EP84 | The Random Photography Show

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Sam. [00:00:29] Speaker B: Welcome everybody. This is the Camera Life podcast, the random photography show. It is 2nd of June, 2025, episode 84 proudly brought to you by Lucky Straps Makers, fine premium Aussie made leather camera straps from Bendigo, Victoria. And we're joined tonight by the man himself, Justin Cassels. [00:00:54] Speaker A: Good evening, Greg. And good evening everyone. [00:00:57] Speaker B: Good evening everybody. [00:00:59] Speaker A: Good evening everybody. So far just Philip Johnson in the chat. Evening, Philip. How you going? How is everyone going? I'm tired. [00:01:09] Speaker B: Yeah, we'll get into that. [00:01:11] Speaker A: We will get to that. But I'm tired. Greg's gonna carry the show tonight. I'm just gonna sort of snooze and listen. Maybe chime in with the odd, odd thing or two. [00:01:20] Speaker B: What do you mean carry the show tonight? I feel like I carry the show every week. [00:01:24] Speaker A: You do, that's why you're here. Who else have we got? We got Rick Nelson in the house. Tony. Tony, get off my digital lawn castles. And Greg. Yes, we are here. Bruce Moyle says. Evening everyone. I'm here to see them not get to the final topic again. That's the plan. That is the plan. I do not have it in me to go long enough to get to that final topic. Ah, Nick Fletcher. Holla. Good evening. [00:01:53] Speaker B: Good evening. [00:01:55] Speaker A: The name of that song that we play is. Is Holla. Holla. Paul Henderson. Good evening. Thought you might be out photographing the aurora. I missed it again. I was in Queensland. Is that still happening or is it over? Is it back? Anyone? [00:02:08] Speaker B: Yeah, I saw a bit of work. I saw a bit of stuff last night from it. And today Cam Blake had an image appear on a news website. [00:02:16] Speaker A: Did he? I wonder if they told him. [00:02:20] Speaker B: No, he. Well, he shared it with. Yeah, maybe they just stole it. I used AI made it a little nicer. But look, this is the, the random photography show. So we're going to cover off a few things tonight that we tried to get through every Monday night. We're not always successful. We're gonna give it a shot. We're gonna cover off some. We can review. We've got to look at some pictures, previous week's comments, we're going to talk about past guests, those sorts of things. We're going to dive into some news and rumors. A little bit of news, a little bit of rumors, but all, all sort of points to positivity in the future for particular camera brands. Justin's put in a surprise topic. I have no idea what this is. Judge Dreddo. Or is it Dread? [00:03:05] Speaker A: Judge. Judge Dread, like the movie Judge Dread. You haven't seen the Stallone. [00:03:10] Speaker B: Stallone. [00:03:10] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that middle segment. We're just going to watch that movie together. All together. I've got the rights for it, so we can, we can play it on YouTube. No, not really. If anyone wants to guess what that topic's about, throw it in the chat. If you think you can guess. Greg doesn't know. Shall we. Shall we talk about last week and look at some comments? [00:03:33] Speaker B: Yeah. So what did we have last week? We had. [00:03:37] Speaker A: We had Lucinda Goodman. [00:03:38] Speaker B: We did have a cinder Goodman on Inspirational individual. Hey, good evening. [00:03:48] Speaker A: So, yeah. What, What a great show. If you guys haven't listened to it after this one, go back and listen to that one. It was an awesome interview. And guess what? She shoots Canon. Yeah, we got to talk about Canon stuff and it was awesome. [00:04:02] Speaker B: And I'm pretty sure she has surpassed all of us combined in terms of total cameras in her collection. So. [00:04:10] Speaker A: Yes. [00:04:11] Speaker B: But yeah, she has put a warning up to say, be careful what you say. [00:04:15] Speaker A: No, we are definitely. I really want to get down there and just film you. Just talking about every single camera. I think that will be an hour of gold YouTube content. [00:04:24] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:04:25] Speaker A: Yeah. What a great interview. [00:04:28] Speaker B: Yeah, it was really cool. Yeah. And phenomenal. And so much that's been achieved at, you know, such a ripe young age. [00:04:36] Speaker A: If you have any interest in, well, any interest in photography, it's worth a listen. But in, in live music photography particularly. Absolutely. Go on and dig into. That interview is over two hours long, so lots of gold. [00:04:48] Speaker B: And also if you're an. If you're a relatively new photographer and maybe you haven't had the best role models or people have told you that you're not going to make it in this industry or that photography is not a real. Check out Lucinda's episode of the camera life because really inspirational how several people told her that she wouldn't make it and that, you know, music photography isn't really a genre and. Or concert photography isn't a genre and. And you know, to her absolute credit, she smashed it and proved them all wrong. So. [00:05:23] Speaker A: Yeah, great episode. [00:05:25] Speaker B: Go and check it out. Great episode. Other than just Lucinda's episode, have we got any comments to share from? [00:05:33] Speaker A: We do. We actually might have too many to share because some of them are so in depth. So we might have to. I'll just, we'll. We'll skim. We'll just skim the comment section and cherry pick some. I'll try and get to everybody's. But like, it was, it went, it went crazy. I think the, the X half has stirred up some. Stirred up the comments a little bit. Start with this one here. The drunk wedding photographer. Look at this. It's a. There's two slabs of information. I love it. He's. He's even time stamped, which is so good. I think at that point we were talking about. What was his name, the cinematographer YouTuber guy who said that if you, if you don't like the X half, you. You don't get photography and you're just a gearhead and anyway, so he said going to go tell him off. Who is this guy? To that I would say, nah, gearheads didn't ruin anything. This, this has nothing to do with the art of photography, nor is there anything wrong with the camera itself. The point many people, myself included are making is. Is about the comical price of this camera. $950 US after tax for something a $20Amazon kids camera can match. If we're only comparing image quality, it shouldn't even be a debate. On the contrary, it sounds like this hipster cowboy is the kind of gearhead ruining photography that he's complaining about. When you actually consider value for money, you could get a mint Nikon F5 for $700 or almost two F5s for $800, or you could grab a $100 SLR and have enough leftover for film and processing for a few months. How is he comparing Instax to the X half? If you catch a deal, pick up an instax camera with 100 photos for no more than 150 bucks yet is it? That is a very different price point between Instax and the new X half. And I think that's what he was getting at. And what we were getting at is they, they've sort of threaded the needle between Instax and the actual X series line of cameras with kind of a. It's like a. The X halfway camera. It's halfway between Instax and, and an actual X camera. I don't know. [00:07:48] Speaker B: Anyway, yeah, and it's halfway to being a real camera too. [00:07:54] Speaker A: Anyway, there's. There's even more about. About the cosplay cameras and, and retro vintage. It's. There's tons in there. I got some comments on the. My old video, not that old. Last year's video. Canon R5 Mark II, Animal Eye Auto focus. How well does it track? And the question was, would you say the hit rate on your R3 is better? Thank you. Overall, they're very, very close. And the R5 Mark 2 does seem to perform better in a few instances. But overall the R3 for me is more reliable with autofocus, better hit rate, but it's by next to nothing. [00:08:35] Speaker B: Yep. [00:08:37] Speaker A: Ah, yes, the boys are. The boys are under it. Oh, Evening, Tim. Cam McKay. Mackie McKay is the hipster cowboy. Yes. And Rick Nelson confirms. Yes, the cowboy. His recent video ranting made a point about the X half. Yep. Moving on. Who else have we got at Costa GF? Costag 5th, something like that. Very insightful. What you mentioned about the Asian market. I'd put the Canon G5X Mark II from 2019 and the ZV1 from 2020, not the Mark II version, in the same list of comparing because of similar prices. 1 inch sensor, way brighter aperture and a zoom lens instead of a fixed lens in that sort of normal 24 to 70, 24 to 120 size. So yeah, they're all comparable cameras and obviously they don't have any of the features of the XR that the hands on tactile film style features. But if you're comparing cameras in that price point, they're there too. And you could grab a bargain on those, those older model cameras. And they still would outperform, I would say, image quality wise. [00:09:51] Speaker B: Yeah, look, I would think so. And you know, the ZV1 in terms of videography would outperform easily. [00:09:59] Speaker A: Far better. We've had some comments about that too. I put a short up about the, the video quality. What else? Oh, and he goes on. I feel like we've hit a nerve here, but a good nerve. It's fun. [00:10:11] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:10:12] Speaker A: I haven't put a poll up. I should find that at Costa gf. Again, the Fuji X half uses a portion of a 1 inch sensor. It's a 17.74 megapixel crop from a 20 megapixel 1 inch sensor. Is this true? Is this. Could this be confirmed? Do you know? [00:10:33] Speaker B: I'm not sure. [00:10:34] Speaker A: Oh, maybe because it's the 4, 3 aspect ratio. [00:10:38] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's not a typical aspect ratio, is it? [00:10:42] Speaker A: No, it's. Yeah. So it's 4.3 instead of 3.2. So is that what it means? And then equivalent depth of field of f 8.3 full frame terms at the 28 mil focal length. Interesting. Yeah, I know this doesn't matter at all to the target market slash audience the X half is intended for, but maybe useful info for people around here. Yes, it is useful for people like us around here. [00:11:12] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:11:13] Speaker A: Because those are the things that you sort of get lost. You hear. You hit 2.8, you're like, oh, yeah, so it's 2.8 lens. Okay, that's cool. You know, but you sort of forget that it's. It's essentially. [00:11:25] Speaker B: It's actually cropped in and it's. [00:11:28] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Very deep depth of field. Which is what you found in testing. Yeah, it's sort of. Everything's in focus. Very, very phone style. [00:11:37] Speaker B: Yep. [00:11:40] Speaker A: All right, what else we got here? J.S. hanny, Jason. With regards to the questions asked around cosplay, the only digital camera I can think of that had a real film winder was the Epson Rd1 rangefinder. This was a Leica M Mount camera and the winder was actually used to cock the shutter. You couldn't take the next shot without advancing the lever. It also had some beautiful analog control indicators for things as surprising as white balance. Oh, that's cool. It was a very, very tactile camera that tapped into the actual process of taking photos and made perfect sense as a range finder and manual focus only camera. Okay, that's cool. I wonder if. So it cocked the shutter. That's kind of cool. Like you had to use that advanced lever. Are you familiar with that camera at all? [00:12:32] Speaker B: No, I've never heard of it. I wonder if it's. It's kind of like that whole like the concept of a bridging camera. You know, it's moving people from film to digital, but in baby steps because it's obviously it would be quite old. I don't know when the Epson Rd one. [00:12:47] Speaker A: 18 years ago, I believe. [00:12:52] Speaker B: Yeah. So yeah, maybe they were trying to still push more people into digital that were still clinging to film. [00:12:58] Speaker A: March 2004. Nice. [00:13:05] Speaker B: Yeah. Sol. [00:13:12] Speaker A: Glenn Lavender says the shutter. I don't know if he just wants me to say that again. I'll say it again. The shutter. And Nick Fletcher says, I love that Fuji are innovating. Even if it's not to everyone's taste. I bet they sell a load. I think they will sell a load too. And we've said the same thing about that camera. I'm glad they did it. It's good to see different styles of cameras trying to be brought out into the market other than just the standard, you know, thing that we've seen over and over again, just with slightly more megapixels or a slightly faster autofocus system. But. But that doesn't mean we still can't critique it or give our thoughts on what we would have done differently if we had any kind of skills on how to design and develop and bring a camera to the market. [00:13:57] Speaker B: Yeah, and, and look, you know, I think the biggest issue really is its price point. [00:14:04] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:14:05] Speaker B: You know, there's, there's no apart from experience, which is important and wonderful and I'm a huge advocate for it. I don't think it's worth that price for the experience given that you get substandard video and image quality at the end of the experience. It, you know, it's all very well for it to be that it, you know, it invokes that joy of film photography and it, you know, if you go with film camera mode, it locks you out of using the viewfinder and all of those wonderful things I think are impressive and important and yes, innovative. But there's no point if the end results are terrible and you live with a bit of taste over the price tag. [00:14:44] Speaker A: It seems like this might be the first time that the sort of image quality was really put back a step maybe for Fuji in their modern. [00:15:01] Speaker B: