EP46 Astrophotography Secrets with Richard Tatti of Nightscape Images

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. [00:00:08] Speaker B: Good morning, Good morning, and welcome to the Camera Life podcast, brought to you by lucky straps from Bendigo, Victoria. If you're watching along at home or in the car, if you're listening along, it's the 23rd of January already. How did that happen? The time has flown already. It's already. It's nearly Australia Day here in Australia. Might be a contentious issue to bring up, but yeah, we're. January is marching on. And you are joining us for yet another live episode of the Camera Live podcast. This is episode 46. If you're watching along for the first time, welcome. Feel free to add comments, ask questions, interact with one another in the chat. We love that sort of stuff. Make sure you like and subscribe this particular video, but when you do subscribe to our channel, make sure you tickle the bell icon so you get notifications. Because we do a live show every week and we're looking at introducing some additional shows coming very soon. I think our first additional show will be next week. A short one, but we'll still be there. But enough preamble. I'd like to welcome our girl, firstly. Good morning, Justin. [00:01:18] Speaker A: Good morning. Good morning, Greg. [00:01:20] Speaker B: How are you, sir? [00:01:21] Speaker A: I'm wonderful. I'm wonderful and I'm excited. [00:01:26] Speaker B: Sir. And we're joined today by very special guest and alumni of the Camera Life podcast, Richard Tatty. Richard, welcome. [00:01:36] Speaker C: Yes, hello. Welcome to you guys as well. Good to be back. [00:01:40] Speaker B: Yeah, it's great to have you on the show. It's nice to meet you for the first time. I wasn't on the show when you first appeared, which Justin says was around episode 13. [00:01:50] Speaker A: It was. Was kind of 20, 23. [00:01:54] Speaker B: There you go. That was the Gen 1 series of the Camera Life. We're now in Gen 2, obviously the more superior version before Greg. Now we're ag. [00:02:04] Speaker A: Before we get an official. Who is. Who is Richard? I think this comment probably sums it up pretty well. From Raphael Perouli. Where are you from, Raphael? Richard, the best night photographer in the world. I admire you a lot and I always follow you. [00:02:21] Speaker B: You know what? You know what I admire? [00:02:23] Speaker A: Stick with it. Yeah. [00:02:24] Speaker B: Where are you going? [00:02:24] Speaker A: Don't go anywhere. [00:02:26] Speaker B: But I always admire our guests. Our guests ability to pay bribe, convince friends to write in. [00:02:35] Speaker A: This is. It's Richard's other YouTube account that he set up on his own shows. Where are you from, Raphael? Do you. Do you. Is that a familiar name to you, Richard? You've seen him in the comments or at a workshop or anything like that? [00:02:50] Speaker C: Or not at a workshop. He's overseas somewhere. I think in the Greater European district somewhere. Or could be South America, but I'm not sure. [00:03:00] Speaker B: Greater European, well, greater years. [00:03:03] Speaker C: You know, it could be anywhere from, from Russia to Spain or it could be, it could be. My YouTube channel is. It goes far and wide. [00:03:11] Speaker B: It does. [00:03:12] Speaker A: Speaking of which, you're so you're over 80,000 subscribers now on your Nightscape Images YouTube channel. If, if you're listening and you haven't seen that before, it's, it's a treasure trove of astrophotography information and adventures and just good content. So head over there after the show, not now, and, and just like dive through the videos. There's so much. There's a video about basically anything you can imagine to do with night photography. So, yeah, more comments rolling in, going crazy. Dave Digifrog from Tasmania says just getting in before Jelena. [00:03:51] Speaker B: And then Yelena is going to have questions for who Jelena. [00:03:56] Speaker A: Yelena says, good morning. Evening. Afternoon, everybody. [00:04:01] Speaker B: Morning, kiddo. [00:04:02] Speaker A: From Luke Ralph, the most humble photographer and friend I've ever met. I assume he's talking about me, but no, that might be directed at Richard also. [00:04:10] Speaker B: You're not humble. [00:04:12] Speaker C: He's a good man. Luke is a good man. A local Victorian. Central Victorian from over near Ararat. [00:04:20] Speaker A: Oh, cool. Yeah, that's a good. That's a, that's an astrophotography kind of area. There's lots over that way. [00:04:27] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. Grampians. [00:04:28] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, Grampians. And it's a great spot. Another one. [00:04:32] Speaker B: Oh, more friends. [00:04:34] Speaker A: Paul Haworth, Nightscape Journals. Richard's an absolute legend. Just the nicest and most encouraging guy in astrophotography. [00:04:42] Speaker B: I'd go away, Richard. [00:04:44] Speaker C: Beyond astrophotography, Paul's a very lovely Englishman. He's from, from the uk. [00:04:50] Speaker A: Oh, cool. [00:04:51] Speaker B: We're also part of the greater European area. [00:04:53] Speaker C: Yeah, well. [00:04:55] Speaker A: And it says Raphael is from Italy, which is very cool. I think that's our first Italian commenter. That's very, very cool. Great, great little profile pic there too. [00:05:07] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:05:07] Speaker A: Raphael. Good lighting. I love it. [00:05:09] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:05:11] Speaker A: And finally, Editor Seb. Morning, lads. Morning, Editor Seb. [00:05:15] Speaker B: Could I make a little announcement about Editor Seb? [00:05:17] Speaker A: Yeah, sure. [00:05:18] Speaker B: Editor Seb is. He's actually my son, my eldest son. And Editor Seb is the newest member of the Camera Life podcast team. He's going to be helping us out with some behind the scenes work. So. Good morning, Seb. He's in Geelong at the moment. [00:05:34] Speaker A: Yeah, he's going to be doing some clips. Clips for us. So Richard, if you say Anything awesome afterwards, just say, clip that, Sebastian and. [00:05:40] Speaker C: Oh, okay, so a few sound bites and grabs, is it? [00:05:44] Speaker A: That's right, yeah. So anything you. Anything you can say, anything contentious you want to talk about Trump or whatever, go for it. Clip it. [00:05:51] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:05:52] Speaker B: Or montage it into something that you didn't actually say. Context is relevant. [00:05:56] Speaker A: Yolanda says, richard, how much are you paying these people? Winky Face apologized. Yeah, they're all bots. [00:06:06] Speaker B: Everyone's getting a free workshop. [00:06:09] Speaker A: All right, let's. [00:06:10] Speaker B: And Digifrog said, hell. Sorry. Yelena. [00:06:13] Speaker A: Yeah, she gets. She gets all of it. She gets Jelena. Yeah, Yolanda, she's. She's used to it. [00:06:21] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:06:23] Speaker A: Cool. So should we give. For the. I mean, look, I'm guessing most of the people listening already know who Richard is, but let's. Let's get a little rundown just in case. [00:06:32] Speaker B: Yeah. Richard, in a nutshell. [00:06:35] Speaker A: Yeah. Sorry, who are you and what do you do? [00:06:40] Speaker C: Well, I'm just an average bloke, Aussie bloke, who has always had an interest in photography and videography, but probably from my earliest years that I can remember. And my mum was a very keen photographer, but she had no idea what she was doing and didn't, you know, always had like a little Instamatic or a box Brownie or something that she was carrying around with her. So I was probably modelled photography at a young age, but as with most children, that you don't think much about it. You just see and observe. But even from a very young age, I always had a great fascination with the. The stars in the night sky. And I would suggest that even though I had an interest in photography and I guess very amateur astronomy from those very early days, the two didn't really connect until. Or I should say the. The. The ability to take the images that I could actually see in my mind's eye didn't happen until probably, you know, after about 2010. So the technology had to catch up. The ability to take the images that I could see in my mind and even imagine. And to be honest with you, that probably connects with what I do today, because the photography that I like to take is probably a combination of what's real, what is actually there and what I can see in my mind's eye and then working out how to make it look like that. Now, that's not. I'm not talking about AI, I'm not talking about photoshopping everything. I'm just talking about how to be able to take the image that I know I can see in my Mind's eye. But my eyes can't physically actually see because it's too dark out there or the sky's not bright enough or something which is where all the gear and the tech and all the other stuff comes into it. But I started photography as a, as a hobby, I guess just as a kid. I had a. I remember my first SLR camera film camera was a Fuji Fujifilm like a lot of people had back in those days. A lot of people? Yeah, a lot of people. And you know, no autofocus, nothing. Just basically a range finder style of focus focusing. But it teaches you a lot, those sorts of cameras about the, the basics of photography, especially using film because you, you can waste a lot of time and money on film that and it doesn't come out, as we all know. And I started doing photography in, in a paid way if you like, just on weekends. Besides, it was just in the spare parts industry as a, as a job. I didn't have a profession in photography or profession at university degree. I've never been taught anything formally but. And I used to do weekend jobs. I, I even did, you'll laugh at this. Just. I even did a few weddings. Completely untrained. I had no idea what I was doing on film anyway. On film, yes, I did a couple on film back in the day. I did a lot of video of weddings which is where we met originally. And you know, you know, I may have mentioned this story before, but I used to shoot wedding videos editing in camera. So I didn't do any post production on them at all. I just filmed what I needed to film. Put a very crude little title in camera, you know, as you used to be able to do back. I'm talking about the 90s here. So using these little tape. Tape cameras, high eights or something, whatever it was. And the funny thing about that was, and these are paid jobs people were paying me to do. This is back in the day when wedding videos were not a thing, it was just something. Oh gee, if someone can film something at my wedding I'll be very happy. But yeah, and you didn't put music in because that, that required post production so. Or the only music you had was what was being played live at the event. And there was no copyright to worry about back then either. So you know, the funny thing was I would often sit in the very front row of the church next to the bride's parents or the groom's parents because I had to get the best angle and I had to get some audio. No, no radio mics back in those days. So here's me sitting in the front row. Can you imagine this with complete strangers who were the bride's parents who were paying for the whole gig with a camera and a tripod sitting there. It's laughable now. But you know what it taught me very quickly was that there are some very important people at weddings. Justin, you know this well and that is the parents of the groom and the bride, if you're getting well with them, you can do anything at a wedding. And I quickly learned, and I say this with all due respect, I sweet talked them, I was very polite and kind and, and they said, come and sit next to us, this is the best seat in the house. And I did. And I used to film. But anyway that's one of the things I used to do a lot. And so the video and the photography sort of went hand in hand for me for many, many years. Probably made, did more professional work as a videographer back in those days because that's what was my point of difference. I knew a lot of photographers and they were all doing the same thing and I thought, oh, I'll try something a bit different which was where the video came in. And so eventually that evolved into events and all sorts of other things and photography sort of followed along. I did photograph quite a lot of weddings, but it wasn't really my thing that I really wanted to do. But I did it because people wanted me to do it. But I didn't jump into it like you, Justin and Jim and others did because I didn't want to really. [00:12:55] Speaker A: Um, if I remember correctly too, your video gear, I'm trying to think, but you, your video gear was more video oriented so you, you would have had to have different equipment for photo and video. Is that right? So if you, if you took photos at a wedding you would use a different camera than if you were filming the wedding because you. Yeah, from, from my memory used to use a lot of more dedicated video style. Oh equipment rather than, you know, using a DSLR to shoot it like some people were. [00:13:26] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. Well that's, and that's, there's two reasons for that. One is because when I first started doing video, that's all there was. There was no such thing as a DSLR that shot video. And secondly the, it was more suitable for long format recording. So if I'm going to record an event such as a stage production that goes for two hours, you know that, that was impossible with DSLRs you couldn't get decent audio adapters into Them all sorts of things like that. So yeah, I used to use dedicated. [00:13:58] Speaker B: And they weren't made for that sort of duration either. I mean they would overheat after 15 years. [00:14:02] Speaker C: Exactly. And, and the, the first models, I actually did start to use Panasonic gear. So the, the GH series, Panasonic cameras were brilliant for video. [00:14:15] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:14:15] Speaker C: So that was a hybrid of micro four thirds system. Really good for video. Not so like photography, but pretty good in daytime photography. So it was a hybrid at, at that particular time a lot of people was starting to shoot with cannons, you know, like 5D Mark IIs and things like that, which, which were pretty good, but still audio interfaces were. And they still are not very good, to be honest, compared to what a dedicated video camera can do. But you know, it just, that's just how things evolve, isn't it? [00:14:46] Speaker A: Well, it's a little bit off topic. I'm sure that the people that are here to hear talk about night photography are probably tearing the hair out. But it's interesting because I feel like that camera series, you know, the 5D Mark II and cameras like that, that had amazingly beautiful video but pretty average audio and stuff like that. Maybe that's what birthed that new style of wedding video that was sort of cinematically shot, put to music, you know, three minute highlight clip. That was the main thing they were delivering and audio and stuff. I actually know a few videographers, they, they were terrible with audio and they admitted it. They were like, oh, I don't like doing audio. You know, I prefer not to do it sort of thing, because the cameras didn't really work with it and they didn't really understand it that well. So they were more about the visuals, whereas you were sort of from the other direction. It was like, hey, I want to capture it, not edit it so much, but get, get good audio that you can hear and show people what their day was like. Yeah, it's. [00:15:47] Speaker C: Yeah, that's true. And you ended up, I mean, I used to do some crazy things like having, you know, a couple of radio microphones hidden on the groom and the bride, even the bride and Mike's in, in the, the little archways around the, you know, you've seen it all yourself, but you know what I'm saying. Whereas I was watching all these, and I dare I say younger guys coming through because I was, I was always not old, but I was, you know, I'd been around a while and these young guys that didn't even have any microphones, well, what are these guys doing and as you say, that was just doing the highlights clips with the real arty sort of visuals that went with it. But anyway, so I, I did that, but you know, I started doing nightscape photography probably in earnest. And what, what year is it now? 20. Oh, probably about 13, 12 or 13 years ago, I would say. And, and as I said previously, that's because the technology caught up with. [00:16:45] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:16:46] Speaker C: The vision that I already had for what I wanted to do. And just before we go on with. [00:16:50] Speaker B: That, sorry, Richard, I just want to jump in and just, just while we're talking about your earlier days, just before we progress to what you're doing now, when you talked about, you know, you're, you, the technology and cameras wasn't up to capturing the images that you could see in your mind that you knew were out there. If only you had the right technology to capture that light, you know, long exposure and all that sort of stuff. Were you using. You mentioned being sort of a, you know, hobbyist. Astrologist. Astrologist, Astronomer. Oh, that's the, that's the weeds. [00:17:24] Speaker C: Yeah. It wasn't fortune telling. [00:17:26] Speaker B: No, no. Well, you know, some people do, um, quite a racket. But were you using telescopes? Were you, you know, what were you doing to sort of fulfill that before the camera could actually catch up with, with what you needed? [00:17:41] Speaker C: Yeah, well, strangely enough, when I was, I was a young teenager, so let's say I was 12, 13 years old, I used my mother's Box Brownie camera, which was already ancient at that stage. Box Brownie because it's the only camera we owned in the family that you could actually leave the shutter open. All the others were just Instamatic click things. So you could actually leave the shutter open with a cable release. And so I was shooting long exposure images with the box branding black and white on 620 film. [00:18:12] Speaker B: That's crazy. [00:18:13] Speaker C: As a 12 year old. And capturing things like star trails. So for example, an hour long exposure. [00:18:21] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:18:21] Speaker C: And because that actually suited that type of camera. But the, you know, say a 10 or 15 or 20 second exposure wasn't great because the low light gathering ability was pathetic on those. But for longer, like an hour or two hour exposure to get start trials. Yeah, it worked pretty well. The biggest problem I had was the tripod. I didn't have a decent tripod and you know, I'd try and hack something to make it not blow around in the wind. I did have a telescope, but I didn't use it for photography. It was too difficult. Although I did. I remember taking a picture of A solar eclipse in 1976. So you know, I was pretty young. 