EP59 Will Godward | Award Winning Nightscape Astrophotographer

[00:00:12] Speaker A: Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the Camera Life podcast. What are we, episode 59 and no Greg this morning. But you got me, you got Justin, you got Jim, and you've got our guest, Will Godwood, Am I pronouncing that right? Will Godwood. [00:00:28] Speaker B: You are Justin. Yeah, thanks for having me. [00:00:30] Speaker A: Perfect. Perfect. Hey, thanks for coming along. We're excited to chat to you because you are, I believe, a astrophotographer award winning astrophotographer that leans more towards the landscape side of Astro, from what I can tell, beautiful imagery and have done work with major news outlets, Australian Geographic, NASA, which is pretty epic. And you're also deep into the industry involved with Skywalker. Sorry, yeah. Sky watcher, sky trackers. Correct. [00:01:07] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that's right, yeah. Thank you. [00:01:12] Speaker A: Thanks for jumping on. I'm excited to dig into it because I have done a little bit of nightscape photography myself and so has Jim. We've even done, we've done the wedding nightscape thing. You know, we were wedding photographers. Jim still is. I don't do as much. And we've, we've, we've dabbled and tried and while we've taken photos that we're pretty excited about, they never quite look like the sort of work that you do and sort of work that other epic nightscape photographers seem to be able to achieve. So we really want to dig into how to take nightscape photography to that next level when it comes to equipment and post processing and even the astronomy side of things like choosing locations and times of year and all that sort of stuff. So that's what we're excited about today. [00:02:02] Speaker B: No, sounds good. I'd just like to say that wedding photography is a lot harder than Astro. [00:02:09] Speaker A: Why do you, why do you say that? Have you, have you done a bit of wedding photography? [00:02:12] Speaker B: I've done a couple weddings, yes. And yeah, it's fun and, and it's great, you know, to deliver that final product. But the stars don't move and don't have as many opinions. [00:02:23] Speaker A: I mean, they move, they move a little bit, a little bit slowly, which is one of the challenges. But yeah, they're not running around and having their eyes closed and all that kind of stuff. [00:02:35] Speaker C: No, yeah, A little bit faster pace. [00:02:37] Speaker B: It is a little bit, yeah, yeah, depends. [00:02:42] Speaker A: And we've also got. Sorry, I was just going to say we've got the live chat going. If you're listening to us live, jump in the comments, ask some questions. Will, if you have dabbled in Nightscape or if you want to try it for the first time, Ask questions. We've got Ian Thompson in the chat, says, good morning, gentlemen. Good morning, Ian. Yelena is in the chat. Good morning, all. She says there's less beard today. There is less beard on today's episode. There's a little bit, but there's nothing. Not as much as usual. Usually got quite a woolly cast. Craig Murphy says good morning. And finally, Philip Johnson. Morning, all. Good morning, Philip. [00:03:16] Speaker C: Morning. [00:03:17] Speaker A: If you're listening back later, just. You'll just have to just enjoy the show and hope that everyone else asks the good questions. But if you're joining us live, get in there, talk about it. [00:03:28] Speaker C: Yeah. Ask some questions. [00:03:30] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, Jim, you'll have to ask a lot of questions too. You're. When's the last time you did any night photography, Jim? Do you remember? [00:03:38] Speaker C: I think I did at a wedding. I did May last year, I reckon. [00:03:43] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. [00:03:44] Speaker C: That was my last. And. And it was very fast and very quick and dirty. [00:03:49] Speaker A: Yep. Just kind of make it happen and get him back to the party. [00:03:53] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. I think I took like four, three. Three, four frames. [00:03:57] Speaker A: Yeah. All right, Will, so maybe before we dig a little bit into your. How you got into astro and photography in general, is there anything I missed about what you do now, the sort of work that you do with both sky watcher, but also your photography? What are you up to these days? [00:04:20] Speaker B: Yeah, so in my day job, I'm selling astronomy equipment, telescopes and binoculars and those star trackers to, you know, enhance your astrophotography and your journey in that space. And then you also. I'm, you know, doing photography, starting some workshops this year, which would be exciting for a first and. Yeah. Taking clients hopefully to some really cool locations out there in the outback. So. In South Australia. [00:04:51] Speaker A: So I was going to say. Speaking of which. So where are you located right now? [00:04:55] Speaker B: So I'm in the Adelaide Hills in Southern Australia. So. Yeah. Yeah. So about an hour from the ad from the city. So there's. It's good enough dark skies here particularly to pick up the aurora when that happens as well. So that's. Yeah. So it's nice dark skies, but I probably don't get out as much as I should. [00:05:14] Speaker A: It's hard to sometimes it's hard to be motivated when you've got a hectic schedule at work and stuff. And then, you know, you've got to stay up till 3am to, to maybe get the good shots. It's. Yes, it's definitely one of the things that I struggle with. So like. Oh, I know it'll be Good. But I also have things to do tomorrow. [00:05:34] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I've got a. I'm a father of three daughters, so they keep me busy during the day. [00:05:39] Speaker A: That's awesome. [00:05:40] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. [00:05:41] Speaker B: I mean, that's probably one of the reasons why I do Astro. I don't have time to do anything else, but. Yeah. While they're sleeping. So. [00:05:48] Speaker C: Yeah. When do you sleep? [00:05:50] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. [00:05:52] Speaker B: I do sleep. Yeah. [00:05:54] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:05:55] Speaker B: Not much in the last couple weeks, but yeah, I have. I do try and sleep when I can. [00:06:00] Speaker A: Yeah, man, that's. Yeah. Sounds like a hectic schedule, but very impressive that you're able to create the sort of work that you do around that. How often do you get out and shoot? [00:06:13] Speaker B: Probably. Yeah, not as often as I'd like, but when I try and get out there, I. I try and make it worthwhile. And, you know, you plan those shots beforehand that you wanted to capture. And like we're talking just before, you know, I traveled up north recently and we did four days up there and I had probably 10 hours sleep in four days, capturing the night sky, you know, shooting sunset to sunrise, which was an amazing experience. So, yeah, not as. Not every. Every night or, you know, but when I do get out there, try and make it worthwhile. [00:06:47] Speaker A: Let's talk about that. That trip. What. So what was that for? [00:06:52] Speaker B: So, working with a South Australian filmmaker, Jed Dobre. He's. He's got a really cool YouTube channel. And yeah, we. We partnered with Jeep, partner with a skywatcher. We partnered with a tent company called Heim Planet, a German tent company. And then we also partnered with William Creek. If you haven't been to William Creek, it's about 900 km north of here in the middle of the Australian Outback, where there's. Yeah, middle of nowhere, as they say. So, yeah, we. We partner with them to capture the night sky in that area. And they were lucky to. There's a special geological formation, rock formation out there called the Painted Hills. And it's. I don't think it's ever been photographed at night before. And we were lucky to be flown out there by William Creek writes there. And we spent the night out there imaging the night sky, which was incredible. [00:07:45] Speaker A: So that's so cool. [00:07:48] Speaker B: Yeah. So I've got a lot of images and a lot of time lapses to edit, which I haven't got into yet, but there's some pretty cool stuff there. And then we also went to Lake Air the next night and. Yeah, seeing that. But it's hot up there. [00:08:03] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:08:04] Speaker B: And the conditions are tough. On your gear and yourself. But it's definitely worthwhile. [00:08:09] Speaker A: Wow. Did you have to take a lot of gear up for that shoot? [00:08:13] Speaker B: Yes, I went with about. I think I took five cameras and of course the project was also sponsored by Sony. So Jed and his team had the new Sony Burana. Think that's how to pronounce it. And you know they're running FX6s so they had, you know, multiple cameras themselves as well. So it was quite a big. It was all Sony and. But it was a quite a big gear. Gear list to make this project happen. But I think we some really nice results in the end and be able to tell that story of the dark skies up there because they're incredible up there. Like it's just a 360 degree view of the night sky. [00:08:57] Speaker C: Yeah, it's amazing. [00:09:00] Speaker A: Yeah. Especially like so many cameras. So did you take. Is it. Was it all your gear or did Sony supply some gear for you as well or you. You shared? [00:09:08] Speaker B: I got one extra camera from Sony so I usually travel with four cameras in these days. [00:09:13] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:09:14] Speaker B: And yeah, I was able to get one extra camera to capture that extra time lapse up there as well shooting all different angles. So. [00:09:23] Speaker A: Wow, man, I can't wait. When are we going to see it? When are we going to see this stuff? I'm going to be hanging out on. [00:09:29] Speaker B: Instagram probably a few months time I think. I think Jed's been posting some sneak peeks of some of the footage he's been pulling from it. But yeah, probably in a few months time once we get through all the edits and complete that story to tell that bear. So. [00:09:43] Speaker A: Yeah. Wow. [00:09:44] Speaker C: Yeah. With the five cameras, Will, are you shooting multiple different things at the same time? Like you might set a time lapse up? [00:09:52] Speaker B: Yes, I was trying to run four time lapses at the time. At a time. It was interesting. This time of the year you've got the Milky Way doesn't rise till about 3am so the first half of the night I was capturing like this, your summer part of the Milky Way or like Orion and that area, the outer regions of our galaxy, time lapsing, transitioning, you know, from day to night and then you know, come after midnight around 2:00am, 3:00am you're starting to get that core of the Milky Way rising over the eastern horizon, which is spectacular up there. It's so bright you can like cast almost cast a shadow on the ground from how bright the stars are up there. Pollution. [00:10:36] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. [00:10:38] Speaker B: So then, yeah, time lapses and then one main camera that I'm shooting my, you know, my stills, my multi layer panoramas with. [00:10:45] Speaker A: So do you have like for that many cameras? I mean, I was going to talk about gear a bit later, but I'm just interested in the lenses. Do you have to have multiple of the same lens? You know, there's only sort of so many lenses that are the appropriate focal lengths for. For Astro, all in that wider, wider range, primes that, that kind of thing. Do you have multiple of the same lens? [00:11:09] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So I've got. So wide is. Yeah, as you said, wide is what you need for Astro. And it's more forgiving as well. The wider you are, you know, you get more forgiving with your exposures. So 14 mil is probably my prime key lens that I've used probably 90 of the time in my Astro work. The Sony 14 mil, which is, I love it. So light and so sharp. Then. Yeah, I also run a 10 mil for time lapse, another 15 mil, a 20 mil and then sometimes a 50 mil just to give that more in depth perspective of the night sky, which you can still. It's a focal length which you can still shoot. Short enough exposures to not see star trails. [00:11:54] Speaker A: Okay. [00:11:55] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:11:57] Speaker B: So, yeah, that's very interesting. [00:11:59] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:11:59] Speaker B: But mostly wide field is what. And you're capturing that landscape as well, which is key. [00:12:07] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think I read somewhere you're very much. And I can tell just from the imagery, when it comes to stills, you love panoramas. Going super wide and getting the entire Milky Way just kind of rainbowing across the sky. When you shoot panoramas, you still stick. Like, can you ever shoot a panorama with something like a 14 or is that where you'll take a 24 and sort of stitch a heap of Images together? [00:12:38] Speaker B: Now 14 is. I shoot all my panoramas mostly on 14 mil. Yeah. So I guess the, the larger the, you know, the more field of view that you have, the less photos that you need to take. But of course, the larger the field of view, you're compromising that clarity and, you know, bringing out those details in the milky Way. So 14 mil also double with, you know, 24 mil and 50 mil in focal lengths. But 14 is definitely my preferred focal length to capture the landscape as well. [00:13:10] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:13:10] Speaker B: Which is just as important, if sometimes even more important than capturing the stars. [00:13:16] Speaker A: Yeah. How did you get into this? When, when did this start, this crazy astrophotography obsession about. [00:13:27] Speaker B: It was about 20 years ago, I think my showing my age. My first camera was a film camera. So yeah, I bought it secondhand in the garage sale, I think it was. And. Yeah. Did some film and then. [00:13:40] Speaker A: Do you remember what it was? [00:13:41] Speaker B: I think it was a pen. Is it Pentech Pentika