Really surprising. [00:15:03] Speaker A: Yeah, like not, not bad but like just, just took a back seat to the overall feel and everything of the camera. Image quality was definitely not, you know, at the forefront of what they were doing. Which you can't say the same thing about the other cameras. X100, anything like that. So what other comments? Some more. Some good comments about the, the OM3 which I spent the weekend playing around with still up in Brisbane, which is very fun. One of the most interesting things about the OM3 is that it has the top of the line autofocus system. So it'd be a very capable tool with long telephotos but less than ideal ergonomics. Yeah, I actually found the autofocus pretty good. I've got some more images to go through. I've only been looking on the back of the camera. I got to get them on the computer and see how much I was getting used to it and starting to trust it the way I would trust my Canon gear. Not quite as responsive autofocus wise but, but way I was trusting it a lot more than I would trust the Leica Q3 like way more. But I need to get it, get them on the computer and see. But I mean, yeah, very different, very different camera. Like it's. Yeah, it's got the autofocus system out of the OM one in it. So it's a. Yeah, it's a good, it feels good. [00:16:23] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:16:25] Speaker A: I'll be interested to see. I took a little bit of high ISO stuff. I didn't push too hard. Might talk about that later. Oh, this is Nick's comments in here and in there. [00:16:36] Speaker B: Oh, look at that. [00:16:37] Speaker A: I love that. Fuji are taking some risks and innovating. Worst case, it doesn't take off. Best case, we suck a whole lot of 20 something year olds into photography. Exactly. And that would be great. But we did talk about the fact that then when moving them from if they love this style of camera, there's nothing for them to go to. There's no other. The camera that they go to, we're going to be saying oh no, they don't have winders. They're actually grown up cameras. That. That was sort of more of a toy thing, you know. [00:17:07] Speaker B: And twice the price. [00:17:09] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right. So also David Leporati, we were chatting about infrared last week and he jumped in because he's been just feeding us with infrared camera information with regards to the infrared conversion lenses. Mirrorless cameras don't need a lens calibration as the lens focuses off the sensor. So that is something we're trying to figure out last week and it's good to get the confirmation. And also custom white balance is necessary. So there's a little bit I want to dig into it. I want to get an infrared camera but I haven't found anywhere that does it in Australia yet. [00:17:52] Speaker B: Still gotta be somewhere. [00:17:53] Speaker A: There's gotta be somewhere. What else? What else is in the comments? [00:18:00] Speaker B: Did you say you had a poll? [00:18:02] Speaker A: I did have a poll. I don't even know where to find that to be honest. I'll have to look into it. I think this. Here we go. Will this work? No. Your post. Does anyone know how that works? There we go. So I did a poll. What are your thoughts? Yeah, I can. What are your thoughts on the Fujifilm X half? And it was. You could choose between. I'm getting one cool idea but not for me. Hate it. And what's the X half? Yeah, so we got 7%. I'm getting one 57% cool idea, but not for me. 14% hate it. And 21%. What's the X half? So I think that's a good cross section of the 14 massive 14 vote sample that we got. I might see if Fujifilm want to purchase that data off me for market research in the future. Yeah. Would you like our research findings on your latest? It might help with help with some of your future product development. Okay, we'll fly through some of the rest. This is taking forever. There's so many comments. It's great. This was another comment on this from Jason that the price, build and capability make no sense for me to make more sense to put the money towards an OM3 or an S5 2 or an XT5. Yeah, I agree. If you, if you're into photography, it's probably not. It's probably not something that's worth putting your money to. Unless you really love that little film advance lever. [00:19:35] Speaker B: Yeah, I think, you know, having thought about it now, it's obviously, and I said this in my review to begin with, but the more that I think about it, over time it's becoming clearer and clearer that they're targeting a really young demographic with this camera. [00:19:52] Speaker A: Yes. [00:19:53] Speaker B: You know, and I know that the advertising says that and the writing's on the wall for that, but, you know, given my experience with the brand and all the other cameras that they've put out, it's. They're trying to forge new markets. [00:20:05] Speaker A: Yeah. You know, Tony notoriously does not own any cameras. This is. Get Off My Digital Lawn is his Instagram handle. But he's not a photographer. But he might have just nailed it. I've worked it out. He says that camera, the X half, is the equivalent of the PT Cruiser in the car world. I don't know if any of you remember the PT Cruiser. [00:20:27] Speaker B: Chrysler. [00:20:28] Speaker A: Yes, yes. It was very cool looking attempt at a retro car. Not the greatest car to drive or own or resell or service. [00:20:40] Speaker B: It's a bit of a dog, wasn't it? A bit of a lemon. [00:20:43] Speaker A: Hey, Tony drew this parallel. Not me. Fuji, we still love you. But maybe he's hit something there, I think. [00:20:52] Speaker B: Yep. [00:20:54] Speaker A: David Mascara says my first film camera was at Yashica TL Electro back in 1974 and I thought this company had gone defunct. I still own two Yashica rangefinders. [00:21:05] Speaker B: I think they do go defunct, but someone's brought the rights to the name. That's all it is. [00:21:12] Speaker A: Yeah. Got a. [00:21:14] Speaker B: Interesting though. My socials have been pretty heavy with the. The new camera. Oh, yeah, what is it? The Y35. Is that what it is? [00:21:21] Speaker A: No, no, the Y35. This is the one that, that Glenn was commenting when he said cock the shutter and hit enter because he wanted. Anyway, that was the one with the plastic cassettes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So cases. [00:21:32] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:21:33] Speaker A: He had said here that, that. That Yashika had the shutter that you had to. You had to cock it. [00:21:38] Speaker B: That's right. [00:21:39] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, but yeah, yeah. [00:21:41] Speaker B: Lots of marketing for it though, I. [00:21:42] Speaker A: Think anyone else in the chat getting hit with that in their socials, getting hit with ads and stuff for the up. Impending kickstarter of the Yashika whatever it is, FXD300 or something like that. [00:21:55] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:21:55] Speaker A: YXD300. [00:21:57] Speaker B: Yeah. I got a lot of hope for the Yashika, by the way, because they dropped a couple of. I shared them with you guys on our chat. Sorry, folks, you're not included in our chat. But in our. In our private little messenger group messaging you and Grant and Jim about it. The Yashika 300, I think that came out a little point and shoot, pocketable digital, but by all accounts they're terrible. Like they're shipping broken, faulty, not powering up. Really cheap product. [00:22:30] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. [00:22:31] Speaker B: Hastily built. [00:22:33] Speaker A: So, yeah, yeah, Bruce has seen it, Rick's seen it, Paul seen it. It's. It's everywhere. They must be spending a bit of money on that. [00:22:43] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:22:46] Speaker A: Got a comment on the short I made when after the canon R5 Mark II come out about how to take the hot shoe cover off and on because everyone has a lot of trouble with that and riveting stuff here, folks. But this comment, it's echoes what everyone. The experience everyone's had. That mofo took everything out of me to pull it off will not ever put it back on. Lol. And I think pretty much everyone that got the R5 Mark II had the same experience with that, didn't they? [00:23:15] Speaker B: Put that on to complete the weather sealing. Yes. [00:23:19] Speaker A: Yeah. It takes it to. Yeah. To the next level. [00:23:22] Speaker B: Yeah. Okay. [00:23:23] Speaker A: Yeah. See, even Look. Listen to OMG. I wish I saw that video. It took me 20 minutes. There is. There is a knack to it. There's a knack to it. So find that video in our. In our shorts. I'll put you through it. I did almost snap it when I first did it. All right, we're talking about Tom Putt losing a drone at his workshop on Lake Tyrrell. I think that was in. I can't remember another random show episode, but at. Felicity Johnson, 7274. Felicity, that was me at Tom Putts drone workshop at Tyrrell. My D750 with 2470 fell over the Richard Taddy workshop. Squash the lens camera. All good. Richard rescued me with a lens to use on the workshop. So you've had some trouble with equipment on workshops. [00:24:12] Speaker B: Yeah. Remind me never to loan you anything. [00:24:16] Speaker A: This was an interesting one. So this is a short about. I just put a question here about the Fujifilm x half like no 4k, which these days is even just like sort of base level 4k at 24 or 25 or something is pretty standard in. In all cameras. It's standard all phones. So I put our thoughts in that short, and we. You must have said, I believe you said it doesn't even have HD. But this comment here says from at Quinton, David, two privileged uncles forget about 720p, which I guess is also technically HD before it. [00:24:56] Speaker B: Well, they know because they called it full hd. [00:24:59] Speaker A: Yeah, Full hd, that's right, yeah. Yes. [00:25:02] Speaker B: And it wasn't. It's just an interesting choice of words from Fujifilm, you know, Know, and I think what's interesting is that whenever they, whenever a brand like Fujifilm launches a camera and they send it to reviewers like me, you know, other people have gotten gear to test. People that have been on our show, you know, Matt Crummans, Russell Ord, they've both been Fujifilm ambassadors. And often we get sent this gear. We don't get sent a spec sheet and we don't get sent an instruction book because they want it, they want to gatekeep all of those specs. You know, their, their ip, their, their plans. They keep it all until the very last minute because that's the sort of. [00:25:44] Speaker A: Stuff that when it gets leaked, if it's, if it's got, you know, if it's official, it's a pretty easy thing to leak out there. Whereas if, if you, if someone just leaks what they think the specs are, it's harder to substantiate. But if it's in a man, if it's in a manual, you know, like it's all out there, then. [00:26:01] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. I mean, they didn't even give me access to the X half app while I was reviewing it. And by the time I had access to it, it was time to send the camera back. So they're very protective, which is. It makes perfect sense because, you know, there's a lot of brands wanting to know what they're going to do. It's competitive market. But when they do send me the camera, they will send me a brief in an email with some basic specs and it didn't include the sensor size or the resolution. You know, there's a bunch of other stuff it doesn't, doesn't include. But it's interesting because closer to the launch that they'll often update those preliminary specs with the correct stuff. So, yeah, it's just an interesting process and don't know why I got onto that. But anyway, I don't know. Here we are. [00:26:54] Speaker A: Last couple of comments. Also about the X half at the GAZ9. I don't think it should be called an X camera. Instead, Fuji should have called it a instax Digi film camera. I also don't see the point of using a leaf shutter if you can't use it with a flash. No sync port, no nothing would have made the camera cheaper. I don't know. I assume the leaf shutter is more to do with size of the lens. Just the size of the lens? Yeah, like the whole mechanism. But it is interesting. I guess if the sensor was fast enough, it could be electronic shutter. There's no worry about flash sync or anything. Anyway, great vid and discussion. Thank you. The gas nine. [00:27:32] Speaker B: Thanks guys. [00:27:33] Speaker A: Finally the. Finally the at lim 2001 burger. The price makes it hard to justify. If it's for Gen Z, where are they getting the cash from? And even then, even then, like you said, a camera store salesperson would be remiss if they didn't steer people towards something that they can grow with a system that they're going to sort of grow into as a photographer. [00:27:56] Speaker B: Yeah. So camera stores don't work that way, unfortunately. [00:27:59] Speaker A: Depends on the store. [00:28:01] Speaker B: Sorry, not all of them. I shouldn't. I shouldn't group everyone into that same bucket. But having worked for a couple of camera stores. Yeah, you. So you sort of see some of, you know, they push particular products because it means that they'll get a greater. I don't know what the term is, but it's a financial reward basically for selling a specific product, more of and all that sort of things. But yeah, that's. That's been our week in review, which is amazing to see. So many comments. [00:28:32] Speaker A: Yeah, thanks. [00:28:33] Speaker B: Amazing to see people thinking about it, but also that we're opening up that avenue for people to have that conversation and share your thoughts. So if you are new to the channel that you're watching along tonight for the first time, make sure you like and subscribe. It helps us out a lot. But also you get notifications, especially if you tickle the bell button. And yeah, you'll. You'll get more of the good stuff. Actually, that reminds me, Justin, I