76, yeah, it was 1976, total solar eclipse in Victoria. And I had a sun filter on this telescope and I somehow rigged up the camera onto the telescope. I don't really can't remember how I did that. And I used to use binoculars just as, as a visual to look around the sky. I didn't take photos through binoculars, but so I was very interested in what was going on. Just, just visual, from a visual astronomy perspective. Photography was just sort of part time then because it wasn't very easy to do. And that came later, as I was saying before. [00:19:35] Speaker B: Yeah. And so, you know, you talked about getting the Fujifilm film DSLR or slr. Sorry, what was your first digital camera, do you recall? [00:19:47] Speaker C: Yeah, it was a Nikon, Nikon D40. I think it was a little crop sensor camera which you know, in its day it did a pretty good job of what I was using it for. Now I didn't, I'm trying to remember what I shot with that. Just all sorts of things really. But you know, you've got to realize, see back in the day when I was, I used to do. Let's go back to about the year 2000, I was shooting a lot of videos and I, I rubbed shoulders with a lot of wedding photographers as, as Justin, I don't know, we met in about 20, what, 15 or something? 14. [00:20:26] Speaker A: 14, 15. [00:20:27] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. But even the 10 years before that I was rubbing shoulders with a lot of very well known photographers because they used to shoot weddings and back in those days there was hardly any part time photographers. Everyone was sort of full time, you know, like the Richard Gibbs's, if you know them in town and Andy Banks and these sort of guys, you know. [00:20:51] Speaker A: Like full time professional photographers and they often shot more than just one. They weren't wedding photographers, they were the photographer. It was like, yeah, you go if you need, if you need a headshot done or if you need a family portrait or whatever. Yeah, they were, they were the professional photographer in town. I remember that that era was ending as we were beginning like Jim and myself, like it was sort of like, yep, that was winding down and people were becoming more specialized and there was more of a possibility to be a part time or you know, focus on one thing. Hey, I just do this and I do it on weekends or whatever. [00:21:29] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, that's right. And I rubbed shoulders with a lot of those guys and learned a lot by doing that. Because one thing I would say about that, those guys they were old school in every, every way and shape and form. But because that. You can sort of learn how people go about doing something. And that's not to say that you can't learn by anyone now. You certainly can. But because I was doing a different job. And the other thing I will say about photographers, especially wedding photographers back in those days, their. Their turf was their turf, and you did not stand on it. I had. I was a wedding videographer on a number of occasions where the actual wedding photographer told me I could not shoot this scene because they were setting it up. And I can remember one of the grooms, who was actually a friend of mine, he said to me, he said to this guy, he told him off in no uncertain terms that I was being paid same as it. He was. So, you know, there's no favoritism here for a particular composition. I don't think that happens now. But you. You could correct me on that, Justin. [00:22:36] Speaker A: But no, not. It's much more of a opposite. It's like. [00:22:39] Speaker C: Yeah, it's more of a collaborative thing. [00:22:41] Speaker A: Exactly. What are you trying to get? You're shooting. Okay. You know, like, we would even check with the video guys for certain parts and be like, oh, we can. We would use flash. But if it's gonna mess with what you're doing in this moment, we won't. You know, the photos won't be quite as good, but at least you won't have flashes going off in your video, you know? [00:22:59] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:23:00] Speaker A: You work with them because, like you say, it's all for the. It's all for the couple. It's not a competition. It's like, what's going to be the best result for the. For them. But, yeah, it probably took a little while for that. You were. Because you were at the start of it, you had to deal with all the growing pains. [00:23:16] Speaker C: Yeah, that's right. But you learn. And I think I would say, and I'm not sure if you would agree, Justin, but I think weddings and events like that are all about people management. If you can deal with people and deal with the personalities, and I'm talking about the people you're working with as well as the. The couple or whoever, then you're on a winning team. You know, if you. If you're trying to fight against people for the whole day, it's an absolute nightmare. [00:23:44] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:23:45] Speaker B: Just an interesting little segue. You mentioned earlier that you were shooting on a Panasonic cassette. Was it a cassette? [00:23:56] Speaker C: No. Well, I. I shot originally when I was doing videos. I shot Canon Sony Panasonic. What else did I have? Just about everything that used to have back on, on little mini DV tapes. No, the, the Panasonic camera I referred to was a micro 4/3. So that's a digital. [00:24:15] Speaker B: Ah, okay. [00:24:15] Speaker A: Is it like the Gym four or something? [00:24:17] Speaker C: Yeah, GH series. But I started with the GH one, believe it or not. [00:24:20] Speaker A: Oh wow, okay. [00:24:21] Speaker C: Yeah, I bought a GH1 which, the autofocus on those Panasonic cameras is terrible but the actual usability is very, very high. And this is something that I think a lot of photographers gloss over. They're always looking for features and even in today I talk about this on a lot of my videos people are looking for what can this camera, what does this camera do? What frames per second, what, what low light ability, what all these other things, what's the autofocus tracking like? All this sort of stuff but they forget about, oh, what does it feel like to handle, how easy is it to actually get through the menu structure and all these other things. So the Panasonic Micro Four Thirds cameras were nowhere near as good as other cameras in low light ability. And as you would know in weddings and events, low light is something you need to be able to deal with. But as far as usability and ease of use and, and small and lightweight, absolutely brilliant. And I, I use those for many years. I had quite a few different models. In fact I've still got somewhere here a Panasonic G9 which was a much later version of the Panasonic cameras. And it's, it's still, I used that camera up until the year 2020 for all of my YouTube videos because it was just so easy to use. Really, really good. I now use a Sony camera, Sony A7SIII, which is what I've got here. But the only reason I really bought that was because it's extreme low light video ability is incredible. [00:26:00] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:26:00] Speaker C: So you can go out at nighttime and shoot and see stars. [00:26:03] Speaker A: Yeah, that's kind of what you do. [00:26:07] Speaker B: The segue that I was referring to earlier about the Panasonic cameras is that I've just received notification this morning that I mean they're still making professional camcorders. We don't hear, remember how, how big a rage camcorders were, especially the Sony ones. We had one as a young family back in the day, in the 90s it would have been. [00:26:28] Speaker A: They're making a comeback, aren't they? [00:26:30] Speaker B: Well, they've just released, They've just announced four brand new 4K 60p 10bit internal professional camcorders yeah. Four of them dropping in March because. [00:26:43] Speaker A: Another, another company released to within the last month or so or six weeks I reckon I saw. I can't remember what the other company was, whether it was Sony or someone like that. But yeah, there seems to be a little bit of. I don't know whether it's a resurgence or just they've always been there and they're just refreshing them. [00:27:02] Speaker B: They have always been there. But marketing and branding always move towards the hybrid DSLR mirrorless tech because that like the newer stuff and you know, why sell one camera when you can sell two in one for trice the price. But yeah, these brand new camcorders, they're impressive looking machines. [00:27:23] Speaker A: There is a bit of a particular style for vlogging and stuff. I've seen a few YouTube channels that use the camcorders and you know they've got that they use the power zoom. Yeah. The flip out screen and the flip out screen. But it does, it does give you this like nostalgic kind of feeling, this home movie feeling to the YouTube channel. [00:27:42] Speaker B: Because they're all just holding it like this handheld and. [00:27:45] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:27:45] Speaker A: And they'll zoom in on someone's face and then you know, like it's, it's. I don't know. I do like it. Maybe. Tempted. [00:27:52] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:27:53] Speaker A: Am I documenting my life? [00:27:56] Speaker B: Yeah, of course. You need another camera. Let's jump to some comments. Yelena wants to know, Richard, how much are you paying these people that are commenting on your. [00:28:05] Speaker A: We went through that. We're up to there. There's only one new one. Okay. [00:28:10] Speaker B: I know this one actually. [00:28:11] Speaker A: Editor Seb. Editor. [00:28:12] Speaker B: Editor Seb. Or shucks. Happy to be part of the team. Excited to make you all look shifty with out of context clips. Stay tuned for that. It'll be the shortest term of employment ever. Dave, in fairness, everywhere else in the world it would normally be spelled Jelena. I'm just different. Different is good, Yelena. [00:28:31] Speaker A: It's great. [00:28:32] Speaker B: We love different. [00:28:34] Speaker A: Another Michelle Diggins. [00:28:39] Speaker B: Morning all. Richard would have to be the most inspiring astrophotographer willing to share all his knowledge and help us achieve goals. And I think that's a really a good point. And Andrew Doyle said. Totally agree, Michelle. But I want to do. I want to touch on Michelle's comment because in photography sometimes and videography and especially when people are trying to make a dedicated career out of a specific genre or style of photography, there can be a lot of gatekeeping, a lot of empire building and a lot of trench digging around the castle. So Richard, tell us about your personal philosophy around sharing what you know. You know, you weren't traditionally trained. You've taught yourself everything you know about photography through whatever means that is. How has that impacted upon your desire to share what you do with others? [00:29:36] Speaker C: Yeah, it's a very good question, I think, you know, in the world we live in today, it's very easy to. With the social media buzz and everything else that goes on, it's very easy to think of yourself more highly than you actually are and to. And to have an elitist attitude about things. So for example, I'll give you an example of this YouTube. Now I have a YouTube channel. You guys have got a YouTube channel. In fact, anyone can have one. There's no qualification required. There's no. You don't have to check any boxes. All you really need is a computer and a camera of some sort. And the other thing I often say about YouTube is that don't believe everything that people tell you on YouTube. It doesn't matter who it is because there's no police. There's nobody out there saying no. That's right. Well, unless you start to get into some political stuff, but we won't talk about that. You know what I'm saying? There's no one out there telling you, hey, that's not right. So, you know, there's a. There's a balance that tends to happen. So you, you, for me, I found that, okay, I could package up a whole heap of material, video material, I'm talking about, talking about what I do and the nightscape imaging and all sorts of things like that and sell it as a package. Or I could just put it all on YouTube for free. And I thought to myself, okay, I think I might do that. And the reason for that is because the reason I started the YouTube channel was just to share some of the stuff that I was doing. It wasn't meant to be anything more than, than that. And I think if you talk to a lot of YouTube people, they would say the same thing. Oh, when they started, they just wanted to document their journey or they just wanted to do this or that was never meant to become anything more than that. And back in the COVID times when everyone was locked down, I decided to package up some what I classified as my online workshops and, and offer them completely free. Now people could actually pay if they wanted to. And a lot of people did. And one of the reasons I did that was, was to try and be, to show people, hey, this is fair income. I'm not trying. This is genuine. I'M trying to get something out of you that you're not willing to give, but I'm happy to give it for nothing anyway. And I guess that's a. For those who don't live in Australia, that's pretty much an Aussie thing. I think it's fair dinkum. It's a. It's an Australian expression that we use here, which basically means, you know, it's. It's. It's who I am, it's who I want to be, you know. Now, there's always a fine line in any business between what you make out of your business as a job, as a living, and what you're willing to let go and give away for free. That's a very difficult line to draw sometimes. But for me, you know, I'm not a young guy in the sense I'm not just starting something. I've been doing this sort of stuff for years and years and years. And I think as you get older in life, you start to realize, hey, I'm happy with my. Where I'm at in my life. I'm happy with where I am. I'm happy just to sort of share stuff. And ultimately it's just sharing your own life and experience and what you do. And there's a combination when it comes to teaching or whether it's YouTube or workshops or whatever, it's all about sharing your life experience and your methodology about how you do things. And all of those things combined end up with the total package at the end. And I can't remember where this question started because it could go on forever. But, you know, I've been running photography workshops for a long time, and my photography workshops are probably a little bit different to a lot of people's in that they are. And it also is because of the topic I'm talking about that's very in depth. It's very complex and it's very complicated in the sense of being very technical on one hand and very creative on the other. And my job, I always see my job as is, is to join those two aspects together and try and connect the. The technical side with the creative side. And if, if we as photographers can do that, doesn't matter what genre we're in, that's where the magic really does happen. But the problem is in night photography, astrophotography, whatever you want to call it, that's a hard thing to do. It's just not quite simple because you're not relying on the camera to do the heavy lifting. You've got to actually make it do what you want it to do, as opposed to other genres where you can put the camera in aperture priority and go out and shoot some brilliant stuff. And I've worked with a lot of what I would classify as creatively brilliant photographers who get fantastic stuff. And you say, oh, how'd you do that? Oh, I don't know, I just pointed the camera. You know what I'm saying? Whereas with this night skate photography, you can't just get away with pointing the camera and hoping for the best. [00:34:47] Speaker B: Well, for one, you don't, you don't always know which direction to point it in. [00:34:51] Speaker C: Well, is that as well? [00:34:53] Speaker B: You know, it's not that obvious anymore. Not that obvious in Astro and nightscape