TWiT+ Club Shows 742 Transcript
Please be advised that this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word-for-word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-free version of the show.
Leo Laporte [00:00:00]:
This is TWiT. Hey, Club Twitters, how are you today? I can call you that now because there is no such thing as Twitter anymore. So there. Hello, Club Twitters. Haha! Members of the club, it's so nice to see you. This is the time we do the photo show with Mr. Chris Marquardt from Tips from the Top Floor and the Viewfinder Villa.
Chris Marquardt [00:00:28]:
And the Future of Photography.
Leo Laporte [00:00:30]:
And the Future of Photography, which I am going to, while you're talking, I'm going to put that logo in the corner instead of the Tips from the Top Floor. Although that looks pretty good. It ain't bad.
Chris Marquardt [00:00:42]:
The advantage of the Future of Photography is that it's an active podcast that comes to you once a week together with my friend Alan and with my And with Jeremiah Chechik, who is a Hollywood director.
Leo Laporte [00:00:57]:
Oh, so yeah, movies too?
Chris Marquardt [00:01:01]:
No, it's photography. It's photography. He's the director of Christmas Vacation.
Leo Laporte [00:01:06]:
You know, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation?
Chris Marquardt [00:01:09]:
Yes. Oh, we talk about photography once a week.
Leo Laporte [00:01:13]:
Oh, that's cool. You know, uh, the Academy Awards were this week, and I was thinking Cinematography, which there is an Oscar for, really is a wonderful art. And we, you know, I think that people think the director is the most important or the movie star is the most important, but honestly, I think the cinematographer is really vital to the whole process. And, you know, When I go to a movie, I look at the cinematography. I look at the— I very much look at the cinematography.
Chris Marquardt [00:01:49]:
Yes. I mean, the director has the vision and the timing and the what goes where, but the cinematographer, the DP, director of photography, is the person who makes it come to life.
Leo Laporte [00:02:01]:
That's the important— Yeah. And honestly, some of my favorite motion pictures, it's really about the cinematography.
Chris Marquardt [00:02:08]:
Oh, yes. Oh, yes.
Leo Laporte [00:02:10]:
I'm thinking of The Brutalist, which should have won a Best Picture last year, which cinematography is incredible. Uh, this year, um, I'm trying to remember who won. I think Frankenstein won for cinematography, and it was amazing cinematography, but so was Train Dreams. I thought it was beautiful. And so to me, a lot of times, maybe it's because I love photography, but the cinematography is what brings me to a movie. I think about The Godfather, and, uh, oh yes, the cinematography in that is amazing. And they dragged the the film through tea to give it a kind of yellowed stained look. And it was the final negatives after they'd been shot.
Leo Laporte [00:02:54]:
So it was an extraordinarily risky thing to do.
Chris Marquardt [00:02:57]:
I'm not sure it's that risky. I guess they did tests and figured out how dangerous it really is. It does things. It does things, but that's kind of the purpose.
Leo Laporte [00:03:08]:
It does make you a little nervous.
Chris Marquardt [00:03:10]:
Just a little nervous. It wouldn't make me nervous at all. Not at all. But that comes with working with film and knowing what it can handle.
Leo Laporte [00:03:21]:
All right, here we go. I am going to, just because you said it, I am going to debut for the first time ever. Let me go full screen so you can see it. Your brand new logo. What did I call it? What's the name of the show? The Future of Photography.
Chris Marquardt [00:03:39]:
Or TFOP.
Leo Laporte [00:03:40]:
That's what I call it. Oh, it's not in there. What is it?
Chris Marquardt [00:03:43]:
And it's not even brand new. It's been around for 5 years now.
Leo Laporte [00:03:47]:
I think 5 years. I know. What did I call it? Maybe I named it something different.
Chris Marquardt [00:03:51]:
What did I call it? TFOP. TFOP.
Leo Laporte [00:03:56]:
Or maybe I didn't save it there. Let's go back. Oh, maybe I saved it as a TIFF or something. One more. Oh, you know, I was so proud of myself.
Chris Marquardt [00:04:08]:
Watch Leo fighting two tigers.
Leo Laporte [00:04:11]:
I was gonna like, ta-da! Let's see, export into a PNG.
Chris Marquardt [00:04:18]:
Make it dazzling.
Leo Laporte [00:04:19]:
It's a PNG and it's gonna be called TFOP. It's gonna be right here. Save. Now let's try that again.
Chris Marquardt [00:04:30]:
It's our little photo robot.
Leo Laporte [00:04:32]:
There you go. There we go. There you go.
Chris Marquardt [00:04:35]:
That's better. The future of photography.
Leo Laporte [00:04:37]:
TFOP.
Chris Marquardt [00:04:38]:
TFOP, yeah. You know those, I choose names by names, but not by the acronym. And that's a wrong order.
Leo Laporte [00:04:50]:
Clearly choose by acronym, don't I?
Chris Marquardt [00:04:52]:
TFTTF, I mean, who comes up with stuff like that?
Leo Laporte [00:04:55]:
Yeah, and you've been stuck with that forever.
Chris Marquardt [00:04:58]:
Yes.
Leo Laporte [00:04:59]:
Well, I called that one a Chris. 'Cause I couldn't, but now that's gonna be in the left. So we get 'em both. How about that?
Chris Marquardt [00:05:08]:
Oh yeah. And now you crop the image and now both are gone again. Perfect. There we go.
Leo Laporte [00:05:16]:
Now, that's not what people are here for.
Chris Marquardt [00:05:19]:
Nope, that's not what people are here for. People are here for having their pictures dissected by us.
Leo Laporte [00:05:25]:
Oh, I thought we were here to demonstrate DLSS. Here, Chris, real quickly, we'll get one of our AI guys in the club to DLSS 5 us so that we look good.
Chris Marquardt [00:05:37]:
Go ahead.