was thinking today that we really do need the camera life T shirts we now need. We need. On the back, we need a bunch of different little quotes. So we need Mega pickles. [00:29:09] Speaker A: Okay, I'll write this down. [00:29:11] Speaker B: We need Cock the shutter. [00:29:16] Speaker A: Okay. [00:29:17] Speaker B: Definitely didn't cook the shutter. And there was another. What was the other one we're talking about? Oh, there was another one I thought of. [00:29:25] Speaker A: Oh, it's gone. [00:29:26] Speaker B: No, it'll come back. That's all right. [00:29:28] Speaker A: I think I'll need to get. We're gonna have to get Matt Palmer to maybe see if he can illustrate Mega Pickles and cock the shutter for us. He's. He does like a little illustration based on a pun. I think he could do those justice. Cock the shutter. [00:29:43] Speaker B: Oh, Tickle the bell. That's another one. Tickle the bell. [00:29:52] Speaker A: Done. [00:29:54] Speaker B: See, that's how easy it is, people. [00:29:55] Speaker A: As good as ordered. [00:29:58] Speaker B: Sorted. [00:30:00] Speaker A: All right, let's move along to the news. Oh, hang on. Oh, I'm not ready. Damn. Ah. To the news. I need to hire, I need to hire a production team maybe. [00:30:23] Speaker B: Oh, dear. Although to be fair, you are very tired. Busy boy. Let's talk about the news. [00:30:33] Speaker A: Yeah. What do you got for us? [00:30:35] Speaker B: A couple of lenses. All right, bring up the Sigma story. [00:30:41] Speaker A: Done. [00:30:46] Speaker B: This is pretty cool. So Sigma are bringing out two. Well rumored. I don't know if it was confirmed yet. This is when I checked it yesterday. It wasn't. The Sigma are bringing out. Sorry, I've just got lost APSC lenses. One is a 70 to 40 f 1.8 and the other one's a 12 mil with an aperture ring f 1.4, which is an interesting, interesting choice for a 12 mil is such a wide. [00:31:23] Speaker A: Wow. Interesting. [00:31:28] Speaker B: Yes, it's coming to Fuji X, but it's also going to all the other lens. [00:31:36] Speaker A: Yeah, okay. You know where else it's going to? [00:31:40] Speaker B: Where's it going? [00:31:41] Speaker A: Canon. [00:31:42] Speaker B: Canon. Yeah, it is going to Canon. [00:31:44] Speaker A: Canon. So Canon notoriously don't have third party lenses in their full frame, but they have been slowly or allowing companies to get on board and release them for the APS C RF cameras and these makes no sense. Well, I think it does. I think they're focusing their R and D and their production on full frame because it's more profitable and they're allowing third party to help build out their APSC because maybe they're worried that they're losing that race a little bit. And I also think that it might be a little bit of a slow, you know, building slowly into allowing third party into full frame. That, that's, that's my thing. [00:32:30] Speaker B: Yeah, I get that. No, I get that bit. What makes no sense to me is it's taking them this long. I mean, maybe their, their research shows that it is more profitable and they, they gain greater retention and customer loyalty through keeping it premium, keeping it pure, first party, only for full frame. But I don't think you can ignore the, the fact that selling third party lenses at a slightly cheaper price also promotes the sale of your cameras. People would be more likely to pick up an R5 Mark II from with a different budget to say what you had when you bought yours because you're a pro photographer but say enthusiastic. Yeah, I can actually go to that flagship provided I can afford to buy slightly cheaper lenses. [00:33:22] Speaker A: Possibly. But Canon are slowly releasing their slightly cheaper lenses and I think, I think they're just probably looking at as an overall financial result if you, maybe you lose a few people to Sony that we're going to buy, you know, an R5 and they end up not or whatever but those were people that didn't want to buy Canon lenses and maybe they're looking at. And they go well if we lose a few of those but we keep, you know, 100% of the market share of their full frame lenses at least for the early years of the RF system. Yeah, maybe it's more profitable. I don't know. Obviously, obviously all of us users would rather more options if possible but I have to give it to Canon. They've been, they've been putting lenses out and they've been putting out lenses people want. [00:34:08] Speaker B: So yeah, I think that's fair. They have been quite consistent especially in the last 12 months even they've, they've. And there's been so many patent drops. I think only yesterday they dropped a new patent for a new. I think it was Canon autofocus technology that's going to be faster and more compact than existing ones. It's a patent. It's still a work in development as far as we know. But what do you guys think that are listening and watching along at home? Is Canon shooting themselves in the foot, so to speak, by not offering 3rd party full frame RF mount lenses? Or is it a savvy smart business decision to, to contain it within the Canon brand? Let us know your thoughts and if. [00:34:55] Speaker A: You don't have any thoughts on that because you don't care about Canon, tell me your thoughts on this. Why does the Internet look like this now? Sorry for those of you that are listening and not watching, I'm looking at the Fuji Rumor site and at least half of the screen is taken up by various ads that are completely irrelevant and flashing around and bouncing and stuff and they're just, it's just annoying. It's, it's not a good way to, to consume content. But this is how so many sites now look and I think it's slowly killing these websites and people are going to end up using ChatGPT to, to search this stuff and summarize it because guess what? There's no ads on ChatGPT. It's just clear text that you can actually read. And I think there's too much stuff here. [00:35:44] Speaker B: Yeah, it's getting. [00:35:47] Speaker A: Insane. [00:35:48] Speaker B: It is getting insane. And I mean, you know, I thought moving to Internet for business especially was. Was meant to be cheaper and more affordable and more convenient for businesses, but a. They're having to subscribe to so many ads or to these ad packages but also they're going to be losing customers to it because you know, I, I know with, with ShotKit who I write for in more recent times, they've elevated the number of ads just to remain competitive, I guess they've elevated the number of ads on, on the site and I, I've stopped sharing some of those reviews with, with people who say my Fujifilm group because so many people have complained about the volume of ads which I have no control over. [00:36:32] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:36:33] Speaker B: But I think my partner Sash counted something like 36 ads in one of my reviews. Like 36 independent ads. [00:36:39] Speaker A: I did that one day and I was scrolling through and I was just like this is, this is crazy. It's just, it's not a good experience for reading and stuff. [00:36:47] Speaker B: So because you. And the way that they place ads often you track of where the article actually ends. Like is this another part of the article? Because sometimes they tend to blend in. You know they keep it white on white and similar font size and it just, yeah it's, it does ruin the experience I think. [00:37:03] Speaker A: Anyway, anyway, this probably segue. Good time for us to talk about our sponsor Lucky. No, I'm kidding. Insert ads every 10 seconds into the podcast. G' day, G' day. The O Show. Good to see you. The Osho says the ads are madness and I agree. Now Rick Nelson agrees. Third party opens the doors to other customers and goes on to say I've seen customers leave when going from EF Mount to other brands just because of the mount support with third party. I could see that happening because when you, when you're switching from Canon and I thought about it, I, I heavily contemplated other brands. I went. So I went from Nikon to DSLR to Canon Mirrorless, but I could have gone anywhere because once you're switching over those lenses, unless you really want to run fully adapted or hybrid lens adaptions like you might as well just buy, you're buying all new lenses and bodies. You could go Sony, you could go Niko, you could do anything. So Canon probably are losing some people but I think it might be, I think it still might be overall more profitable for them. Paul Henderson says, I think they are but worse they are releasing things like the 75 to 300 from last century and reskinning it. Yeah, that. I don't know what the deal is with that lens. That's. That's an odd one. They. Everything else has been great. New designs and that was just a bit weird. [00:38:32] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:38:34] Speaker A: What else? [00:38:37] Speaker B: In terms of news. [00:38:39] Speaker A: Yeah, in terms of news, there's another. [00:38:42] Speaker B: Fujifilm summit coming up next week on the 12th. So it's 5:00am New York time. It's actually being held in Shanghai. Sorry, I don't have the time for it here. What time? That will be in Shanghai or in Australia. But it is coming up on the 12th. So what does that. 5am in New York. What would that be like the day after here? The 13th here. Is that how it works? Are we. It's what, the 11th? [00:39:09] Speaker A: No. [00:39:09] Speaker B: The 11th. [00:39:09] Speaker A: No, we're ahead. We're ahead. We'll be the 13th. [00:39:13] Speaker B: Right. Anyway, so the rumors are saying that they will. That they will be the other. Maybe that's the whole thing. [00:39:23] Speaker A: They're going to release the other half of the X half. [00:39:27] Speaker B: Here's the bit we forgot. [00:39:30] Speaker A: That's funny. Yeah, we are. We are a day ahead. Yeah. So. But we're not a full day ahead. We're like 18 hours ahead or something like that. [00:39:37] Speaker B: Right. [00:39:37] Speaker A: I can't remember. [00:39:38] Speaker B: But it doesn't matter. But the Fujifilm XE5 is the rumored camera, which is my. It's on my bingo card smack in the center. The X E4 released, I think it was. It was just after or just before COVID I can't really remember. XE4 26 megapixel. But interestingly, when they released the XC4, they released it with a brand new weather resistant version of the very popular 27F 2.8 pancake lens, which is a brilliant combination. There's a rumor that the new XC5, these are mockup photos by the way. These aren't real. [00:40:18] Speaker A: This is on Fuji Rumors. So this is just. [00:40:20] Speaker B: Yeah, big bag of salt, Big grain of salt there. The. The summit is definitely happening. As to what they release, we don't know. Originally rumor sites were saying definitely going to be two cameras. Definitely going to be two new X X cameras. It's going to be an XC5 and maybe the XT6. Now the rumor sites have backed off that and saying no, it's only going to be one camera, definitely XC5 and a new lens which is a 23 mil pancake lens which they already have it. They already have a couple of 23 mils there's an original 23 mil. There's a remade 23 mil f 1.4. Then there's the compact 23 mil f 2. This would be the fourth 23 mil X series lens. [00:41:02] Speaker A: Do you rec. Does that compact one, is that just going to get a refresh maybe? Is that, is it due for. Well, refresh. [00:41:10] Speaker B: They're saying that this new one that's coming up at the summit is going to be a pancake. So if it is going to be or something, it'll have a. Yeah, It'll be a 2.8. It'll have a very different lens assembly. [00:41:22] Speaker A: Is this camera interesting to see? Is this camera. Is this a bit of you? Is this what you're. [00:41:27] Speaker B: Yeah. So I shoot with an XE4. My favorite kind of just, you know, walk out the door with my. If I'm taking my X E4, it's with the 27 mil f 2.8 pancake lens. It's small, it's compact, it weighs next to nothing and you know, it suits me to a T. So I'm hoping that the XC5 does come out and I'm hoping that it has a few bumps. [00:41:54] Speaker A: I want to know what, so you're, you're currently an XE4 shooter and you love it. What do you need to see from the XC5 to make you go, I need that, I need that in my life right now. [00:42:07] Speaker B: I don't need Ibis. Let's just make that clear. [00:42:12] Speaker A: Okay? [00:42:13] Speaker B: I haven't picked up on that in the past. I don't need IBIs. I, I don't necessarily shoot things that require via IBIs. Not to say that I don't do low light photography. [00:42:24] Speaker A: You wouldn't be upset if it had Ibis, but you just don't. [00:42:27] Speaker B: No, no. Well, it depends on how that impacts the cost, doesn't it? Because as soon as you pack in a X processor 5, a 40 mega megapixel X trans 5 sensor and a, an Ibis, all of a sudden the cost is close to three grand. [00:42:46] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:42:47] Speaker B: So I want to pair that back. I would like what the. Maybe a little bit of a bump over what the XM5 has in terms of performance. I need a crop button and I need a crop button. [00:43:00] Speaker A: A crop frame, half frame, vertical. [00:43:02] Speaker B: I wonder if they'll add a half frame. But vertical half frame option in, you know when you can choose your aspect ratios in camera for jpeg. [00:43:12] Speaker A: That would be the only thing that would help bring people forward to the upgrade. You know, as, you know. So they bought the X half and then they're like okay, what's my upgrade from here? I want interchangeable lenses. I want to take photography more seriously. But I really like my vertical. They would need that crop button. [00:43:28] Speaker B: Yeah. And an X E5 depending on how it's priced would be a great next stepping stone from say an X half. Especially if you're looking to get into Fujifilm's lens and third party lens ecosystem because there's a shitload of third party manufacturers developing lenses for Fujifilm X mount. I mean the first Zeiss were the first ones to