stuff. Like, you know, in every other genre there's, there's pretty much a subject that you can see with your eye or you pretty much know where it is even if it's in a dark room. [00:35:05] Speaker A: You know, it's, it's interesting too, like just going back to the. Putting the camera on the mode. Maybe I'm, I'm not up with, because it usually comes into beginner cameras first, some of these features. But would you say that currently cameras are slipping behind phones in night photography when it comes to point and shoot, set and forget because you get an iPhone or whatever or the newest, I don't know, Galaxy or something. Most of them now have a night mode that will actually get you a photo of the night sky. But your average camera doesn't have a night mode that really like, like one that will get you a Milky Way shot that you could like you say you just point it at, at the Milky Way and just hold it. But the, you know, the stabilization and, and all the computational stuff that they're building into phones now, people are actually getting night photos from their phones with no, no knowledge whatsoever of settings. They're literally just pointing it and, and pressing it. [00:36:11] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. [00:36:12] Speaker A: Well, do you think cameras are going to try and catch up to that? [00:36:17] Speaker C: I think someone will come up with that. And typically that would be Sony, who, who do. Because they're the innovators in, in camera manufacturer of camera manufacturers. Before I answer that, totally. [00:36:30] Speaker B: I'd also keep an eye on OM systems. They often bring up freaky little features sometimes. Yeah, they can do. [00:36:39] Speaker C: Yeah, that's true. What was I going to say? I think, I think you have to realize that camera manufacturers I'm talking about particularly Canon and Nikon and well across the board, but particularly those two as being the longer serving just camera people, they like to hold on to a tradition. They like to hold on to where they've come from and what they are and what they stand for. Other companies who are newer to the party tend to be a little bit more innovative. I mentioned Sony because they are newer to the party. But, and Greg, you mentioned Olympus and om. They, they are under a fair bit of pressure to come up with things and I think that's why they do that. But when it comes to phones, I can tell you there's one area where phones are far superior to cap to mirrorless cameras or DSLRs or anything else, and that is the screen technology. Now you can go, you know, it's like you can go, you take your phone out into the bright sun shining, you can see everything on that phone. You take your camera out, you think, well, where's. I can't see a thing on the screen. It's covered in writing. It's too small. That is the number one thing that. And I don't know why the, the big camera manufacturers don't improve the quality of their screens because the technology is obviously there to do it. So yeah, they do. But the problem with phones is of course it's the tiny small sensor that's in it. There's only so much you can do with physics. And so when you put a phone picture onto, you know, Instagram, for example, it looks fantastic but obviously on a full screen of a, of a computer. Now AI is changing that to some degree because it can upscale, it can do all sorts of things. But yeah, I think you're, you're right, Justin. I don't think any camera at this point in time is a point and shoot to take a brilliant nightscape photograph because they're just a little bit too hard to drive. [00:38:43] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:38:43] Speaker A: Which is where you come in with all of your education. [00:38:47] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. [00:38:48] Speaker A: Speaking of which, we got a few more comments rolling in about that, so we'll just quickly whip through these. A couple of questions too, which are good. Brett Davies, he says, actually I'm generally happy to pay Richard for one of his workshops every now and then. Not sure what that means, but I think that's a compliment. And I'm pretty sure he, he's enjoyed either online or in person workshops by the sounds of it. Andrew Doyle says, I've learned so much From Richard Virus YouTube channel and was lucky enough to attend one of his workshops, which I think based on what I saw on your website, fully sold out already for 2025. Is that correct? It's. [00:39:29] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. They sell out quickly I haven't actually advertised any of them for years now, to be honest with you. I'm doing less of the traditional workshops that I used to do and that means they sell it quicker because there's less of them. But yeah, Andrew's a good man. He came last year to one of my workshop groups and look, I really connect with people and a lot of these people who are talking on, on here online, I know them personally, some I don't because I've never physically met them, but I still feel like I know them personally because we interact, whether it's on a comment on a video or I see something that they've done and decide, you know, just talk about their picture or whatever it may be. So yeah, it's good. [00:40:21] Speaker A: Very good. A couple other quick ones. Verat Sah Shah. I don't know how to pronounce Shah. Pronounce it. Richard is an inspiring astrophotographer and explains things in a perfect way. A teacher who connects you and encourages his viewers connects with you. Sorry, I'm terrible at reading today. I've learned a lot from him. A legend in Astro. And it looks like you've got a wonderful Astro shot as your profile picture. So yeah, quite a handy photographer himself by the look of that. [00:40:50] Speaker C: He is. Verat is a brilliant photographer. He's from Perth in WA and really, really good man. Very encouraging himself as well. [00:41:00] Speaker A: Does he do YouTube and stuff or is he just. [00:41:03] Speaker C: Well, he. As far as I know, Verrett doesn't have a YouTube channel but he does hang around with another guy over there who does have a YouTube channel. So he tends to feature in the background and as a sort of partner in crime with. With another guy over there. [00:41:17] Speaker A: So nice. [00:41:18] Speaker C: Good. [00:41:19] Speaker B: Hit us up. Virat, join us on the show sometime. [00:41:21] Speaker A: Yeah, come and say hi. Quick question from Raphael in Italy. What do you think about the Nikon Z8? I know that so many megapixels are difficult to manage in Milky Way photos. [00:41:35] Speaker C: Richard, the Z8's a great camera. I think people worry a lot these days about things that they don't need to worry about. Any of the new cameras from any of the brands are very, very capable. I know a lot of people who shoot night photography with the Z8. The Z8, a great all round camera. It does everything well. It's a lot. It reminds me a lot of the. For example, a Canon R5 model does everything well. You can use it for any genre. The high megapixels is not a problem when you. If you downscale a Z845 megapixel camera to a 24 megapixel Z6 camera, you won't see any difference. So it's a fantastic camera. [00:42:27] Speaker A: No difference at all? [00:42:28] Speaker C: No, I don't. [00:42:29] Speaker A: Yeah, because I, I did some tests that's, that's super interesting. I did some tests with the, the original R5, the R5 Mark 2 and my R3 and, and did some highest, very average tests. Not scientific at all, just the basic sort of high ISO testing. And I was interested because that is usually the word on the street is hey, once you downscale, they are actually sort of similar or if not better sometimes. Yeah. But what I found is the R3 was still a little bit nicer visually in just the style of the noise and, and what? Like less hot, hot pixels and stuff like that. Once it got to a really high ISO, but not enough that it would really bother you, I don't think. You know, like it's like, hey, if you were choosing it particularly for that purpose. But on the other hand you get the benefit of the extra megapixels and everything on the camera, you know, in daytime and stuff. So it's like it wasn't really enough to bother me. But I did still see a slight, slight advantage with the R3, I think. [00:43:35] Speaker C: I think the Canon R3 is. I mean you get something for the money you pay for that camera. I had a guy who actually had one of those at one of my workshops and I was very impressed with how good that camera was for a nightscape and astrophotography. So there's something going on in that particular camera that is pretty good and pretty smart. For example, he was shooting images and it's not just the brightness of the back screen that was just much brighter than other everyone else's camera and different brands or whatever. So it's a good camera, it's a good camera for this sort of stuff. But not many people are going to buy that camera just to shoot astrophotography. Whereas. But, but you know, the other thing you've got to realize is most people who are doing this sort of photography seriously are pretty heavily editing their images and once you start getting into noise reduction it becomes a non issue totally. [00:44:34] Speaker A: And that's where the extra megapixels can also be beneficial because it's more data for those, those fancy AI denoise algorithms to work with. That's what I've heard is that once you start doing that maybe it's actually better to have more megapixels. Yeah, it's interesting. [00:44:50] Speaker C: Yeah. Well, as a general rule, more megapixels means you've got more options. [00:44:56] Speaker B: It does indeed. Can I just jump in on a little segue there? Because you know how much I love a segue, guys. [00:45:01] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:45:02] Speaker B: Canon has just announced overnight that they're developing a brand new full frame 410 megapixel CMOS image sensor. [00:45:14] Speaker A: What for? [00:45:16] Speaker B: It's not for a Canon EOS R, be pleased to know, 410 megapixels. It's for surveillance medicine and other industries that need high resolution and the ability to crop in quite significantly. It's been. It's going to be on show at the U.P. one of the upcoming trade shows next month. But a 410 megapixel sensor is equivalent to 24K resolution or 198 times full HD on a 35. And it's on a 35 millimeter sensor. [00:45:50] Speaker A: 35 mil sensor, full frame sensor. [00:45:53] Speaker B: 410 megapixels. [00:45:55] Speaker A: Yeah. That's nuts. [00:45:57] Speaker B: Readout speeds, the radio speeds aren't huge, but they can capture 3280 megapixels per second at 8fps video or capture 100 megapixel video at 24fps. But the thing with it being a full frame image sensors that traditional full frame lenses don't need correcting for it. [00:46:22] Speaker A: No. [00:46:23] Speaker B: So you can, whatever the application is, you can mount. Technically, you could mount. [00:46:27] Speaker A: Could mount whatever. What's interesting is they, they wouldn't be able to resolve that kind of resolution. So it would likely need specialized lenses that are designed to resolve that instance. Yeah. [00:46:39] Speaker B: And let alone like data storage and. [00:46:43] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:46:43] Speaker B: You know, a processor that can handle that sort of data would be pretty insane as well. But it is an interesting proposition. Last year they revealed in January it. Sorry, no, I think it was earlier. Last year they revealed a 250 megapixels pickle. There it is. Mega pickle sensor. So yeah, it's interesting to see how even within that, that smaller form factor, like they didn't go to medium format or large format, they kept it within the 35 mil and they just crammed so much. Which is pretty, pretty fascinating to see where that leads in the future. Anyway, I digress. [00:47:21] Speaker A: Richard, you. So there's a lot of tech, often a lot of accessory technology involved in the images that you create. Whether they're, you know, for tracking and stacking and for time lapses. There'd be sliders and all sorts of crazy stuff that's, that's separate to the camera when it comes to Just specifically the camera and the lens, is there anything you're like, first of all, what, what are you shooting with now currently? What body? And also is there anything that you're longing for, you know, like, is there something you're like, damn, I hope the next camera they bring out is higher megapixel, better high ISO or whatever? Or like specifically, is there something that's holding your, your work back, technology wise, at the moment that you want to see advance? [00:48:16] Speaker C: Yeah, it's a, it's a really good question and I'll, I'll, I'll preface my answer by saying this, that camera tech or the technology that goes with cameras is an area that so many people get bogged down with. So in other words, that can become a barrier or a roadblock, thinking, oh, I need this, I need that, I need that. The reality is, is that camera technology hasn't changed very much in the past five or six years. I'm shooting with currently a Nikon Z6 Mark II and a Mark III now. They're 24 megapixel cameras, both of them now. And so that's a Z mount. My favorite lens is the 20 millimeter f 1.8 Nikon Z lens. So typically I'll shoot with prime lenses, fast aperture primes. Most of them are 1.8. I do have a couple of zoom lenses at f 2.8. So it's really funny when you start talking about low light photography, the majority of people think, oh well, F 2.8, that's a fast aperture lens. But when you start really talking about low light photography, you really need to get a bit lower than that. So F1.4s, F1.8, potentially even F 1.2 if you can find one of those, because it opens up a whole lot more options. Now the camera itself, because there has been probably more advances in editing technology. So for example, in Lightroom, Photoshop and Capture one and all these other programs have probably advanced a little bit more than cameras have. In my opinion. What is advanced in cameras typically is autofocus and stuff that is related as much to video as it is to photography. And when you're shooting nightscape photography, obviously autofocus is irrelevant. You're not auto focusing at night, you tend to be manually focusing. So if you lock out, suddenly you lock out a whole section of a camera's te autofocus I'm talking about, then suddenly you realize this camera is the same, really doing the same thing my 10 year old camera did. Now, okay, you have ISO ability or capability is a Better way of putting it. But when you start thinking about it, a lot of the ability or the technology that cameras have now is basically AI or computer generated within that camera itself. So the sensor size hasn't changed, the optics hasn't changed very much. There's not much that's changed in the past 10 years now. Sure, the cameras are better now than they were 10 years ago. There's no denying that in every way. They're smaller, lighter, more compact, they do more stuff. But when you start boiling it down and take away all the automated features, there's not that much difference. So I'm shooting with 24 megapixel cameras because I see that as a sweet spot for shooting, Albeit we talked about more megapixels, makes it easier to crop and things like that. I can tell you now with my nightscape photography, I rarely crop the images at all. If I want a bigger megapixel picture, then I can shoot panoramas and get massive amount of megapixels with a 24 megapixel. I see that as a sweet spot in, in my mind with digital cameras across the board. I'm talking full frame. I'm not talking about medium format cameras. That's a different thing. And lenses, look what you're looking for to shoot low light. Astro landscape photography is light gathering ability. So lenses that don't have a lot of vignetting, for example, are better than ones that do. Because typically with vignetting you've got to stop down the aperture to to lose it. So to stop down the aperture, I'm losing my light gathering ability. I can tell you this. If I put an f 2.8 lens here, let's just say a 20 millimeter f 2.8 lens, and I put it over here, a 20 millimeter f 1.8 lens, and stop them both down to f 2.8 or one's wide open, but one stop down. I can tell you now the prime lens at f 1.8 that stopped down is going to be a better image than the one that's natively at F 2.8. Because there's less vignette, it's not operating at its forced aperture capacity. So it's affording a little bit of flexibility. So that's typically why I shoot prime lenses. Lenses are the thing that will enable pretty much any camera to capture low light images. The camera body itself, even noise performance is less of an issue now than it was a few years ago. There's topaz aid noise and there's built in lightroom built in, Photoshop built in all these other DXO labs and all of these noise, performance noise additional programs or whatever you want to call them. They do amazing jobs with the thing that they're designed to do. The camera doesn't have to do it. Now, you might remember probably about five or six years ago, maybe a bit longer, Sony had the famous Star Eater issue that was typically. That was noise reduction built in to the camera at a certain shutter speed and certain ISO. And people howled it down. They said, oh no, they're killing our stars. Well, guess what? You know what people do these days? They. They do star reduction deliberately, which is what Tony was doing it automatically in the camera. So there's all sorts of things. But technology wise, the question you asked