Leo Laporte [00:05:38]:
Let's pose. Okay. In moments, the Discord will be filled with handsome images of you and me, unless everybody's sleeping.
Chris Marquardt [00:05:51]:
So DLSS will make that, will do that in real time, right?
Leo Laporte [00:05:56]:
That's the— yeah, that's the whole idea. It turns everything dazzling, or it's kind of this sexy filter, and it's been very controversial.
Chris Marquardt [00:06:06]:
Yeah, and I'm not a video guy. I just heard of it, and it's— it's even video creeps me out a bit, you know.
Leo Laporte [00:06:13]:
Yeah, it should. I think it should. Uh, it certainly really annoyed all the gamers who said that's terrible. We don't want that. It's kind of uncanny valley is part of the problem, right?
Chris Marquardt [00:06:27]:
I think so.
Leo Laporte [00:06:28]:
Yeah.
Chris Marquardt [00:06:30]:
Yeah. Especially in moving pictures and in stills. I mean, we all now have a bit of a radar for is that AI slop, isn't it? And it's getting harder. But in video, I think it's still relatively easy to see if something has been For the time being. Modified for the time being.
Leo Laporte [00:06:53]:
Development. Who knows how long we have. Ah, let's look at our dazzling images. Not our dazzling deepfake, but our dazzling images.
Chris Marquardt [00:07:05]:
We had a whopping 3 submissions this week.
Leo Laporte [00:07:09]:
3? Yes. Well, now Anthony Nielsen and I were at Cape Canaveral in Florida looking at rocket ships And Anthony kept saying, okay, look for dazzling pictures. And I thought, well, gosh, Cape Canaveral shouldn't be hard.
Chris Marquardt [00:07:26]:
But Anthony submitted one, so one of the three is Anthony. Yes, I did my homework. Yes. Well, you did. We did.
Leo Laporte [00:07:33]:
I feel like I should recuse myself generally from these things. Uh, here we are in the photo group, and that's it. That's it.
Chris Marquardt [00:07:44]:
But that also means that every single one of them—
Leo Laporte [00:07:47]:
every one of you gets picked. Let's start with Anthony's. Should we start with Anthony's?
Chris Marquardt [00:07:52]:
No, let's start from the right. Let's start from the right.
Leo Laporte [00:07:54]:
Oliver in the Snow.
Chris Marquardt [00:07:56]:
Oliver in the Snow.
Leo Laporte [00:07:58]:
Oliver. Oliver.
Chris Marquardt [00:08:01]:
And I've looked up dazzling because, you know, the translations of words into German, dazzling has like at least 5 different meanings. They're somewhat not the same.
Leo Laporte [00:08:14]:
It's a German word, dazzling?
Chris Marquardt [00:08:16]:
No, it's not. It translates to shiny and powerful and sparkly.
Leo Laporte [00:08:25]:
I think generally in English we think of it as blinding light is dazzling. It's when you come out from the dark into the sun, you've been dazzled.
Chris Marquardt [00:08:35]:
That's the interesting thing about this photo because it is not that.
Leo Laporte [00:08:38]:
That's not that. Maybe this guy's German.
Chris Marquardt [00:08:41]:
I don't think so. But I think dazzling can also be the thing on your inside, you know?
Leo Laporte [00:08:46]:
Oh, my inside is dazzled by that car.
Chris Marquardt [00:08:48]:
Maybe that car is the one and only car that that person loves, and therefore that's a dazzling car.
Leo Laporte [00:08:56]:
It's beautiful.
Chris Marquardt [00:08:58]:
So it's your— it can be meta. It can be something—
Leo Laporte [00:09:04]:
The snow was dazzling too.
Chris Marquardt [00:09:06]:
The snow was dazzling too.
Leo Laporte [00:09:08]:
And I do like it that he got the snow to be white. That is non-trivial.
Chris Marquardt [00:09:12]:
That is non-trivial, unless you have a dark car in the picture.
Leo Laporte [00:09:16]:
Oh, maybe that, yeah, the camera went, oh, I know what I wanna think about.
Chris Marquardt [00:09:20]:
The camera knows. Cameras are way too smart these days. Way too smart. No skill required anymore. That's good, thank you.
Leo Laporte [00:09:28]:
Oh, Greg, I know Greg. Greg Bilton did that one on a Sony DSC camera, his RX100. Those RX100s are really nice cameras.
Chris Marquardt [00:09:37]:
Yes, yes, they are.
Leo Laporte [00:09:37]:
Speaking of point-and-shoots. Yeah.
Chris Marquardt [00:09:40]:
All right.
Leo Laporte [00:09:41]:
Thank you, Greg. What else?
Chris Marquardt [00:09:43]:
Second image is about ducks.
Leo Laporte [00:09:46]:
You know what? That is dazzling plumage.
Chris Marquardt [00:09:50]:
Dazzling male ducks. So we see a male and a female duck. And of course, of course, the male duck is the one with the dazzling plumage and the more showy off kind of bird.
Leo Laporte [00:10:05]:
So pretty. I love the iridescence. That you see on some birds like peacocks and mallards. Really beautiful. Yes, really. The sun is— see, that's, that's kind of a dazzling emerald.
Chris Marquardt [00:10:19]:
Well, I think it is, especially, especially with all the sunlight and everything.
Leo Laporte [00:10:24]:
Yeah. And speaking of dazzling, and speaking of dazzling, we want to thank Jane. Thank you. Oh, I know Jane too, our regulars in the club.
Chris Marquardt [00:10:33]:
That's nice.
Leo Laporte [00:10:34]:
Now speaking of dazzling, let's go back and our own, our very own McAnthony McShanielson. There he is, submitted. And I know where he got this too. That is beautiful.
Chris Marquardt [00:10:47]:
And it's a, it's an IMG_7610.