make a third party lens for Fujifilm X. Yeah, they made two to it lenses, they'll manual focus I'm pretty sure but they were cracking sharp lenses. They were expensive but they were, they were there, you know, almost from the start when the X Pro one came out. Not long after that. Yeah. So we'll wait and see what this summit has to offer. It's yet another Fuji offering. They've been pretty consistent with these presentations and revealing new products. And yes, as we talked about earlier, they are looking for ways to innovate. You know, I don't know, they're always hitting the mark and obviously the X half is proof of that where it's causing a bit of uncertainty about what they're actually trying to achieve. I don't think the messaging was quite clear enough for the X half or maybe we're just of a generation that we missed it. I don't know, maybe we're boomers and we were all in bed when the X half advertising came out. [00:44:47] Speaker A: You know, just not, it's just not targeted at us. But there is the, the biggest downside of that is that sentiment and they can develop more than one product at a time. But there is a bit of sentiment online that's like hey, there's lenses and cameras that we're waiting on, so make those instead, please. I've seen quite a few comments of that that are a lot more aggressive than the way I just put it. Yeah, yeah, there's definitely that but you know that's, that's part of it. [00:45:17] Speaker B: You got. Rick says keyboard rage. [00:45:20] Speaker A: Oh, definitely. It's what we're here for. That's why we've got a live chat. Hopefully they come here and rage out. Rick says, I want the X T5 to have the tracking of the X T5 but keep the rest simple. Don't add bells and whistles. So you don't want to a manual film advance lever on there. Rick. [00:45:38] Speaker B: A little plastic film canisters that you pop in to get your simulation just on that, Rick. I. Yeah, I agree. Or even keeping it Even simpler, the XM5, which, when it first came out had Fuji's fastest autofocus system for an X or GFX camera because it had the latest sensor and algorithms and it was all tweaked up really nice. And since then they've done firmware updates for the other cameras. But it's very simple. It's, you know, it's a 26 megapixel sensor, which for me is fine. Of course, I would love 40, but again, that would likely boost the price. I would imagine Fuji will stick with their X processor 5, the same one they put in the X half, apparently. I reckon if you. If you kind of take the COVID off, there's just a cockroach pulling levers, but I don't think there's any real processor in there. [00:46:30] Speaker A: Just a little like a scene out of Men in Black. [00:46:33] Speaker B: Just like that. [00:46:35] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:46:35] Speaker B: Just a little machine pulling levers and. [00:46:37] Speaker A: Pushing buttons, making TikTok reels. Yeah. [00:46:43] Speaker B: But, yeah, I think. I think that would be great if it was just kept simple. I don't need IBIs. We don't need the best image sensor. It's not the camera for that. You know, if you want that, then go to an XT5 or wait for the X Pro 4 or 5. Whatever comes out. So. [00:47:03] Speaker A: Tim Siama says makes sense. They're adding a pancake lens alongside the XC5 to keep it nice and compact. And an interesting alternative to the X100VI, the combination that has the same focal length. Yeah, it would. It would be a very. And it would just wouldn't have. No. So it's got no viewfinder at all or just. No, it does. [00:47:27] Speaker B: Oh, it doesn't. [00:47:27] Speaker A: Proper viewfinder. Okay. [00:47:29] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:47:29] Speaker A: Okay. Just. Just no optical. So you lose the optical, but you basically gain the ability to throw on other lenses. And you're saying it probably won't have IBIs or 40. It's not gonna have the same sensor as the. [00:47:40] Speaker B: I hope not. [00:47:41] Speaker A: You hope not? [00:47:43] Speaker B: Because as soon as you do. Because the price. Yeah, I mean, look, they. They put a. They put like a. Like we said, a cockroach wearing a cape inside the X half, and that still costs 1350 Australian dollars. [00:47:54] Speaker A: That's a good point. So this camera is going to be pricey. [00:47:57] Speaker B: It's going to be 2 to 3. I don't think there's any avoiding that now. I think that's just the reality of the world. We're living in consumer electrics. This nature anyway seem to just keep going up and you know, obviously they do, but there just seems to be something around, especially since COVID around photographic year, the price increments seem to be in bigger leaps than they ever were, you know. But yeah, I think look, an XC5 with a 23 mil pancake. I mean that'd be you, you know. Yep. [00:48:34] Speaker A: Bruce Moyle 8 bit animated gif option. Yeah, Well, I don't know if they've got the processing power to do 8 bit in the X half, but Nick Fletcher says hadn't really twigged to the XE until I saw Greggs. Love the form factor. And a cheap small, good camera without the bells or whistles is awesome. [00:48:53] Speaker B: And you got access to the entire Fuji lens ecosystem. You know, it's not like it's a fixed lens camera, it's not like it's a different mount. It's when the first four iterations of the XE have been affordable, kind of entry level, pushing into small enthusiast level system. So. [00:49:15] Speaker A: But you can build us, you can build a system around it. You know, you can, you can then end up having this as your smaller camera. You could have an XT or even an XH camera as your bigger, you know, camera. If you require one of those in the future and you know. Yeah, you're building into a system. [00:49:33] Speaker B: Yeah. And yeah, if you've already got a big flagship Fuji body and you want a second camera but don't want a fixed lens, you like the option to change lenses and the XE is perfect. [00:49:42] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:49:43] Speaker B: You know, what they do with the rear screen will make or break my purchasing decision. If it's a flip up and flip down, so up 9, up 90 degrees, down 45 degree, just tilting screen, then that's what I need. If it's one of those flip out like the XM5s and all the Nikon screens where it flipped out and rotates so you can do vlogging and all that sort of stuff. That'll piss me off. [00:50:11] Speaker A: I hate those ones too, even though I've got them now. But I really miss just the standard tilt out screen that the Nikons had. They the downside of those is I couldn't turn them around to see myself if I was doing some video work for Lucky or something. But Sony figured it out now and they can flippy flappy in every direction and I think Lumix have it too. [00:50:34] Speaker B: Yep. Yeah, yeah. [00:50:37] Speaker A: But yeah, for that, for an xe, just even just the tilt up and down or up. Up all the way up to be able to vlog or whatever. Yeah, down all the way up. Perfect. [00:50:48] Speaker B: Yep, yep. [00:50:50] Speaker A: Any other news? Any other news? [00:50:52] Speaker B: A couple of little bits and pieces. We talked last week about the rumored Sony FX2 or that did come into. [00:50:58] Speaker A: Oh yeah, it come out, I think. [00:51:00] Speaker B: Yeah, it's come out. You know, it's a bit of a unique offering, but it does have a. [00:51:07] Speaker A: Flippy EVF tilty EVF that a lot of people like. Oh, I'd like that on, I'd like that on my regular cameras, any camera. And so it's. So it's like a video centric camera. I'm still trying to get my head around it. It's a video centric camera but with a slightly more hybrid oriented sensor to the fx3. But so it's. So it's yeah. Less capable than the FX3. Little bit more capable for video, A little bit more capable for photography than the FX3 because 33 megapixel sensor, mechanical shutter, I'm pretty sure. But yeah, I don't know. Basically from what I could tell, the general feel of the, of the video world was like, hey, it's better, it's not as bad as we thought it was going to be, but it's still not a super compelling. [00:52:08] Speaker B: Yeah, I think a lot of people question whether they should just jump to an A7. I can't remember which one. Sorry. I always get confused with the Sonys because there's so many A's. [00:52:19] Speaker A: Well, the A74, the A7 IV is the same sensor and does, does great video. This thing I'm assuming has far better like run times before overheating and all that sort of stuff I haven't looked at. I'm not, I'm not really an FX line potential owner so I don't look into them too deep. I just know that the FX30 and the FX3 have been very, very popular and do a great job. So yeah, Rick's trying to get his head around the price for the FX2. How much are they? Are they more, they're cheaper than the FX3 I assume, or no? [00:52:54] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm pretty sure they were. [00:52:57] Speaker A: Bruce says I think they're just testing out ideas with ideas out with it before they make a decision putting things into new bigger FX cameras. Okay, interesting. 6K. [00:53:11] Speaker B: Yep. That's a lot. [00:53:12] Speaker A: Okay, that's a lot. Especially when, and this is, this is where I, when it comes to pro video versus like what, whatever it is that I do, I don't Know what, what you would call it just a photographer running. [00:53:23] Speaker B: Yeah, no you wouldn't. You wouldn't call it pro video what you do. [00:53:27] Speaker A: No, no, you wouldn't. But when you look at the capabilities of it compared to the R5 Mark II for 6k. And I know there's going to be some stuff like the scopes and the things that I don't and that tilty. But the, the R5 mark II seems to run rings around it in terms of just video capabilities, in terms of shooting uncropped 4k120 and yeah. Raw video. I mean, but I'm sure there's stuff that's in that FX line that I don't understand that people need that cost money to put in there. I don't know. [00:54:04] Speaker B: Look, I think, I think there is in the high level bodies, I think, you know, and maybe this is once again more of a marketing thing around. Let's offer a bridging solution to get people from a 7s or an Alpha body into an FX body. And this is a perfect entry level for those new to cinematography or videography or hybrid shooting because it does shoot perfectly good stills. But maybe this is more about an entry level FX cine camera than anything else. [00:54:34] Speaker A: Well, there are a ton of YouTubers use the A7IV as their talking head camera. It shoots great, just standard 4k at 24 or whatever. So I think there's. Maybe they're looking at that and going, hey, a lot of people are buying the A7IV. Let's give them this. That's more cine because they're mainly shooting YouTube with it. They're not shooting. They're buying this essentially stills camera and shooting like full time YouTube channels with it. I don't know. [00:55:06] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:55:10] Speaker A: Rick Nelson says it's really down to the workflow I feel with the FX line. Yeah. [00:55:14] Speaker B: Yep. [00:55:15] Speaker A: Yeah. More mount points and all that sort of stuff. [00:55:17] Speaker B: Yeah. And also just post production stuff. And I think also the, the you could even shoot your stills in like a log and then gradually, same as your video. [00:55:31] Speaker A: Yeah, I saw that. I don't know about. Yeah, I guess that could be useful if you're trying to shoot. Yeah, I could see how that would be useful if you've got grading that you need to keep consistent across all of your materials. Especially if you're a video first production. But you need to provide some stills and you don't want to have to think about it. You're just like, I just want it to look the same as a video without. Without having to muck around in lightroom for ages. And yeah, Bruce is. Bruce is sort of clarifying here. FX3 is basically the A7SIII which is what I thought like the sensor is the same but it's just a more video centric body. And his workhorse is the FX6 which is super expensive. And the A7SIII, they match and work together well. Yeah. So you're not looking at the A7SII and think you need to change it over to the FX3. Bruce, you don't. You're happy shooting FX6 and a 7S3 together. [00:56:29] Speaker B: Yep. Couple of last bits of news before we move on to the next topic which I'm keen to understand what it is. A couple of. Couple of things quickly. Canon EOS and Cinema EOS cameras. New certifications have appeared for those again we mentioned earlier a lot of the rumor sites will pick up on double scour patent sites and those sorts of things. And especially has to often it happens early because brands have to register their cameras if they have Wi Fi or Bluetooth early because it goes through a different kind of government regulation process of some sort to meet standards. So often that's the first hint that something's being released. In other canon news, R1 was awarded the camera of the Year at Japan's Camera Grand Prix for 2025. Yeah one I think that means you need to get one now, doesn't it? [00:57:23] Speaker A: I really did want to get one but I honestly the difference just other than that big, big beautiful viewfinder because it really did have a big beautiful viewfinder. The difference image quality wise between it and the R3 was almost nothing from what I could tell and the autofocus was insanely good. But I for what I do, I have good enough keep right with the R3 that I just couldn't see that the just justification of probably selling the R3 for five grand, probably not even more. Not even that now for something and then spending 10 on a one doesn't make sense. It was. It was really nice to shoot with. Yeah, really pretty excited. Lucinda says and the winner is Canon. [00:58:08] Speaker B: It is Canon. [00:58:09] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right. I think what was. What was the title? Best camera in history or something? No, it