me was what do I wish the camera had that it doesn't? Well, it's not much. They just about do everything that you can imagine. That hasn't changed a lot in the past few years. And the accessories, things like star trackers are great. I mean, they do a great job. But, you know, this is the. Here's my. I hope you can see this. I've got, I've got one hand here and one hand here. Now you. If you add something here, typically you're taking away something here. So, you know, more megapixels, I'm adding more megapixels, but I might be taking away on low light performance or I might be adding aperture. So I've got an f 1.8 lens, but, oh, hang on, it's only a prime, it's not a zoom. You know, compromise is the word that I will often use when I'm talking about nightscape photography with landscape photography or portrait photography. There are far less compromises required in your photography, whether it's gear or stuff or technique, than there is in astro Landscape photography, it's a lot harder to do it. And the challenge of getting it right or doing it really, really well is you have to meet it head on. And that is less to do with the gear and more about your understanding and how to use the gear and what to do in certain circumstances or how to light a subject or something like that. One of the things that people talk about all the time is light. Okay, so when it comes to a nightscape image, then one of the things you'll quickly find out and we talk about noise. Let's associate light and noise together. Typically, if you underexpose an image a lot, it'll look noisy. And if you don't underexpose an image a lot it won't look as noisy. Now sometimes the noise is still there, but you just can't see it because it's lit. The pixels are lit. Now there's all sorts of things like ISO invariance that comes into this topic and that, that muddies the water. But the basic principle is if you have a correctly exposed image, and I'm talking daytime, nighttime, anything, then it can be shot at a high ISO and it still looks pretty good. But if you have an underexposed image, even shot at a low light, so it can look muddy and dirty and grainy and awful. [00:56:59] Speaker A: Do you remember the technique going back a few years now when Canon was really sort of falling behind on their sensor technology a little bit for a while? Remember they used to, if you push the shadows, they get banding and some magenta and stuff. [00:57:12] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:57:13] Speaker A: So there was this technique everyone talked about called ettr exposed to the right, which is essentially what you're talking about, where you're essentially overexposing the images. Yeah, but then. And trying to preserve the highlights, but overexposing the shadows and then bringing them down in post production rather than try to pull the other way. But yeah, it's funny, a lot of those techniques now are not really required as much. Like you say, correct exposure is important to not introduce extra noise, but you don't really have to. Or do you? I don't know. Do you, do you ever use that technique anymore? Or is it not. Not so much required now? [00:57:52] Speaker C: Well, it's a, it's a. You've brought up a. You've started to open a can of worms. But I'll try not to, you know, make it too wormy. As a general rule, Canon used to be a camera you would never underexpose. Okay. But with Sony Nikon and other brands, particularly Sony sensor cameras, you could underexpose and just lift them in post and with, with no loss of, of quality. Now with the more modern Canon cameras, they are starting to become what's known as ISO invariant, which, which solves that issue. So the, the exposed to the right concept was just, was talking about the histogram that you would see on a camera where you push the little, little mountain, if you like, further towards the right hand side, which is more exposure. Now obviously you don't blow the highlights because if you blow a highlight on any issue, any image, it's blood, you can't get it back. But if you push it a bit further over. Yeah, you, you lift the shadow detail because the cannons used to be really bad with Purple fringing around the, the bottom. But even with the purple fringing, if you lit the shadow areas with a torch or something like that image you can see on screen there, that's been lit in the foreground. Even with a camera that was struggled a bit with, with the banding issue. If you light that, the purple fringing isn't as visible now, it's probably still there. The concept of the noise noise threshold is such that you've got noise, well, signal to noise ratio. Okay, so you have signal on this side, you've got noise on this side. Now as a, as a general rule, if your signal is really high, your noise thresholds here, then your signal is going to overpower the noise. And so you don't notice the noise. It's still there, but you're just not seeing it. But if your signal is really low or comparable to the noise threshold, then the image looks really noisy. Now the concept of stacking images, which means taking a whole lot of the same image, is essentially just building on the light gathering ability of the camera. It's adding a whole lot more. Now there, there is a few other things happening with the stacking that targets noise, but let's just keep it simple. So if you've got more signal, the signal to noise ratio is high and that's good, that's what you want. So if you underexpose your camera, the more underexposed it becomes, the closer that signal comes down to the noise threshold. [01:00:23] Speaker B: I've never heard it explained that way, Richard. [01:00:26] Speaker C: That's just uneducated way of explaining. [01:00:29] Speaker B: No, no, it's, it's hit the mark. It really has. [01:00:32] Speaker A: It's SPE speaks a lot to me with when it comes to sound. I used to do a lot of sound engineering. But even taking it out of that application just into the real world, if you've got, say you got a, you know, you're watching something on your phone, crappy little phone speakers. If you're in a quiet room, no problem, jump on an airplane with all of that background noise, it's a lot harder to hear that little, that sound coming out of your tiny little phone speakers. And you got to bring it closer or whatever. So it's like, like, yeah, you need to elevate whatever it is above the noise floor. And yeah, it's obviously higher. [01:01:08] Speaker C: And, and using that illustration as an analogy, you know what we tend to do, we tend to boost the signal. So by, in other words, with our camera we boost the ISO. And what does that do? Makes it noisier. The actual noise is increased. So rather than increase the signal, we increase the noise. In other words, if you turn the stereo system up, the audio system, it eventually distorts, doesn't it? If you keep turning the volume up. So what you've got to do is increase the signal, not the volume. So I, I classify ISO as a volume switch built into the camera, because it's not. We know it's not real. It's not a real signal. It's actually an electronic gain, so it does the same thing. Now, modern cameras, you can turn the ISO a few away and still get a great image, but you will get a far better image at a high ISO if your signal is high. Does that make sense? [01:02:05] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Just before we move on, I do want to go through some of your images from your Instagram. But just before we do, I just want to take a moment just to thank everyone who's watching along and for those of you who may be listening along at a later stage via audio podcast. We are available on all popular audio podcast platforms. And of course, you can watch our back catalog of the Camera Life podcast. [01:02:30] Speaker A: At any time, including Richard's original episode number 30. Yeah, if you, if you just can't get enough of Richard today and you want another three hours after this. [01:02:39] Speaker B: Three hours, yeah. [01:02:41] Speaker A: Go back and listen to episode 13. [01:02:43] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. But, but also I just want to remind everybody to like and subscribe. And don't forget that today's episode is brought to you by Lucky Straps from Bendigo Victoria, maker of exceptional leather camera straps. Do we have any little flashy graphics? [01:03:00] Speaker A: Look. Yeah. Hey, let's put this up. See this little QR code in the corner? If you, if you want to save 15 off any of our camera straps, just scan that little bad boy with your phone. Unless you're watching on your phone, in which case, I don't know, you'll have to figure it out. Find another screen. It's complicated. It's a puzzle to get the discount, but yeah, you can use that. We won't leave it up for too long, but we'll leave it up for now. Well, I actually, maybe I'll go through a couple of comments before we get stuck into something. [01:03:29] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's a good idea. [01:03:30] Speaker A: Because there's a ton, including Andrew Doyle. Richard has a really good way of explaining complex concepts, and this was a great example of that. It certainly was, because I've. I've been told about signal to noise and I kind of understand it, but when it related it to sound in my Head. And the way he was explaining, I was like, oh, that makes way more sense. Yeah, absolutely. Very, very clear. Michelle Diggins. One thing I think we learned from Richard is to experiment with your settings and find what suits you and how you want to create your image. Is that something you often encourage people to do rather than just telling them, hey, just, just use these settings, you'll be fine. You, you, you want them to experiment for themselves? [01:04:16] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. Michelle knows me too well that, that is very true. You see, I, I. Everything, everything we talk about comes back to what I mentioned previously. We have on one side a technical settings, and on the other side we have creativity. Now, what we need to do is jell those together. And the way people are wired is either predominantly one way or the other. We all know this. Some of us are tech people and some of us are just creative, arty farty people. We need to blend those two together. So if you think as a, as a tech person, you're searching all the time for settings. What are my settings? What, my camera? What lens? What f stop? Da da da, da, da, da da da. If you're an arty person, you're thinking, oh, how can I see an image? How can I compose? You know, it's a completely different mindset. And so a lot of people are simply looking for a set of settings. So what I often do deliberately, you'll see this on some of my videos. I'll shoot a scene with different settings. Now, I'm not talking wildly different, but rather than shoot something at F, say I might. This happens a lot with foreground, so I might be light painting a foreground, and oftentimes these will be images where the foreground is a separate image. Image to the, to the sky. Now, I might shoot my foreground at, at F4, right, for 20 seconds and do some lighting on it or something. Then the next time, I might shoot it at F8 and then do some lighting on it. Now, obviously, if I'm shooting at F8 as opposed to F4, there are changes in technique to get the same amount of light gathering. But there are other things that come into the equation. For example, the depth of field is much greater at F8 than it is at F4, F 2.8 or F 1.8. And these are the things that we talk about. So landscape photographers, for example, don't have to worry about depth of field very much because they're shooting at F11, F16. Everything's in focus, you know, from, from a couple of meters in front of the camera. To the whole world is in focus. You start stopping down your lens to f 1.8, f 2, f 2. 2 and things like that. It's really hard to get things in focus. If I want to shoot something that's close to the camera and feature that. And you'll. When you see my images, you'll see I do this a lot. Sometimes you got to stop down your aperture or refocus or whatever. But stopping down the aperture does that as well because it increases your depth of field. So changing all of these things makes you think. And that's one of the other things that is one of my favorite sayings is with nightscape photography. Astro landscape photography. It's a genre of photography that makes you think about what you're doing rather than just follow the same set formula a lot. I don't know if that answers it totally, but that's what I think it does. [01:07:13] Speaker B: I'd like Sebi to clip that one too. I think that's worth keeping. [01:07:16] Speaker A: Clip it, Zeb. We're doing it. More comments. More comments. There's so many. All of them are love for Richard. Nicole. I have to agree with Verat's words. I wouldn't be at the level I'm at now without Richard's inspiration. [01:07:32] Speaker C: Thank you. [01:07:32] Speaker A: Nick Wells was privileged to join Richard on a 2024 nightscapes workshop and echo Andrew D. Sentiments. Richard is a brilliant teacher and human who really stimulates your thinking. Have learned so much from him. It's just these people. They love you. [01:07:49] Speaker C: You love. Diane's from New Zealand. Lovely person. It was really good to meet her last year. [01:07:56] Speaker A: That's cool. Was that so we'll. We'll get to that a bit later. Was that as part of the New Zealand workshop or like the trip you did or. [01:08:04] Speaker C: No, it wasn't. It wasn't. It was. She came over here to Australia and came out to the farm out. Yeah. [01:08:10] Speaker A: Very cool. Tony W. Always love Richard's videos and photographs. Very educational. Drunk wedding photographer. Ahoy. Ahoy there, matey. Good to see you in the comments. Couple more. John Rutter Photography. So much wisdom there. I could listen to Richard chat about photography all day. Well, challenge accepted. [01:08:32] Speaker C: We'll just get John. John's brilliant. He. He's a great guy. You would. You would love him. You. In fact, you should have John on your channel. He's a very, very clever man. [01:08:41] Speaker A: We'll have you. If you'll have us, we'll have you. Digifrog. He went from the R5 to the R3 and was initially worried about the loss of megapixels, but the noise benefits outweighed the megapixel issue, in his opinion. I kind of agree, too. I use a bit of both. I'm enjoying both of those cameras. But, yeah. And finally, a question from earlier from Ken Peterson. Richard, how important are YouTube videos compared to your workshops? When it comes to income, I assume with 80,000 subscribers, you make millions a month. Month. From your YouTube channel, or is it billions? [01:09:17] Speaker B: We do. [01:09:21] Speaker C: Thank you, Ken. Ken's a watcher of my YouTube channel. You don't make a whole lot of money from YouTube unless you've got hundreds of thousands of subscribers. I can tell you that from experience. It comes down to. To watch time and view numbers. It's not so much associated with subscriber count. And I do find that the genre of photography that I have is a niche market, so it's not widespread. So you won't get hundreds of thousands of views on a video because there's not hundreds of thousands of people that want to do it. So it's only a minor amount of money. You don't get a lot of money from YouTube. With the. The view camp that I have, it's. It's helpful. It's pocket money, but it's. You certainly couldn't live on it. So you make more money from workshops and things like that. That's. [01:10:17] Speaker A: You do a few other things as well, I think. You do calendars each year, Usually. [01:10:21] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:10:22] Speaker A: Sell some calendars. They usually sell out, I think, from. [01:10:24] Speaker C: What I. Yeah, they do. Yeah. Yeah. Look, I've done a lot of things, to be honest with you boys. I'm. I'm. If anything, I'm slowing down. I'm not speeding up. I'm not trying to ramp up anything. I'm. I'm keeping my life simple. I've got grandkids now. And, you know, I'm not. I'm not saying I'm getting old, but I'm feeling like. I'm feeling like I'm content where I'm at. One of the things I do enjoy about YouTube is the fact that I can do that from home. I can do it from where I am. I don't have to travel the world to do that. Yeah. And I actually appreciate that. And that's one of the other things that I will mention about YouTube that I enjoy, and that is because I live in Central Victoria. There's no epic landscapes here. There's no epic locations. So making an image out of something that is quite insignificant is important to me. And I think it's important to a lot of people, other people, because most people don't live on the edge of the Grand Canyon to take photos every, every day or you know, in the Dolomites or something like that. So, you know, these are part, part and parcel of what my YouTube channel and everything about what I do is all about. It's actually trying to make something out of nothing, almost trying to find the good in something that we think is bad. [01:11:45] Speaker B: Can we. On that note, we might bring up your Instagram page. Justin, did you remove that earlier? [01:11:51] Speaker A: I just, yeah, I just pulled it down so we had a better visual in case we're going to clip something, whatever. But we're back. [01:11:58] Speaker B: So where am I here? I did. We did talk earlier about, you know, turning mundane objects into something, finding something where there was nothing. And I think, I think you've kind of mastered that there, Richard. This is