or something like that? [00:13:45] Speaker A: Yes, that's with a Pintax, maybe. Not Pentex. [00:13:52] Speaker B: I think it was. No, it wasn't a Pentax. It was like a Practica. It was, yeah. [00:13:56] Speaker A: Oh, okay. [00:13:58] Speaker B: Yeah, sorry, sorry. [00:14:01] Speaker C: I mean, you're shooting night sky on film or. [00:14:05] Speaker B: I started. Yeah, I started with that. I remember one of my first shots was an aurora was back that 20 years ago when we had that last big major storm. And I took the shot and waited, you know, a few weeks to see if I. Yeah, if. [00:14:18] Speaker C: That's crazy. [00:14:19] Speaker A: Did you get the shot? [00:14:20] Speaker B: I did, yes. [00:14:22] Speaker A: Cool. [00:14:23] Speaker C: Have you still got it? [00:14:24] Speaker B: Yeah, I've still got it somewhere. Frames. Somewhere. [00:14:26] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:14:26] Speaker B: So, yeah. [00:14:27] Speaker C: That's awesome. [00:14:28] Speaker B: Memory of that. [00:14:29] Speaker C: That's very cool. That's. Yeah, that. So working that out and. [00:14:34] Speaker A: Yeah. An aurora on film. I haven't even got one on a digital camera yet. [00:14:39] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:14:40] Speaker B: Now we're taking their phones, which is. Yeah, later. [00:14:44] Speaker A: So it's crazy. [00:14:46] Speaker B: Yes. I started with a film and then I think my first camera was Canon 20D with a kit lens. And I had this. This is before Nightscape. Photography was really a, you know, a popular, you know, thing, or I guess a genre of. Of photography. So had this idea. I grew up in a country town in South Australia called Muntah with a lot of these Cornish mining buildings out there. Some of my heritage was. Ancestors were miners in that area as well, and these old, beautiful old buildings. And I had this idea that I'd take a picture of the night sky over these buildings and no one had ever done it before and. Yeah, and that really sparked some attention and I was able to run a few exhibitions and some galleries and. Yeah, that's where it kind of fueled that. Those dark skies in the country. Growing up there and, you know, appreciating that as well. And then I think in that middle bit there, I had a sporting career which kind of sidetracked all my photography. And then. Yeah, probably the last few years. [00:15:48] Speaker A: Is it true just on that. Is it true you're an Olympian? [00:15:53] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. [00:15:55] Speaker A: Really? [00:15:56] Speaker B: In a couple Olympics. [00:15:59] Speaker A: What sport? [00:16:01] Speaker B: Shooting. So different type of shooting. So rival shooting. Yeah. [00:16:05] Speaker A: Wow, that's amazing. Twice, two times. [00:16:09] Speaker B: Yeah. London and Rio. It was. [00:16:12] Speaker A: That's amazing. What was that like? [00:16:16] Speaker B: That was pretty cool. Yeah. That's definitely one of my top 10 experiences in my life. To represent your country, you know, you always. I always dreamt about doing it and then, you know, when you actually get to do it and walk out in the opening ceremony, you know, compete as well on, you know, probably the. One of the hardest levels of sports competition. Yeah, it's pretty. Very cool experience. So. [00:16:39] Speaker A: Man. And so that's. That. That sidetracked the photography for a little while. [00:16:44] Speaker B: It did, yeah, for that. That middle period there. So. Yeah, I haven't been shooting for exactly 20 years, but, yeah, I started 20 years ago. [00:16:52] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:16:53] Speaker B: Photography. [00:16:53] Speaker A: So then got distracted and come back to it. That's. Man, that's. What a great reason to get distracted. That's amazing. Congratulations. [00:17:01] Speaker B: Thanks. Thanks, Justin. Thanks. I think. Yeah. Sorry, mate. [00:17:06] Speaker C: I was gonna say, do you find any crossover, like in the, you know, I guess the shooting versus using a camera, you know, like the hand eye or. I'm guessing in that, like, you had to be very settled, very still, kind of waiting. [00:17:26] Speaker B: Yeah, no, you're right, it does. I think there is. Yeah, definitely. You know, you. You train your eyes continuously to see that fine detail in. In competitive rifle shooting, you know. Yeah. Always used to get my eyes tested and they used to stay, you know, you've got that extra level of visibility with your eyes. Used to compare shooters. They always used to compare shooters to pilots as well, a similar level of attention to detail. So that definitely helped, you know, when you. You move that over to seeing those finer details in. In astrophotography and that as well. So I have noticed that. And then I guess probably, yeah, just the commitment to your goals in life from, you know, sporting goals to photography goals as well, you know, definitely helps fuel that passion more. So. [00:18:21] Speaker A: So cool. Yeah. Well, do you remember we actually tried our hand at a little bit of. What's it called? Trap shooting? [00:18:29] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. [00:18:30] Speaker A: Yeah. And, um, we were both pretty good, like, considering we'd never done it. And we. Yeah, we surprised a lot of people that could shoot and we. We attributed it to maybe the wedding, you know, kind of fast like acquire. Acquire a subject and take a photo pretty quick. Whether that helped or not. We might have just been lucky. I don't know. [00:18:53] Speaker B: Yeah. And eye coordination. Yeah, the trigger control and that. Yeah, that's. [00:18:57] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:18:58] Speaker B: Using the same. The trigger finger. [00:19:01] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. [00:19:02] Speaker B: Yeah. Pulling the trigger on the gun to pulling the trigger on the camera. Where did you do that? [00:19:10] Speaker A: I was just at a. A private property in New South Wales. Just like someone had one of the. The setups with the, you know, pool. Yeah, the clay throw. Yeah, it was a machine too. It wasn't like one of the hand ones. Yeah, it was a proper machine. It was actually, it was super fun. We had a great time. Excellent. All right, so getting back to it. So after your Olympic career, you got back into astrophotography? [00:19:38] Speaker B: Yeah, I think I bought. Yeah, I thought, you know, Olympics and that career was slowing down, so I thought I might try and get back into photography again. And I think I purchased a Canon 60 at the time, which was kind of like the. Yeah, the nickel, you know, astrophotography, landscape, astrophotography, camera and you know, they're still out there, people using them as well and producing amazing results. And then I think when Sony came out with the A7 III and showing their video capabilities as well, which is a passion for me as well to do that, it was like in a really affordable package and producing incredible, you know, low light results. And that's kind of. Yeah, we've fueled that. And then I guess. Yeah, with COVID coming into play as well, I was home more. I was able to, you know, start enjoying the night skies around South Australia more. Not as traveling as much with that. And yeah, so that's kind of where it kicked off again in. Yeah, my photography adventures. [00:20:41] Speaker A: Very cool. And so that's when you made the jump to Sony, switched the whole kit across right around that time of the. Was it the. Yeah, the A7SIII and it's crazy low light. [00:20:52] Speaker B: Yeah, A7 III first. [00:20:54] Speaker A: Oh, A7 III. Sorry, not the A7SII with. Yeah, right. [00:20:57] Speaker B: I think the A7S III as well. [00:20:59] Speaker A: Okay, now. [00:21:00] Speaker B: Yeah, now. But yeah, so yeah, A7 III. I think it was that easy transition as well. I mean, when you change gear with any brand, it's, It's a huge commitment. But I think that transition where you could go from a digital SLR to a mirrorless and you had those adapters to adapt to the, the Canon lenses so I could get the Sony body and still continue to use my Canon lenses. I was mostly running Sigma art lenses at the time, so it made that transition a lot easier. And now I'm mostly Sony with. I've still got a Sigma and allower lenses as well, so. [00:21:42] Speaker C: And was it a. Like when you first jumped, was it sort of like one body, you sort of kept most of your lenses and then like, is it. Was it a slow transition or was it just sort of all in? [00:21:51] Speaker B: Yeah, no, it's definitely a slow transition. Yeah, no, I've definitely thrashed my Sony A7 III now and got a lot, got my money's worth out of it over that time. And then yeah, it went to this A7SIII because of that low bit, low light capabilities again, especially with video. I mean that thing can. You can, you can film the Milky Way at night on video, which is incredible. [00:22:16] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:22:17] Speaker B: So, yeah, and yeah, just what it can produce for, you know, normal video work as well is, you know, it's top notch. [00:22:26] Speaker A: All right. I have a question about high ISO and night photography, sorry, high megapixel, high ISO and night photography. Because there seems to be. Obviously most people that I've seen favor that kind of 20 to 24 megapixel camera that has really good high ISO capabilities for night sky photography. But there is often a school of thought that's like more megapixels with the current Denoise software that's getting really good. Gives the software more to work with. And so even though the files might be a bit noisy to start with, you might end up with a better image or as good of an image later on. Have you had, have you explored higher resolution cameras versus lower resolution cameras like the A7S III? And what works best and you know, is there is kind of a perfect, you know, amount of megapixels in the current crop of cameras for, for what you do? [00:23:27] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I have, I guess I think, you know, you're coming, we're coming from that mindset where more megapixels is, you know, and more, more high ISO produces more noise in your images. But then the camera technologies, camera technology is definitely advancing in recent times and you know, what we can do in processing, you know, it's kind of taking those, that mindset out play. So my current camera is the A7IV, which is what, 33 megapixels. And that's still producing pretty good results. I have tried Sony A7. Which one was it? A. An A1 once I tried that. Oh yeah, and it did produce, it did produce more noise in the megapixel in the range that it was giving. So I think you can do that in post now and kind of fix that. I think video work is definitely lower megapixels, still better for low light at this point in time. But we're definitely seeing that transition to, you know, producing good results with high megapixel cameras. So. [00:24:34] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, okay. It's. It's one of those things that seems to get debated around a little bit. But in general people seem to still, yeah, gravitate towards that sort of 24ish or thereabouts. And you know, the Canon, the current like R6 mark 2 or R3 on the canon side of things. And then yeah obviously Sony depending. Sony's that little bit different because they've got yeah a 33 megapixel and then is the, is the a 7siii, is that still 12 megapixels? Is that what. [00:25:07] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Which is, it's, it's enough like that. [00:25:10] Speaker A: Yeah. Well because it's so clean at high isos and obviously epic for, for video work. [00:25:17] Speaker B: I think another thing is a lot of once you get into astrophotography landscape you, you most likely going to modify your, your camera which is, which means it's removing the, the UV filter internally to make it more red sensitive to the you know, red channels to bring out that, that red emission nebula. That's sometimes you might see in some of my shots you get this, you know, beautiful red structures in the Milky Way or around a constellation like Orion, things like that. [00:25:45] Speaker A: I'll bring some up. Yeah because I was going to ask about that and about modifying cameras. [00:25:51] Speaker B: So once you, I think once you do that, you know I'm not brave enough to modify a you know an A1. I haven't even modified my A7 S3 so yeah, so that's probably more favorable to do it on a lower cost camera than doing on a ten thousand dollar camera. [00:26:09] Speaker C: Are these modifications are that, is that something you're doing yourself or are you sending it to like is there a shop or a person or. [00:26:16] Speaker B: Yeah, so yeah, I'm not brave enough to do it myself. Technically minded to do it myself. So I sent it off to a company in Melbourne, Melbourne Camera Clinic. Oh yeah. International people that do it as well. I think Spencer's camera in the US they do a good job as well. [00:26:37] Speaker A: Do you have any idea roughly how much it costs? [00:26:40] Speaker B: For me I think it was around about 600. That was many years ago now it's yes, it's probably under a thousand dollars to get it done but if you, if you're dedicated into astrophotography, you know it's definitely a game changer and it separates your images from you know, using a standard camera out there. [00:27:01] Speaker C: Absolutely. [00:27:02] Speaker A: What is there, is there an image on here that would give us a good example of, of what you're talking about. [00:27:07] Speaker B: That one you just had up. Yeah, yeah, yeah that's that, that's with a modified my a 73 modifier I think. Shot at 20 mil panorama. Yeah so yeah you can see that those. You've got the one on the left side there around Orion. It's like A C, inverted C shape. That's called Barnard's Loop. It's a Mission Nebula which you can bring out with a modified camera. And then there's one over there on the right there. Neither between the two bright stars called the Gum Nebula as well. So yeah, two distinct objects in the, the summer part of the Milky Way. So this is looking at the outer part of our galaxy towards in the summer