was camera better than a half frame. Better than half Grand Prix. Yep. It says here, I'm just reading it. All of the camera manufacturers put in their silent bids for who would win and Canon paid the most. No, that's not how it works. I'm not sure how how they choose the winner but the R1 is the winner. And I'm happy about it. [00:58:35] Speaker B: Take the win. Take the win. [00:58:37] Speaker A: I'll take the win. [00:58:40] Speaker B: I don't like this little. This little union that you and Lucinda have formed. [00:58:45] Speaker A: I love it. I'm getting more. We're getting more. More Canon shooters. [00:58:50] Speaker B: Yeah. Next week, Greg will be replaced by a new host. [00:58:53] Speaker A: I hope so. [00:58:53] Speaker B: No, send a good one. [00:58:55] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. [00:58:58] Speaker B: And the last bit of news was that there's been a long rumored Hasselblad X2D Mark 2 medium format camera. Some images have leaked online of it. So that's about all that the rumor sites could offer at this point, other than a lot of speculation. [00:59:16] Speaker A: Let me. Let me bring up some. A little bit of speculation for fun of the. How do we get one of these to review? Reckon they'd send 100 megapixel however much these things cost to us geese that don't know what we're doing. [00:59:32] Speaker B: Speak for yourself. [00:59:35] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay, so these. These are the leaked images. [00:59:39] Speaker B: Yeah. But it looks like someone dropped it in something. [00:59:42] Speaker A: It does. [00:59:44] Speaker B: Unless that's just. They've tried to upscale it maybe. Or. [00:59:49] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't know. [00:59:50] Speaker B: Or it could be made of clay for all we know. [00:59:52] Speaker A: So here's a quick recap on what to expect. Potentially is built in one terabyte SSD that holds four images. CFExpress card, type B memory slot, LiDAR focusing. I need that. 100 megapixels. [01:00:11] Speaker B: Seriously, do we really need lidar focusing? [01:00:14] Speaker A: I assume. Well, isn't. Isn't everything getting. Doesn't like everything have lidar now? Don't iPads have lidar scanners and stuff in them? And that little new DJI iPhone gimbal, doesn't that use lidar to do something? [01:00:28] Speaker B: Maybe. [01:00:28] Speaker A: I don't know. But yeah. 16 bit color depth, 15 stops of dynamic range. Ibis. Yes. And face detection. [01:00:38] Speaker B: Oh, it's got face detection. [01:00:41] Speaker A: They're catching up. [01:00:42] Speaker B: Yep. Yep. [01:00:44] Speaker A: Says you. They've got ibis, so yeah, I'm sure it'll be insanely expensive. Hasselblads are a dream camera. Rick Nelson says. I've. I've. Other than film ones, I've never had my hands on a digital one. It would be very fun to shoot with. [01:00:57] Speaker B: It would be fun. We should try and get one. [01:01:01] Speaker A: And Greg Carrick has entered the chat. Cannons are designed like a bar of soap. What? What? Like you can't hang on to them. They're like the most ergonomic camera there is. Yeah, they are. [01:01:17] Speaker B: Are they? [01:01:18] Speaker A: Yep. [01:01:19] Speaker B: For who? [01:01:21] Speaker A: For working. Working professional photographers. Yeah. Nick Fletcher says Inbuilt ssd. Every top end camera should have that. I, I kind of agree. I mean other than whether there's going to be issues with corrupt like if it. What happens if it corrupts or what, you know, while you're working. As long as it probably needs its. It probably still needs a card slot but I bought big 512 gig cards for both of my canons CF Express Type B and they basically just live in there. I still pull them out because the car like the transfer is faster through the card reader than through the camera which I don't understand why, but it is. But if they could get card reader level speeds straight out of an SSD straight out of the camera, that would be just one less thing you have to worry about. Nick calls bullshit on lidar focusing. So you don't reckon they're going to put it in there? What do you reckon? Lidar is just voodoo magic. Doesn't do anything. Nev says my new drone has lidar and I don't know why you'd want to shoot people with a drone. They were talking about compression with a drone, lol. Well, because it's got that long lens on it, don't they? So they can do the, you know like the moving around pan of the ridge, the ridgeline shot, the parallax effect, you know, the background's moving fast and the you're walking slowly, slow motion for your YouTube channel. Even Bruce says lidar is a strange thing to add. Well, we'll have to see if it actually comes out. [01:03:01] Speaker B: Great. [01:03:03] Speaker A: The new Hasselblad XD2 as well as slider has inbuilt lane detection to help keep you in the rule of thirds. If you move it too much, it rumbles. You know, like the steering wheel in your car. [01:03:14] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Ah, gosh. [01:03:20] Speaker A: All right. I'm so glad you guys join us on this show. [01:03:23] Speaker B: Yeah, me too. [01:03:25] Speaker A: Well, it'll focus better than a Tesla. Is that the news? [01:03:33] Speaker B: That's it. There's not much else happening. Bunch of rumors. [01:03:38] Speaker A: All right, well I guess we move on to the next topic. Let's not go scream. This topic's called Judge Dredd and it's kind of actually news. It's a good segue from the news. No one guessed what. No one guessed what it was going to be. I'll bring the article up from PetaPixel Exire company called Xi. I think that's how to pronounce it. It's 10th anniversary photo contest will be judged entirely by AI, by their AI system. Why German artificial intelligence company PRC, known for its AI powered Xia photo management software, has announced a new photo contest featuring AI judging their People in Focus competition, which runs from June 1 to June 30, invites photographers to submit their best people centric photos, whether portraits, candid street scenes or everyday moments. The contest is free to enter and open to both amateur and professional photographers. So both you and I can enter, Greg, A prize pool of $7,000 is up for grabs. [01:04:59] Speaker B: No, I see what this is. [01:05:01] Speaker A: However, hold your thoughts until we get through the article. However, what sets this contest apart from other photography competitions is that it will not be judged by a jury of professional photographers with their own intrinsic biases and subjective opinions or industry experts. Instead, it will be judged entirely by Xi's in house AI model, which the company has developed exclusively to analyze and score photos based on their aesthetic qualities. This means that not only are photos judged instantaneously as they are entered, but the contest will also feature a live leaderboard. As photographers submit their work, they can see how they compare to the competition. Blah, blah blah. Entries close. First place winner gets 4,000, second place 2,000, third place 1,000. It's a ruse. Further, all participants will receive a 20% discount code to use on Xi products valid through June 30th. So it's actually the company's 20th anniversary, 10th anniversary of the XI software. Petapixel has covered the software many times over the years. It's a photo culling software, basically. And here's a little bit of a plug about the software. Blah, blah blah. [01:06:21] Speaker B: See that top paragraph? [01:06:22] Speaker A: Which one? [01:06:23] Speaker B: Photographers spend hundreds of hours each year on T. That is the start to the introduction for every AI photography calling. Yeah, Thing, Software, thing. They all start with that. They try to make you feel like, oh, you're wasting your time. [01:06:40] Speaker A: Yeah. Anyway, back to the judging. Xia says its AI judge has been trained by expert photographers using hundreds of thousands of of photos. The company says that this AI judge contest, while designed to give photographers a fun way to win money and may open up a dialogue surrounding the use of AI in photography. It also has the benefit of extreme fairness. Human judges can be inconsistent and biased. The People's Republic of China says Excise. Aiprc. Excise. It's a strange coincidence. That's not that. Excise AI judge, however, analyzes submissions with unerring consistency. Unerring. Of course, artificial intelligence can't replace human taste, Professor Barth says, but it can objectively analyze what makes a photo great. Excise AI offers impartial evaluations without Subjective bias and has already served as a juror in several prestigious photographs photography contests. [01:07:48] Speaker B: I doubt that very much because I would no longer be very prestigious if that was the case. [01:07:55] Speaker A: All right. And thoughts? [01:08:00] Speaker B: Well, it's a ruse, it's a trick, it's a trap, it's self centered. So basically this company is encouraging people on the premise and the promise of a prize. Send us your images. It costs nothing to enter. Every photo competition costs money to enter. We're ours is free. Send us all your images. And then they're going to use those images to further train their AI culling tools. I think they're not calling it for what it is, they're not being very trans. I mean I know we're looking at a news article about it, we're not reading the terms and conditions, but who does? And I, yeah, I think it's a load of shit. I think it's, I think it's underhanded and I think it's sneaky. And putting aside the fact that they're trying to get AI to judge photography and I don't think that that's going to be terribly successful. [01:08:55] Speaker A: I think the other thing is with it, it's, it's obviously a, a lead magnet too. It's a lead magnet to get people into their ecosystem to be able to offer them the software. And I actually don't have much of a problem with that. You wouldn't know. I mean if they could do this in a way that's less, that's more transparent, that's like, hey, we made this thing, you might be able to win it. And, and it sort of basically then you submit it, they're going to have your email address, they're going to send you marketing emails and try and get you on their software or whatever. That's, that's their strategy as well as possibly training, using obviously, you know, further. Oh my God. It's showing me the current top 10. [01:09:42] Speaker B: Top 10 of what? [01:09:43] Speaker A: Of the photo, of the competition so far. [01:09:46] Speaker B: Please. [01:09:47] Speaker A: Opened. Should we. First let's go to comments and then you tell us in the chat, should we pull up the current top 10 photos? Top 10 photos. All right, let's go. First comment. Nick Fletcher. Ah, yep. Paul says they're training the AI. Yep, yep. Bruce says it's going to be used to train the AI model for their software. Be very careful. [01:10:10] Speaker B: Agreed. [01:10:12] Speaker A: Rick. So we use hidden data in the photo to directly get the AI to pick you. Only like the old days, people add words and on their digital resume to get through the Filter. Oh, you reckon there's a way to trick it, to trick the AI into picking you? Bruce says, good luck with my work. Yeah, it's probably not going to pick you. Yeah. Nick says no chance to pick something like Bruce produces. The culling software will prioritize sharp images in classic compositions, like the Rule of Thirds. No. [01:10:53] Speaker B: Now, you already read that one. [01:10:53] Speaker A: I already read that one. Where am I going? Dave Digifrog. Good to see you. It's all going up in a tiff. I don't get it. Is that a pun? [01:11:04] Speaker B: I think it's a pun. [01:11:07] Speaker A: Tell us what you really think. Rick Nelson says art should be picked by judges that can feel something by your work, not an AI. [01:11:13] Speaker B: Absolutely. That's my other point, is that, you know, photography judges don't just look at. I mean, you know, some of the guys on here tonight in the chat have been judges, but they don't just look at how. Whether the Rule of Thirds has been applied, whether the compositional elements are included. They look for how the emotion it generates, what it. What it invokes, what story it tells. AI is not going to be able to pick up on that. And that's why I think this is just all a load of bullshit. [01:11:43] Speaker A: All right. Oh, we've actually got the whole Current top 20. Oh, my God. Now it has. Only we might have to revisit this because it's still got. It's only been open for a day, so, you know, anyway, great. Carex says, to be real, a lot of human judges are woeful. Anyway, Rick Nelson says, show it. We're going to show it. Wookie sounds like a terrible idea. Although I'd love software to help color shoot. Well, yeah, that's the thing is, like, maybe this software is actually good. It's just this comp is maybe a terrible idea. Unless they marketed it more of like a, hey, test yourself against the AIC where you rank. Don't worry, we won't use it to train our software. It's just for fun. Maybe that. Maybe people would have had fun just seeing what random score they get. [01:12:38] Speaker B: But it feels underhanded, doesn't it? It feels icky. [01:12:41] Speaker A: Something feels a bit off about it. Bruce Moyle. Agreed, Greg, but that is why comps should be. Should have multiple judges for everyone's images. Try to move away from bias. Yeah. [01:12:53] Speaker B: Yep, Definitely. [01:12:54] Speaker A: G Frog. It's all going to end up in a big tiff. My bad. Yeah, that was a terrible pun. It wasn't the best pun, but we see where you were going with it. Okay, let's. Let's pull up. I'm going to start at number 20 because it actually has the top 20. And we're going to. [01:13:10] Speaker B: All right, let's do it. [01:13:11] Speaker A: We're going to work our way up to number one. We're going to move fairly quickly, but if you're listening on audio, we'll try and give you some sort of thoughts. But I don't know how we're