obviously an old piece of farming equipment. Yeah, it looks like a torture machine, but. And that's a, that's a time lapse. We might go to one of your images where you've got the galactic core very much alive. [01:12:28] Speaker C: So, so this, this image here, for example, highlights exactly what I was saying before. It's a gum tree and it's not even the most attractive gum tree you've ever seen. So, you know, image taking is all about storytelling. Let's face it. That's what it's about. And so what, what I'm looking for is some image somewhere that will connect people to something. So this is just a basic gum tree with the Milky Way galactic core over the top of it. My intention is to compose it in a way that it's attractive to the eye and it's not over complicated. So you know, it's, it's, it's an image of the Milky Way over a tree, essentially. [01:13:16] Speaker B: Yep, yep. [01:13:18] Speaker A: And so this, can you just talk us through as well? Because that, that Milky Way looks epic. [01:13:24] Speaker C: Yeah, that, that Milky Way is, is using a star tracker. It's a single image from memory. It'll say on there. Yeah, it's a one track sky image. [01:13:33] Speaker B: Yep. [01:13:34] Speaker C: Yeah. So there's, there's all sorts of discussion about techniques to capture a night sky image. Now as we all know, because the Earth's rotating, the stars are moving across the sky and that limits our ability to extend our shutter speeds out. So the use of a star tracker, which is a device that actually follows the stars across the sky very slowly but at the same speed that they're moving, enables us to extend our Shutter speed. Now, once you can extend your shutter speed, you can get a higher. Get back to this thing again. A higher signal to noise ratio. And the stars are not streaking because they're not. They're not actually moving through the frame. So you get better quality of image. You can lower your ISO. You'll notice there that I've shot that at ISO 1600, so I don't have to shoot at ISO 6400 or ISO 10,000 or something to get a nice bright image. I can shoot at low ISO, just a longer shutter speed. So the concept of the rule that the exposure triangle, which most photographers are somewhat aware of, how you have aperture, shutter speed and ISO. Now, in nightscape photography, particularly, just point and shoot at the sky, you're basically limited with your shutter speed because of that movement. Now, daytime landscape photography, for example, or long exposure photography in the daytime where you haven't got stars, you can shoot a long shutter speed and get blurry clouds and blurry water. We all know that. So by using a star tracker, we suddenly bring shutter speed back into the equation. We can use a longer shutter speed. And that has given me that image, one single shot of the sky and another. Therefore, because your camera is moving on the platform of a star tracker, whatever is in the foreground is blurry. So you can't use that. It's blurred because it's been shooting for a minute and it's actually moving. The camera's moving. So that's why I've shot a separate shot of the foreground there. And you see, I think that says F4, 13 seconds at ISO 1600. So, yep, that's all it is. A little touch of light painting with the torch. [01:15:46] Speaker A: So does that mean that the sky that's there, you would have had to move spots slightly so the tree wasn't in the shot of the sky. Is that because otherwise you'd have it like a blurry smudge there where the tree would be. [01:16:01] Speaker C: Okay, Correct. [01:16:02] Speaker A: So say you walk 80 meters to the left. [01:16:07] Speaker C: Yes. Or just in front of a tree. Yeah. [01:16:10] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, that would work too. [01:16:12] Speaker C: Yeah, that's what I do now. Not everybody, not everybody would do that. There are. That just makes it easier to blend. And when you start thinking. So remember before I mentioned about thinking about your photography? So when you use these sort, you have to start thinking it's not just a point and shoot scenario. Now, having said that, that picture before, you could shoot it, point it and shoot and get a reasonably decent image as well. I've got a video on My channel, which I shot last year, where I compared single shot stacking from a fixed tripod and tracking all of the same subject. And it's a very interesting comparison. [01:16:52] Speaker A: Tell me this, on Instagram, do you think any. If you, if you process them all well, do you reckon anyone could really tell the difference on Instagram? [01:17:01] Speaker C: Not a lot. Not a lot. Because a small screen, like an Instagram screen, which even on YouTube, which is a bit bigger screen, albeit compressed, I put all three images together on that particular video and a lot of people couldn't tell the difference. [01:17:16] Speaker A: Yeah, it's really when you start printing larger that you. You reap the benefits of that extra, extra work to get that higher level of professional quality. [01:17:28] Speaker C: Yes. Now you've brought up a very interesting point there, Justin. And my comment is this. It is all in the eye of the beholder. Because when you begin this journey of nightscape photography, we think getting anything that's in focus is a good picture. As you progress down the track, by the time you get a few years down, you might think, oh, unless this thing is stacked and tracked and light painted and denoised and everything else, it's not a good picture. So this is a mindset. And people who are photographers are stuck in mindsets. We all get stuck in mindsets. And this is why I encourage people to go back to the basics, go back to the original methods and style and see what you can do. Now, after a few years of experience, and you will find you'll still get as much enjoyment out of that single shot that you took of that tree with the Milky Way. Even though it technically it's probably not as good, but the, the experience out there is just as good and the editing is a lot easier. And so people, I think, need to stretch out of that mindset that they're locked into. It's all about settings, it's all about the gear, it's all about a new camera. It's all about a new star tracker. It doesn't have to be. [01:18:43] Speaker A: Okay, yeah, very cool. I love it. Yeah. And there is that real, that feeling that you get. That's. And that's what I've always enjoyed when it comes to night photography. And that's why I don't. I've never really experimented with the tracking and stacking and multiple exposure stuff because for me, the magic is when the camera goes blank for a little second and it thinks about it and the red light flashes and then when it finally comes up and the image is right there on the back of the camera, that's the bit that I like. I like when you finally. You get your settings right and you got the light painting right and you didn't muck something up. The torch isn't in the shot, you know, and then it pops up and you're like, wow, that looks, that looks exactly what I was trying to do. Whereas I don't know if I would get as. I mean obviously your, your images look next level but you don't get to see them on the back of the camera. You, you have to, you're. You're having to imagine. [01:19:37] Speaker C: Exactly. [01:19:38] Speaker A: You'll pull it together later in your, in your mind's eye. Like you were saying. [01:19:41] Speaker C: Yep. [01:19:42] Speaker A: Yeah, just a. Yep, spot on process. [01:19:46] Speaker C: And that is one of the most difficult things for people to grasp is, is being able to connect the. What's happening on the camera to what you can actually see and imagine in your mind. Yeah. So some of these. This is a Tasmania, that's Cradle Mountain. That's a trip I did last year. Obviously it's a daytime picture. You don't see too many daytime. [01:20:09] Speaker A: You do go out in the daytime. [01:20:11] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [01:20:14] Speaker C: Sometimes I do get out. Now that's not my image. That was from a guy called Royce Bear, he's an American guy. That's obviously in the U.S. yeah. Somehow it got onto my Instagram. That's in Tasmania as well. By the way, that image there is a panorama. That's not, it's not tracked. I don't think it's. What is it? Oh, it's a, it's. I did stack. What's, what's it say there? Four. Four. Yeah. I'll tell you what, how that image was taken, that is a panorama, even though it doesn't look like a panorama. And what I did, I shot four images of the sky at a crossways as a vertical orientation pano at whatever settings I've got written down there. And I shot. Got the same thing but on the foreground. And the reason I did that was because I want to. Just wanted to get the lighting right on the foreground. It's got a couple of tiny little low level lights. I didn't do any light painting as such, but there's a couple of lights here because if I didn't have any lighting there, you wouldn't see any rocks, you wouldn't see the water, you wouldn't see anything. Yeah. So I shot two separate panos and I think you'll find the settings change a little. Let me have a look at that. I can't even Read that. [01:21:30] Speaker A: But anyway, 30, 30200 versus 4000 for ISO and 15 second at F2 for the sky versus 60 second at 2.8 for the four. [01:21:43] Speaker C: Correct. Okay. Okay. Now this brings me back to my signal to noise. So I shot 60 second images of the foreground to gather more light. [01:21:52] Speaker A: Yep. [01:21:53] Speaker C: So to make it brighter. So sometimes because you can do that now, 60 seconds obviously means the water smooths out. That was really rough. See there? It doesn't, it doesn't look rough, but it was. But I shot it long exposures to make sure I got, I got more signal into that foreground. Now you know, I probably could have got away with less than 60 seconds, but that's what I did. Yep. [01:22:21] Speaker A: So is that an aurora in the background? [01:22:24] Speaker C: No, that's just the green Eglo. No, that's facing due east. It's not light pollution because it's going out to the. It's in Tasmania on the Bay of Fires. It's air glow. So the actual light air glow is, is, is. Oh well technically I don't have a technical explanation, but it's, it's a bit like aurora in the sense that it change, the sky will change color and you see it in long exposure. So that on this particular night there was a lot of green around and I was in Tasmania a few years ago and the sky was red and that was a night before a big aurora happened where obviously the sky starts to glow. So there's stuff going on in the sky all the time in every direction around that you see and the, the sky lights up in colors and all sorts of things and your long exposure of your camera picks up those colors. [01:23:19] Speaker A: Interesting. [01:23:22] Speaker B: I've seen this in a few photos. This red ring. [01:23:25] Speaker C: Yeah, so that, that is, that particular shot's taken with what's known as an astray modified camera. Essentially all it is is that cameras are designed with filters that filter out any light that our human eye can't see. That's how come when we take a photograph it looks like what we see with our eyes. Now obviously there are spectrums of light that our eye can't see. So if you get a camera full spectrum modified, for example, it will say everything ultraviolet, infrared. And then people put various filters in front to get that, say for example infrared cameras, they get that sort of real bright black and white look. This is what's known as a visible plus H alpha modification and that sees hydrogen alpha. And there's lots of hydrogen alpha in the night sky around Orion, which is this area here. And it's that pinky red color. So essentially what that filter does is, is filtering in more of the red and pinks, simple as that. So it can actually see that, but. [01:24:29] Speaker B: It'S actually picking up hydrogen in the atmosphere or out in the night, out in the galaxy. [01:24:35] Speaker C: The galaxies and their nebulas, they're way out, light years away. And various images, some image, some areas of the night sky have more or less of that particular. Now this image here, that. Just go back one again. That one. [01:24:49] Speaker B: Yeah, sure. [01:24:50] Speaker C: First one, that's in Tasmania, that's on the Fraser name peninsula. There was a bit of an aurora happening at the time. That's just a pretty simple composition. Nothing overly complicated about that. I shot two images only to get more light gathering on the foreground. So obviously if you're shooting, you know, 10 or 15 seconds of the sky is always brighter than the foreground. So the sky is nice and bright, but the foreground won't be. So that's why I shot a second image there with. You'll notice those little bit different settings. It's 120 seconds. That just captures all the sand and all the trees and all the. You can see some definition on that mountain now, which I could not see at 20 seconds. Then I would be really pushing the exposure, in other words, lifting the shadows, lifting everything and potentially lifting the noise. My signal to noise ratio is bad, so therefore I get a noisy image. By doing it this way, I've got a good signal to noise ratio on that. 120 seconds. [01:25:54] Speaker B: Very cool. [01:25:55] Speaker A: That makes sense because yeah, if that was me out looking for a night sky shot, I would always be looking at how will the landscape be silhouetted against the sky? Because I know it'll be mostly dark, you know, unless you light paint it or something. [01:26:10] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. [01:26:11] Speaker A: So it's. So I would, yeah, I'd be like, okay, I got to get lower so the tree sticks up into the sky so you can actually see the whole tree trunk and not just like some blobs on the horizon and you know, all that kind of stuff. But I see, yeah, I see with you bringing more of the foreground out, you get to experiment with compositions that otherwise might not work for a night sky. [01:26:33] Speaker C: Exactly. [01:26:33] Speaker A: A single night sky photo. [01:26:35] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. And see that you've hit the nail on the head that that is my philosophy of my night photography full stop. It is not so much about the night sky as it is about the night landscape or the night subject that is in the foreground. And therefore my principles, techniques and ideas are largely oriented toward the foreground subject, whatever that is. And so the sky never changes. So after a while you know how to shoot a night sky image and you can work out the various techniques, whether it be stacking or tracking, whatever that gets you the best image quality. So I can tell you one thing. A star tracker has no relevance to the foreground at all. It doesn't help you. But longer exposures will, or stacking multiple exposures will help you with the foreground or light painting. All of those things help with the foreground. And a lot of those images that you were looking at there show a closer, like the old plough and so forth. A closer subject. That is actually the point of the image. That is the focal point of the image. [01:27:43] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:27:43] Speaker C: And so the technique has to of has to go with whatever it is I'm trying to, to show people when I'm taking an image, whether, whether that's a plough or an old tractor or a machine or a tree or a landscape. In that particular image we just looked at, that's a big landscape. It's impossible to light paint. You can't light a mountain, so you need more exposure time. [01:28:05] Speaker A: Could you light a mountain? I mean with a big enough torch? [01:28:08] Speaker C: Yeah, well, you probably could, but it's not practical because you can't get on and, and I'm starting to get down to the nitty gritties. But you can't get the right angle of light. So if you're lighting them out, you're lighting from the camera. And one of my no nos is deer in the headlights lighting. It's a bit like flash photography at a wedding. You don't want the flash coming straight at someone from the camera. You want it to be bouncing off or coming from the side angle. And, and it's the same thing with, with that you can use moonlight to your advantage. In that case, I think I have seen some. [01:28:43] Speaker A: I was gonna say that light painting there was a dude, do you remember, photographer called Moose Peterson. Moose Peterson, he was like a famous landscape photographer or whatever in the States. [01:28:54] Speaker C: Yeah, I don't recall. [01:28:56] Speaker A: Yeah, he was, he's. Anyway, he was a well known landscape photographer and I reckon I watched a, an online course of his on one of those websites like Creative Live or something like that. And it was, it was light painting landscapes at night. And yeah, you just had these giant torches and he'd run over here and you know, light paint. But it wasn't, he wasn't doing a lot of the night sky. Wasn't the focus there wasn't A Milky Way in the shot or whatever. It was more trying to light paint. Yeah, hills and stuff that it was interesting. [01:29:29] Speaker B: There's a guy who does landscape light painting with drones and you'll see like above, like a pinnacle sticking out of the ocean. He'll have a drone fly a perfect circle around. I've seen the peak of the rock and, and it will be enough light to bring the whole thing forward. But you just see this gorgeous halo. [01:29:49] Speaker A: The halo, yeah. [01:29:51] Speaker B: Around the, around the, the monument or whatever the element