months. [00:27:53] Speaker A: And so they you. That just would not show up on a camera that's not modified at all. Or would it be like less prominent or a different color or. [00:28:01] Speaker B: No, it would. So it would be less prominent and it would. You would need to take more exposures or long exposures to bring it out, enhance those channels. So yeah, it's a lot more work. So yeah, you know this, this was achieved in single images. I think it was about 30 seconds each image for this one over that period of time. It's around about 30 images altogether. And you can still bring out that data. [00:28:27] Speaker A: Yeah, this might be a dumb question, but what about UV filters on the front of lenses that we often put on there just for protection? Does that filter out that same kind of light? Like are we cutting down light just by putting a UV protection filter on the front of our lens? [00:28:43] Speaker B: I mean there'd probably be a small percentage of light, but it's definitely worth having it on there in the night, especially when we're out. [00:28:50] Speaker A: Okay. [00:28:52] Speaker B: Once before into it was into sand, but yes. Nah, I think it's worth the compromise. [00:28:59] Speaker A: Okay, so it's not. We haven't been for years just ruining our night sky photography by throwing a UV filter on the front of our lenses. Okay. I was just for a second there, I was like, oh, I'm an idiot. Been doing this all these years. [00:29:15] Speaker B: You can get filters on the front. You know, people are starting to use them and you also get the clip in filters. I use a hydrogen. So those channels, you can even enhance them even more. I use this certain filter called a hydrogen alpha filter, which I put on top of the sensor, like in between the lens and the sensor. And I haven't used it for this particular image, but it brings out that emission nebula even more. Essentially it's a filter that only lets that certain wavelength of light through to your sensor, which is. It looks black, but once you expose, you know, for maybe two minutes, you can bring out those, those details. [00:29:54] Speaker A: So okay, so it's. And then, so that's, and that's part of a quite a complex image making sequence where you'd be taking multiple Exposures with and without that filter and blending it together in post. [00:30:09] Speaker B: That's right, yeah. [00:30:10] Speaker A: So it's a. Yeah. And with a two minute exposure, you would need a tracker as well. [00:30:19] Speaker B: Definitely. [00:30:20] Speaker A: Yes, I assume definitely. Okay. Which I'm gonna, I'm gonna have a couple, look at a couple more of these images and then we do have a question about trackers in the, in the live chat and I do wanna talk about that, but these are amazing. Tell us about this. [00:30:35] Speaker B: Are they May 11th Aurora was. I heard someone was doing a wedding on that night and they, they captured the bride and groom. I did one, I did a, when I did a wedding late last year, I, there was a, there was an aurora and I got the bride and groom underneath the aurora, which was pretty cool. [00:30:53] Speaker C: That's cool. [00:30:53] Speaker A: Oh that's, yeah, that's awesome. [00:30:55] Speaker B: Yeah, that was bonus points for sure. [00:31:00] Speaker A: Then the next, the next couple's like, hey, can we get an aurora photo too? [00:31:06] Speaker B: Yeah, no worries. But this is May 11th Aurora. That was, I mean that was all over the news. You know, I, Yeah, it was looking at the number. So that Aurora 20 years ago, when I witnessed that, that was just as good. But back then, you know, we had film cameras, you know, we couldn't make it as popular or share it across our social media channels. So I think, you know, this aurora that we saw on May 11, it was. Did you guys see it before? [00:31:32] Speaker A: I, where was I on May 11th? That was the. I didn't, I didn't actually get to capture it or see it. I'm trying to remember why not. I've been. Every time one of these events has happened, I've been around, not around to get out and take photos of it and it's, it's starting to crush my soul. And the worst one perhaps was the fact that I was at a photo expo in Bright and I, I was so tired I could have done it. And people went out and shot it and they got epic photos from the top of Mount Buffalo. And then all day the next day when everyone was showing their images, I was like, oh, I'm an idiot. I should have just stayed up and, you know, made the effort. So that one's on me. But no, I didn't, I didn't capture it, unfortunately. [00:32:22] Speaker B: So. All right, okay. So this was, you know, the. Probably the most witnessed aurora in human history. Almost photographed aurora in human history. And it was incredible. So I traveled to Second Valley and yeah, was able to position myself away from the clouds on the hills there and see it. And you could see it easily with your, you know, your naked eye. You'd look out. I mean it was just after sunset. I got out my car just to see what the sky looked like. And you could see these columns of beams. Look, you know, shots that you see and normally see in Iceland and things like that. And these beams moving across the night sky visually like, like a flowing waves as well. [00:33:01] Speaker A: So I haven't seen a shot like this of the aurora before, I don't think. Not that I can recall with that. [00:33:08] Speaker C: With the split color. [00:33:10] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. The clear delineation between the aurora and then the sky. Sky that isn't being lit up by the aurora. It's. It's beautiful and it really shows that. That clear edge. Whereas often it's, it's more of a glow towards the horizon and still beautiful. But yeah, I, I haven't seen anything quite like this. Have. Did you plan to get this shot specifically like that or was it more the location that drew you in and then the aurora just did its thing thing. [00:33:41] Speaker B: So I think that sh. The first thing I wanted to do. I love reflections in my images. If you've got a small body of water or salt lake or. Yeah. Like, you know, bring so much more to the image and you know, bring that. That viewers. Viewer into it. That create that depth. So that was my first goal. But that. That big. So you've got the main structure of the aurora there just over the horizon, but that big. Like it's like a bubble or like that boat. So it's a, it's a phenomenon that happens with really large auroras called a sar. And it's this outer regions of the, of the aurora storm hitting the atmosphere and depending on your latitude. So, you know, I'm in South Australia, so I'm not as further south as say Tasmania or New Zealand. So they would be. You know, I had some friends who were shooting in New Zealand and you know, the aurora was directly overhead. You know, that whole sky was covered. They didn't have that separation between the two that, you know, the, the blue sky and the, and the aurora. [00:34:45] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:34:46] Speaker B: So yeah. And that would be an incredible experience as well. So it just, it depend. Depends on your latitude and how strong that that storm is on the night. [00:34:56] Speaker A: Yeah. Is that. Can we see the Milky Way in there? Is that. [00:35:00] Speaker B: Yeah, just. Yeah, yeah. Kind of like shaping the top part of that on the left side there. [00:35:08] Speaker A: Tell us about the technical. Like what is, is this. How many exposures is it. How. Yeah. How did this come to life, this image? [00:35:18] Speaker B: So like the aurora is like, it's bright. Like you know, your normal exposure for the Milky Way, if you're down there, I'd probably do 20 seconds. I think from memory this was like five seconds per frame. You know, as soon as you like. That's that center structure of the aurora. You know, once, once the big storms are happening, you know, I've. From 1 second to 5 seconds is probably your limit to capture. Otherwise it just blows it out. You're not seeing that. And also that, that center structure that, those beams, there's, you can see a couple beams there going up. They're moving fast. So it's, it's like almost like photographs, the ocean waves coming in. You know, the longer the exposure you, they start to blur as well. So. [00:36:00] Speaker C: So you're trying to work fast. [00:36:03] Speaker B: Very fast. [00:36:03] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. [00:36:06] Speaker B: So five seconds per image, maybe 20 images all up. Yeah. And then just going from left to right. I normally do. [00:36:15] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:36:16] Speaker C: And just, just with a tripod. [00:36:18] Speaker B: Yeah. No tracker, just a tripod. Yeah. And then. [00:36:22] Speaker A: And blending separate foreground exposures. Or was, was this able? Oh, wow. [00:36:30] Speaker B: So yeah. [00:36:31] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:36:32] Speaker B: Makes it a lot easier. [00:36:34] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:36:34] Speaker C: And how many fluff frames would this one be? [00:36:38] Speaker B: I. Maybe 20 frames. It wouldn't have been more than that. So. Yeah, yeah, it would have been about 14 mil, I think as well. 14 mil, 20 frames? [00:36:49] Speaker C: Yeah. That's just still a lot like. Yeah, yeah. [00:36:54] Speaker A: So yeah, it would look amazing as a full, like full resolution file on a big, yeah, big beautiful monitor. [00:37:01] Speaker B: I had a client asked me, they asked for a print of this. I think it was. They did it 20 inches wide and it looked, looked really nice on that, on high quality paper. [00:37:12] Speaker A: So yeah. A couple of comments coming in. Ian Thompson says as a night sky starter, the mate aurora from Morong was great. Waving glow, et cetera. P. About the light pollution around Bendigo. Yeah, I, It's a, it's a battle. Whenever that, whenever the Aurora or alerts start going off, you're like, all right, I gotta find somewhere away from town that's gonna have a nice dark south view. You got any tips Will, for, for newbies like us that are, you know, an Aurora event starts, everyone starts talking about it. And I mean, you know, from Aurora. [00:37:52] Speaker B: Like if you're Aurora like this one, you know, it's the biggest aurora in 20 years. So it didn't really matter where you were. You could have seen it from the middle of a city. The normal auroras not normal. You know, you lower intensity storm. I think there was one last night. I was too Tired to go out but yeah there was, you know south is, you know they're coming so what an aurora is, you know it's an outburst from the sun, the solar flares and they're directed towards the Earth and they interact with the Earth by hitting the poles so you know it's for us it's the further south you are the more aurora activity you'll see and that's why those who live in say Antarctica or you know near the northern latitudes, you know they're seeing them every night almost up there so so yeah further try and get a clear horizon. So for us South Australians and Victorians you know we head south of our cities away from the cities to you know get that clear view of the night sky. Tasmania you know perfect location. Very jealous of those guys who live down in Tasmania and New Zealand south island even more jealous. [00:39:05] Speaker A: So yeah, yeah just dark skies over in NZ especially towards the south of the South Island. [00:39:12] Speaker B: Yeah yes beautiful lucky guys over there. [00:39:18] Speaker A: Craig Murphy also said had cloud where I lived for the May event but could see it and at the bright festival of photography. It was awesome. Yes, yes it was. I can't believe I didn't get out there and photograph it. Craig asked about the trackers for when we were discussing before about capturing these sort of, what were they called again. [00:39:41] Speaker B: This emission nebula or Nebula. [00:39:45] Speaker A: Yeah so a track is generally required to capture that. [00:39:51] Speaker B: No, you can capture say if you had an Astro modified camera without an Astro modified camera without a tracker you can bring that out quite easily but I guess it's without that it's yeah the more you expose, the longer expose the more you know you're, you're capturing those light photons and that color depth in your image. So yeah a tracker does definitely helps your astrophotography images it makes a beautiful clean image. [00:40:20] Speaker A: So tell us for us like I said that are. [00:40:26] Speaker C: We have no idea, we have no. [00:40:27] Speaker A: Idea, we have no idea about trackers. Hang on, let me just try and rearrange this all over the place. There we go, that's better. What is a tracker? [00:40:36] Speaker B: So it's, it's a little essentially so why would we use a tracker? The Earth is rotating. I can't remember how fast it is rotating but it is rotating and with our camera technology say I'm using a Sony A7 III which is a full frame camera and I'm using a 14 mil lens probably my max exposure before I see star trails is about 20 seconds and you know the higher the megapixel back to our Megapixel question, the more you'll see those star trials, you know, enhancing those, those finer details. So, and that's what we're getting with, you know, advancements in technology. So, you know, and we move that down, say, 24 mil, you're probably looking around about 10 seconds and then a 50 mil, you're probably looking at around about three to five seconds before you see star trails. And once you see star trails, then, you know, it makes the image essentially images becoming blurry. So that's the first thing we're combating. You can stack images, take multiple images, and achieve maybe a similar result by maybe taking 20 images at 20 seconds at 14 mil and bringing out that depth. But using a tracker, it's like trying to capture everything in camera on there. It definitely brings out a better, cleaner result. To combat the exposure limitation, we use a tracker, which is like a little motor device. So it moves, it counteracts the earth's movement. It moves at the same speed, called the speeds called sidereal, and it moves at that same speed. And then what that does is when once you