. Yeah, the station. [01:31:25] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:31:25] Speaker A: Because it's Melbourne cup week. Well, it's the spring racing carnival week this week and we just had Melbourne cup on Tuesday. For those of you not from Melbourne, it's a Melbourne only public holiday in Australia and Victoria. But you guys in Bendigo, you have your own Cup Day, don't you? [01:31:39] Speaker B: We have Bendigo Cup. [01:31:41] Speaker A: Very. Is that a public holiday? [01:31:43] Speaker B: Yeah, it is, yeah. You get the Wednesday off if. If you have a job. They made it Wednesday. [01:31:49] Speaker C: They made. Yeah, for normal people. For normies, they made it Wednesday because then they were like, they won't take the day before or the day after to make it a long weekend. Yeah, that was. That was literally the strategy. [01:32:01] Speaker A: Yeah, that makes sense. But, yeah, lots of people strutting around the city this week of Melbourne in their power suits and their frocks. Quite an interesting observation as a street photographer, to see this sort of. It's almost like a migration of people that are not normally from Melbourne, don't normally dress like that, don't normally appear in those places that all of a sudden show up and fill the city and. And they're quite. I think, because there's an energy around cup, the cup festival, the carnival for them, that they. They stand out. Their behavior is so different compared to the normies, as you say, that are going about their days. [01:32:41] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:32:42] Speaker A: So it makes for an interesting juxtaposition when you're taking street shots to see these people all in glamour, you know, at the start of the day, that doesn't always end up that way. [01:32:53] Speaker C: But you didn't do a photo walk at like, when the trains were coming home from the Cup. [01:32:58] Speaker A: No, I thought about it. I thought about it, but I was done. I was already done. I've got one I don't know if I got onto. Yeah. So I'm doing the XM5 photo walk with Fujifilm and Ted's cameras this afternoon or tonight. [01:33:10] Speaker C: Yeah, I do, actually. I want to hear more about that. I better go, though, because I do. I'm mindful that I've probably burnt through my entire SIM card that I bought streaming this because the WI fi was definitely not enough to stream. So I better go and hopefully save some of that. But I want to hear about that XM5 and see if it's going to be like, is that a new Greg kind of camera? Because I heard before I jumped on that the autofocus is epic. So is it going to be a new little street camera for you, Greg? That's what I want to hear. [01:33:38] Speaker A: It's tempting, but I'll let you go and we'll talk about a little bit more before we wrap up. [01:33:42] Speaker C: Okie dokie. All right, catch you. [01:33:45] Speaker A: Take care. Be safe. [01:33:47] Speaker C: Thanks. [01:33:47] Speaker A: See you, Justin. There you go, folks. That was Justin live from Vietnam. It's about six in the morning and it's probably hot, definitely humid. [01:33:59] Speaker B: Very hot on that balcony by the look of us. [01:34:01] Speaker A: Yeah, he was very red and sweaty shiny by the end, wasn't he? So the Fujifilm XM5 for street photography. Look, I don't need lightning fast autofocus for street photography. It's. I mean it's nice to have good, good focus performance. It doesn't need to be lightning fast for me anyway. The only time I kind of miss it is if there's people are moving or bikes are moving through a scene and I want to catch someone on a bike. I always struggle with that. But the XM5 is the perfect size for a street photography camera. For me it doesn't have an EVF. That doesn't bother me because my X70 to have here doesn't have an EVF. It's just got a screen but the screen just naturally tilts up. [01:34:57] Speaker B: Yeah, you can see. [01:34:58] Speaker A: So when I'm shooting for. And it also tilts down 45 if you can see that. So when I'm shooting street, I'm usually holding it at just sort of a tummy height or at hip height looking down at the LCG that's facing up. Sometimes I won't even have the LCD out and I'll just basically point and shoot and hope for the best depending on the situation. The XM5 is great. I love that it's small, I love that it's got a great image sensor. It's got an excellent processor. It does have all the fancy tracking and focus performance of a flagship Fujifilm camera because it's got the latest processor in it. The rear touch screen. The rear screen is dull so it's only just on a thousand, a million dots. Sorry, it's. Yeah, it's only just on a million dot screen and