is. And sometimes you'll do curves flying down the mountain, you know, like following the bridge of the mountain and. Yeah, really clever stuff. [01:30:03] Speaker A: So the drone provides some light on that, that part of the subject, but it also provides a point light source that has to become part of the shot. [01:30:12] Speaker B: Well, yeah, the point light source is quite a bright LED that must be mounted to it somewhere and it's casting enough onto the subject. But yeah, they look great. Look them up. Justin, you want to jump to some more comments because there's a lot coming in. [01:30:25] Speaker A: Yeah, there's a couple there still. Philip McCallum says Richard is a great teacher. Did a workshop on the farm. Learned a lot and very enjoyable. Farm's pretty cool. [01:30:35] Speaker C: Good man. Phil, he's from Queenslander. He's. He's a good man. [01:30:39] Speaker A: Oh, very cool. Yeah, very cool. And David Mascaro from San Francisco, he's been watching the podcast on his phone on the way home from another street walk and his long awaited book, the Americans was at his doorstep. Made his day. I was actually just looking at that book after I saw this comment. I might have to order it. It's a Robert Frank book. Very cool. He also says, really interested in this type of photography. Seems easier on the knees, I'm guessing, than wandering around the streets of San Francisco. I'm almost 70 now and the knees ache a lot. Well, yeah, the only problem is where you are in San Fran, you'd have to dive, drive a little bit away to get some, some clear night skies. But I guess you're not that far from some of the amazing national parks and stuff. Get out to Yosemite and. Yeah, yeah, hit it. It's just, you know, I don't know how. What's that, four hour drive or something? You'll be right. Get into it, David. [01:31:35] Speaker B: Yeah, make it a weekender road trip. [01:31:37] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. He. He shoots a lot of film, I think. And I had this question written down from earlier, so. So you mentioned star trails. Is that the only type of night photography you can shoot on Film, really? [01:31:53] Speaker C: No, it's not. But film is limited in its dynamic range and ability to capture. You have to. Excuse me, my wife has just brought a cup of tea in here for me. Is that permissible on this channel? Is it? [01:32:10] Speaker A: Well, I've been drinking coffee the whole time, so yeah, absolutely. [01:32:12] Speaker C: Oh, have you? Well, I've got my. [01:32:16] Speaker B: Empty coffee. [01:32:17] Speaker C: Sorry about that. So, you know, the ability to capture enough light onto film is the problem because the stars are moving so they end up trailing. If you, if you had a star tracker, then, yeah, you, you would get the benefit of shooting film. Obviously you don't get certain types of noise on film. So you can leave the shutter open all day and all night and it won't get noisy. As opposed to a digital camera. That's the, the sensor noise and everything else. But there are a few people that shoot film nightscapes, but they're pretty few and far between. [01:32:56] Speaker A: I want to try it now. It sounds fun. So does that mean, does that mean you could use like an ISO 100 film? If you could just, if you were going to do a star trail and you can just leave it open for hours. Can you use a low ISO film or would you still want to use a high ISO film? [01:33:15] Speaker C: I think, look, it's a long, long, long time since I've shot film. I think you could, you could use a 100 film. In fact, you could use 100 ISO on a digital camera and shoot star trials. [01:33:28] Speaker A: That's true, yeah. So I should probably try that first before I waste a roll of film and 20 hours trying to shoot some star trails. That's right. What other question did I had? A couple other questions I've been noting down. I just want to get through them because I was interested to know. So first of all, what about medium format for Astro? Is anyone using that? Is there a benefit to it? Is it something you've seen people doing or not really? [01:33:56] Speaker C: Yeah, I have medium format. Well, let me put it this way. I would suggest that 35 millimeter, what we call full frame cameras have had the most research and most technology put into them over the years and therefore they are the best all round cameras. You probably have to agree. I mean there are crop sensor cameras. You're put into the same category because they've had a lot of technology put into them. Medium format Cameras, you know, 100 megapixel, GFX 1/ hundreds and things like that can be used for long exposure photography, but they're, they're less suitable because they're more of a One trick pony. They're a high megapixel landscape camera, sometimes portrait camera, but they're not made for anything else and their noise performance is nowhere near as good. So you're getting, you're getting 100 megapixels. Right. But you know, do we really want 100 megapixel nightscape with a whole heap of noise that we've got to control that isn't. See, I had a guy, a guy came to one of my workshops. He had a Leica medium format camera that was about this big, his tripod head was about this big just to hold the thing up. And it just did not perform over ISO 800 at all. Because it was made as a landscape slash studio camera. That's what it was made for and it excels at that. So in my experience and from other people's experience that I've seen, medium format is expensive way of trying to get a nightscape image where you could do the same thing on a, a tenth of the budget with a more commonly available camera that is cheaper to buy. And also the lenses, they don't have very many wide angle lenses. Ultra wide, ultra fast lenses. [01:35:59] Speaker A: No. And if they, they get expensive too as you start to head in those directions of their, their sort of lower, you know, wider aperture lenses and stuff like that get pretty pricey on the medium format systems. I was just interested as to where, whether it's something that people. [01:36:15] Speaker C: I got a biscuit as well. [01:36:16] Speaker A: Oh, nice. [01:36:17] Speaker C: Yeah, I just dunked it. Is that okay on your channel? [01:36:20] Speaker B: Yeah, you do whatever you need. [01:36:22] Speaker A: You can drink the tea through the biscuit if you want to go, what's it, the Tim Tam straw technique. [01:36:28] Speaker C: All these people following along, they know I dunk my biscuits. [01:36:33] Speaker A: They've been to the workshops, they've seen it. [01:36:36] Speaker C: Yeah, probably. [01:36:39] Speaker A: What other questions did I have noted down? Now you mentioned Nikon Z6, 2 and 3. Any difference for Astro or like any, any perceivable difference? I know the three they talked about having some issues with dynamic range and stuff compared to the two. Is that something that enters your radar or not? Not really. [01:37:00] Speaker C: Well, yeah, it does, but that's at base ISO. So once you get to ISO 800 upwards, there's no difference. So there's not very many images that I'm shooting under ISO 800. Typically with most modern sensors they have dual gain ISO circuitry. So on the, the Z range, the, you know, six, seven and I think eight, that second native ISO kicks in at 800. So if you look at the charts, you'll notice a big dynamic range increase when you go to 800 as opposed to 640 or whatever. Now, other cameras are different and every camera is different in where that is. So on the older cameras, like let's go back to the Canon 5D Mark II, it was just a linear. It just got more and more as you went up. But on these new cameras it goes like this and then suddenly drops down and then starts off up again. So the Z6 Mark III is a partially stacked sensor. The reason they did that was to get better autofocus performance and tracking focus performance. Now you'll notice the Z8 and Z9 in the Nikon range and some of the other Sony A1 or whatever, they're stacked, fully stacked sensors. Right. And other brands have the same fully stacked sensor. Does not work as well at base ISO as a non fully stacked or partially stacked sensor. What am I saying? It's a speed performance that they're getting by stacking sensor technology. But that comes at a little bit of a premium at ISO performance. Now, if you're after speed, if you're, if you're at the MCG wanting to get the mark of the day in the grand final, you don't care too much about ISO performance. You want speed and focusability. That's what you're after. So those high cameras, like the Sony A1 for example, has a fully stacked sensor, as does the Nikon Z9 for example, and the Z8. People don't care about base ISO performance so much in those cameras. At high ISO performance doesn't matter anyway. So the Z6 Mark II, it doesn't perform as well as the Z6 Mark III in autofocus, but I'm not using autofocus. What else is. A flip screen is different. So sometimes that can be good, sometimes it can be bad. A few other things, it's got a couple of high, what they call it starlight mode to focus with things like that. These are all just added bits and pieces to the bare bones of a standard old Z6 or Z7 camera from, you know, six years ago. [01:39:46] Speaker A: Yep. So no significant difference in image quality for shooting something at 1600 or 3200. You wouldn't choose one over the other. When you're going out, you think, for this shot I'm definitely going to use the Mark III or something like that. It honestly wouldn't matter to you. [01:40:01] Speaker C: Which one wouldn't matter? [01:40:03] Speaker A: Okay, that's interesting. [01:40:04] Speaker C: If I was, if I was shooting people or moving subjects, I would go for the Mark iii. Every single time. Yep. [01:40:11] Speaker A: Yep. Interesting. Okay, Greg, you got any questions burbling up in your brain that you've been waiting to ask? [01:40:20] Speaker B: No, I'm. I'm processing so much information. [01:40:23] Speaker C: Have you. [01:40:24] Speaker A: Have you done any Nightscape stuff, Greg? [01:40:27] Speaker B: No, not really. I did a little bit with a mate down at Phillip Island a number of years ago, but it never really grabbed me. I'm scared of the dark. [01:40:39] Speaker C: So that is a problem. [01:40:43] Speaker B: It can be. It can be because I quiver when I'm squared. I quiver and then the photos are all blurry. But no, I haven't really. Justin. [01:40:53] Speaker A: Okay. [01:40:53] Speaker B: I came across a couple of your shots the other day. You had done some night shots with someone on a. Was it a mountain bike or a trail bike? [01:41:02] Speaker A: No, it was. It was a dirt bike. I reposted them recently, I think. I actually, I talked to Richard about this last time he was on the podcast, because these are from years ago. They're actually from 2017, so. On an old fashioned DSLR camera. And yeah, I reposted them because the rider in those images, Daniel Sanders, Chucky Sanders, just won the Dakar rally this year. Second Aussie to do it in the last 50 years. I think so. And he's a friend of ours. He's me. Bring it up. You bring it up. [01:41:32] Speaker B: No, I'll bring it up. [01:41:33] Speaker A: You bring it up. [01:41:34] Speaker B: I'll bring it up. [01:41:35] Speaker A: And yeah, we did talk about this last time because it was one of those ideas that I had for a photo, for a night image that I hadn't seen done before was sort of nighttime sports photography. And yeah, I remember showing Richard these last time was that they could probably be done better, but I wanted them in one shot because to me, for something that involves action, if it's not in a single shot, it might as well be. I mean, you could do it however you want to. Yeah, or we could have lit because the thing that was crazy was controlling the light. So for this one, and he's going off a jump in the bottom left hand corner, he's hitting the up ramp of a jump and you can see on those trees, that's the bleed From a tiny LED light we had about 20 meters in front of the jump. That was like his cue, so he could keep a bit of an eye on his speed and stuff like that. But otherwise the landing, everything was completely black. Yeah, it was insane. He's a crazy rider. There's no other way that it could have been done. And even the other shot, that's not a jump, it was just a Sandy, Bermuda. But he was. He was hitting it in pitch black. I don't know how he did it because, yeah, obviously any light bleed at all would have created motion blur and all that. So it was lit with a flash. [01:43:01] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:43:01] Speaker B: Anyway, so you've gone for a lot. Sorry, You've gone for a long exposure to make sure that the galactic core get enough detail and then you've delayed the flash trigger. [01:43:12] Speaker A: We. We manually. Manually triggered the firing of the flash based on where we could hear him in the corner. So we had. Because we couldn't even see him. So we just hear him go. And I was like, all right, now. And just fire the flash. And then I'd have to tell because there was also. There was a group of probably 15 or 20 people watching this unfold because everyone was just standing around a fire before I decided to do this. And I'm like, no one touch anything. If you touch your phones, I'll kill you. Because, you know, because it was like we had to wait until the shutter closed after I fired the flash for it to be all clear for people to be able to, you know, move around or whatever. So, yeah, it was. It was. It was very interesting. Very fun process. Really fun process. But it was years ago and I haven't done anything like this since. Yeah, I'd really like to. It was. Yeah, it was super fun. I love getting it in one photo. I don't know what it is about it getting it in camera. Obviously those have been put through Lightroom, but. But they're just one shot. [01:44:22] Speaker C: I think. I think the concept of what you're saying also stems from your experience in wedding photography, where you haven't got time to set your thing up anyway. You've got about 20 seconds to get a bride and groom in position and take a photo and then they're gone again. And it's also the principle of what you just did there. Is it pretty much exactly the same as you shooting a bride and groom on a dam with a sunset in the background? It isn't. It really. [01:44:48] Speaker A: Exactly. [01:44:49] Speaker C: It's all the same thing. [01:44:50] Speaker A: Yeah, it's the same you. It's. It's. Yeah, exactly. It's what we've. We've practiced a million times, which is exposed for the first. We've got to expose for the supply or whatever it is. We're trying to capture the. The thing we can't control. We need to do that and then we need to control the rest of the frame with light so that we can get what we're trying to Get. And it's the same as if you were doing light painting or whatever. So first we start with this, the Milky Way, and then we work backwards to add in the other elements or whatever. It was super fun. It's a good shot. [01:45:25] Speaker C: It's a good shot and I would say a unique shot. There's not many people who'd be willing to firstly take the photo, secondly, not many people willing to actually ride the bike. [01:45:33] Speaker A: It's the rider, honestly. Yeah, there's a ton of photographers that could have done what I did because it is. It's a fairly simple technique. It's just yet to expose for the shot and then get the flash correct and then that's it. And timing the flash was honestly the hardest part because it had to try and get it at the correct part of the frame without really being able to see him. But the writing was a thousand times harder. Oh my gosh. I was watch. Watching him do it. It got to the point where I was like, oh, I don't. The jump one. I was like, I don't. It's not exactly what I was going for, but I was sort of like, I think we need to call it because if, if you crash, like, I won't forgive myself. So. Yeah, but yeah, he's also a professional, obviously, so he was. Yeah, he was flying. David has just commented. I have the D850 and the ZF. Which would you take if you could only take one of them to do Astro? [01:46:34] Speaker C: That's a. An interesting question. Okay, so the Nikon D850 is in my opinion the best DSLR camera Nikon ever made. So it's great. It will do everything you ask it to do without any hiccups at all. So it's a great camera as long as you put a good lens on that. For example, a Nikon 20 mil F 1.8G, cheap, easy, lightweight lens, it'll be fine. The Nikon ZF is an enthusiast late model mirrorless camera. Lacking a couple of things which I didn't like. I tried it out. It's actually a really good image camera. It's pretty much got the Same internals as Z6 mark 2, same sensor, I think, but it doesn't have a remote port, which really bugged me because I always remote trigger things. It's a. It hasn't got a grip. You can't, I suppose on a tripod it's not a problem. I, I struggled just holding the thing. It's like a brick. And that takes, it takes me back. And you Guys will laugh at me, but it takes me back to the old film cameras because that's what it's meant to be, a retro camera. Yeah, look, they're both great. The. The D850 is a better camera, all overall, in my opinion, but it's older technology. The ZF's great. It would. It would take the picture. But as long as you can press the shutter release somehow, because you can't plug a remote into it, not easily anyway. [01:48:04] Speaker B: I think you can load it off the phone app. [01:48:06] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:48:08] Speaker B: Yeah. It's not ideal, but it's. Because it's, you know. [01:48:11] Speaker