set it up, you can do longer exposures. And I've done up to a few minutes exposure and, you know, still have pinpoint stars and being able to really bring out that, that structure in the Milky Way and, you know, the clarity, you know, once you go. Once you go about 30, about a minute, you. And you do a minute exposure with say 14 mil or, you know, 24 mil or 50 mil, the, the clarity and the, the sharpness in the Milky Way is incredible. So. And yeah. [00:42:55] Speaker C: Would you have foreground in these images or no? Like you wouldn't have. [00:42:59] Speaker B: So, yeah, so that's the, that's the compromise. Once you start using a tracker, your foreground's going to be blurry. So that's where you come in and you have to take a. Turn your tracker off without. Well, I turn the tracker off without moving the tripod and I, yeah, take those foreground images and depending on what the night is, I'll take them before I track or I'll take them after I finish the sky. Yeah, that's so. [00:43:25] Speaker A: Okay. [00:43:25] Speaker C: So there's a bit of pre planning into that then. Of. Yeah, like. Yeah, where you're gonna, where your camera is going to end up and like. [00:43:35] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I guess it's like, you know, using your photography eye and any, you know, you're going out there and, you know, you're seeing the composition and you know, if you're doing a panorama. So I'm I'm taking that next level. I'm shooting multi layer panoramas, tracked and then turning it off and then shooting the foreground as well. But if you're just doing a single frame, it's not, you know, you do your maybe 14 mil in portrait mode, you're taking the sky, turn the tracker off, take another exposure for the foreground, quick blend in Photoshop and then you know, you've got your final result which will always look better than say a single image. [00:44:13] Speaker A: Yeah, that's how you get that different level of, of depth, clarity and particularly obviously when you're, you know, when you're printing large or viewing on a large screen, that's where you really start to see the differences. But I feel like you can, you can tell the difference. Even scrolling on Instagram, as small as our little phones are and stuff like that, there is a different level of what these images look like compared to when, yeah, when I just put my camera on a tripod, point it towards and don't do any light painting on the foreground or anything like that. They never have that same kind of level of clarity and 3D sort of ness that it does when you, you know, people like yourself, people like Richard Taddy who we've had on it just has, there's just a different level there. And so trackers take us from, from the sort of more plain, simple shots to these much more detailed images but with a lot more post production work. It sounds like it does. [00:45:15] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So it definitely enhances, like I said, you know, it brings out that color depth. It's when we're playing against noise, which is our biggest enemy in longer exposures and that. And you're playing with our eyes so you know, it allows you, you know, for, for a 30, say a 20 second shot untracked, I'll, I'll probably be at 6400 ISO and say F2, but then you know, tracking at say a minute, I'll drop that ISO down to maybe 1600 and shoot it maybe F2A. So you know, doesn't push those noise boundaries and you have that lot cleaner image to take as well. [00:45:56] Speaker A: So. [00:45:56] Speaker B: Yeah, and then it does, yeah, it definitely enhances the image, the final result and the datas, you know, especially when you're playing in RAW with a RAW file and you know, you've got so much more room to push those, those boundaries of your image and push, you know, the saturation and things like that if you tracked as well. So. [00:46:17] Speaker A: Right, so. All right, so if I wanted to try one of these things, where do they start in terms of like, how much are they to get into it if it's not something you're doing at the level you're doing, but it's just like, hey, I just want to give it a go. I've already got a tripod. Will that tripod work? Like, do I need a beefier tripod for a track? Yeah. Where does a beginner start off? With trackers. [00:46:43] Speaker B: Yeah. So first thing, my main tracker, which is the beginner. I've got it right here. It's called the Mini, which is. It's very small. I don't even have the polar scope, so the size of an apple. So that's where I start with my. I use this as my workhorse and it's great. So I think you can. I've seen these for a bit, probably for around about $300. So they're really affordable. You know, there was some trackers out there that were down to 200 in the last, you know, Black Friday sales. So, so that's, that's kind of where it starts. And then there's. This takes a 3 kilo payload which is perfect for your mirrorless cameras with wide field lenses. And you know, I've even had up to 100 mil on this, the Sigma 100 and 500 mil, which is a beefy lens. So that's, yeah, that's the little track and that's the little motor which is fully controlled by your phone using a WI fi connection. And that's brilliant. So when you, when you're just a quick. How to use a tracker. What we're doing, we're counteracting the Earth's movement and we move to our poles, the south celestial pole or the North Pole. In the north they have that thing called the North Star, which is. We're very jealous of. So you can easily see which way north is here in south. Here in Australia we don't have that luxury of a, you know, a pinpoint star to, to align our trackers to. So we have to align them to the south because then the whole, you know, everything moves around those, that point of in the sky. So you can do that by pointing it south just using your compass on your phone. And I've gotten away with that really quickly. Otherwise there's a little polar scope that you put into here and it's like a little telescope and you're actually seeing those little star constellation and aligning that and it's not that hard. Some people find it a little bit scary to polar align but you know on a. I'm in doing a lot but I can get it probably done in about 30 seconds on a good night. [00:48:55] Speaker A: Craig in the comments says I definitely have a love hate relationship with my tracker. Polar alignment is frustrating but you can get beautiful images when it all works. Right. Which one are you using, Craig? Just while we're chatting about it. But okay, so tips for Craig. You can get it done in 30 seconds obviously will you're an expert. Any tips for, for Craig trying to align his tracker more consistently? [00:49:23] Speaker B: I think that I use a leveling head on my tripod. That's, that's a key thing, a leveling head. So I yeah level the tripod and then level it and then obviously, obviously use. So that's the first step. And then I use my compass on my phone just to point it south and that's roughly where it is. There's a little wedge that you need to adjust your latitude. You know for me in south Australia that's 32 degrees further north. You know that changes as well so that once you've done those two setups pointing it south, adjusting to your latitude, you should be like on point to not even look through a telescope. The little telepoliscope and you should be able to you know at least do 30 seconds to a minute with a 14 mil to get those results. So once you've done that, you know your way you go. Otherwise yeah, polar aligning can be difficult looking trying to find those little stars in that. In the telescope. And it's really just. I just use my phone looking at what the orientation. So there's, there's an app called Star Adventurer Console which is the brand that which I use and it shows the formation of those stars and I just look back and forth between that and the telescope till I can see them and, and align it. [00:50:43] Speaker C: But yeah what, what happens will if, if it's not aligned like is it. Does it spin off axis kind of thing? [00:50:50] Speaker B: You just get blur star trails in your image. [00:50:52] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:50:54] Speaker A: They're not. Instead of sort of the stars and, and it. Yeah the same. [00:50:58] Speaker C: It'll go the wrong way. [00:50:59] Speaker A: Yeah. It's going a different direction. Okay. [00:51:01] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:51:02] Speaker B: But really I've, I remember one night it was. And it was 1am I left my glasses at home and I was half asleep and I didn't, I pointed it totally at the wrong place and it still produced a really I think one of my award winning images actually as well. So it produced some amazing results. And I wasn't even pointing directly south at 14 mil so you don't have to panic too much if you don't get it 100% right at wide focal length. [00:51:29] Speaker A: So and is that I was going to ask. So okay, if we, if we bought a 300 entry level tracker, would you recommend people just starting off like don't go out and try and do a massive panorama or something like that? Would you say, sort of say start. Would you go on a wider focal length lens or would you go maybe on something a bit narrow focal length so it's easier to tell if you're tracking successfully or do you have any tips for like. All right, I'm going out to make my first image with this thing. Yeah. What would you do? [00:52:04] Speaker B: Yeah, so I, yeah I'd start with the 14, say around a 14 mil. You know there's some, I think Samyang used that was a really go to lens affordable lens to get into astro photography. They did a, was it a 14 mil as well? Yeah, yeah. And it's, it's, it's great. So yeah, start with a wide field lens and yeah, it's more forgiving as well. And you can, yeah and you can capture more of the night sky because yeah it's, it's, you know, you could go out there and try and capture the stars but once you get into a dark place, the Milky Way is quite, quite a large structure in the night sky. So the wider the better. And probably another thing to note on Star Trekkers is it really helps lenses that maybe are not, you know, the top quality lenses. So like it can really turn say like a kit lens that you get with a, you know, your entry level camera kit to produce, you know, once you start tracking and exposing longer, you know you can produce the same results as with a high quality lens which is probably cost three or four times more. So it's a, it's a, it's a good way to, you know, really enhance your camera, your current camera equipment without spending too much on a high quality lens. [00:53:21] Speaker A: Makes total sense and obviously yeah, stopping those kit lenses down a little bit if you can't, you know, if you can get to the point where you're sort of shooting at yeah. F4 or something like that on A, on a F 3.5 to F whatever. Yeah, those, those sort of kits. Yeah, you get some decent results and that's right. [00:53:38] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:53:38] Speaker A: Not have to invest in $2,000 lenses. [00:53:41] Speaker B: No, no. So yeah. [00:53:46] Speaker A: Greg Carrick, friend of the show is asking what does will think of the SE30 50 telescopes? A good introduction to astrophotography Yeah, I wanted to ask because trackers are kind of, we're talking about trackers from the photography perspective of kind of astrophotography landscapes. But obviously I see these epic like deep space images that look like they're made with AI or something. And I assume a tracker is the only way to progress in that direction where you're doing these kind of really, I guess zoomed in shots on nebulas and stuff like that. Is that the gateway? Like it goes from like, all right, I got a tracker for my camera to a full on telescope that you can attach your camera to. Is that how it works? [00:54:41] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So yeah, Star Trek is like that little one I've got here, the mini, it's, they call it the gateway is your words. They call it the gateway to astrophotography because you know, it starts that journey and as I said you can have up to 100 mil or you maybe even a 200 mil lens on there. There's a lens, a famous lens. This is the Samyang 135mil F2, which is affordable lens and I've seen amazing deepscape deep space photography achieved with that lens. [00:55:11] Speaker A: Really? [00:55:12] Speaker B: By astrophotographers. Yeah, there's a famous one, Astro backyard in the U.S. he does a YouTube channel. He's, he's produced some amazing results with that lens for deep space. So you don't need too high a focal length to, you know, achieve some really good results. But once you, once you start going down that trail of, you know, bigger lenses, a telescope, you know, you're really, you know, up to maybe 1500 mil focal length, 2000 mil focal length. You, you really are relying on a solid tracker and that's where those, that tracker becomes a lot bigger up to say like a 50 kilo payload tracker that we, we sell is, is that what. [00:55:57] Speaker A: So we're just bringing up this image here which was on the Sky Watcher Australia Instagram page. Like what? So how is someone creating something like this? Is this like a telescope the size of a house or something? Or like what? [00:56:11] Speaker B: So I'm looking at the, the data there. So they've used a sky watcher, any Q6 Pro, which is probably around about a 10 kilo, 15 kilo weight telescope, as in that's how much it physically weighs and it can take up to about 20 kilos of gear. And then he used, he's used 130 mil objective size lens. So my guess that's probably around about a thousand mil equivalent to like a thousand mil focal length on A camera. [00:56:44] Speaker C: Yeah, but. [00:56:48] Speaker B: Sorry, sorry, I was gonna. [00:56:50] Speaker C: Say is there like adapters that then adapt that to different bodies? [00:56:54] Speaker B: That's true. Yeah. So he's used a dedicated astronomy camera called camera there. Zwo called camera. So he hasn't used a mainstream camera. But the key thing there is, look at the integration time. 23 hours and 20 minutes to achieve that result. [00:57:12] Speaker A: What is, what does integration time mean? Is that, is