in bright light it's terrible. I couldn't see anything going on on the screen. So composing cleaner shots was really challenging. I almost had to create, you know, my own shadows just to see the screen and. And as a result I wasn't focusing on the compositions and you know, it was changing the way that I had to shoot and because the. I think I showed you guys in the photo earlier because the screen, because it's got this sort of, it's. It's targeting younger influencers, type photographers and because it's got that screen which I'll just show you again. Fujifilm XM5 review. So as you can see it's got this, this flip out screen which is great and it's handy for different angled shooting. But as A street photographer. I found it just made the camera feel twice as big because as you. [01:36:40] Speaker B: Can see, almost doubles the footprint. [01:36:41] Speaker A: Well yeah, because the screen takes up, you know, almost all of it. [01:36:47] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:36:47] Speaker A: 80% of it's such a small camera that's a three inch screen. So it's really only like a four and a half inch camera. If that once you flip it out like that all of a sudden. [01:37:00] Speaker B: You'Re. [01:37:00] Speaker A: A different looking photographer and street. I like to be discreet. I like to be calm and in the moment and I don't need my gear to be flashy or showing off that I'm actually taking photos because I like to capture candid stuff mostly kind of. [01:37:15] Speaker B: It takes it away from being almost just your hand as well. Yeah, you know it would. [01:37:21] Speaker A: Yep. Yeah. And shooting from the hip is awkward because I like to change my aperture on the go. So my left hand is usually. That's not the lens I would shoot straight with but say with a 27 millimeter pancake I'll have my left hand on the aperture ring. And having the screen out like that just so I can see a composition, especially if I'm shooting low, it's really annoying. It just gets in the way. So that's the downside of it. If it was a flip up, flip down screen like if they did like this one which was the, like one of the oldest Fuji cameras, they made the screen flip up 180 degrees so you can do selfie mode. Yeah, I wish they'd done that with this rather than the, the twist out screen. However, the reason why they did that is if you have a look at this photo you'll see that there's these two mounts here. So these two mounts are actually for the Fujifilm. It's like a fan unit that you bolt that mounts to the back of the XH2. The XH2s. So these are flagship videography cameras from Fujifilm. And now this little XM5 you can actually add the cooling fan for long form video recording. Which I think is amazing that given that this entry level camera that's for younger, you know, budget friendly influencer types is actually. Not only does it currently have flagship better than flagship level autofocus, but it can actually take a flagship intended accessory to optimize. Optimize what you can do with videography. [01:38:56] Speaker B: That's interesting. [01:38:57] Speaker A: Which I think is really impressive because the other thing it had was where was that image of it? Sorry everyone. So it's got the film simulation dial but on the right it's got Your pretty standard PASM dial, but it's also got the vlog and video modes on there ready to quickly flick it into video mode and start recording your vlogs. It's got directional audio recording so you can set it to focus on who the camera's pointed at or only or focused on the holder of the camera. Or you can choose sort of like a 360 degree audio capture for it, which is pretty impressive for such a little camera. Look, I liked it. I liked it for its size. I don't know that it would be very usable as a street photography camera for the reasons I've listed. There's no reason why you couldn't. Any camera can be a street camera. You know, any camera can do anything if you just point it and shoot it. But in terms of practical application, it's a little fiddly. And I'm not a fan of PASM dials. I'd rather have a shutter speed dial there like all the other Fuji cameras. So, yeah, to answer Justin's question, it would be good for street, as any camera would, but it has some complicated elements to it that make it a bit less meaningful. Yeah, it's a big. Yeah, you're right, clunky. Yeah. The other camera I was looking at getting was the Ricoh GR3. So Ricoh Pentax or Ricoh Imaging make the GR models. They always have, even since the film days. And the GR3, there's now a GR3X, a GR3 HDF which has a different filtering system in the glass and Ricoh GRX hdf. And then they've got all these other