Leo Laporte [00:10:50]:
Oh, of course it is. I know where he took this. This is from Gatorland in Orlando, Florida. And I even think I remember Anthony getting down on his haunches to take this picture of this beautiful flamingo.
Chris Marquardt [00:11:07]:
And I just learned, I just learned a couple of days ago in a, in a YouTube Short that the color of flamingo feathers, the pink color, is not genetic. It's from their, from them eating fish.
Leo Laporte [00:11:23]:
It's from their diets, from their brine shrimp diet.
Chris Marquardt [00:11:26]:
Yeah. And And it seems, well, what that video said, every bird with pink feathers, the pink comes from the diet.
Leo Laporte [00:11:38]:
Really? Because there's no pink in nature.
Chris Marquardt [00:11:41]:
Apparently. I mean, I don't know if that's true, but it sounded very— Isn't that the same way the salmon also?
Leo Laporte [00:11:50]:
Oh, really?
Chris Marquardt [00:11:51]:
Salmon is the same, yes.
Leo Laporte [00:11:52]:
I think you're right because farm-raised salmon is very pale. Unless they feed it stuff to it.
Chris Marquardt [00:11:56]:
Unless they feed it color, which they do.
Leo Laporte [00:11:59]:
Wow, well, well, well.
Chris Marquardt [00:12:01]:
There we go. Nice pink tone, Anthony.
Leo Laporte [00:12:04]:
What are we gonna do to get, okay, here is the DLSS version of, and thank you, Anthony, Anthony leaped in, so he gets two mentions in this show. Are you ready? This is you and me, baby. The DLSS versions of the Photoshop. Look at that. That's a good looking. Now that's dazzling. Actually, we look like those guys who hit themselves in the— yeah, chads. We look like those guys who hit themselves in the cheeks with hammers.
Leo Laporte [00:12:40]:
We've been look-smacked. That's, that's exactly what I prompted. Did you say look-smacked? Yeah.
Chris Marquardt [00:12:47]:
That's what I look like in the morning looking in the mirror. That's exactly what I look like.
Leo Laporte [00:12:51]:
I like to suck my cheeks in.
Chris Marquardt [00:12:54]:
Oh, during the day it kind of all falls apart again, but in the morning when I get up, that's—
Leo Laporte [00:13:00]:
That's how you look.
Chris Marquardt [00:13:01]:
Yes.
Leo Laporte [00:13:02]:
Perfect.
Chris Marquardt [00:13:03]:
Dude.
Leo Laporte [00:13:04]:
Thank you, Anthony. That's very funny. That's very funny. All right, well, this was disappointing, I must say.
Chris Marquardt [00:13:14]:
Yeah. A bit.
Leo Laporte [00:13:16]:
You know, I don't know about what's going on in Germany right now, but people in the United States are consumed right now with other things in their lives.
Chris Marquardt [00:13:25]:
Oh, us too here.
Leo Laporte [00:13:27]:
Yeah.
Chris Marquardt [00:13:27]:
It's this.
Leo Laporte [00:13:28]:
Yeah.
Chris Marquardt [00:13:28]:
This.
Leo Laporte [00:13:29]:
And maybe they just weren't in the mood.
Chris Marquardt [00:13:31]:
It's horrible.
Leo Laporte [00:13:32]:
To take a dazzling photo.
Chris Marquardt [00:13:34]:
Possibly. Possibly. Let's find a different— let's find something more suitable.
Leo Laporte [00:13:41]:
To the fishbowl we go. Chris Markmark.
Chris Marquardt [00:13:45]:
The problem is I don't really have anything sad in here because I took the sad things out. I took the sad things out to have nice things in there. You know, that's how you handle it.
Leo Laporte [00:13:56]:
Well, we don't want to take sad pictures.
Chris Marquardt [00:13:57]:
I'm pulling. Oh yeah. This is going to be difficult.
Leo Laporte [00:14:01]:
Oh boy. Playful.
Chris Marquardt [00:14:04]:
We got to make it playful.
Leo Laporte [00:14:05]:
All right. Look, we got to get out there, folks. I will commit. I will take a— and you are all invited to take a picture, new picture every week for the next 4 weeks. Or you can actually take more than one picture. Take many pictures looking for playful. And when you— he's being playful sticking it on his forehead right now. And when you find a playful image, lick it.
Leo Laporte [00:14:28]:
You gotta lick it and then smack it. When you find a playful image, one that you really like, each week you're allowed to submit one and one only. So pick the best one of the week. And submit it to Flickr.com. Upload it to Flickr.com. You can make a free account if you don't already have one, and then tag it. There's a nice tag feature in Flickr, and the tag this, this, this month should be TGPlayful. That's so we know that this is your submission for that particular photo assignment.
Leo Laporte [00:14:58]:
And then if you're not already a member, join the Tech Guy group. That's a wonderful place on Flickr for people who love photography. You know, I was reading a Reddit post, a sad Reddit post this morning by a photographer who said, "I used to post on Instagram, but it's just, it's just no good anymore for photography. Where do people post?" And I wanted to say, Flickr's still here. There's even an app if you, you know, Flickr is even there.
Chris Marquardt [00:15:32]:
I think they're even planning for a convention in—
Leo Laporte [00:15:37]:
They need to do something.
Chris Marquardt [00:15:37]:
Fall? They're doing something.
Leo Laporte [00:15:40]:
Yahoo practically killed it, and I think that's what happened. And then fortunately, SmugMug, the McCaskills, bought it. Thank goodness. When they bought it, there's no TG Dazzling Group. Let me go to my groups and I'll show you our Tech Guy group. Here it is, the Tech Guy group. 14,000 members, almost 8,000 photos, and of course our wonderful moderator Renee Silverman, who takes your photos and puts them into the group. I think there might have been other dazzling, but people didn't tag them, maybe.
Chris Marquardt [00:16:22]:
I don't know, possible.