that like shadow speed? [00:57:16] Speaker B: That's how long he's exposed that area. So maybe not all at once, but it might have been you know, 30 second images. But he's stacked that amount of data and you know, collected that amount of data to produce this finer result. [00:57:34] Speaker A: Yeah, that's crazy. [00:57:36] Speaker C: Like as in over multiple nights or something. [00:57:39] Speaker B: Yeah, it would have had to been over multiple nights because. Yeah, pointing at I guess landscape photography, you know your foreground can change and the night sky can change depending on different things that are happening. But deep space, you know, it's always the same. [00:57:53] Speaker C: Yeah, that's, that's crazy. [00:57:57] Speaker A: That is crazy. So these, these telescopes that Greg Carrick's asking about, are you familiar with those at all? Seestar S30 50. [00:58:10] Speaker B: So they're a smart telescope. So there are, we're starting to see, you know, technology advancements in astronomy and what it is, it's, it's essentially a computer built into a little robotic camera telescope which you can point using your phone in the night sky where you want to look and it will start taking that image. I think the, the sea stars are using a process called lucky imaging. So really short exposures and they're stacking live, stacking them in the camera or in your, in your software and they're producing the results. So because I don't think it's, it's tracking not as say like a pointing to the south celestial pole method. It's just doing a. Yeah. Really short exposures but you know for some of the results that I've seen from these small telescopes are very, very good. [00:59:07] Speaker A: Okay. Awesome. Yeah, it's very, it's so appealing when you see those images. But yeah, that taking that step to where you full on telescope, that's a. Yeah, seems like a whole nother level in my head. It's really interesting that a 135mil lens can obviously it's not going to make images anything like what we were just looking at, but that you can do some cool things with 135 mil. That's very appealing. And, and you, you think that would be possible even on, on an entry Level tracker. [00:59:41] Speaker B: Oh definitely, yeah, I've seen, yeah, some, we, some of our award winning shots that we see through Sky Watcher are taken on us just you know, entry level star trackers. I guess it's really comes down to, you know, able to pull that data, having cleared dark skies as well, just. [01:00:02] Speaker A: Trying to see if there's, was there anything that you can see on here that, that would be the one there. [01:00:07] Speaker B: On the left on the, the Large Magellanic Cloud. The big blue. Yeah, this one. That's why. Yeah. Paul Wilson. [01:00:14] Speaker A: Oh, 100, 105. [01:00:16] Speaker B: 105 mil of our, one of our close galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud. So yeah, what does that look he's done 30 seconds, ISOS 1600. So not crazy exposures in there to produce, you know, a beautiful image. [01:00:38] Speaker C: And that would be multiple images or just like a foreground background. [01:00:44] Speaker B: I reckon it would be one image. [01:00:46] Speaker C: One image, yeah. Okay. Yeah. [01:00:48] Speaker B: Attraction because yeah, he would have been tracking that. [01:00:50] Speaker A: So yeah, 30 seconds and then a foreground to blend. That's. [01:00:56] Speaker C: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yep. [01:01:00] Speaker B: We don't have white hills in our, in Australia, do we? [01:01:04] Speaker C: No, not very often. For about a month. [01:01:08] Speaker A: For those of you just listening along, maybe listening back later. This image that we're looking at is taken in New Zealand over the Southern Alps by Paul Wilson Images. You can see it probably on Paul Wilson Images, but also it's, it's on the Sky Watcher Australia Instagram, which is a treasure trove of making you want to just get out and make beautiful images. It's insane. The variety and just, yeah, beautiful images that people are taking from all over the place. Absolutely amazing. [01:01:43] Speaker B: We're very lucky here in Australia. How dark our skies are. [01:01:47] Speaker A: Yes. [01:01:48] Speaker B: To be able to, you know, I've traveled to many countries in the world and there's not some people who have never seen the stars before and they, once they get out, you know, into the Australian outback, you know, that's, it's incredible experience for them. I've even seen people cry when they've seen the sky for the first time. [01:02:05] Speaker A: So yeah, there is something about being out under the stars, making photographs. But even if they don't turn out that great, just being out there, there is something special about it. Every time I've done it. You always feel good afterwards. You feel like you've experienced something and you sort of. Yeah, you forget that it's above us every night, you know, but there's street lights and all that sort of stuff and you go to bed early and you just Kind of, you don't, you don't take the time to get out and look at it, maybe as often as you should. [01:02:39] Speaker B: Now we need to appreciate that more. I mean, not just astronomy and that, but, you know, all aspects of being outdoors. [01:02:47] Speaker C: Yeah, for sure. [01:02:48] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. I'm mindful of time. I know you gotta go in about 15 minutes, but I want to look at some more of your images. Where are we? I'm going to bring this up. There we go. [01:03:04] Speaker C: Whoa, that's. [01:03:05] Speaker A: Yeah, the comet images are very cool. Tell us, tell us about that comet G3 Atlas. [01:03:13] Speaker B: We've been very, we've had auroras in the last year. We've also had two naked eye comments. You know, we, my favorite comment was 2009 comment McNaught. If anyone had seen that, listening. That was probably the most spectacular comet ever witnessed in history. But this comet here, you know, Comet G3. And there was another one earlier last year in October. The two naked eye comets which you could walk out sky as, walk out at night and you could say, hey, that's a comet in the night sky. And they don't happen very often at all. You know, probably once every 20 years. And we've had two in the last six months. So. [01:03:56] Speaker A: Wow, it's, it's amazing and it's. So did you just, did you pick locations to try and track down some great images or is, is this just in my backyard? [01:04:09] Speaker B: So, yeah, looking over my back fence. So that was, that was an easy composition to take. But there was the one last year in October just down there on the right, the screen. Yeah, that's where I traveled. Yeah. Into the outback to capture it over Lake Gardner. And that was. Yeah. Seeing that the Milky Way stretched over the lake with a comet underneath, it was, yeah. Incredible experience. So, man. [01:04:44] Speaker A: So cool when you, when, when something like that comes up, like how much planning goes into, into the chosen location. Do you figure it out as you get further out towards, you know, your destination or have you already got literally like a pinpoint on a Google map that you're, you know, you're heading to? [01:05:08] Speaker B: So I guess depending on where it is in the night sky. And I've got some, you know, I've already pinpointed a lot of locations, you know, some key, you know, iconic locations to capture, say the Milky Way rising or the Milky Way setting or some different astronomical events. So you, you know, where there's a good place and then it kind of just, yeah. Planning that shot and then, you know, the days before you're, you're looking at the weather closely because that's it's cloudy, then you're not going to see anything. So yeah, I've been able to, you know, change location, you know, within a few hours to, to get the shop or travel somewhere else to get it. So. So yeah, a lot of planning. I use, you know, weather apps to software called Sky Safari which you can, you know, pre plan what the night sky is going to look like. And then a famous photography app called Photo Pills as well. Yeah, that's yeah, really helpful in planning your shots. [01:06:08] Speaker A: That's good to know. So Photo Pills are still recommended. Like I think I first downloaded that, I don't even know, seven years ago, eight years ago or something like that. Used it a lot for wedding planning. We do a lot of sunset shoots and that kind of thing. So it was always handy to just see what's going to happen without having to do location scouting. If any of you listening haven't used Photo Pills or a similar app, it essentially gives you an augmented reality view of things like the sun and the trajectory that it's going to have across the day. But also it can do the same with the moon and Milky Way. So you can kind of just hold your phone up and move around and see what's going to happen or what things look like now, but also in the future. So you can kind of fast forward it six hours or whatever and watch as things move and then plan your shots out in advance. Yep. [01:07:04] Speaker B: Now very powerful. I think it's really powerful if you're doing like moonshots. Yes. And lining, you know, that foreground object up with the moon rising. So yeah, it's great for that. [01:07:18] Speaker A: So speaking of moonshots, total solar eclipse, this photo. [01:07:27] Speaker B: 2023. [01:07:29] Speaker A: 2023. How did you do this? [01:07:32] Speaker B: So that was the total solar eclipse over x mouth in 2023. So yeah, we had a. Every, I mean there's eclipses every maybe one to two years somewhere in the world and we were lucky to have that one over Australia, just that small bit of peninsula at Exmouth back in, yeah, 2023. So we, I knew where it was going to happen and I, yeah, I traveled there to capture it along with probably about another 20 to 50,000 people. Yeah. But I was able to position myself on the, on the peninsula looking over the Ningaloo Reef with no one in the, in the foreshore foreground. So just with the sand hills there and there as well. So but that's yeah from, from an astronomical perspective, like you know, my bucket list shots and, you know, experiences that would have to be, you know, up there, probably the one to experience to witness a total solar eclipse. [01:08:32] Speaker A: So would you consider yourself more of a photographer or an astronomer? [01:08:42] Speaker B: Oh, probably a photographer that tells the astronomy journey out there. Maybe that's okay. [01:08:51] Speaker A: Yeah, I always thought that was interesting because obviously it's knowing your subject, like your subject being the stars, in my opinion, often is far more important than being a great photographer. Like deeply knowing your subject and what you're trying to capture. And it sounds like just from the way that you're talking, it sounds like you've got so much knowledge and love for what the night sky is doing. Possibly more. More knowledge than. Than when it comes to, you know, cameras and things like that. It just. Yeah, I don't know, it seems like it's a difficult place to even get started with the night sky unless you're into astronomy and following celestial events and all that kind of thing to do the planning required to get the sorts of shots that you get. I just thought it was interesting. [01:09:43] Speaker B: You definitely have to follow those. Follow the night sky and. Yeah. You know, but understand it. So I think for me, it's just. Yeah, I really, really love, you know, looking at the night sky and appreciating, you know, and what it portrays and things like that. But being able to tell that story with a landscape, you know, landscape that's potentially maybe been untouched for thousands of years and, you know, been able to incorporate that in your final image and trying to tell that audience or the person that's viewing the image, you know, what it's like to be out there under the night sky and. And hopefully they can get out there too, and capture it. [01:10:24] Speaker A: That is the goal, and that's what Jim and I are going to do. You've excited us to get back into it, I think, before we let you go. Yeah, exactly. [01:10:35] Speaker C: So does Justin need a tracker? Justin loves buying gear. [01:10:40] Speaker A: He needs everything. [01:10:41] Speaker C: Does he need a tracker? Of course he does. [01:10:44] Speaker B: Always. Yeah, I think another. Cool. You can do moonshots as well and time lapses with it. So, you know, you can do your panning time lapses with it. [01:10:54] Speaker A: That's a good point. Yeah, that's a good point. I hadn't thought about that because, yeah, I've experimented with time lapses, but I've always just done kind of a. After a post kind of track, you know, like a slight. Like a zoom kind of zoom and pan. Yeah, pan and zoom. But do it in post, just by cropping the images, you know, do it in Final cut or whatever. And I've always thought, oh, those, those sliders and stuff that people use for time lapses look so good. I actually hadn't thought that a tracker could do that as well. So two reasons to get one. Before we let you go, this one last thing I wanted to go over because this is very cool was you mentioned telling the stories of, of astronomy in the night sky through your images. You recently told a pretty cool story which is capturing the first commercial spacecraft re entry in Australia. Tell us about that experience. [01:11:53] Speaker B: I love space like you said. Yeah. And I'm a space nerd and being able to be a part of this mission, being asked to have the opportunity to capture that shot of a space capsule, I mean it's pretty cool. Something that's been up in space was launched by I think one of the SpaceX rockets and it's been, it was up for about six weeks and then it came over South Australia was a great honor and experience, so. And yeah, I was able to achieve the result that was needed to tell that story being and seeing it come out across Ceduna area. [01:12:29] Speaker A: So yeah, pretty, pretty epic. What was the, what was the planning like? And was it stressful? Like were you. Because this is, I mean you can't be like, hey, do it again. I didn't, I didn't get the