street urban diary editions. There's so many editions of that camera, but it's so hard to get one in Australia. Like they came into stock. I think we talked about it last week or the week before they came to stock and people said, yeah, they're in camera stores. And by the time I looked that afternoon, all the camera stores I usually look at had sold out and stock is now like Christmas Eve. And Fujifilm are having a similar issue with a lot of their gear that. [01:41:31] Speaker B: They can't, can't produce enough stock. [01:41:33] Speaker A: Yeah, they can't meet demand. The X100, that happened and it's happened again with the X106. You know, it's proved to be one of the most popular cameras and despite its $3,000 price tag, it's perpetually out of stock in a lot of places. Some places are starting to get it in, but that camera launched, you know, months and months and months ago and the demand's been so high, which is great, you know, and they're handy little cameras. It's. Especially if you're traveling or something like that. No, you know, if you, if you're the sort of person that likes to take four to five cameras and multiple copies of basically the same lens, then, you know, then go for it. How does he get all of that stuff on? Carry On? It's Jetstar. [01:42:19] Speaker B: Maybe he just took one pair of shorts and then maybe he did camera gear. [01:42:23] Speaker A: Maybe because they, they weigh. They make you put it into the cage and they weigh it at Jetstar. [01:42:29] Speaker B: If you just do it. I don't. You just pack your pockets with all of that stuff, run the camera around your neck, put four. [01:42:35] Speaker A: Four T shirts on, three jumpers, two jackets. [01:42:38] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. All my heavy accessories I pack on me in case I get asked. [01:42:43] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:42:44] Speaker B: I'll put it back in my bag. [01:42:45] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a good idea. I'm sure lots of people do that, but. Yeah, that's what's happening with, with Fujifilm at the moment. Any gear acquisitions on your horizon that you're interested in? [01:42:59] Speaker B: Not at the moment, no. Just. [01:43:02] Speaker A: So you're happy with Nick on then? [01:43:04] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I'm happy. It's all working, doing what it's supposed to do. Well, it's not doing much at the moment, but, yeah, previous to that it was doing. Doing really well. I'll probably get some new cards, just things like that. I do wanna eventually get rid of all my F mount lenses. [01:43:24] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:43:25] Speaker B: When, when there's a decent, like Z equivalent. [01:43:28] Speaker A: Yep. [01:43:29] Speaker B: But yeah, there's a couple lenses that aren't. Aren't up to scratch for what I want yet, so. [01:43:35] Speaker A: Yep. That's good that you've got choice. [01:43:38] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And like, they do work really well, but the Z mounts are like far superior. [01:43:45] Speaker A: Yeah. And so you've got, you've got F mount lenses from when you were shooting your D850s and. [01:43:52] Speaker B: Yes, yeah, yeah. [01:43:53] Speaker A: Your DSLRs. Yeah. [01:43:56] Speaker B: And a couple. Yeah. Lenses that are not ready to let go of yet. So. [01:44:00] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Nice. What? [01:44:05] Speaker B: Sorry, I was gonna say there's a couple questions from David. He said. [01:44:08] Speaker A: Yes. [01:44:08] Speaker B: Have you guys tried the Zeta for straight? [01:44:11] Speaker A: Not yet. [01:44:12] Speaker B: And yeah, no, I haven't actually shot with the zf. Be keen to try it. [01:44:16] Speaker A: Yeah. A friend of mine, Curtis, he, he. He does a lot of motorsport photography, but he got one and he found he just can't put it down. He loves it. So I'd be keen to give it a shot. [01:44:31] Speaker B: Might Sway you away from the, the dark side? [01:44:34] Speaker A: Hey maybe. No, I think, I think I'll always shoot feature film. I need the small. I mean even even though it's a smaller camera the ZF is still a brick, you know it's still a full frame camera. What else has David had to say? I think he's had issues with the ZF screen agree say with the zmf. This, this is an earlier comment, sorry guys. And the final one that just dropped in was the hit rate is off the hook so that's good. [01:45:08] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah the Z Z series is a good camera so yeah. [01:45:12] Speaker A: Yep. Yeah they're fast aren't they? So that's. Yeah, I, I don't. I did look at the