Leo Laporte [00:16:24]:
Dazzling photos for sure. Look at that, that's dazzling. Uh, anyway, y'all, we appreciate your photos. Once you get your photo, tag it TG Dazzling, upload it to the Tech Guy group. Renee Silverman, our moderator, will thank you for your submission.
Chris Marquardt [00:16:42]:
And then if you're on Flickr, click the info and streams link, and from there on you'll find the instructions to make sure your pictures are are tagged properly.
Leo Laporte [00:16:53]:
This is a new— everything in there, info and streams right there. It's in the description.
Chris Marquardt [00:16:59]:
And then in there is a description how to submit a photo. There's a Q&A a bit higher up.
Leo Laporte [00:17:05]:
Um, oh, good to know.
Chris Marquardt [00:17:07]:
Okay, so everything's there. If you're not sure how to get your photo in there, that's the place to look.
Leo Laporte [00:17:13]:
Perfect. And thank you.
Chris Marquardt [00:17:15]:
By the way, in the menu, in the menu, there's a mode link. That is the festival there Flickr is doing. Up on the top in the middle.
Leo Laporte [00:17:23]:
Oh, that's new there. I never— yes, Mode.
Chris Marquardt [00:17:25]:
It was just announced.
Leo Laporte [00:17:26]:
Oh, in Minneapolis. Good place for that this fall. Photographers need something real. I couldn't agree more. A place to go show your photography. Oh, there'll be some photographers there. Yes, there'd be a whole bunch of them. You can, uh, share, participate.
Leo Laporte [00:17:46]:
I love this. Good for you, McCaskills. They're— you know what, it's not easy resurrecting something from the dead. And, uh, and Yahoo has pretty much killed Flickr, and McCaskills have had it for a few years now. Now it's time to really bring it back. They've got great ads.
Chris Marquardt [00:18:04]:
I think it's a good time with everything turning more and more virtual. That's a good idea to have that.
Leo Laporte [00:18:11]:
Yeah, mode. All right, well, that was story number 1 in our— there we are in our news. And we should again say, in fact, I will change the lower third to reflect this, that the new word is playful. And we will be— before the show's over, we will give you a date. It'll be probably 4 weeks from today. We're kind of settling into that, if that works.
Chris Marquardt [00:18:36]:
Sounds reasonable.
Leo Laporte [00:18:37]:
Yeah. News.
Chris Marquardt [00:18:39]:
We have a bunch of photo news. First one is for you, Leo. Oh, well, have you ever wished your Leica M lenses would be autofocus?
Leo Laporte [00:18:51]:
No.
Chris Marquardt [00:18:53]:
No. Okay, then it's not for you.
Leo Laporte [00:18:56]:
Really? Because that's the whole kind of like the whole point. It's a rangefinder, right?
Chris Marquardt [00:19:01]:
Right. And, and we're, and we're not talking Leica M lenses on a Leica camera, but we're talking Leica M lenses on Canon RF. Ah, so there's—
Leo Laporte [00:19:11]:
is there an adapter? Is there an adapter that does that?
Chris Marquardt [00:19:13]:
It's, it's about to be released. I have— I don't think I don't think the price is public yet. Yeah, so if you go to the website, there's a video a bit down. They have a whole system where they claim, I haven't seen it actually working. There's a rendered video.
Leo Laporte [00:19:34]:
Oh, so it has a little finger that it puts on the focus.
Chris Marquardt [00:19:36]:
Nope, nope, nope. That's not how they do it. That's not how they do it. It's motorized. It's a motor-driven helicoid. And what it does, it changes the distance of the lens to the camera.
Leo Laporte [00:19:47]:
Oh, that's brilliant.
Chris Marquardt [00:19:48]:
Forwards and backwards.
Leo Laporte [00:19:49]:
So it's like a little bellows almost. Oh, that's brilliant.
Chris Marquardt [00:19:52]:
Sort of. And it apparently is completely integrated with Canon's dual pixel autofocus. It supports the subject tracking, the eye tracking, even aperture control from the camera. And it's supposed to be out in May. No price yet.
Leo Laporte [00:20:11]:
That's amazing.
Chris Marquardt [00:20:13]:
If it works, I've only seen the announcement video. There's this article on PetaPixel. Look at that.
Leo Laporte [00:20:19]:
It's a little bellows going in and out.
Chris Marquardt [00:20:22]:
It is. Yeah. I mean, that's what most lenses do anyway, right?
Leo Laporte [00:20:26]:
Would it be just as precise?
Chris Marquardt [00:20:28]:
It's what most non-zoom lenses do anyway. They move the entire assembly in and out.
Leo Laporte [00:20:35]:
If it's a prime lens, that's how they focus.
Chris Marquardt [00:20:37]:
I, I would think so, yes. It might be different with the zoom lens because those move elements in— not, not all of them in and out, but they have weird, weird motion.
Leo Laporte [00:20:48]:
That's why you have multiple rings and stuff on the— yeah, okay. But okay, okay, I mean, the reason being that Leica glass is widely considered to be superb, right? That's the theory. And so if you want to use this superb glass, especially since older, older Leica lenses are are plentiful and they're just as good. Glass physics hasn't changed much. Electronics has, but physics hasn't changed much.
Chris Marquardt [00:21:14]:
Physics hasn't changed. What has changed is the ability to make more precise lenses from a manufacturing point of view, from a software design point of view. Grinding technology. But also the design of a lens, the whole optical design is easier now because of the software support. But Leica still has an edge. I mean, you will, of course, pay for the brand if you buy Leica, but—
Leo Laporte [00:21:39]:
That's because they've got little German elves with emery, with diamond-encrusted claws.
Chris Marquardt [00:21:45]:
The interesting thing is maybe 10, 12 years ago, I had a guy from Leica on a workshop and he was there somewhere high up in the HR area. And that was during the difficult times for Leica when they were digitizing, when they were switching over from analog up to digital. And he said they have no clue how to do digital yet, but they are the best in the world for optics.