going to do that. Maybe Greg will describe each image. Can you do that, Greg? [01:13:24] Speaker B: Why don't we get AI to do it? We don't have time for that. Not to that. All right, here's number 20. [01:13:33] Speaker A: Number 20 thoughts. What is it? What are we looking at? [01:13:42] Speaker B: I was starting to wonder if the. [01:13:43] Speaker A: Image was AI it kind of looks it, doesn't it? Yeah. I don't know. [01:13:50] Speaker B: Okay, look at 19. Maybe it gets better. [01:13:54] Speaker A: What would you call that? Like a travel portrait of a lady waving? [01:13:57] Speaker B: Yeah, it's just a travel portrait. [01:13:59] Speaker A: Travel portrait, yeah. Okay. [01:14:02] Speaker B: I feel like AI photos. [01:14:04] Speaker A: A studio. Studio portrait of a dirty. Like a girl covered in dirt with a blue. [01:14:12] Speaker B: Maybe it was her job in the office to change the toner cartridge on the printer. [01:14:17] Speaker A: Maybe something went wrong. [01:14:18] Speaker B: That's the. [01:14:19] Speaker A: Does actually look like that. That's what I look like when I have a fight with the printer. [01:14:23] Speaker B: There's a girl in lingerie who was asked to change the print. This is for the people listening. Girl in lingerie asked to change the. The toner cartridge on the big photocopier in the office. It exploded. She's now loving it. [01:14:35] Speaker A: And she. She fell down a ladder and now she's stuck in a hole at the office. Okay. [01:14:42] Speaker B: The next one is an AI generated portrait. [01:14:45] Speaker A: Black and white. [01:14:46] Speaker B: A black and white portrait. It's a head shot. The eyes are sharp. It has good soft fall off of focus. [01:14:56] Speaker A: But she's got nice hair. [01:15:00] Speaker B: She washed it. Basically. That's all it is. [01:15:02] Speaker A: Yeah. Pantene. [01:15:04] Speaker B: Yep. [01:15:05] Speaker A: All right. [01:15:06] Speaker B: This is a really. This is a lovely portrait. [01:15:09] Speaker A: The culling software, though, would have said that Eyes closed reject. [01:15:14] Speaker B: It would. And it would have. Pretty sure it would have used the erase function to get rid of that blur on the. On his right side, our left behind the ear, whatever that is. There's something that's a bit distracting in the background. But yeah, beautiful character portrait. Headshot of someone in black and white. Good texture. This looks like an AI generated image. [01:15:37] Speaker A: That. That does looks really strong. The perspective is. [01:15:41] Speaker B: It feels like it's either stacked or it's a composition. Like it's not a composition. What do you call it when they combine images? What's that term? [01:15:49] Speaker A: A composite? [01:15:51] Speaker B: Composite. Thank you. It looks like a composite part of you just shot in a slight sepia toned black and white. And there's an old kind of bigger. It looks a bit like it's from Cuba. But half the background is in that same sepia, black and white. The other half is in sort of. [01:16:06] Speaker A: Buick in the background. Is that a red Buick? [01:16:08] Speaker B: Thanks, Bruce. [01:16:10] Speaker A: Yeah, it does look like a composite, Bruce. Yeah. Thank you, Bruce. Confirmation from a professional judge. [01:16:16] Speaker B: Yep. This is an image of Ewan McGregor in the third Star wars movie. He's wearing. He's wearing some very dark clothing. It's got nice texture. The face, is it sharp? Are his eyes sharp? [01:16:34] Speaker A: It's low res. It's pretty. It's. Yeah, it would be sharp. [01:16:36] Speaker B: Pretty average. [01:16:37] Speaker A: It's low. It's low res. [01:16:39] Speaker B: It's just a candid portrait in a rainstorm. [01:16:43] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh. [01:16:44] Speaker B: Okay. This looks AI generated. It's a seascape shot taken on a wide open beach. It looks like there's some sort of lava pool in the top right hand corner. And there's children playing in the water, soon to be burnt. [01:16:59] Speaker A: I don't understand. Oh, painterly photo of Cannon beach on Oregon coast. The way edited to look painterly because there's like artifacts and stuff around the people. [01:17:16] Speaker B: Yep, it's. It's odd. [01:17:17] Speaker A: Next, Nick Flecter says these photos demonstrate why this comp is a bad idea. I'm. I'm a little worried that. Is there any chance that. Well, first of all, is Jim Signorelli listening right now? If so. Sorry, Jim, we don't. I don't know what's happening with this photo, but also. Or are these all fake AI submissions so that it had something on the leaderboard when the comp launched, you know, like, did they just put in like, what do you call them? Just stock photos so that their comp looked like it had something going. [01:17:47] Speaker B: Or maybe there's some of their ambassadors photos. They might have ambassadors doing shots. [01:17:51] Speaker A: But it genuinely says Explore our top 10. [01:17:54] Speaker B: Yeah, this is a. Just a headshot. It looks like a corporate headshot. There's nothing. I mean, the girl is beautiful and the lighting is good. [01:18:04] Speaker A: Yeah, the lighting is good. [01:18:06] Speaker B: It's a. It's a fairly standard corporate looking headshot. That's about it. Okay, so this has got some character. This is a sort of shot. It's like street photography. It's a character portrait. Like a street portrait. [01:18:22] Speaker A: It's been very over processed though around the hand and stuff. This. There's some weirdness going on you. I don't know if you can see it through the. [01:18:30] Speaker B: It looks like the face looks far too detailed compared to the rest of the body. Like it's. Yeah, the face. A lot of work has been done on the face in post production. Compared to say the neck. Look at the skin of the neck and then you look at the skin of the face and she looks like she's got a 20 year old face on a 70 year old neck. So. [01:18:50] Speaker A: Yeah. All right, let's. Let's move through some. Okay. The girl picking. [01:18:56] Speaker B: Yeah, this looks like. Oh, Bruce just said this unsplash. This looks like an unsplash image. Like a stock image. [01:19:02] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:19:02] Speaker B: We could reverse this. [01:19:04] Speaker A: Maybe we should. Moving on. Oh my gosh. [01:19:09] Speaker B: This is an AI generated photo because the lighting is all wrong. [01:19:12] Speaker A: It is an AI generated photo. I can tell that the girl looks fake as. [01:19:19] Speaker B: See just before we move beyond into. [01:19:21] Speaker A: The top 10 because I mean technically this one is. This is top 10. This is 10th, currently number 10. [01:19:29] Speaker B: So my concern is like with, you know, when you do a Google search now you get an AI summary. Google gives you this, what they think is an AI summary and that AI summary has been harvested from other people's work, actual work. But eventually the AI summaries are going to run out of real work to pull results from and they're going to start relying on other AI summaries to create the Optimus prime of AI summaries. The same thing could happen with photo imaging and culling software where they start, instead of using real images captured with real cameras and edited by real photographers to train AI, they use AI images to train AI. And it just gets dumber and dumber and dumber. [01:20:10] Speaker A: Until this is the top 10 for. [01:20:13] Speaker B: Image, no one can tell me this is a real image. [01:20:17] Speaker A: No. Wookie says went hard with the clarity slider. Nev class. Nev. Clark says that's worse than a kid with a crayon picture. Rick says, Justin, you should enter. The winnings would cover the half of the R1 purchase for you. That's true. That is true. I mean I have a feeling anything I enter wouldn't win. I don't think it would be AI friendly enough. Enough. [01:20:54] Speaker B: It's interesting though, isn't it? It would be an interesting experiment to see what happened and who won. [01:20:59] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't know what. I wouldn't have anything to enter. We'll see. We'll see what else is let's see what's in the top 10. Okay, so this is a pretty like processed medieval composite. [01:21:13] Speaker B: I can't. Yeah, it feels like. I can't say that that background is actually there. [01:21:16] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a fake background. It feels studio shot with like a background replace but a green screen. Well, that's, that's kind of just like a phone photo. But it's nice. Makes me smile. Right. Surf photo. [01:21:42] Speaker B: Feels real. [01:21:45] Speaker A: It feels real. It's not processed very well. All the highlights are blown out. Lucinda says, so someone tell the point of this, the point of us looking at the images or the point of the competition itself? Because I think that, I think unfortunately the point of us looking at the images is kind of just to see how bad some of them are. The point of the competition. I'm assuming it's just a marketing ploy by an AI culling software company which. [01:22:20] Speaker B: On an email list. [01:22:20] Speaker A: Yeah, the point of the comp. They're giving away seven grand in the hopes that a lot of people will enter images. Those people. [01:22:29] Speaker B: It's free to enter. [01:22:30] Speaker A: It's free to enter. It's free to them. It's free for them to run their judging because it's done through their AI. And then they'll give some money away. But they'll probably acquire thousands of email addresses that they can then market to about their AI culling software which. [01:22:44] Speaker B: And potentially thousands of images to use to train their AI. [01:22:47] Speaker A: To train their AI. But. But they probably don't necessarily need that if they're getting lots of people culling with their software that's training their AI all the time. I don't know. But maybe, maybe they figure if it's comp worthy images, that'll be better to train their AI. But they can probably, maybe, maybe. [01:23:05] Speaker B: Because then they can go back and say we've trained this on competition winners. [01:23:09] Speaker A: Yeah, maybe. Bruce says so far I wouldn't want them to color shoot for me if this is what they are picking is good. It's true. And this can be a problem because it's like I hear about this software and I think, oh, maybe I would want to try AI culling. So software. And then yeah, you look at this and you're like, well, probably not. [01:23:33] Speaker B: Wow, that's very like there's another photocopy cleaner. [01:23:37] Speaker A: Yeah, it's like theater characters, like very. Yeah. A lot of work has been put into the makeup and costume. Like, like if it was cosplay photography. And more work's been put into that than the photography. [01:23:53] Speaker B: Count the fingers how many? That's, that's one of the first artifacts of AI is that it can't seem to get five fingers right. [01:23:59] Speaker A: That all looks. The hands look real in that. That all looks real. There's nothing obviously odd about that image but it's oh, heavily processed really. [01:24:11] Speaker B: I mean they've gone hard. They've gone hard on the contrast. [01:24:14] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:24:16] Speaker B: And the texture. But it feels over the top. [01:24:21] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:24:22] Speaker B: It's distracting, isn't it? It's not clean. Like granted that the, the character in the shot, the subject, you know, obviously is a. Lives a hard life. He's got a weather beaten face, he's missing teeth. He's got all of that going on. But it's just over emphasized. [01:24:40] Speaker A: That being said, I could see this getting shortlisted in like your average camera store photo competition. Yeah, camera stores run, run photo competitions and stuff like that. [01:24:51] Speaker B: Sure. [01:24:52] Speaker A: Yeah. You know it's not. This isn't like. Well like that. [01:24:58] Speaker B: What is going on there? That has got to be AI. What is that in front of her chest? [01:25:04] Speaker A: It's just, it's just her dress. It's like a very. It's. It's got these big things sticking out of her dress. But the, but the photo itself here is. It's not. I don't know what it is. [01:25:16] Speaker B: I don't think that's real. [01:25:20] Speaker A: You don't reckon it's real? I think it's real. I think that's real. It looks like it's shot on a phone but I think it's real. [01:25:30] Speaker B: Okay, interesting choice. [01:25:34] Speaker A: So it's a landscape photo with landscape photographers in it on. Yeah, I don't know. [01:25:42] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a snapshot. [01:25:43] Speaker A: So that's. Yeah, so. Yeah, well, yeah, that's right. That's. That's the photo that the, the guide running this tour took to be like we did this today. [01:25:53] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:25:55] Speaker A: That's number currently third. So that's currently winning money. [01:25:58] Speaker B: I don't know what. Why. [01:26:01] Speaker A: Hang on, we need it. I need to get my sound effects ready for when number one comes up. [01:26:10] Speaker B: I don't understand the thinking behind. I'll choose. I'm going to put this. And is it because the mountains are there is that I'm going to choose to put this in a photo competition. It does feel like a snapshot. [01:26:21] Speaker A: All right, number. Number two. Number two. [01:26:23] Speaker B: All right. [01:26:25] Speaker A: Whoa. Oh, hang on, hang on. [01:26:28] Speaker B: Go back. One. [01:26:29] Speaker A: Say number three. [01:26:30] Speaker B: How is that three and two? [01:26:32] Speaker A: Johan Peter Melder. Oh, it's the same person. They've entered under different names. One's just been More aggressively post processed. Is it the exact. The same shot? No, it is, in fact a different photo. [01:26:48] Speaker B: If. Why would you edit it that way? Anyway, whatever. All right, so there's