Ricoh grs. Aside from the stock, you know it's still a big chunk of money to invest for me anyway I've got two perfectly good cameras that I love and have no intention to upgrade this stage. Of course if Fujifilm Australia are listening I'm always welcome, all you guys are always welcome to send me stuff. I'll never knock it back but other than that I don't. I've got a couple of lenses I'm going to sell the lenses I got sent for review. They're manual focus X mount lenses made by Typoc. They're kind of a bit like Leicas but I don't really have anything else that I want to acquire or for my camera system. If anyone at home or anyone watching along, listening along is currently thinking about, you know we're coming up to Christmas. Maybe you deserve a little. Maybe you have been on the nice list. Maybe you deserve a little treat. Maybe you like to buy yourself a little photography treat every year at this time. Let us know in the comments what what's in what's on your radar at the moment for new gear acquisition? Is it necessary or is it pure gas and FOMO driving that that desire? But yeah, we'd look forward to seeing what you guys have to say about your Christmas wish list but on that note I think we might wrap it up Jim, what do you say? [01:46:42] Speaker B: Yeah, let's do it. [01:46:43] Speaker A: Yeah. So good to have you back Jim. We've missed you on the show. We've made plenty of jokes that you're absent expense but it is good. Good to see you back. Will we see you next week? [01:46:58] Speaker B: I think I'm away next week I think I've got an appointment in the morning so. [01:47:01] Speaker A: Okay, I'll have to find another co host because I we have on the show Dennis Smith, who is a light painting artist and photographer who is incredibly enthusiastic, probably too much for me to handle on my own. So I'll have to track down a bit of a co host. [01:47:21] Speaker B: He's next week, a bit later. [01:47:23] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. And Justin might be in a better Internet spot by then. So we've got Dennis next week and we haven't made any plans yet as we move towards Christmas, whether we'll stop for a couple of weeks and have a break or. I mentioned it to Justin last week. He said you get three days off, that's it. So we'll see what, we'll see what actually happens. I know, I know. [01:47:50] Speaker B: Generous. [01:47:51] Speaker A: He must be feeling generous. Not like him. He doesn't have a generous spirit. But you guys have been listening and watching the Camera Life podcast. This is episode 37. It's the 7th of November. Coming to you from Victoria, Australia. I'm in South Yarra, Jim's in Bendigo. And look, if you're, if you're watching along for the first time, please make sure you hit the like and subscribe button and hit the bell so you get notified. We stream every Thursday morning. However, we are looking at adding some impromptu streams in the not too distant future. And often Justin drops some of his daily challenge videos on the channel, so keep an eye out for those. If you hit the notification button, then obviously you'll get either forewarning or you'll get notification once a new video drops. And if you want to catch up, please check out our back catalog. It's available on YouTube and also on audio podcast channels. So you can pretend to work and listen to us at the same time. But on that note, thank you for joining, Jim. [01:48:55] Speaker B: Yeah, thank you. Thanks for having me. [01:48:57] Speaker A: Good to see you again and rest up. I hope you, hope you recover fast. And for those watching along and reading and listening along, get out and shoot this weekend. Just pick a street, go for a walk, take your camera somewhere, take it somewhere. And. Oh, David's just dropped very quickly. Just stumbled on. You guys subscribed? Yes, David, fourth subscriber. Thank you. [01:49:25] Speaker B: We back next week. [01:49:27] Speaker A: We will be back next week and every week after that apparently. But yeah, look, thanks for joining and everyone have a great week and weekend ahead. Stay safe. And for our friends in the United States, I'm really sorry but we'll leave it on that note and we'll, we'll see you next week. All right, Two days for now. [01:49:49] Speaker B: Bye everyone. [01:49:50] Speaker A: You could make. [01:49:51] Speaker B: We also don't, we don't have any outro music because Justin's not here, so you just have to maybe. [01:49:54] Speaker A: You said you were going to sing. [01:49:56] Speaker B: Oh, we can dance. [01:49:57] Speaker A: We'll just dance. We'll just pretend. That's worse than singing. All right, we'll see you guys later. Signing off for now. Bye.