Leo Laporte [00:22:14]:
And that's what matters.
Chris Marquardt [00:22:16]:
And that's— they might not be the best in the world, but they are really among the good ones. So their ability to make glass that renders beautiful images is there. And it's—
Leo Laporte [00:22:32]:
That's why. You spend $8,000 for this. If you're crazy, you know, uh, this is—
Chris Marquardt [00:22:43]:
this—
Leo Laporte [00:22:43]:
when I bought this, this was widely considered by many to be optically the best lens ever made. It's the, uh, 50mm aspherical, um, f/2, uh, Leica lens. And it's, it's a beautiful— the APO Summicron, it's a beautiful lens.
Chris Marquardt [00:23:01]:
Oh, and the way it renders sharpness and out of focus.
Leo Laporte [00:23:06]:
That's what's interesting to me. It's the bokeh as much, you know, as the sharpness. It's also like, is it possible the lens could impact the color? Because I feel like the Leica color is unique.
Chris Marquardt [00:23:19]:
There is definitely something in the glass will impact the color. Glass can have a tint or influence a tint, such as a filter can, and glass does some filtering. So depending on what glass they use and what combinations, it's not perfectly clear even if it's perfectly clear, is what you're saying. Yes.
Leo Laporte [00:23:36]:
And then the thing about a Leica is it has this thing on the bottom that you're supposed to put your finger on, and then it has a— you're not even looking through the lens here, you're looking through a little prism, and you're lining up the vertical lines, which I think is quite precise.
Chris Marquardt [00:23:55]:
And the interesting thing is the entire focal range is, is within like a third of a revolution around the lens. Yeah, so it has to be maybe even a quarter. So in very little space, you go— if you focus through the entire range of the lens, and that is—
Leo Laporte [00:24:09]:
yeah, has to be, I guess.
Chris Marquardt [00:24:11]:
That is fast. That is fast. So if you, if you do street photography, yeah, if you do street photography, you can like almost, almost autofocus with that thing.
Leo Laporte [00:24:19]:
Well, when you get good at the at the rangefinder. Oh yeah, it's hard if you don't have vertical lines. There are some things you kind of have to go, where's a vertical line?
Chris Marquardt [00:24:30]:
But then some, some of that, I mean, with enough experience, and I'm talking 20 years of experience, you will probably— your finger will just go where it needs to go.
Leo Laporte [00:24:37]:
I remember when I first picked up a rangefinder, and I, I think it was O'Mallick or somebody said, here, you want to look at my Leica? And I said, I'm never going to use that.
Chris Marquardt [00:24:47]:
Why?
Leo Laporte [00:24:47]:
That's so hard. Why would you want to do that to yourself?
Chris Marquardt [00:24:53]:
It's, it's a limitation. It's, it's a creativity— no, it's also a creativity booster. By being limited, you'll— you're really thinking about a different mode.
Leo Laporte [00:25:02]:
You're really thinking about what you're, what you're looking at. The other thing is, uh, these have a very— at least this lens and most of my Leica lenses, you have to be pretty far away. The What do you call that?
Chris Marquardt [00:25:15]:
The minimum focal distance.
Leo Laporte [00:25:16]:
Minimum focal distance is, yes, it's pretty long. It's, uh, I think it's, uh, what is it here? It's 0.7 meters. So that's, that's 2 feet. You can't get up close to anything, you know.
Chris Marquardt [00:25:30]:
I've, I have the suspicion that, that if you— I mean, there are a lot of lenses that focus much closer, of course. I have the suspicion that the close focusing lenses that, that means you have to do some compromise in the lens design, and Leica is not making that compromise, and that's possibly why that minimum focus distance is so long.
Leo Laporte [00:25:53]:
Oh, that's interesting.
Chris Marquardt [00:25:54]:
Possibly.
Leo Laporte [00:25:56]:
I've also heard that you never want to open a lens up all the way because it's not going to be as crisp as somewhere in the middle of the range.
Chris Marquardt [00:26:05]:
You know, Leo, if crispness is your goal, then yes.
Leo Laporte [00:26:08]:
Right.
Chris Marquardt [00:26:09]:
But why does it have to be crisp?
Leo Laporte [00:26:11]:
See, I want the bokeh, and so that means—
Chris Marquardt [00:26:13]:
why does it have to be crisp?
Leo Laporte [00:26:14]:
Right.
Chris Marquardt [00:26:15]:
There's a lot of portraiture that, that will benefit from not being too crisp.
Leo Laporte [00:26:20]:
And usually it's not the center that's not crisp, it's the outside, right? That's not.
Chris Marquardt [00:26:24]:
But it's a stylistic choice, right? It's a— it's— it, it will do—
Leo Laporte [00:26:28]:
it will, um, it will give the picture a certain mood if it's not fully That's part of the ineffability of this camera is, you know, I guess if I, uh, if I were smarter, I could say, well, it's this, this, this, and this that makes a Leica look that way. But all I do is I go how it makes me feel, and I can, I can tell there's something different about a photo. My favorite photos have all been taken with a Leica that I've taken, have been all been taken with a Leica.
Chris Marquardt [00:26:58]:
So there you go.
Leo Laporte [00:27:01]:
It's worth it. The day I got this lens, or practically one of the very first photos I took with it many years ago, was of Lisa and her son and a hug. And it's to this day one of my absolute favorite photos. It's just— there's something about it.
Chris Marquardt [00:27:21]:
And tools do influence how we feel about the things that we make with the tools. The tools do have an influence for sure. I've had new gear. I used to be that guy that told you, you don't need that new camera, it's not important. You can take pictures with a pinhole.
Leo Laporte [00:27:39]:
I wish you'd tell me that.