C: You know, and it's. And that shows. Greg, my, My. Maybe I'm just getting old, but I hate using phone apps to control. Yeah, I really do. Yeah, I really do. [01:48:22] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:48:22] Speaker A: Just trying to get them to connect. Honestly, what. It blows me away that the only reasonable app that I've used so far is the Leica one, because I would actually expect Leica to be behind on that sort of stuff. You know, like, you would think that like, like Canon and Nikon and that their apps would be amazing and Leica would be behind because they're a smaller company and they're more focused on, you know, niche cameras and stuff. [01:48:50] Speaker C: Exactly. [01:48:51] Speaker A: Like Leica's app actually connects really easily and works really well. [01:48:54] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:48:54] Speaker A: The other. I could never get the other ones to work. [01:48:57] Speaker B: I reckon the difference is, I reckon, like, it outsourced. I reckon they swallowed their pride and outsourced to a. To a proper tech company, whereas I think the others are trying to do it in house. [01:49:07] Speaker A: In house. [01:49:07] Speaker C: And that illustrates. Illustrates my point about why where camera manufacturers are so far behind phone makers, because they get the Bluetooth and the WI FI stuff, right? Oh, yeah. It seems easy for them. [01:49:21] Speaker A: Yeah. It all just works. [01:49:22] Speaker C: Camera. Yeah. Yeah. [01:49:24] Speaker A: I. I could never get it. I was like, I just want to transfer some photos. And it was like, it's not connected. And then it. I'm like, what is? [01:49:31] Speaker B: Yeah, the Fujifilm app is notoriously. It's much better now. They've just released a new one for newer cameras, but. Or last year they did, I think. But the original Fuji Remote camera app, as it was called, was such a dog to connect. [01:49:47] Speaker A: Oh, really? [01:49:48] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. And it just. It just. It got confused. It just wouldn't find your camera. It. You know, and I only used it a handful of times, mostly when I was overseas and I just wanted to send a like do because it has RAW conversion software in the camera to the app. So you can transfer a JPEG because it wouldn't take raw photos originally and yeah, just so much mucking around. Not worth crazy. [01:50:16] Speaker A: That reminds me. No, it doesn't really remind me but it reminded me because I've got it written down here. Richard, you went to New Zealand for half. Half workshop, half holiday recently you went with on the workshop was organized with 11 Barrett, previous guest of the show. Tell us a little bit about New Zealand, what you thought of the. I mean we got a good rundown of the workshop in, in Levin's episode. [01:50:50] Speaker B: Yeah, she was on it with him. [01:50:52] Speaker A: What about. Tell us more about New Zealand in terms of like photo locations. [01:50:58] Speaker B: What. [01:50:58] Speaker A: Yeah, what were some favorite parts? What did you explore? North and south island or just south or. Yeah, talk us through it. [01:51:06] Speaker C: Well, I only did the south island and not all of that either because you need a lot more time. But New Zealand's a beautiful country. Everywhere you turn there's a composition somewhere. And snow on the mountains was the biggest thing for me living in central Victoria. There's not much snow around here. In fact Australia full stop. There's not much snow here. And seeing snow in November on the mountains in New Zealand was just beautiful. But everywhere you turn there there's blue water in a lake. And even at the end of my time they went just before I came home that the lupins were coming out. So they got these. I know they're weeds, but they're beautiful weeds and these long flowers that, that just grow in massive clumps and it's just a photographic paradise really. And so I, I, you know, I've never been to New Zealand so that was the first time there did the trip with, with Levin and the group and that was a wonderful group, wonderful people. It was a, it was a very, very efficient and well organized trip. That's. Levins are a very organized person as you have to be being an airline pilot. But he, he's just, he's just a guy who can, he can organize a trip. He organizes logistics probably better than anyone I've ever met. And it's a lot easier for me to come along on a trip like that because I don't have to organize logistics. And he's good at problem solving on the run if logistically or whatever it may be. The country itself is, is beautiful. Everywhere you go there are places to photograph. Now obviously local knowledge helps. I didn't have local knowledge because I'd not been there. But if you, if you go to some places you just go down a little side track somewhere and suddenly there's A there's a big vista opens up to you. Now, you wouldn't know it was there unless you obviously had been there before. But yeah, I loved Mount Cook. The, that area is gorgeous. There's blue lakes everywhere, little rivers and streams running through, you know, swing bridges and things like that. It's, it's completely different to what we would see here in Australia anywhere. The, the. There's no kangaroos. I love that about it. [01:53:24] Speaker B: What's your beef with kangaroos? Oh well, they just disrupt your compositions. [01:53:28] Speaker C: Now on the way to the airport to go to New Zealand, I smashed into a kangaroo at 110k's an hour on the freeway down the wood end. Wrote my car off basically. I, I was able to get to the airport and go on the trip but I've since had to replace that car. It's gone. So I've got a beef with kangaroos. I had thankfully had a bull bar which has saved the car from actual total destruction. But there's no ruse. I did see a couple of deer over there, but no, look, it's a great place to visit but I love Tasmania as well. There's a lot of similarities in, in the landscape. Tassie's easier to get around, it's smaller. You don't quite have the big snow capped mountains that you have in New Zealand, but at the same time it's got some beautiful places. I've, I'm more familiar with Tassie because I've been there plenty of times, but I'm going back again to New Zealand with Levin this year and Tasmania with Levin this year, so that'll be good. Look forward to that. Really? [01:54:32] Speaker A: I assume, I assume they're both sold out. [01:54:35] Speaker C: They are. [01:54:35] Speaker B: His was sold out. Yeah. When we talked to him last year, weren't they? Yeah. I was having a chat with Levin on email earlier in the week and he mentioned on his, on his episode with us that he was looking at possibly organizing some different tours and he's kind of in the throes of organizing Norway so it'd be interesting to see what comes from that. And knowing, as you said, Richard, knowing Levin and how meticulous he is about, you know, because as you said, he's an airline pilot and I think one of the comments he made to us is that my job is problem solving. [01:55:11] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:55:11] Speaker B: You know that the aircraft is designed to do its thing. My job is to problem solve when things don't go right. [01:55:17] Speaker A: Yeah. And what, what, how did he put it? Problem solving but also preparing for potential problems prior to Them happening, that's a lot of peace. But you know, like force, you know, looking forward and going, okay, what would happen if the bus broke down? You know. Yeah, but, but he, he, that's how his brain works is like, okay, what if, what if the weather did this? What if this happened? What would we do? And so when, when these unforeseen situations arise, he's ready to pivot and, and, and make sure everyone still has a great time. [01:55:49] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, that's true. No, very true. No, he's, he's a good operator and he's a good bloke. He's, he's friendly, laid back and easy to communicate with. So. And I think he asked me to come along on some of these trips with him. So they're his, they're his trips. I'm just coming along but I'm enjoying it because he and I approach photography completely differently. We have different backgrounds in photography and so I, I was, would say and hope that we complement each other and people that come along on the trip have, have a wider gamut of experience because of it. [01:56:28] Speaker B: Yep. Wonderful. [01:56:30] Speaker A: Very cool. [01:56:31] Speaker B: Very, very cool. Justin, should we jump to some news? [01:56:35] Speaker A: Yeah, I think so. I mean unless there's anything else you want to chat about, Richard, before we do you want to talk about a little bit of news with us, See what's been. [01:56:43] Speaker C: Look, I'm happy, I'm happy to talk about whatever you, you want. I noticed someone's commented there that there's no rumbles today. I don't mind the old. Yeah, these people know me too well. I. [01:56:57] Speaker A: You like a rumble with a cupper. [01:56:59] Speaker C: I usually dunk something into it. Haven't got any today, Bill. Sorry. [01:57:05] Speaker A: I'd be jealous. [01:57:06] Speaker B: What's wrong with the little morning tipple? Is there. [01:57:08] Speaker C: No, no, no, no. [01:57:10] Speaker B: What am I looking for? [01:57:12] Speaker A: What news has there been? What's been happening? Oh I see. [01:57:15] Speaker B: Well I see coming up actually recently I must say because I write daily news for ShotKit.com the amount of third party brands that are bringing out lenses for mirrorless, current, you know, full for God, green words, full frame and APS C sensored mirrorless. You know we've got Viltrox, TT Artisans, seven Artisans, Lauer, a couple of other brands. Voigtlander have brought out a few lots of third party lenses coming out at the moment. It's wonderful to see. I'm a fan of native glass. I'm a Fuji shooter and I prefer native Fuji glass. But the amount of third party quality third party options that are coming out that give people like us choice, especially if you're on a budget or that, you know, you don't quite want to go with the Fuji lens or the Sony lens. There might be a third party option. So keep an eye out for those. [01:58:13] Speaker A: And it seems they've been good for things like Nightscape, Astro and also just landscape photography because a lot of them previously were manual focus only. [01:58:25] Speaker B: Yeah. So like the Samyang 12 mil that's been in circulation. God for probably a decade at least. I remember that was one of the very first options as a third party on Fujifilm cameras when the X. [01:58:41] Speaker C: A lot of people still use that lens. [01:58:43] Speaker B: Yeah. So there's and Lauer or Venus Optics who make Laura. They've got a lot of macro tilt, shift and wide angle zero distortion lenses which are also great. The wide angle obviously especially for nightscapes. But this piece here, it's a little bit different. Fujifilm have launched what I, I kind of think might not be the prettiest camera on the market today. It's, it's an interesting blend. It's a hybrid Instax EVO wide instant film camera. So the reason why it's a hybrid is that it has a, has a sensor, it has storage and it has some form of processor. You can shoot and print your images instantly. It takes a wide which is about the size of two business cards side by side the wide frame and it's. But it's, it's not a cheap camera. It's. And so sorry. It also has a LCD on the back and you can apply up to 100 film looks. It's 100 film looks and 100 style like alterations to those. They're like filters. It's very much targeting a youth kind of, you know, with the filters and it's got a selfie mirror on the front. But it's an interesting device. It's huge. It's quite big. And it also acts as a smartphone printer. So you can shoot, you can either just use the camera on its own, take a photo, print it it or you can take a bunch of photos and then choose what to print later. Or you can use it as a smartphone printer which you can pretty much do with any of the, the Fuji hybrid EVO ones. There's also a mini one and you can, yeah just shoot from, you know, print from your smartphone directly to the camera. What, what is interesting, which I think is really out of place is that on the side here, I don't. It's hard to show it's actually a film like an old school film SLR winding thing. So it unclips and you wind it and that's how you make it print. It just feels. Yeah, indeed. It feels out of place. There it is there. And so you basically. Yeah, you basically unflip it, wind it to make it print. [02:01:04] Speaker A: Yeah, that seems like making it harder to use for the sake of adding a kind of a retro element or something. [02:01:13] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, it's a little, it feels a little out of place, but I haven't. I'm hoping to get one for a review. I've asked for one as well as the lamography wide. That came out a couple of weeks ago, so I want to compare them. But it has a fixed 16 mil 2.4 lens, 16 megapixel, 1/3 sensor. But it's big. It weighs 490 grams. Most Instax are really light and yeah, you know, kind of you throw them in your, in your day bag kind of thing. [02:01:42] Speaker A: But this one here, paper will still be expensive for these. Is it like the Instax where it's like they're like a dollar a shot kind of deal? [02:01:49] Speaker B: It is the same. Yeah. So the camera itself is 350us. So that's pretty hefty. That's like, you know, 1900 Australian. I'm sure. The wide film, they brought out a new brush, metallic. It's got like a metallic frame, you know, so the frames are still the same. That's 14 US for a pack of 10. [02:02:10] Speaker A: Wives for a pack of 10. So it'll be over $2 a shot. [02:02:14] Speaker B: Yeah, yep. [02:02:16] Speaker A: It's expensive and it's still, it's hybrid. So it's basically just a digital average digital camera with a printer built into the back of it, essentially. [02:02:26] Speaker B: Yeah, but they are very popular and they have, you know, they've been running this brand, I think since 98. I think I mentioned at the start, I wrote this article. 98. They launched the first one and they've been, you know, they've been running this brand for a long time. [02:02:41] Speaker A: So they certainly own that market, that's for sure. They really. [02:02:44] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, Leica brought out theirs and obviously there's the Polaroid options when they sort of resurfaced a few years back. But, but Fujifilm have stuck through the whole time with the, the insects range and they are incredibly popular. They sell well. You walk into a JB hi Fi or anything like that and there'll be a whole wall of them, film styles, you know, photo albums. You can get a cover for leather cover for this one. So it's quite a premium offering. Anyway, that's that the next one. Let me share this one. This might interest you because it's a 24 megapixel full frame camera. Brand new one. Drumroll please. Justin. No, don't do that. [02:03:31] Speaker A: Oh no. Where's my other sound effects? [02:03:33] Speaker B: Don't you have a stream deck? [02:03:36] Speaker A: I've got. No. [02:03:40] Speaker B: Like I have released the all new full frame Leica S3. Sorry, SL3s. Yes. This is very much a videography camera. It's a 24 megapixel. No, not this one, sorry. This is the S. So this is the video version. The S only has a. So the SL3 has a 60 megapixel sensor, whereas this one, because it's more video centric, it has a very different sensor and it's only 24 megapixel backside eliminated. [02:04:11] Speaker A: It's also supposed to be faster for sports and stuff, but. Yeah, I don't know, it's. It's. I, I'm. I'm struggling with these. I really am. I don't know, I guess there are photographers that want to. Or videographers that want to shoot with that SL series, but it's. Yeah, I don't know, it just seems like a not up, up to date Z63 or R6 mark 3. You know, like it just seems like it's triple the price but. But still kind of behind those models of camera. [02:04:50] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I mean you are paying for the little red dot. That's always a premium. But you know, there's a tool for every job. And for some people who are already SL shooters and have a bunch of lenses, this is a, you know, this upgrade makes sense. It's got a crazy ISO range up to 200,000 expanded. It's got image sense image 5 axis image stabilization. It shoots 30fps continuous mode. [02:05:21] Speaker A: Need to, need to hit up Leica Richard and see if they'll send you a test model. That'd be a wonderful YouTube video. [02:05:28] Speaker C: Yeah. [02:05:29] Speaker B: Because it is US$5,300 for the body alone. [02:05:35] Speaker A: I don't know what they've got in the way of lenses. I know they're. Because it's part of the L mount alliance. Like there's. There are other lens options available, but. Oh yeah, the, the SL lenses are quite, quite magical. But I don't know what they like in the, in the way of wides. [02:05:50] Speaker B: Well, you are paying for it, aren't you? [02:05:53] Speaker A: Well, paying for it. Have you, have you ever been tempted by something like that. Richard, have you ever looked at Leica and thought, oh, I'd like one of them? [02:06:01] Speaker C: No. No. That's an easy answer. That's an easy answer. It's a bit like what I said before, you know, a lot of these, these brands, look, it's great camera, don't get me wrong, but the, the price, I don't, I don't want to. And I'm locking myself into a system that's going to make me