shot. Yeah, yeah. Tell us about the planning. [01:12:45] Speaker B: So five cameras pointing at all areas of the night sky to try and work out where it was going to. [01:12:50] Speaker A: Come cover the whole, the whole sky. [01:12:54] Speaker B: All I was told that it's going to look like a shooting star, but yeah, which it, it did, but it was moved a lot slower. That was I think probably good summary. It was like a plane coming across the night sky on fire. [01:13:07] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:13:08] Speaker A: Wow. [01:13:08] Speaker B: Yeah. So it was slow moving and so I was able to reposition the cameras at the last moment just to make sure I had the, the right composition to capture it. So yeah, that was cool. And then yeah, the next day we, I was able to, you know, be up with the team and we went out and retrieve the capsule and just you know, seeing that, that process of how the scientists worked and you know, and it was, was bit like being in a movie, you know, being in Independence Day, going out to check out what, what's landed. Yeah, nothing. [01:13:42] Speaker C: Nothing climbed out of it obviously. [01:13:44] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:13:44] Speaker B: So yeah, we went up in this thing that looked like a Blackhawk helicopter and yeah, off we went. So that was a pretty cool experience. So. And there's going to be plenty more. I mean this is the first in Australia. So there's, you know, there's going to be plenty more to come in, you know, in, in the next few years to happen. So. [01:14:06] Speaker C: And were they were planning to. For it to come back to like land in Australia? Is that the. [01:14:12] Speaker B: Yeah, that was the plan. I think it landed like within a kilometer or two of where it actually where they predicted it would land. So, you know, they're very precise and yeah, I mean, they had to clear the whole airspace and, and, you know, and the, and the marine as well for boats and that. So. Yeah, so nothing could fly from Perth to Adelaide for that period of time. But, yeah, but they were able to pinpoint it exactly where it was almost going to land. So very, very well put together plan of attack. So. [01:14:46] Speaker A: What an amazing experience. I love these images. If you guys want to read the article and have a closer look at these images, the link to Will's website is in the show description, but it's just Godwood.com and just go to the blog and it's the latest article there. It's very cool. Worth a read. Beautiful images. Epic experience, as Craig says. So cool. All right, one last thing. I said that would be last, but I lied. One last thing before we let you go. It's a question I ask, I try to ask most of our guests. I'm going to change it a little bit for you, all right? You've got like five cameras, so you got lots of options. But let's say tomorrow the aliens land and it's chaos and you've only got time to grab one camera and one lens. Maybe a sky tracker thingy and a tripod. But just one camera and one lens, what would you grab to document the. The alien invasion? [01:15:51] Speaker B: My camera. Sony A7SIII. [01:15:54] Speaker A: Oh, I like it. [01:15:56] Speaker B: Yes. I mean, it's 12 megapixels is fine. I think some of these shots here were done with that. One of my. Yeah. Out on the field you can shoot incredible video and I've taken some pretty cool nightscape shots with it as well. [01:16:10] Speaker A: So what lens would you put on it? [01:16:14] Speaker B: Probably the 20 mil, I reckon. 20 mil gmus g. The 1.8. That's. That's a really nice. I mean, 14 mil. If I was just shooting Astro, but if I was documenting some aliens as well, I'd probably go to 20 mil. [01:16:28] Speaker A: Nice. [01:16:29] Speaker C: Very cool. [01:16:31] Speaker A: Good choice. All right, so finally. Yeah, so you're doing some workshops. I believe there's information about that on your website as well. [01:16:43] Speaker B: Yeah, so I've run some. Yeah, workshops. I'VE done some with Sony last year, but I'm planning some. Yeah. This year up into the Australian Outback. Some locations which haven't had workshops before and we can head out to some salt lakes or some really cool remote locations and really experience that, that red dirt of the Australian Outback, which you don't get really anywhere else in the world with a kangaroo hopping across the field as well. Yeah. [01:17:12] Speaker A: So if you're listening and you want to learn about night sky photography and get taken on an adventure into the outback, head to Will's website, check out those options. Otherwise, follow him on Instagram. It's well worth a follow. And I don't know anything else that people need to know about you? [01:17:30] Speaker B: No, just, yeah, get out and look at the night sky more. And we've got a lunar eclipse happening tomorrow night on Friday. That's so, yeah, if you're watching this live and you, you get out, get a chance to see the lunar eclipse just after sunset for those who live on the eastern seaboard, predominantly of Australia. Yeah, check that out. [01:17:52] Speaker A: I didn't even know, I don't know any of this stuff is happening. I need to get tapped into all this, these events. [01:17:57] Speaker C: How do you shoot a lunar eclipse? [01:18:00] Speaker B: It's a, it's a full moon. So yeah, as you would normally shoot the full moon with a bit longer exposure than a full moon, essentially what the lunar eclipse is, it's this Earth, the sun, casting the Earth's shadow across the moon. [01:18:15] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:18:16] Speaker B: And creating that red, red glow across the, calling it the blood red moon and things like that. So yeah, for us in Australia, it would look more like a shadow across the moon, but you know, heading further east, say New Zealand, you know, you start to see that really blood red moon on tomorrow night here in South Australia, it's not really going to be anything at all. So we'll see, see what I'm doing tomorrow night. [01:18:43] Speaker A: We'll keep an eye on things. Awesome. All right, well, we better let you go get ahead of your day. Jim and I are going to stay on the chat for a little bit, so if you're in the comments, chop it up with us. Thanks so much, Will. Thanks for your time. [01:18:55] Speaker B: Thanks, Justin. Thanks, Jim. Yeah, it's been good to talk to you. [01:18:59] Speaker A: We've got the info we needed and that's that. We need trackers or one tracker. We'll just share a tracker. [01:19:05] Speaker B: Yeah, why not? [01:19:08] Speaker A: All right, awesome. Thanks so much. Have a good day. [01:19:11] Speaker B: You too. Thanks, guys. [01:19:12] Speaker C: Bye bye. [01:19:17] Speaker A: Well, that's it. It's man it's something we need to put a bit of work into, I think. [01:19:24] Speaker C: When does your tracker arrive? [01:19:26] Speaker A: I haven't ordered one yet. I don't know. I'm surprised that they're cheaper than I thought. I actually thought they were going to be like closer to a thousand dollars. And I'm sure there's. Obviously there's levels and levels and levels of everything. But knowing that they're. I don't know as much. I don't want another thing to have to put in my bag. But not that you would. You would only take it out. That's true. That's true. [01:19:48] Speaker C: It could slot in there somewhere, find. [01:19:50] Speaker A: A spot for it. But you only have to take it out when it's a night sky thing. I think we talked about that. Like we talked about this after we had Richard on about that. You know, you could just have one. But there's. I don't know. I do. I've always got a little bit of an apprehension though towards more post processing work. And it does create. [01:20:08] Speaker C: You don't want to be shooting foreground background. [01:20:12] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:20:12] Speaker C: What you do and how you like, I guess, how you appreciate it. [01:20:17] Speaker A: But I love the idea of the deeper sky shots. But I know that that's, as Craig said here, the money rabbit hole. But like the idea of. Because. Because with the deeper sky shots, you know, you're not doing necessarily the foreground stuff. [01:20:35] Speaker C: Yeah. So still like one. Well, not one frame, but yeah. [01:20:39] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's kind of like the cool part of looking through a telescope, but you actually get to make an image from it as well. I love that idea. But yeah. I. [01:20:50] Speaker C: Sounds expensive. [01:20:51] Speaker A: It does sound expensive. I think I'd rather just to start with, find someone who's got one of those setups in their backyard or something and just go see them, use it and see what the images are like and how it. How it works. [01:21:02] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:21:05] Speaker A: What else has been going on? You've been taking any photos? [01:21:08] Speaker C: Yeah, well, we had a wedding the week before last, so that was pretty good. Got some good stuff there. Some interesting stuff. So yeah. Shot in a shearing shed, which is pretty cool. [01:21:23] Speaker A: Oh yeah. [01:21:25] Speaker C: Had some crazy good light. Not what I expected. Anticipated. [01:21:32] Speaker A: What do you mean by cray? What do you mean by crazy good light? [01:21:36] Speaker C: Have a look to bring up the Justin Jim insta. [01:21:39] Speaker A: I'm on it. [01:21:40] Speaker C: It was not what I expected. I expected it to be, I don't know, just average. I've shot in a few before and they. They weren't that good. Maybe I wasn't Very good. My eye wasn't very good. I definitely just saw some things I hadn't seen before, so. [01:21:58] Speaker A: All right. [01:21:59] Speaker C: So, yeah, had a wedding, and then obviously we shot. We're at a wedding, and we shot a little bit last week, but, yeah. [01:22:10] Speaker A: So these ones. [01:22:12] Speaker C: Yes. Yep. So this is hot. Like, it was very hot in there. And this window was hot, but I was like, this light is. It's too good not to use. [01:22:23] Speaker A: Sorry. Trying to zoom in. Yeah, that is nice. I like the hat. The hat, really? [01:22:28] Speaker C: Yeah, the hat made it. [01:22:29] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Very good choice. If you're just listening. Sorry. We're looking at photos, you know, jump on YouTube. But, no, this is the shearing shed, like, tin with, like, light poking through some of the holes in the tin. And they've framed in a window. Oh, yeah. The floor's got lights coming through underneath it, and. And they're framed in the window and with a silhouette, you can sort of see their expressions. And you can see this. This hat. And it just really. Yeah, sets. [01:22:59] Speaker C: The hat made it, I think. [01:23:01] Speaker A: Rural wedding. [01:23:03] Speaker C: Yeah. And then it was just kind of like normal shearing shed sort of stuff. But, yeah, I was surprised by the, like, the light that was in there. Or maybe it's just the windows. I'm not sure. [01:23:18] Speaker A: Yeah, I think you've made good use of that window light. [01:23:21] Speaker C: Yeah, well, like, that second shot was like, the first shot I took, and then I was like, oh, there's better light. Oh, there's even better light. So, yeah, like, these were. I think the end. I can do something with that window. [01:23:35] Speaker A: It's very cool. I like it. So you've prioritized the bride for Beauty Light through that window. Front on Beauty Light. But also, he's got, like, this mysterious. Because of the hat, like, dark face. It's kind of that. I don't know, I'm a sucker from. For. What's that show called? Yellowstone? It's kind of got that, like, rip from Yellowstone vibe. Like, he's just the cool cowboy. Anyone else? No, just me. Okay. [01:24:04] Speaker C: But, yeah, that was. That was cool. It was cool as a, like, farm wedding. So, like, dress was dusty. We're walking in the dust. We're walking in the paddock. Tractors. Hey. And it's just cool. It was fun. You know, they had their dogs with them and. Yeah, yeah, it was a fun, fun time. [01:24:20] Speaker A: Awesome. It's always good when a shoot's fun. Digi Frog from Tassie is in the comments. He's a late starter today, he says, but. Morning, boys. Where is The G train Greg is busy this morning, so we fooled in. We've kicked him out. Yeah, it's just us now. It's just us. [01:24:38] Speaker C: Sorry, Greg. [01:24:39] Speaker A: Sorry, Craig. His beard got too long. So he'll be back. He'll be back probably on Monday night, I think for whatever Monday night shows brings along. I've got some film back. We might look at that on Monday night, potentially. [01:24:53] Speaker B: Is that from. [01:24:54] Speaker A: What's that from Two rolls of film, one roll. I mean, I guess we can have a peek at it now if you want. From that, the car that we took some photos of. [01:25:03] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. Or did you want to. Have you got the. [01:25:11] Speaker A: I was going to save it for when we have digital to look at. [01:25:15] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. [01:25:15] Speaker A: To look at his images. Yeah. Okay. Maybe we'll just. Maybe we'll just have a little peek. Just a little. [01:25:22] Speaker C: Because I've edited that car now. [01:25:24] Speaker A: Oh, have you? Yeah, we. We took some photos of a very cool car. Jim actually had to do. Do photos of it, whereas I just had my film camera. So I was just like cruising around and having a bit of fun and shot a roll of Ektar. If I can share it off this. I really did enjoy getting the film back from Lumina Labs. It's like opening a little present, even though it's just a Dropbox file of your images because you just don't know what you've got. And that is one of the really fun parts of film. And I will be shooting some more of it very soon. I shot some at a wedding on the weekend. [01:26:06] Speaker C: You don't. [01:26:08] Speaker A: What's that? You don't have. I haven't sent that away yet. I think I want to go down to the lab when they process it. But, yeah, here's these shots of you taking the photos, Jim, of this cool car at the cathedral in Bendigo. What's. What's super interesting is often I feel like. I know film is