Chris Marquardt [00:27:42]:
Well, there's something true about that.
Leo Laporte [00:27:43]:
Why didn't you tell me that earlier?
Chris Marquardt [00:27:45]:
On the other hand, the number of times I've picked up something completely new and I had to learn my way around it and I had to spend time with it and get acquainted with it. And that's a playful time because you have to play and experiment. And that takes you out of this very focused scientific mood. It has to be crisp and so on. And allows you to be more playful and get different results.
Leo Laporte [00:28:14]:
I would say it puts you back into the beginner mind.
Chris Marquardt [00:28:18]:
Yes.
Leo Laporte [00:28:18]:
You know, when you're a child, everything is magical and new. And getting that feeling again is really worth $8,000.
Chris Marquardt [00:28:27]:
I'm not sure it's worth $8,000.
Leo Laporte [00:28:29]:
But you did talk me into it. And I'm embarrassed to admit this.
Chris Marquardt [00:28:33]:
No, no, no, no, no, no, it takes two. I told you about it, but you let yourself be talked into it.
Leo Laporte [00:28:40]:
It's the same thing because I've always wanted a monochrome camera and I couldn't really justify the very high price that Leica charges for its monochrome bodies. And Lisa asked me, well, why just take a picture with your regular camera and make it black and white?
Chris Marquardt [00:28:53]:
It's different.
Leo Laporte [00:28:54]:
It's a little bit different, not a lot.
Chris Marquardt [00:28:56]:
It's that escape hatch that you don't have. And the moment you don't have that, The moment you don't have this secret door that will allow you to go back to color if you want to, and it's not a real decision. It's black and white. If you take a picture with that camera, you've made a decision and you have to stick with it. There's no way around it unless you take crayons and paint it in afterwards.
Leo Laporte [00:29:20]:
So this compared to the monochrome Leica body, this is the Ricoh GR4 monochrome. Is— was cheaper. And it's, it's, it's a nice little pocket camera, which I like.
Chris Marquardt [00:29:31]:
Cheap per—
Leo Laporte [00:29:32]:
then not cheap per, uh, it's nicely made. I mean, it's really— it's a— it's, it feels like a quality thing, but it's black and white only. And, um, and their images are beautiful. I just trying to describe it to her, and I did. I told her it doesn't have the bare filter, so, you know, you get another stop, and, you know, all the things that photographers say, but what it really feels like is you're taking a picture out of time. It's not in the real world because the real world has color in it. Now you're taking an image and you're taking it out of its time, and you— and it just feels different and looks different. You look at different things in the picture, you look at different elements, you're not looking at the colors.
Chris Marquardt [00:30:12]:
Colors can be a real big distraction.
Leo Laporte [00:30:15]:
Sometimes you want color.
Chris Marquardt [00:30:16]:
Distraction out— if you're taking a distraction out, you can draw color out.
Leo Laporte [00:30:19]:
Yeah, but when you're taking pictures of people's faces This is great, right?
Chris Marquardt [00:30:25]:
So yeah, I, I envy you for that camera.
Leo Laporte [00:30:28]:
You don't have to envy me. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm happy that I was able to spend some of my retirement. And I apologize to my kids who will not inherit this. They'll inherit the camera though.
Chris Marquardt [00:30:40]:
That might be worth it.
Leo Laporte [00:30:45]:
Daddy's spending your inheritance, kids. All right, I'm sorry. Let's move on. What else?
Chris Marquardt [00:30:51]:
Next news item away from Leica. AI generative photography is a thing and it's becoming better and better. And the better it gets, the more it becomes important that we find a way to mark images as human-made, right?
Leo Laporte [00:31:12]:
So even black and white can I saw it the other day, a video made by AI that was to look like black and white vintage black and white film. And it was, so that wouldn't, you can't just say, oh, well, that's too old and old fashioned. No.
Chris Marquardt [00:31:28]:
Of course not.
Leo Laporte [00:31:29]:
No.
Chris Marquardt [00:31:30]:
And it's getting harder to tell apart and that erodes trust in photography. You used to have, a photo used to be a source of trust and it's, No longer. So there's a couple of initiatives. One is the content authenticity initiative.
Leo Laporte [00:31:49]:
We've interviewed the people behind that and it's on this camera. It's on this like—
Chris Marquardt [00:31:53]:
It's called Content Credentials and it signs the picture cryptographically when you take it. And then the thing is there's a tool chain and the tool chain means you put it into Photoshop or Lightroom or wherever.
Leo Laporte [00:32:07]:
And that gets stripped right out.
Chris Marquardt [00:32:09]:
And the problem is that those signatures and the metadata and stuff gets lost. So the more pieces of the chain that photos typically go through support content credentials, the better. And one important piece that professional photographers have used in the longest time is called Photo Mechanic. Photo Mechanic is—
Leo Laporte [00:32:31]:
I use this. I have a license for this. I like this. Yes. An intermediate step that you would use between taking the picture and importing into Lightroom or Photoshop, you'd use Photo Mechanic as your raw picture.
Chris Marquardt [00:32:46]:
It's a way to filter and sort and tag and work with some metadata and then you import it into Lightroom or whatever you use. And it's very fast. And so, so perfect for photographers who have to dig through thousands of pictures at a time And that's, that's their tool of choice. And they've just announced that they will support Content Credentials. So fantastic, because they, they will also modify your pictures by putting different metadata in and changing things around. So yeah, so that's a, that's a good sign, because one of the tools that all, almost all professionals use. Is getting support for that. So more, more pieces of the chain support Content Credentials or will support it.
Leo Laporte [00:33:34]:
This is great. It might make me come back to Photo Mechanic, actually. I started using it because Lightroom was so slow when you're trying to go through a bunch of RAW files. And so Photo Mechanic is a very quick way to go through your photos and, and rank them.