number two. [01:26:55] Speaker A: All right, number one, everybody. Number one. Okay. It's a. It's a HDR waterfall image of a photographer having the best day. Like a self portrait, I guess. [01:27:16] Speaker B: It's really heavily edited. [01:27:18] Speaker A: It's very heavily edited. [01:27:19] Speaker B: I've really pushed the shadows out. Look at the grass. It's not very well defined. [01:27:26] Speaker A: Yeah. Potentially multiple. Like stacked. [01:27:32] Speaker B: I think it's AI too. [01:27:33] Speaker A: Rick, you reckon it could be. [01:27:40] Speaker B: Look, you know, hats off to people for entering a photography competition. I think that's wonderful. I think more people should do it. And I love the fact that there's a free option. I just don't like the fact that it's obvious there's a nefarious. [01:27:52] Speaker A: All right, here we go. Here we go. [01:27:55] Speaker B: You're going to do it? [01:27:56] Speaker A: No, no, I'm just looking at some of the things. First of all, AI generated images with. With hand images with dominant AI elements are excluded from the competition for a top 20 ranking. The original photo must be sent to us by upload within 24 hours after the submission. You may submit one image per day. And it also says here your images are not used for AI training purposes. They should lead with that. They should get that. Like, this is on the. This is at the bottom of the. Of the comp page. Yeah, but they're saying that. And here we got conditions of participation. They got a whole thing. Whoa. Cookies. No, never. [01:28:40] Speaker B: No submit an image. [01:28:44] Speaker A: Okay. Lots of conditions during the upload phase. Keep uploading. If there's more than one photograph, they must not be identical. Technically, the guy coming second and third, they're not identical. Okay. You must own all the copyrights that you use. The person in the photo must consent. No porn. Makes sense. Wow. Basic image editing, such as color and brightness adjustments are permitted, but the addition or removal of image defining elements is not permitted. Well, I think you might have to have a closer look at your top 20 already. Maybe it's the weekend still over there. [01:29:38] Speaker B: Yeah. Bruce said, remember, this is day one. Come back to this when it's about. [01:29:41] Speaker A: I know, I know. We don't ruin our fun, Bruce. We will revisit this when it's about to close. [01:29:49] Speaker B: But I will say it is a bit of a shock. [01:29:52] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:29:53] Speaker B: To see how many images actually appear like AI. And that's the. That's one of the biggest problems that we're facing now. I Think, you know, and I wouldn't want to be a photography judge or in this sort of environment, but, you know, we're starting to be dubious about what people are creating, you know, and it naturally will occur to us, I wonder if that was AI. Is that really that good? You know, which is terrible. [01:30:18] Speaker A: And. And look, this actually wasn't. This segment wasn't supposed to be roasting the images that are currently in the top 20 at all. That wasn't the point. And I know some. Some people, if they're. If that's a legitimate submission for a competition, they just. That they're on their photo journey and they're making work that's different to what I would make, and that's cool. It's more the fact that they're. They're doing this comp and they're pushing it as. As unbiased. An unbiased, fair ranking of what makes a photo technically good. [01:30:52] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:30:53] Speaker A: As opposed to biased, artistic, emotional judging. And what will be interesting is. Yeah. What ends up being chosen as unbiasedly good from this competition is what I'm interested in seeing. And also, are we ever going to see this in a more legitimate photo competition or have I missed it? Have we seen this in a legitimate photo comp. Used in any way? Some sort of AI scoring in tandem with a panel of judges or something? I haven't heard of it, but I'm not really into the. Into that scene. So I don't know whether any of the larger, you know, real competitions are using it in any way as part of the judging process. It's. That's why I called it Judge Dredd. You know, it's. He's like. He's the. Is the police officer and the Judge and the executioner just all in one. Submit your image. You just get a ranking done, it's over. [01:32:03] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:32:06] Speaker A: Bruce says it would be against the rules and ethically bad. But imagine uploading some classic images that are considered great and just see where they end up in the rankings. And I'm glad you. I am the law. That's. That's Judge Dredd. I'm gonna go watch that movie after this. Fall asleep on the couch. [01:32:28] Speaker B: Nice. Classy. [01:32:31] Speaker A: Nev Clark says allowing people. Okay, hang on. I missed his first comment. Nev Clark says our local show this year had a separate section for AI images. So they allowed completely open and transparent AI section, which was really fun to judge the images. Maybe it's the future, like the Steroid Olympics, basically allowing people to cheat and acknowledging it rather than, you Know people sneaking in AI images into comps. I like Rick's take. So what does AI judging prove, though? A robot likes your image and that's it. So it's also like Greg was saying earlier, it's a robot trained on images that already existed. It can only know those images and can only rank your image. So by definition, if you're doing something that's novel, pushing the boundaries, making people go, wow, I've never seen a photo like that before. That's amazing. That's new. You're gonna lose. Because the AI hasn't seen that before. It doesn't understand it. It understands patterns that it can then discern down into a ranking. [01:33:44] Speaker B: Yep. Yeah, I don't know. It's. It's. It's weird. I mean, it'd be fun in an immoral way to create an AI generated image. [01:33:59] Speaker A: Bruce. Bruce says the newer movie is better. It is not better. [01:34:04] Speaker B: A newer Judge 3. I didn't know there was. [01:34:05] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, they remade it. It's. It's okay. Stallone. Are you. Are you. Is he trying to rile me up? Bruce? Yeah, the newer movie isn't better. [01:34:17] Speaker B: Anyway, as I was saying. [01:34:19] Speaker A: Sorry. [01:34:21] Speaker B: To create an image with a. With an image creation AI bot and submit it and see what happens. [01:34:29] Speaker A: Do it. [01:34:30] Speaker B: I don't want to. You do it. [01:34:31] Speaker A: Okay. [01:34:32] Speaker B: I don't even know how to just. [01:34:34] Speaker A: Go into ChatGPT and you say you want to do it now. No, no, I'll just. Let me. Let me just try this while you read out some comments. [01:34:44] Speaker B: All right, Let me go through. Let's have a look. Cheers, honey. It might be like that enhanced athletics thing they're currently running. What is that? Do you know anything about that? [01:35:00] Speaker A: Yeah, the. No, the enhanced games, basically, they're. Yeah, they're doing. They're working towards enhanced games in 2026, which is open and legal. Steroid or any enhancement usage. [01:35:15] Speaker B: Is that what Nev was talking about as well? [01:35:17] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And basically they're saying, hey. And they're also, in the lead up to those games, they're offering a million dollars to anyone that breaks a world record. And a swimmer just did it and he was jacked. But what they're saying is these guys can do it with proper medical supervision and no Secret Squirrel stuff. So they. So it's. They can actually do it in a safe and competitive environment because it's not against the rules in these games. [01:35:47] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:35:48] Speaker A: And they're going to see what the performance is like. So what they're actually getting is athletes that were previously aged out. So maybe they're into their 30s and they can't compete anymore against the young guns because of the training volume and the stress on the bodies. But with the, you know, performance. Yeah. Testosterone replacement and various performance enhancers and the medical support, they can get through that. They've got so many more training hours than these younger athletes. They're elite, the elite of the elite. And now their bodies can perform still and they're, they're breaking records. It's pretty cool. [01:36:28] Speaker B: Weird. [01:36:29] Speaker A: Very cool. [01:36:29] Speaker B: Lucinda the Ripp used to have an illustrative composite category that was allowed to have changes made in Photoshop. I seem to remember. Lucinda, correct me if, if you call this as well, a few years ago, a photographer, a really famous, previous award winning photographer. I don't know if she was Australian, but she was called out for her composite work where elements were taken from someone else's image or there was some. I think it was someone. Saad was the surname. Lisa Saad. Does that ring a bell? And it was something like that where it was a composite illustrative work and it was called into question about the legitimacy of it. Anyway, let's just jump to the next comment. As I've always said, AI can create an image, but it actually can't take an image. Well, not yet anyway. It's very true, Lucinda. Again, photography and art is subjective, so it defeats the whole purpose of art. Yeah, absolutely. [01:37:29] Speaker A: Yes, exactly. [01:37:30] Speaker B: And I think what they're trying to do, you know, this software is not targeted at artistic photographers, it's targeted at people that churn and burn. Because it's a culling software. They don't. They don't. The intention of the culling software is that it doesn't want you to spend time reviewing your images. It wants you to trust it and just go with whatever it spits out. But yeah, Rick Nelson, Camera Life podcast should enter as a whole. And we design an image on a live video like this so we all have input and split the winnings. No, we're not spamming anything, Rick. [01:38:03] Speaker A: I'm working on it, Rick. But yeah, sorry, Greg and I need that. We're going to Japan. [01:38:07] Speaker B: Yeah, we need to go to Japan. Nev. Still on the steroids game there, Nev. The only problem with taking steroids, and I know this as a drug and alcohol counselor, by the time they're 45, they'll be dead. Jungle juice is not good for you long term. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Lisa Sar. That's it. Or sad. Sad. I think it's sad. She was An Australian. Lisa Saad. Yes. Melbourne base. Massive, massive problem. [01:38:38] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:38:38] Speaker B: There was something that came about in a big photography competition and it called into question what people were actually submitting, whether it was actually their work. I used to teach ethics. It was an interesting discussion. Very cool. Well, how's your image going? [01:38:57] Speaker A: Look, the first one's not going to win anything, but we can look at it. You want to see it? [01:39:03] Speaker B: I say upload it anyway. [01:39:07] Speaker A: Now I'm working on a second one. Hang on. This is it. [01:39:23] Speaker B: Oh, my God. That's the guy that was holding the violin before with the soot all over his face. [01:39:27] Speaker A: It is. He just had a shower and put a different outfit on. [01:39:30] Speaker B: It's like I cleaned up. Still grumpy. [01:39:33] Speaker A: So I didn't give it much of a prompt for this. I just said, can you make me a portrait photo that would be worthy of winning a competition? Apparently it thinks this would. [01:39:45] Speaker B: Let it do it. [01:39:46] Speaker A: No, I'm working on a second one. Let's see. Okay. Why does it like dudes with hats on? After that first one, I said, so can you please make it more creative with impressive photography techniques being used, and gave it no other information other than that it just made the subject look the other direction. It cropped in a little tighter. Change the lighting slightly. Probably. Yeah. I don't know. [01:40:16] Speaker B: Lucinda said, can you ask it why it thinks it's award winning? [01:40:19] Speaker A: Oh, good question. This is fun. [01:40:22] Speaker B: This is fun. [01:40:23] Speaker A: Hang on. Why this is award winning. Okay. [01:40:48] Speaker B: A lot to say. [01:40:50] Speaker A: Yeah. So Chachi BT says this portrait could be considered award worthy for several reasons rooted in both technical excellence and emotional storytelling. Which. [01:41:03] Speaker B: Emotional storytelling. [01:41:05] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. It knows. Which are key criteria in most photography competitions. Number one, the use of light and shadow. The. I should know how to pronounce this Chiaroscuro effect. The soft directional light, likely from the golden hour, cast dramatic shadows and contours the subject's face, creating the depth and emphasizing texture. The painterly lighting technique is a hallmark of high end portraiture. 2. Environmental composition. The autumn forest isn't just the background, it contributes to the narrative. The subject appears introspective and the rich earthy tones of the leaves mirror his muted clothing, suggesting a theme of time, transition or wisdom. Three, Expressive subject. His thoughtful gaze and slightly furrowed brow communicate a quiet strength or contemplation. There's no smile, no posing, just a natural moment of emotional gravity, which judges often look for in competition portraits. 4. Color grading and tonal harmony. The warm amber palette gives the image cohesion and mood, while the shadows are deep but not crushed. This type of tonal control reflects professional post processing skill. 