poor for the rest of my life. [02:06:25] Speaker A: Clip it, Seb, clip it, clip it. [02:06:29] Speaker B: The only other, the only other bit of news that I think is worth sharing. We'll just do a quick recap of the news. This is brought to you by ShotKit, as always, because I write all of this stuff. Pelican have announced, announced a new hybrid travel case range. Not for camera gear, for luggage. So they've moved into the, the luggage space. You can get obviously camera cubes that will go into these things. But they're very high tech, they've got fancy materials and fabrics and interesting larger wheels. So they're saying that they're, I mean, they're pretty spiffy looking cases for travel. [02:07:07] Speaker A: I like that. [02:07:08] Speaker C: Yeah, I like it too. [02:07:09] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:07:10] Speaker A: Because I, yeah, I, I think I actually need to get a hard case suitcase that I can check in because I often end up with just a little bit too much gear to put in carry on. [02:07:24] Speaker C: Yeah. [02:07:24] Speaker A: Like if I just want to take an extra lens or something like that and a few other heavy things, but I don't want them to, it's just too much because some of the, like when we went to Vietnam, like some of these cheaper airlines, I think our max carry on was seven kilos, which doesn't go far. You know, by the time you actually have a bag, that bag probably weighs a kilo and a half. It's like. And then you put a camera in it and a lens and a couple other bits and pieces. Like there's nothing else you could. So I do end up having to put some stuff in the. [02:07:54] Speaker B: Yeah. Which is always a risky, anxious time because, you know, we've all seen the videos, we've all seen the one. What was that guy? He was a musician and they completely destroyed his guitar. He's like much loved classic. But anyway, these, the ATX series is a 22 carry on 22 inch carry on, a 25 and a 30 inch check in case. So they all have this same style, which I wish that Pelican would actually start to move their camera cases too because it's really stylish. [02:08:24] Speaker A: Just a bit. Yeah. Move past that. The sort of the oldest. [02:08:27] Speaker B: Go past the rounded. It's got the pressure seal so you can tighten it depending on, you know, or loosen it depending on where you are. The ATX 22 inch is going to cost you 500 US and the big boy 30 inch is 700 US. So maybe if you sell your Leica Q3 then you can afford some new luggage to then buy a camera lens to take with you. [02:08:52] Speaker A: Hang on, let me bring. Is that the last thing you need to bring up? I just want to share my screen. [02:08:56] Speaker B: Let me just have a quick scan of news. Think tank have got a new bunch of bags out. That's about it. Bunch of. Look, look here. These are all third party lenses that are, you know, being made coming out. [02:09:07] Speaker A: Coming out, coming out. [02:09:09] Speaker C: So how many of those will fit the Canon RF system? [02:09:13] Speaker B: Nothing in full frame yet. [02:09:15] Speaker A: No, I do, I've got to actually send it back. I, I need to remember but there. [02:09:19] Speaker B: Is a bunch of APS A Tamron. [02:09:22] Speaker A: APS C wide angle that I, I got to test which was pretty cool. And and so to me that's like it's coming, it's just slow and yeah, you're right. There's not much available. But if you were to go with the SL3s, Richard, for Astro, here's a beautiful 21 mil F2 lens for a mere $9,190. So camera, you would have change from 20 grand. It would probably only cost you 17 or 18 to get set up in that system. With one camera and one lens you could, you could sell all of your gear and maybe cover the cost of the one camera. [02:10:02] Speaker B: And I think it's spending that much money and putting yourself in that much debt would actually motivate you to build up your YouTube subscriber base several hundred thousand. [02:10:13] Speaker A: You could be the Leica camera, the Leica astrophotographer. [02:10:17] Speaker B: What did you call it? You called it pocket money. [02:10:20] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, no thanks. [02:10:23] Speaker A: Not excited. [02:10:24] Speaker C: I don't think so. [02:10:25] Speaker A: Look, and I'm an enjoyer of Leica cameras but yeah, it's hard to justify that system, that SL system. And I think Petapixel did a review on it and they sort of said look, it's so close to the current Lumix. What are they doing now? The Lumix S something or whatever kind of like video oriented 24 megapixel camera. [02:10:46] Speaker C: Yeah, it's like all areas. [02:10:48] Speaker A: Yeah, they're like, it's the same tech. It's you know it's got the same mount, like. [02:10:53] Speaker C: Yeah. [02:10:54] Speaker A: But it's literally less than half the price. I think that that's a third of the price. And they're like, it's hard, it's really hard to turn around and say, yeah, it's worth that extra money. Y which. [02:11:04] Speaker B: The only other bit of news that's probably worth sharing is that OM Systems, it looks like they're going to release like the Nikon zf. They're going to release a digital camera with a retro camera aesthetic. [02:11:18] Speaker A: They've teased a little bit of stuff, haven't they? [02:11:20] Speaker B: Yeah, they say, well, there's an event now scheduled for. I think it's March in Australia, like a global summit. So that's coming soon. That'll be interesting to see. You know, we're seeing more of this. Obviously Fujifilm kind of paved the way for retro. Retro aesthetics that's slowly disappearing with some of their flagship models. [02:11:43] Speaker A: You know, it's interesting. And Nikon have done it with the ZF and those sort of series. Has Canon ever done it? I don't think they've ever had a retro anything. Or they just don't. They're just like, nah, we don't. That's not how we roll. [02:11:59] Speaker C: I think Canon's attitude is we don't need to do that. [02:12:03] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. We're only focused on the. [02:12:08] Speaker C: Yeah, we're the number one. We don't need to do what they're doing. [02:12:11] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Well also I guess has Sony done it? [02:12:16] Speaker B: No, no, not so much. [02:12:19] Speaker C: Their attitude is we're the innovators. So we're not going to copy somebody else. [02:12:23] Speaker A: No, and they're trying there. I guess also they don't have the retro history to call on. You know, Nikon can be like, hey, this is, this is like our old. Whatever. Exactly. Sony don't have that. So there's probably no point them looking backwards. They need to. [02:12:39] Speaker C: They could make it look like a Sony, you know, like a Walkman or something. [02:12:45] Speaker A: That would be cool. [02:12:46] Speaker B: Discman. [02:12:48] Speaker A: It records to cd. Yeah, that'd be sweet. [02:12:51] Speaker B: What is interesting though is that a lot of these camera brands like Voigtlander especially, I don't know, Voigtlander often does stuff for Leica. But a lot of the camera brands that are developed third party brands producing current gen lenses that are autofocus with classic aesthetics and even classic build quality, full brass chassis, aircraft grade aluminium, aluminum, if you want to say it in America, you know, like they're really digging into that retro styling and build quality. This you know, should last forever, those lenses, but they're not, they don't necessarily cost the earth. So it's just interesting to see where things are heading. I think Fujifilm have at least last year Fujifilm released four cameras or announced four cameras. This year the plan is two more. We know that OM system has got a couple up their sleeve. We know that. Or Pentax has just released. I just retired. Is it the KT3 3? [02:13:51] Speaker A: Yeah, K3 Mark. [02:13:52] Speaker B: The K3 Mark 3 I think has just been retired. So there's a whole lot of flux in the industry around products coming and going as brands try to release products that retain and capture market share. [02:14:05] Speaker A: Market. Yeah. I was just thinking, I wonder what Nikon will do this year. Like, are they, what do we got? Because the Z8 and Z9, they're still. [02:14:12] Speaker B: Like, they're still new. [02:14:14] Speaker A: They're still new leading cameras, but they have been out for a few years. [02:14:18] Speaker C: Yeah. [02:14:19] Speaker B: Focus on lenses. [02:14:20] Speaker C: They've had quite a few firmware updates on those cameras. [02:14:24] Speaker B: Yeah, they have, yeah. [02:14:25] Speaker A: Which keeps. [02:14:25] Speaker B: I think they'll focus on glass. Yeah, I think they'll expand their glass for cine applications. [02:14:33] Speaker C: I wouldn't mind a native 14 millimeter or 16 millimeter prime f 1.8 or 1.4 from the Z mount. [02:14:42] Speaker A: Are you using like a Sigma or something now or what? What do you use for a wide angle prime? [02:14:48] Speaker C: Well, I have, I have a Viltrox 16 mil f 1.8 native Z mount. That's not a bad lens. [02:14:56] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:14:57] Speaker C: I also have a Nikon 14-24 f 2.8 zoom lens. [02:15:01] Speaker A: The Z1. [02:15:02] Speaker C: The Z1? Yeah. [02:15:04] Speaker A: Oh yeah, yeah. [02:15:05] Speaker C: That's a great lens, but it's expensive and I don't use it much. You'll laugh at me, but I use it more for time lapse than anything else. Just to get the ultra wide field of view. [02:15:16] Speaker B: Yeah, fair enough. [02:15:17] Speaker C: I also have a Lauer 15 millimeter F2 in the Zed mount. That's, that's built like a tank, that thing. [02:15:24] Speaker B: Very strong. [02:15:25] Speaker A: Their lenses are pretty cool, aren't they? They're like. [02:15:27] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. A couple of comments here, David. This old Nikon guy hopes for a rangefinder. [02:15:34] Speaker A: Is that what you're waiting for? [02:15:36] Speaker B: Is that David waiting for that or are you saying that the Richard's waiting for that? [02:15:40] Speaker C: No, I'm not waiting for it. But just put, just put your camera into manual focus mode and it's close enough. [02:15:45] Speaker B: Yeah, true. Jim. We haven't seen Jim for a few weeks. [02:15:48] Speaker A: Yeah. Where are You, Jim, We've been waiting. We're actually gonna just cancel the show because you weren't here. [02:15:53] Speaker B: Yeah, so sad. Sorry I couldn't be there today. Finally, a Nikon shooter. What is that supposed to mean? But yeah, look, I think. Oh, Jim's working. He's at Lucky hq. Someone has to be. [02:16:09] Speaker A: If you've ordered a strap. He's packing it. [02:16:12] Speaker B: Well, Justin and I have frivolous conversations with celebrities. Jim, Yelena and now editor Seb are. [02:16:19] Speaker A: Busy working, working hard. We're just having a chat. We just keep building the team, Greg. So we're the talent. Anything. [02:16:25] Speaker B: We're the talent. That's what we are, the talent. [02:16:27] Speaker A: We had a shoot this morning, Jim. That's cool. You'll be back next week. We don't want you next week. [02:16:32] Speaker B: Yeah, no, you've keep packing straps. But yeah, I think we might. I think we might wrap things up. On that note. So much to process about today. I think this is an episode that I definitely will sit down and re watch. Because there is so much to learn from what you've said, Richard. And I think even just spending these last couple of hours with you, I can see why the sentiment coming from all the people who you paid to watch today, the sentiment has been that you do know how to educate people, you do know how to engage and boil everything down to its purest level so that you can digest it in its simplest form, take it away and apply it and then build upon that with your own skill set, your own experiences, your own knowledge and learning. So I guess on behalf of the camera life, Justin and I, and lucky straps, I just wanted to say thank you for what has been probably one of the most insightful episodes that I think I've had the. The benefit of being part of. [02:17:38] Speaker C: Thank you. Appreciate that. It was good to be with you again. [02:17:42] Speaker B: Yeah, it's lovely to meet you if. [02:17:45] Speaker A: You haven't, and I'm sure most of you have, but if you haven't been over to Richard's YouTube channel, I've got it up on the screen now. Nightscape Images. It is. How many? 304 videos, 82,000 subscribers. And it is just time lapses. It's star trackers. It's adventures out. He takes you on adventures out with him taking photos. You can see how it unfolds and learn literally every part of Astro Night. Landscape, photography, light painting, star trails, post production, all of it. And it's all free and it's all right there. But if you do go over there and enjoy some of his stuff. Subscribe, comment, like, do all that stuff because that's what keeps it all rolling. You can't go to any workshops. They're sold out for the next 10 years. But if, if you do want to go to a workshop, I don't know, get on, get on his website and just beg to, to be included. But yeah, they're all sold out for 20, 25. [02:18:45] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, but, yeah, look. Thank you once again, Richard. Now, your, your website for your workshops, what's the. Where do we, where do people find that? [02:18:55] Speaker C: Just under Nightscape Images. So it's dot com. It'll get there. [02:19:00] Speaker B: Yep. [02:19:01] Speaker C: I'm on Instagram, Facebook. It's all just Nightscape Images. If you Google my name, Richard Tatty, you'll get a million responses all pointing it to the same place. [02:19:12] Speaker A: Yeah, and they're all, they're all already in the description of this video too. So just, just look in the description. The links to all that stuff's down there. [02:19:18] Speaker B: So, yeah, and if you love what you listen to today, don't forget to like and subscribe, but also dial back and look at maybe some of our older episodes, including the one that, episode 13 that featured Richard back in the day, BG, before, you know, things really kicked up and became professional. But yeah, look, it's been, like I said, it's been a fascinating topic today. It's, it is a niche genre and it's something that I think, me included, have a lot of apprehension about approaching because it feels bigger than probably what it is. I also don't like being out at night, as I've mentioned. But what would be the one defining piece of advice that you would give to anyone who had that apprehension, that fear of not the dark, but nightscape photography? What, what would be your, your, your takeaway from that? Your tagline? [02:20:11] Speaker C: Yeah, it's, it's a very common issue. The simple way to overcome it is to take somebody with you because then suddenly the fear is replaced by company. But the reality is the, the night sky and landscape is a beautiful place to be. Once the fears subside and you start to open, your whole sensory perception of the world changes. Little things become less important and the big picture is what you're looking at. And so this is more of a, you know, a bit of a left centered way of looking at things. But it's not just about cameras, it's not just about settings. It's about being there in that time and place. And once you overcome the fear, it is brilliant, wonderful. [02:21:03] Speaker B: I think that really reflects what Levin said that often he'll. He'll take people on a workshop and he'll get the business of taking photos done and educating. And then he'll just put his camera down and find a place to sit and just marvel at what is actually before him. So there's no gear, there's no. Nothing filtering what you're seeing. It's just you experiencing the world. [02:21:24] Speaker C: And I think, I think, I think one of the things we mentioned earlier, and I'll quickly is don't forget about the basics. The basics of where you started, why you wanted to do it in the first place. Very important, because it's so easy to get wrapped up in the techniques, the gear, the processes, and everything else that you need to get to that end result. But the journey from where you began is what it's all about. [02:21:51] Speaker B: Yep. Very good. [02:21:53] Speaker A: I love it. We should end on that. That's amazing. [02:21:55] Speaker B: That is amazing. Seb, clip that. [02:21:57] Speaker A: Clip it, clip it. I'm gonna roll some music and. [02:22:03] Speaker B: Yeah, we'll see you next week, everyone. Next. Oh, by the way, just before we start the music next week is an 8am Australian Eastern Daylight Savings Time. [02:22:11] Speaker A: Early show. [02:22:12] Speaker B: Earlier show. We're an hour earlier. We have. Who do we have? [02:22:19] Speaker A: Is it Mikey? [02:22:21] Speaker B: No, no, not Mikey. It's Ben Lawrence, who is a filmmaker and photojournalist. Mostly a filmmaker, but bit of an interesting discussion. So stick around for that next week and be sure to like and subscribe. And don't forget to check out the audio podcast, especially for our longer shows. It's just a different way to experience them. But on that note, on behalf of the camera life, Justin, Jim, Elena, editor Seb, and our special guest, Richard, we thank you. Be safe. The world's a little crazy at the moment. Just, just, just, just be safe. [02:22:57] Speaker A: If you go outside and look up at the sky, it's just the same as it's always been. Yeah, true, true. [02:23:05] Speaker B: Bye, everybody. [02:23:06] Speaker C: Bye. [02:23:09] Speaker B: For the dance. [02:23:10] Speaker C: Just.