lower dynamic range than what a modern camera is. [01:26:36] Speaker C: Is it? [01:26:36] Speaker A: But the. Yeah, I believe so. That's what I've always been told. But the. The sky that you can get sometimes it does look like it's. [01:26:45] Speaker C: Yeah, I should do that same shot of Martin. My highlights are blown out. [01:26:49] Speaker A: That's what I reckon. So where's this one? You know, like, even these were really fun. Some old dudes saw these. This car and they were like. Yep, just kind of. They just stood around and watched us taking photos of it just because the car is that cool. But yeah, that. Like those highlights that they blow out, but they're not white, you know, it's. It's this sort of creamy, nice sort of blown out. I don't know. It's cool. Look, there's the selfie shot of me using the F100. [01:27:19] Speaker C: You're gonna put that on your new Facebook profile pic? [01:27:23] Speaker A: Probably not. Yeah, it was fun. Like, even that, like, blown out just gets this really nice, creamy look about it. I don't know. [01:27:31] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:27:32] Speaker A: Need to learn more about film, but, yeah, it was fun. [01:27:39] Speaker C: It's funny, you've actually got some similar shots to me. [01:27:42] Speaker A: Really? Hang on, let me get back there. [01:27:43] Speaker C: Like this one, I've got the next one, I think the one where you're like one step back. [01:27:49] Speaker A: This one. Oh, yeah, you got to get the rear shot. But this one was. This one was more fun. [01:27:54] Speaker C: Yeah, I got that. But like, it was on a 50. [01:27:57] Speaker A: He's Jim, driving the car, struggling to drive. [01:28:00] Speaker C: Very worried for my. For my life. Hey, Greg's here. [01:28:07] Speaker A: Greg's in the comments. Hey, Greg. [01:28:10] Speaker C: We've only been saying nice things, Greg. [01:28:12] Speaker A: Yeah, cool. [01:28:16] Speaker C: These are cool. [01:28:17] Speaker A: Yeah, it was a bit of fun. Could be about the yoga sign by telling yoga doesn't really match the car. [01:28:23] Speaker C: But I shot that without the yoga sign. [01:28:27] Speaker A: Yeah. I only had a 20 mil lens, so I was kind of. I had less options. Yeah. Anyway, it was. Yeah, it was fun. [01:28:38] Speaker C: Good time. That sign is cool. I was looking at that the other day. I was like, that's actually a very cool photo. Yeah. Yeah. [01:28:46] Speaker A: Greg says, hey, team. Hi, everyone. Missing you all. We miss you too. Hopefully you'll be back on a Monday. And yeah, I got a roll of. I was gonna say, I'll save it for Monday show. I got a roll of portrait back to. From out at Lake Everlock, which was a fun shoot. Testing out my new film camera, which is the Canon EOS 1N and the 50 mil 1.2 lens, which was really fun, really good. I enjoyed shooting it. I just don't like the fact that I got. I didn't get tricked. I shouldn't say that. It was. It was all pictured and advertised. What I didn't realize about this camera is it's got an optional extra back on it, a different back, like a different film back. And it's got a data back. And the data, I believe, allows you to, like, imprint the date and stuff onto the film somehow. It's. It's like a different back that was probably for, obviously some level of professional shooting that required that information. But it removes the rear dial that cannons have for aperture. [01:29:56] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:29:57] Speaker A: Which means you have to press a button to change your aperture. You know, like the way you would normally used to do with ISO. You'd, like, press a button and then change your ISO. So it's. I don't. It doesn't. Doesn't fit my shooting style perfectly yet. And I don't know whether I can find a back for it or whether I'll have to try and buy a different camera with a different back or something like that. [01:30:20] Speaker C: Could you just sell that one and buy, like, the same camera with the original back? [01:30:24] Speaker A: If I can find one, I'll probably do that. I mean, the camera was $300, so it wasn't like the world's most expensive camera. And it's very clean. But, yeah, I think I'd prefer to have the aperture dial on the back for quick changes. Although I shot the whole when we shot at the wedding. I shot that often on aperture priority, using exposure compensation, which I enjoyed working with. We'll see if there. [01:30:54] Speaker C: Yeah. See how it goes. [01:30:55] Speaker A: Yeah. We'll have to see if the images are actually exposed, but that'll be fun. But I think. Yeah, I want to go down to the lab and talk to John as he develops a film, learn a little bit about that process. Maybe film a little bit of the process. [01:31:11] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:31:12] Speaker A: And go from there. [01:31:13] Speaker C: So how'd you go shooting, going from mirrorless. You've been mirrorless for a long time. Back to, like an slr? [01:31:21] Speaker A: Ah, it's the same. It's. I mean, it's not the same. Sorry. It's like. It's like riding a bike. You know, you just use your light. Just use your light meter. I think because we did so much shooting with DSLRs, knowing what a backlit photo meter is like, what a full sun photo meter is like. I mean, I'm sure I didn't get everything right, but you reckon you got close? Well, based on the shots that I did out at the lake in the boat, that was when I first used their camera, which I've just gotten back, which I'll say for Monday night show. Most of them are metered pretty well, and some of them were full sun and some of them were backlit. And I just know, roughly, you know, you sort of. You need to meet a. A stop over, you know, for a backlit shot, maybe a stop and a half over for a backlit shot. And you just. You're constantly doing that calculation in your head where you're like, all right, how much light is in this shot that I'm happy to be. Have Blown out if it's backlit. How much of the shot has dark colors in it? How much has light colors in it? And you're kind of blending all that together in your brain and just kind of guessing where the light meter needs to be. And I don't know, they seem to get close enough. I. I can only imagine that the film must have a fair bit of latitude in it. I don't know how that works. That's what I want to talk to John about. Like, is he like, rescuing my poorly exposed images? And that's what I want to ask about. Yeah, you know, maybe that's what we need. Am I really good at shooting film or is he just in there going, gosh, I gotta push this one a lot, or whatever. I don't know how it works. So, yeah, I'm a film rookie. [01:33:04] Speaker C: That was only one way to not be. [01:33:06] Speaker A: That's right. Just to shoot it. That's it. But yeah, you'll have to. You'll have to grab one of my Nikons and find yourself a 50 mil maybe, or something cheap to throw on there. I mean, you can use your 20. That's the only one. [01:33:21] Speaker C: Your lenses, not super interesting. [01:33:25] Speaker A: Well, I mean, it's what I shot all those car shots with, but yeah, it's a little bit limiting, especially with people, you know. What else? Anything else? I mean, supposed to be just an interview show. Yeah, we kind of kind of wrapped it up. [01:33:41] Speaker C: I don't think there's much news. There's any other gear that we've bought. Not this week. [01:33:49] Speaker A: Not this week. There was a little bit of news about Fujifilms. I mean, Apple has released more. More computers and stuff, but mine's still going really well. Like, my Mac was an M1, I think, but. But the M1. But sort of maxed out pretty much. [01:34:11] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:34:12] Speaker C: Mine's the same as yours, is it? [01:34:14] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they. They're a super expensive, beefy laptop, but it's now an M1 one and they're up to M4. So it seems like it should be outdated, but, man, like I, I shot that like 4K 100 frames per second log footage on the R5 Mark II before I drowned it in the pool. And, and when I did that edit, like, you don't have to build any, like, proxy files or anything like that. And I can literally watch it in real time on this computer and do color grading and stuff. Like, I don't. It doesn't need to be any faster. So I'm pretty blown away with these. [01:34:58] Speaker C: Macs their sales is that it's better. It's better. You need to get the new, like the new laptop every time and you don't. [01:35:09] Speaker A: Well, it's one of those things. It's like, I mean, you don't. I don't need to. I was actually thinking about this the other day when Greg was talking about, you know, that I get excited about new gear, I don't get excited about new laptops unless the one that I've got is in struggle town. And so I'm guessing most people, I hope that are looking at new laptops are running into issues with their current laptop. Slowing down. Like, remember we used to be editing weddings and constantly all we're looking at is like, how can we make these photos load faster? Because 10 seconds an image over all the images that we've got to look through slows us down a ton. And then even longer once we were doing like edits with spot removals and stuff and you're waiting for the thing to load the full image like it was slowing us down by hours per wedding. And so an upgrade of a computer meant faster turnaround times. And I think, I think that is the same thing with camera gear. Like, I didn't buy the R5 Mark II because I just wanted, I mean, essentially the same camera with some small upgrades and I just wanted the latest and greatest. I bought it because my R5 has overheated while I've been on a shoot, a paid shoot. You know, I'm out with flow, there's multiple people there waiting on me. The shoot budget was in the thousands of dollars and the camera's overheating. So we've also been many times before we got up to these modern cameras. We're looking at updating purely a lot of the time for buffer. Remember we used to buffer out all. [01:36:57] Speaker C: The time, D750 and we had those things. [01:37:04] Speaker A: Yeah. When the D750s were a popular sort of wedding photography camera, it was a good mid spec sort of budget camera. You know, without buying the top of the range flagship, we had to shoot on 12, 12 bit files fully compressed to be able to get our buffers up enough that most of the day you don't need the buffer. But when they're throwing confetti down the aisle, when the couple leaves and you're trying to get the shot, we'd buffer out halfway down, swap cameras, buffer that one out and then be like, shit, yeah. [01:37:34] Speaker C: And they used to buffer out pretty quick, pretty fast until we did those. [01:37:39] Speaker A: Tricks and they were a camera Shooting at six and a half frames a second. [01:37:43] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:37:44] Speaker A: And they would buffer out. So, like the whole time through our, like, wedding photography career, I guess pretty much up until recently was we were constantly pushing up against the limits of the gear. And that's what drives the. The waiting for that next camera to see what it's going to do. [01:38:06] Speaker C: Like when you got the D5 and you went from a D750 to a D5. [01:38:11] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:38:12] Speaker C: And then you never had to worry about a buffer again. And that's probably why you shot not exclusively, just that camera. I know you had the 850 as well, but it was 90% of the day on that. [01:38:21] Speaker A: Yeah, it was one of the best cameras I've owned. The D850 was too, but for different reasons. The D850 was a better all rounder, but the D5 was a workhorse. And that's what the R3 is now. Even compared to the R5 Mark II, it's a little bit more reliable and solid in many aspects, including overheating. But yeah, it's like it. Yeah, there's. There's so much to it. And I was. Oh, yeah, I was thinking about it a bit. I was thinking about autofocus as well. And I mean, you've shot a bit of mountain bike stuff. Like, it's tricky. I don't know if I'm just not good at it, but I feel like I'm pretty good at it. I've done a lot of shoots now. I don't know what I would be up to, but a hundred more. [01:39:06] Speaker C: Yeah, you've done a lot. A lot more than me anyway. [01:39:09] Speaker A: Yeah, a lot of shoots. Shooting hybrid photo on video with a rider in the sun on a 30 degree day when you have to tell them to. So I already. At a minimum, if I nail both the photo and video first time, at a minimum, they have to do everything twice if I don't get it right. For both the photo and video. Now they're doing the same thing four times. [01:39:36] Speaker B: At least. [01:39:37] Speaker A: At least. So you can easily blow a shoe. And that's also if you compose the shot, you know, if you're like, all right, this is perfect. I've just got to make sure I nail the autofocus when they fly over this hill and I can't see them until they're literally in the shot. And then. Yeah, so it's. I don't know, it's even. I miss shots. Even currently with the best autofocus on the market, Canon, I still miss some shots. And I had, you know, the last shoot that I did with Will. We got some great shots, but I think there was one section I just couldn't get it. Um, it was heavily backlit and I was trying to get him in a particular spot and it just kept missing. Um, and I was trying different for photo settings. This was for photo. [01:40:17] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:40:19] Speaker A: And I shoot most of it at 15 frames a second. And, you know, it'll grab, miss a couple. Grab, miss a couple. And unfortunately, it kept missing a couple when he was in the spot that I wanted him to be in. And it's like, yeah, you try and work around it. You try and. Yeah, it's frustrating. And that's what. For me, that's what drives the. Want to upgrade. There's never a point where I'm like, I'm totally happy with this camera, but I want to upgrade it. It just doesn't happen. So, yeah, I don't know. It's interesting. Is there anything that your Z8s do or don't do now that you're like, I can't wait to see if they bring out something that sorts this out? Or