5. Technical precision. Sharpness is localized on the eyes, critical for impactful portraiture. Depth of field is shallow enough to isolate the subject while maintaining context. The bokeh is smooth with background elements artistically blurred. 6. Storytelling. The photo doesn't show a man, just show a man. It makes the viewer ask questions. What's he reflecting on? Where is he going? What has he lived through? [01:42:35] Speaker B: Can we go back to the image now? [01:42:37] Speaker A: That ambiguity is powerful. [01:42:40] Speaker B: Go back to the image for a sec. See, the problem that I have with the background is that it looks like a prop. It looks flat. There's no smooth bokeh. And the lines to the left of his head, so our left look like curtain folds. Like it looks rippled, you know, like it's rippling in and out. [01:43:08] Speaker A: The problem is, Greg, this is art. And you're looking at it in too much of a technical way. You're trying to apply just a pure technical photography view on something that is art. [01:43:22] Speaker B: Clearly art. I think I prefer the first one. [01:43:26] Speaker A: Yeah, probably. And maybe that's the one that sort of. It's actually talking about because it's. It makes more sense to what it's saying. [01:43:38] Speaker B: I say submit that one. [01:43:40] Speaker A: Submit it. Do I submit it with my. Oh, hang on. If you'd like, I can push this even further into fine art or conceptual territory. Surreal lighting, more symbolic elements and. Or cinematic framing. [01:43:56] Speaker B: Yes. [01:43:56] Speaker A: Would you like a version like that? Go for it, please. [01:44:04] Speaker B: You always say nice to the robots. [01:44:09] Speaker A: See what happens. [01:44:11] Speaker B: This is fun. [01:44:13] Speaker A: It is fun. Maybe we'll do a regular ChatGPT segment. Bruce says ask it to explain to Greg why it's good. Greg doesn't get it. [01:44:27] Speaker B: I don't. [01:44:28] Speaker A: He doesn't get my art. The random AI prompt show. Oh, my God. If I actually thought about starting a new YouTube channel that just features the arguments that I have with ChatGPT. [01:44:41] Speaker B: I. [01:44:42] Speaker A: Think I'm on the forefront of fighting with it. [01:44:44] Speaker B: Oh my God, it's so slow to load. It's like loading porn in the dial up days. [01:44:48] Speaker A: We're going to look back at this and be like, remember how slow ChatGPT used to be to create images? Now it can create movies. [01:44:54] Speaker B: Went too far. [01:44:55] Speaker A: Look at that. It's beautiful. [01:44:59] Speaker B: I love the reveal, says Lucinda. [01:45:03] Speaker A: Please explain the symbolism. How do you spell symbolism? Symbolism, ism. [01:45:14] Speaker B: Yeah, try that. [01:45:24] Speaker A: Right. Falling leaves. [01:45:26] Speaker B: That's what we'll call it. [01:45:28] Speaker A: Symbol of change, mortality and the passage of time. In many cultures, autumn is a Metaphor for life's later years. When things slow down, memories fall like leaves and legacy becomes the focus. The way leaves float around the subject suspended in time suggests a moment of reflection or a memory suspended in a dream. Do you want to see them again? [01:45:48] Speaker B: Yeah, let's see the memory suspended in a dream. That just looks like an illustration. [01:45:54] Speaker A: Maybe it's the COVID of a book or something. Yeah, an average book. Soft fog and mist. The symbol of mystery, memory and the unknown ray of light. The elderly man. Yeah. Okay, so it's. [01:46:12] Speaker B: Child. [01:46:12] Speaker A: Final message. The image invites viewers to reflect on their own passage through time. Who will we be when the leaves fall around us? It asks us questions about memory, mortality, and identity, but does so quietly and reverently, which is often what separates good from award winning. [01:46:35] Speaker B: Oh, go for Rebirth. [01:46:36] Speaker A: This is great. Rebirth. [01:46:39] Speaker B: Okay, let's do Rebirth and just see what happens. [01:46:42] Speaker A: Okay. Let's explore any. Does anyone in the chat have any way to. Are we going to explore Rebirth? What should we add? Anything else? Let's explore rebirth as a theme. What else can I add to this prompt? [01:46:57] Speaker B: We want chickens. [01:47:00] Speaker A: Jay Shannon. Hard to believe that one day this becomes Skynet. [01:47:08] Speaker B: Include chickens in the rebirth because chicken and the egg. [01:47:12] Speaker A: I didn't. I don't want. I don't want to, like. Do you want me to. Okay. I don't want to. [01:47:17] Speaker B: You don't want to ruin the photo. [01:47:18] Speaker A: No, I don't want to cramp its like, creativity by giving it too many stories. Let's. Let's explore rebirth as a theme. I think including chickens. Yeah. And. And Lucinda says intensify the lighting. Okay. [01:47:36] Speaker B: And intense for the lighting. Yeah. [01:47:38] Speaker A: Including chickens would be a good element for that theme. Do you agree? Also, please intensify the lighting. Silence. Sorry for you guys listening on Spotify and Apple podcast next week, but it's worth watching this to see what we're pulling up. Hopefully me reading out ChatGPT's AI prompts is. [01:48:19] Speaker B: I think the chickens will make it an award winner. [01:48:21] Speaker A: It could be an award winner. [01:48:22] Speaker B: Who doesn't love a chicken? [01:48:25] Speaker A: I like eating chickens. I like eggs and eggs. [01:48:29] Speaker B: Can't have an egg without a chicken. So, you know, if you love eggs, you love chickens. [01:48:38] Speaker A: The reveal is slow. [01:48:39] Speaker B: It's very slow. [01:48:41] Speaker A: It is very slow. The chicken should have had that. We don't even know yet. It could be a giant chicken. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. [01:48:57] Speaker B: Oh, it's a biblical chicken. [01:48:59] Speaker A: It's coming in. [01:49:00] Speaker B: Oh, my God. Look at that. That's amazing. [01:49:02] Speaker A: Look at that lighting. [01:49:04] Speaker B: It's more than I could have hoped for. Look at him. He's like a Jesus chicken. [01:49:09] Speaker A: I'm selling my cameras. [01:49:11] Speaker B: It's coming down from heaven. Oh, wow. It's really. [01:49:15] Speaker A: I could never dream to make an image that looks like this. Well, I can now. I'm going to try and replicate. Oh, wouldn't that be a good YouTube video? Trying to replicate AI images. It just in real life studio. So, like, I've got a cop. I've got to find a guy that looks like this. Greg's. [01:49:32] Speaker B: Oh, hang on, there's more chickens. [01:49:33] Speaker A: Whoa. [01:49:34] Speaker B: Oh, where's his legs gone? How are the chickens? Oh, my God, what have I done? [01:49:50] Speaker A: Hang on, let me get this whole thing in the frame. Oh, my God. We're submitting this. We did it. [01:50:00] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. He's like, I'm buried. I need to save you, chicken. And here it comes. [01:50:10] Speaker A: Okay, that is. That is stunning. [01:50:19] Speaker B: Yep. [01:50:19] Speaker A: I donate Words can't describe. [01:50:22] Speaker B: Yeah. Can we. Can we get that printed and framed and we'll hang it on the background somewhere on the wall so that it's always there? [01:50:29] Speaker A: Yeah. Maybe we might put that on a T shirt. [01:50:33] Speaker B: Yes. [01:50:35] Speaker A: Cock. [01:50:35] Speaker B: The shadow. [01:50:37] Speaker A: Yes. Oh, dear. So what have we got here? Lucinda says the chicken from the Gods. Glenn Lavender says, would have been nicer with a bigger chicken. I saw that with cakes. Cakes, Glenn says, or a cock shutter three feet under. Perfect for the shop. Yeah. Big poster. Is he rising from the dead? I don't know. I think he might be sinking into chicken quicksand. [01:51:08] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:51:10] Speaker A: Ask for the raw file so we can submit it. How much power was used to create it? Oh, look, I'm not sure. Not much. I didn't say thank you, so I don't think it took up too much, but I might say thank you now. We'll see. Okay, that's brilliant. All right, well done, Chat. Gbt. [01:51:26] Speaker B: And that, ladies and gentlemen, is Judge Dredge. [01:51:30] Speaker A: That's dread. We're doomed. Photography's doomed, but we're still having fun. [01:51:34] Speaker B: We definitely need that on a. On a T shirt, though. [01:51:37] Speaker A: So, in summary, hopefully this maybe is the first and last AI photo comp. But we'll see. And we will. I'll put a note to check in on this regularly to see what the top 20 is looking like in the end of the month before they submit. Will submit this. I'm going to double check whether it's illegal to submit this if I'm going to get in trouble because it's not a original photo. But. [01:52:08] Speaker B: But none of them were. [01:52:11] Speaker A: Good point. [01:52:12] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:52:14] Speaker A: Cool. What else I mean, that's. That's. Well, that's pretty much the show, other. [01:52:19] Speaker B: Than we are pretty much done. [01:52:21] Speaker A: It's. It's a bit late. I was going to give you some more om 3 thoughts about After Shooting with it for the weekend, but I don't have a lot because I haven't had a chance. I got back so late after my delayed flight that I didn't get a chance to put the files on the computer and look through them. [01:52:38] Speaker B: But why don't we save that next week? All right. Yep. [01:52:41] Speaker A: Okay. No, no, we'll say we'll save it for next week because basically. What? I don't know. I just. I enjoyed the autofocus. It's growing on me. I'm getting used to the ergonomics and where they put things. I fixed the viewfinder issue, but what is weird with it is, I don't know. I need to find an OEM system expert to tell me. I don't think I can have Image Review disabled for the EVF but enabled for the lcd. [01:53:12] Speaker B: Right. [01:53:13] Speaker A: So I had Image Review enabled for the lcd, but it was doing like a really quick image review in the EVF that made it lag. And so I disabled Image Review, which sorted it out. But I don't know, I thought you could enable and disable them separately on the viewfinder and the LCD on the back. All right, anyway, but with. Yeah, but with my. With those sort of changes and getting used to the ergonomics and customizing a few things, it was starting to feel comfortable. I could work with it fairly quickly. The auto focus was feeling snappy and the JPEGs, at least on the back of the camera, looked really good. I was shooting most of it in black and white, but with RAW files as well that I want to play with later. And I was having fun. Those little lenses are tiny. [01:54:03] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:54:04] Speaker A: And I shot with them wide open a ton. So that would be also be interesting to see what, how sharp they are wide open, but they look sharp on the back of the camera. [01:54:14] Speaker B: Very cool. Very cool. [01:54:17] Speaker A: But, yeah, that's about it, really. [01:54:19] Speaker B: All right, well, I think we're going to wrap up, folks. It's. It's almost 9:30. We've been going at this for two hours. Time flies when you're having fun with AI. Just a reminder for everybody, a little bit of housekeeping. This is the Camera Life podcast. If you're new to the show, this is your first time watching G' Day. Don't be shy, jump in the chat, tell us who you are. Where you're from, we run two shows each week. We run a Monday night random photography show, 7.30pm Australian Eastern Standard Time, and then we also run a Thursday morning show at 9am Australian Eastern Standard Time where we interview amazing photographers. But, but look, on that note, I want to thank everyone for watching. Want to thank everyone that's been listening. Sorry, I know we've been very visual heavy in this episode for those of you on audio podcasts. But you can always roll back and watch any of our episodes on the back catalog if you just jump to. [01:55:18] Speaker A: Our YouTube channel, Lucinda's from last week. Go back to that right now. If you listen to this and you haven't heard it, go back and listen to that. It was great. [01:55:24] Speaker B: A couple of hours go and have a listen. But, but yeah, look, if you happen to find yourself, you know, watching a few of our shows, let us know in the comments which has been your favorite episode so far. We'd love to know who are some guests where you feel like we still have some story to uncover. [01:55:45] Speaker A: Let us know who should we bring back on a Monday night? We need to get Greg Carrick back on, but he's probably busy working, radioing. [01:55:54] Speaker B: Yeah, well, he doesn't do it AI does it now? [01:55:57] Speaker A: Well, he just asked us if we're AI. [01:55:59] Speaker B: I will say no one trusts anyone anymore. [01:56:02] Speaker A: No. [01:56:05] Speaker B: But look, on that note, this is the Camera Life podcast, the random photography show proudly brought to you by Lucky Straps from Bendigo Victoria Makers. A fine leather camera straps head to Luckystraps.com use the code Greg at checkout, you'll get yourself a fine discount. Fine discount with Greg. [01:56:24] Speaker A: I'll let you have this one. [01:56:25] Speaker B: Cool. [01:56:26] Speaker A: Use Code Greg. And otherwise, thanks to everyone in the chat. You guys are awesome. [01:56:33] Speaker B: Yeah, you are awesome. [01:56:35] Speaker A: Philip, Jason, Rick, Greg, Bruce, Paul, everyone. Who have I missed? Yeah, I don't know. You're all here. Bruce says he's Code Jim. Jim's not even here. Yeah, no Jim. Maybe we'll make a Bruce. All right. Okay, let's do this. [01:56:57] Speaker B: Be safe. Have a great week. We'll see you on Thursday. But yeah, get out and shoot. We'll talk to you soon. All right, bye bye. [01:57:04] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Bye, Philip. Good to see you. See you on Thursday. Hey, Nev. Yeah, see you Nev. [01:57:14] Speaker B: I'm really tired. [01:57:15] Speaker A: Paul Henderson loves his green strap and T shirt. Thanks. [01:57:23] Speaker B: See ya.