Chris Marquardt [00:33:53]:
And if you shoot, I don't know, hundreds of photos a day, if that's your job, then that becomes a time factor. If you only do that like every once in a blue moon, then it's not as important. But time is money in that regard.
Leo Laporte [00:34:12]:
Well, or if you're a spray and prayer like I am.
Chris Marquardt [00:34:16]:
There's nothing wrong with that. So you have lots of photos, you want to weed out the bad ones quickly. You want to tag them, you want to rate them. Um, yeah, so in that chain we have now another piece of the puzzle.
Leo Laporte [00:34:31]:
Good, because already, uh, Lightroom supports that and Photoshop support that, right? They support credentials. So now you can use Photo Mechanic, as one often does, in conjunction with those tools, and you won't lose your credentials. That's good. I like it.
Chris Marquardt [00:34:50]:
Yeah. Next up, Capture One.
Leo Laporte [00:34:56]:
One of the tools that I use.
Chris Marquardt [00:34:58]:
Yeah. One another, another image editor that photographers use as an alternative to Lightroom because Lightroom Classic used to be the one, the big one. And Capture One has taken up some of that market.
Leo Laporte [00:35:16]:
It's Adobe Camera Raw is still probably, I don't know, what do you think, the best? So many of us shoot in RAW. You know, when I shoot on a Leica, it's a DNG file. On a Canon, it's a, I think a CRW, CR1. Those RAW photos have all the data, but they don't have any rendering. There's no way to look at it. So you have your, Tool has to have a way to render it so that you can see it, uh, and different photo RAW renderers have different results. Do most people still agree that Adobe's is the best, or is that up for debate?
Chris Marquardt [00:35:55]:
I think it's a matter of taste, and it— and the differences aren't— are not huge.
Leo Laporte [00:35:59]:
Capture One has its own workflow, which is quite good.
Chris Marquardt [00:36:02]:
Yes, yeah, they do. And, uh, um, the thing I want to talk about Right here is something that does not really— I think the color is not the big thing here, but the workflow is the big thing here. Because if you're a film shooter, um, it was always a bit of tool hopping if you— for especially if you use Lightroom, because Lightroom doesn't natively do negative conversion, right? If you shoot film, you have a negative, a color negative, or a black and white negative, and you'd have to convert that on the outside of Lightroom in a separate tool and then import it because Lightroom would—
Leo Laporte [00:36:41]:
So what were you using to convert? Because you shoot a lot of film. What were you using to convert?
Chris Marquardt [00:36:47]:
Um, something like Photoshop or Affinity Photo, um, or your version.
Leo Laporte [00:36:54]:
I mean, when I was using film, I would bring it to photo processing and they give you a CD.
Chris Marquardt [00:36:59]:
You can do that as well, yes. But I'm, I'm, I scan my control Yeah. So the thing is Capture One has just announced native handling. Oops. Was it gone here for a second?
Leo Laporte [00:37:15]:
Yep. Native something handling, but I think you meant film.
Chris Marquardt [00:37:19]:
Film handling, native scan handling. So they have this entire workflow now where you Where you photograph, like you take a macro lens, you have a copy stand, you have a backlight, and then you photograph your negatives. That's the way most people do it these days.
Leo Laporte [00:37:40]:
Oh, really? That's interesting.
Chris Marquardt [00:37:42]:
It goes straight into Capture One. And then in Capture One, you would do a white balance, a crop, and then there's a new button and it's called Convert Negative. And what that will do is It will invert the negative and it will invert color negatives with good color. That's the key thing. Inverting a black and white is just an inversion. But if you go into, let's say, Photoshop and you invert a color negative, you get a weird magenta cast on it. No, not even magenta, cyan bluish cast on it because A color negative is not just an inversion, it needs color processing. And Capture One has that now built in.
Chris Marquardt [00:38:30]:
So you don't have to tool hop, you can stay in this one tool, you can do every single step of your negative conversion in Capture One. And it's non-destructive, as it should be. So your raw file is still your raw file. You can go back, you can undo everything, and it stays that way. So the whole negative conversion is just a processing step on top, as opposed to, as opposed to what I'd have to do with Lightroom, do an external conversion and then import it into Lightroom.
Leo Laporte [00:39:06]:
Capture One is probably the closest replacement to Lightroom, right? Or maybe, is that true?
Chris Marquardt [00:39:14]:
Yeah, I would think so.
Leo Laporte [00:39:16]:
I've not really—
Chris Marquardt [00:39:18]:
I haven't really spent a lot of time with it, but from all I've seen, it's a pretty good replacement.
Leo Laporte [00:39:26]:
As far as I could tell, was for tethering. So if you're shooting in a studio, especially if you're doing a model shoot, if you're doing a commercial shoot for a magazine or a client, you want to tether it to a computer so that you can see the images right away. The client can watch as you're taking photos. And so a lot of people, I think that was their— you could— I guess you can do that in Lightroom, but a lot of people were doing it in Capture One. In fact, the name kind of implies that, that that's, that's what's really going on. But now their processing tools are just as complete as Lightroom or Photoshop. Very powerful tool. I have a Capture One license.
Leo Laporte [00:40:02]:
In fact, it came with my Sonys, uh, just for use with Sony, uh, Ross. Yeah, so this is the guy, this is his photo enlarger he's using to take pictures of the negative. Wow, wow. And so that's interesting.
Chris Marquardt [00:40:18]:
And that, and that's how you do it these days. So Capture One is now— if, if, if I was a film photographer, Capture One would probably be my first choice given the feature set now.
Leo Laporte [00:40:30]:
I don't know if there's— they're a subscription model. I think you pay outright, but they update it regularly, so it might as well be a subscription model. You have to always buy the new version. People just hate what Adobe's done. They just really hate it.
Chris Marquardt [00:40:45]:
And, and it, and it shows in Adobe's current stock price. So yeah, they're not doing too good.