are you just. Are you currently. For you. The Z8's pretty epic camera for weddings. Are you like, these things are sweet. [01:41:12] Speaker C: It doesn't focus on dance floors for me. [01:41:14] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:41:15] Speaker C: Like, it misses more than it gets really, like. And it misses way too many. Like, sometimes I just. I'll stop down and I'll just focus and then I won't refocus. [01:41:27] Speaker A: I'll just really get them in the focal plane and then just. Just let it. Let it sit there. [01:41:33] Speaker C: I'm trying, like, I'm trying lots of different ways and it's getting better, but it's not like what the day at 50 used to be. [01:41:41] Speaker A: Which is crazy. [01:41:42] Speaker C: Yeah. And I've worked out why focuses at the aperture that you're shooting at. Whereas DSLRs obviously used to open up again. Yeah. But, yeah, it's a pain. Very massive pain. [01:41:58] Speaker A: So we should do some testing with that. Somehow. I don't know how we do that. Go to a dance floor or something somewhere for the day. Turn all the lights on. You know, like, turn all the disco lights on or something and have it be dark. And then just play around with it and see if there's different, I don't know, different way to set up the autofocus or whatever that works. And it would be interesting to directly compare it to, like, the R5 Mark 2 and see, do they just both have the same issues or has one of Them figured something out that the other one hasn't yet. [01:42:30] Speaker C: You know it's. Yeah, I don't know, it doesn't seem to pick up. If I tried faces, I've tried just doing normal focus. I've tried spot focusing, I've tried matte. [01:42:42] Speaker A: You know like generally with that stuff. Usually like if face tracking and stuff isn't working, the extended spot focus, you know the assisted that's got the five. [01:42:53] Speaker C: Dots around it or whatever. [01:42:54] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, it's like spot focus but it's using the areas around it to kind of help assist it. I find that's like the, that's my backup worst case scenario autofocus setting because it's like you can tell it exactly what you where you want it to focus and take control of that part. But it's got yeah the extra stuff. Whereas spot focus only often struggles a little bit in like a fast moving scene. But yeah, the extended spot focus I find to be the best backup for. [01:43:28] Speaker C: I'll give it a good face. [01:43:30] Speaker A: Yeah. Face tracking doesn't work but yeah, I would have thought face tracking would be killing it for dance floor stuff. [01:43:36] Speaker C: You'd think so but it's, it's not. But it's also like it's moving fast, it's dark. [01:43:43] Speaker A: Yeah, it's, it's, it's a challenging situation for sure. Like a lot of the dance laws we've shot, you know you're at 3200, 6400. Like you're, you're probably using flash which is. [01:43:54] Speaker C: Well it's more the on camera. When I'm off camera flash it's fine. So it's when I'm close. So if I like first dance it's no worries because it, I was generally a little bit more light. [01:44:07] Speaker A: So you're talking more like party shots. [01:44:09] Speaker C: Party shots, yeah. Yeah. [01:44:10] Speaker A: Okay. Interesting. [01:44:11] Speaker C: When you're in a bit close, a bit wider but for some reason it's not interesting. Not happy. But yeah, I'm working through it, working. [01:44:19] Speaker A: Through it, doing my best. I mean you can switch to Canon. Off topic, Paul Henderson says perhaps if you plan to jump in more pools you should get an Olympus 0n one and maybe a weather sealed lens. Look, I probably should just get a weather sealed prime like wide prime for my, my Canon. I've. I don't know. And don't jump in and don't. Maybe I should just not jump in pools. There's that as an option. Although I did, I took this, my new film camera, I did take this in the lake. The Other day. Yeah, I should have. We'll talk about it on Monday's show. But yeah, I got some shots from in, in the lake to try and get like the water close to the lens and that was fine. I didn't go under. It's just, I just made a mistake at the wedding and went under. Wasn't supposed to. [01:45:08] Speaker C: Were you at the bank or were you like off the side of the boat? [01:45:11] Speaker A: Just in the middle of the lake. But I had a life jacket on. [01:45:14] Speaker C: Yeah. Okay. [01:45:14] Speaker A: Which helps me float. But I still, I still sort of had to actively try and keep the camera out of the water because how. [01:45:20] Speaker C: Many arms and to like paddle. [01:45:22] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. [01:45:23] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:45:25] Speaker A: But yeah, Canon's, Canon's prime lens game is a little odd in terms of weather, ceiling and stuff. Like. It's not odd, it's just expensive. You know, they've released these, a 24 mil 1.4 or a 35 mil 1.4 and a 50 mil 1.4. But they're all, I think they're all up over two grand. And they're, they are L series lenses but there's nothing under that, you know, that's kind of weather sealed and decent quality. Whereas like that Nikon, the 20 mil 1.8, that's an awesome wide angle lens. And I think they were like, I don't even know, they're like 1200 bucks or something. [01:46:06] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:46:07] Speaker A: And the, maybe the new Z mount one's a bit dearer, but. Okay, maybe that's just, maybe that's just mirrorless life these days. Everything's, everything's like, it's like top of the range is four grand. Mid range is two grand. Entry level, like the cheapest entry levels, like 500 to 1,000. [01:46:26] Speaker C: Yeah. I'll tell you how much it is. It won't be a while. [01:46:45] Speaker A: While you're doing that, I'll tell you a story. One of our mutual acquaintances from the gym was looking at a new camera and they rang me. They used to use. I don't know why I'm keeping his identity secret, but anyway, I just like it. It's odd. Find out who it is and be like, oh. Anyway, he wanted to buy a new camera and he was just trying to catch up because, because he used to have a dslr, an older one, a Canon, and he was like trying to catch up with like where everything's at now. And he was a bit confused between mirrorless and like full frame. He was like, I don't know if I want full frame or mirrorless. And if mirrorless is as good as full frame. And I was like, oh, okay, we gotta fix our terms. There's like mirrorless versus there's full frame mirrorless and there's. Yeah, you can get full frame mirrorless. And that's, you know, that's what I shoot with and blah, blah. Anyway, and we sort of discussed whether he should go a crop sensor mirrorless. He wanted. He was sort of keen on sticking with Canon because that's what he used to have. And the menus haven't changed in insane amount. So he'll probably feel a bit more comfortable navigating the camera. But anyway, like, looking at the price of crop sensors and stuff versus what you can get an R6 Mark 2 for at the moment, an R6 Mark II, I think there was someone advertising them for just over 2,600. And like the crop sensor cameras that were anywhere near even being like a sort of a fully fledged camera, not an entry level, they were still close to two grand. I was like, wow, for 600 bucks you can go full frame and essentially get something good enough to do professional work with. Not that they needed to. [01:48:36] Speaker C: It's kind of like that D750 market. It's. [01:48:39] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. But it's. But they've always been more like three and a half, which kind of put anyone that's like three a body for three and a half plus lenses. It's like, oh, I'm gonna. I don't want to spend five grand on camera gear. But at like two, six. And then we was talking about lenses and he'd been looking at the 24 to 105L lens. That's f4, f4 kit, like L kit lens, beautiful. Can do everything you want. But I ended up telling him to get the 24 to 240, like just super zoom because it's actually pretty good. And then a nifty 51.8, which I've made him mine for now he's going to get the super zoom and just play with my nifty 50. And I'm like, this is going to give you everything you want. [01:49:25] Speaker C: He'll never take the 50 off. [01:49:27] Speaker A: Well, I mean, for. Because like, for like family photos and stuff like that, the 50 would be perfect. But if you're like. If you're going on like a trip to Europe or something and you can whack that 24 to 240 on and just do anything, like you can do anything. You can. [01:49:44] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:49:45] Speaker A: Or like, I don't know, taking photos of the kids soccer game or something. Like that 24 to 240, you can just use it all day long. And then if you want some more low light, creative shots of 50 mil. And I was like, you know, it was really fun working through the like start to finish purchase process. [01:50:04] Speaker C: It was. [01:50:04] Speaker A: I'd love to do that, but without working at a camera store. I like doing it just as like a. [01:50:13] Speaker C: Helping people out. [01:50:14] Speaker A: Yeah, helping people out. But yeah, I wouldn't want to do it in a camera store because there's like, I don't know, it's a completely different feel because I want to sell them something. Whereas this, I was like, I was sort of trying to stop him from spending money. I was like, oh no, no, I don't think you need an L, an L lens. I think you'd be better off with something a bit more flexible. [01:50:31] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:50:31] Speaker A: Anyway, it was fun. [01:50:32] Speaker C: So. So classic Justin spends like to spend all your money on gear but you don't let anyone else spend money on. On stuff. [01:50:42] Speaker A: I like to challenge the need for something. [01:50:50] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:50:50] Speaker A: You know, like, do you really need it? And I do that to myself all the time. If I just gave in to my base instincts, I'd buy everything. Just kidding. [01:51:03] Speaker C: That lens at 800 retail, which one? The 21.8 Nikon. [01:51:09] Speaker A: Okay, so it's up there. Whereas the. So I was looking at the. [01:51:12] Speaker C: Probably get it on special. Like it's probably down on special for like 1500 often sort of thing. [01:51:17] Speaker A: Canon RF24 Mil 1.4. See that? The RF24 Mil 1.4 is like retails for 2, 6 and you can get it on special for 2. 262. So it's like, it's, it's up there and I don't know, I don't, I don't need it a lot. I'm currently shooting this podcast at 24 mil. So, you know, I could upgrade my podcast setup, but other than that it would just be to have a wide angle prime lens. And. [01:51:56] Speaker C: Do you need anything wider for the podcast? No, no, I need more of your room. [01:52:04] Speaker A: I mean I could. I've got the, I've got the 15 to 35 on at the moment. So we can like, we can go full mass if you want, get pretty wide, show my air conditioner. [01:52:12] Speaker C: But I'm using prime like a real photographer. [01:52:18] Speaker A: Well, I've only got the 35 which is too tight. [01:52:24] Speaker C: It would make it a lot easier though to just be able to get it. I've had to get up, move my tripod. It's quite frustrating. [01:52:30] Speaker A: Yeah, it is. Handy being able to zoom. I think I'm going to try and ditch this 15-35L lens for the new 16 to 28 non L version, which is cheaper, lighter. I just. [01:52:44] Speaker C: Is it like an S4 or a 2.8? [01:52:46] Speaker A: No, it's a 2.8 Canon. They've introduced these really cool, like lightweight. They're somewhat weather sealed but not as rugged as an L lens. And they're like half the price of the L lenses but they're just, they're not as optically correct but they're pretty sharp and I've just got to check. I'm just not sure how I'll go for autofocus for action. [01:53:12] Speaker C: It's gonna be fast enough for. Yeah, yeah. [01:53:14] Speaker A: If it's gonna struggle or if it's gonna be fast enough. But it would be nice. Like they're literally half the weight, half the price. Yeah. I have to say anyway, that's probably about it. Anything else you want to talk about? What are you guys doing in the chat people? It's very quiet out there today. [01:53:36] Speaker C: Very quiet. Everyone's missing Greg. [01:53:38] Speaker A: I think they must be. He'll be back, don't worry. [01:53:42] Speaker C: Yeah, he'll be back. [01:53:45] Speaker A: Okay. [01:53:46] Speaker C: Yeah, I got a. I'm shooting wedding tomorrow, so. [01:53:49] Speaker A: Nice. And then we've got to shoot. We've got to shoot on Sunday too. [01:53:52] Speaker C: We do, yeah. Full day shoot Sunday. So yeah, lots to talk about in a studio. In the studio. Yeah. [01:53:59] Speaker A: Fancy. So that should be fun. But otherwise it's been, it's been a morning. It's been the camera life. If you guys are new to the channel, give us a. Subscribe, give us a. Like. We actually just hit 950 subscribers, which is cool. I think some of those were from Will's fans. So if you're new to the channel, we're happy to have you. [01:54:25] Speaker C: Thanks, Will. [01:54:26] Speaker A: Thanks, Will. Otherwise, the episodes will be up on Spotify and Apple Podcasts roughly 24 hours after each episode goes live. Depending on how we go. Paul Henderson's missing the Fuji chat without Greg. Don't worry. I mean there's a, there's a Fuji announcement coming late next week, so there'll be ton of Fuji chat after that. [01:54:47] Speaker C: I'm sure we're not missing it, Paul. [01:54:51] Speaker A: Yeah, it's so exciting to have a Sony, a Sony photographer on. I was very, I was like, yeah, let's talk about Sony cameras. [01:54:57] Speaker C: No one's mentioned Fuji till now. It's great. [01:54:59] Speaker A: That's true. It's been. Yeah, maybe that's why the chat's so. [01:55:01] Speaker C: Quiet, we might lose out. Fuji subscription. [01:55:06] Speaker A: Yeah, maybe. Philip Johnson says, thanks, guys. And with that, we will call it a show. Great to have you all and catch us on Monday night. [01:55:16] Speaker C: Cool. Thank you. [01:55:18] Speaker A: Thanks.