Leo Laporte [00:40:50]:
That's too bad. They really wanted to do that.
Chris Marquardt [00:40:53]:
People don't like, don't like being treated that way.
Leo Laporte [00:40:55]:
So no, yeah, understandably. Um, and Lightroom is has its flaws. It's slow, it's not very fast. Um, and then they, I mean, they forked it into two different versions, which was a really weird thing to do.
Chris Marquardt [00:41:10]:
And the main reason I'm still with Lightroom Classic is that there's like 15— no, there's, there's like 17, 18 years of metadata.
Leo Laporte [00:41:19]:
Oh yeah, right.
Chris Marquardt [00:41:19]:
And edits. So getting that out into something else is possible, and in some ways, but that's, that's quite a lock-in, quite a tough one.
Leo Laporte [00:41:32]:
Yeah, that's probably why they haven't killed it. I'm sure they would much prefer you to use Lightroom CC. Yeah, but, uh, because that— and you know what they're really selling with that is, is cloud storage, which I think— I don't know, I just, I, I think I understand photographers' unhappiness about it all. Anyway, anyway, what else?
Chris Marquardt [00:41:55]:
Let's talk about an interesting, an interesting looking camera. So a few weeks ago we had the CP+ photography show in Yokohama in Japan. I'm glad I didn't know. And one of the interesting things here, what I found interesting, is that Canon showed two camera prototypes, one they even had out for people to play with. A pretty rough prototype. And there's no idea. I haven't heard anyone talk about if this will become a camera or not. If you open the link and look at the camera, tell me what that reminds you of.
Leo Laporte [00:42:40]:
This is funny because This is what car makers do at auto shows. They show concept cars.
Chris Marquardt [00:42:48]:
This is not a concept camera. This is an early prototype. It's not even on a concept level yet. That's the interesting thing is it's rough.
Leo Laporte [00:42:56]:
It's rough.
Chris Marquardt [00:42:56]:
And photographers played with it. That's exactly what I said. It's a waist-level viewfinder camera.
Leo Laporte [00:43:04]:
You shoot it, you hold it at your waist and you look down through the viewfinder from above.
Chris Marquardt [00:43:08]:
You do. And then it has some some mirror in. They showed two different prototypes with a different outside design, I guess. And yeah, they had a tethered one and photographers, there's several videos out there and people will play with it. I have no idea about the details of that.
Leo Laporte [00:43:27]:
Who uses this? Is this studio for studio photography, portraiture?
Chris Marquardt [00:43:33]:
I have the feeling from what I've seen that this is not a high-level thing that they're building, if they're building it at all. I don't know if it will become a product. It drew quite a crowd.
Leo Laporte [00:43:47]:
Oh, I bet.
Chris Marquardt [00:43:48]:
Because a company like Canon would typically not show something as early in the development. It feels like from what I've seen and from what I've heard people say about it, it seems to feel more like a like a, like a, like on a toy camera level.
Leo Laporte [00:44:11]:
Is this kind of a meme camera is what you're saying? This is for the kids. I could see the kids. I mean, they're, they're all into this kind of retro feel, aren't they? I could see the kids being interested in this.
Chris Marquardt [00:44:24]:
Possibly. I don't know. I don't, I don't think Canon will try to compete with Hasselblad on a medium format level. I don't think that's what this is, but it certainly has the look and the feel of it and the The waist-level viewfinder, I mean, that's for a lot of, especially younger photographers, that's a novelty. That's something they've only seen in old documentaries. And so this is, I think there's something cool about that.
Leo Laporte [00:44:56]:
Yeah.
Chris Marquardt [00:44:57]:
If it becomes a product.
Leo Laporte [00:44:59]:
Well, of course, I bought a Rolleiflex just because I wanted to get that experience of shooting from the And then you always have trouble getting it in, getting it level because it moves in a different direction than you expect. Yeah.
Chris Marquardt [00:45:11]:
Takes practice.
Leo Laporte [00:45:13]:
But some of the greatest photographers in the world have used those. And then of course Hasselblad made these very high-end medium format cameras this way. And in fact, that was the camera they used on the moon.
Chris Marquardt [00:45:24]:
And choosing and using a camera like that actually changes the pictures you get because first of all, you photograph from a different level, not from eye level, but from very belly button level. So it's a lower perspective. And then what you also get is, a lot of the time, you get people not looking at the camera, but looking above the camera, because they will look at your face. And that changes the kind of feeling of the picture.
Leo Laporte [00:45:54]:
I used my Rollei once at Christmas, and exactly what happened. It was just— it was kind of a disaster. And, uh, and I developed their film because it was a film camera, and I thought, well, this has been an interesting experiment. It seems like a good idea, but maybe— I mean, the kids, they look at— they like Lomo photography, Lomography. They like the instant, you know, cameras. They like these kind of weird, oddball old formats. So maybe this is for the kids.
Chris Marquardt [00:46:27]:
And if you look at the photos of Vivian Maier, which is a street photographer who was rediscovered years ago, she shot with a Rolleiflex a lot, and her photos just show that all the time, that people look above the camera.
Leo Laporte [00:46:44]:
In a way, that's kind of what she was going for, right? She— or we don't know what she was going for, actually. It was kind of an odd—
Chris Marquardt [00:46:53]:
She was a bit of a recluse.
Leo Laporte [00:46:55]:
Yeah.
Chris Marquardt [00:46:55]:
With the photography.
Leo Laporte [00:46:56]:
Uh, I, I suspect that she liked that kind of weird look of it. Unfortunately, her site's down, so I can't show you her.
Chris Marquardt [00:47:09]:
It's a, it's a, it's a bit of a candid style of photography because people will not connect the camera that you have in your hand with you.
Leo Laporte [00:47:20]:
There's a very famous shot of her reflected Yes. In a window. And you see she's shooting it from waist level. Here's a picture of her with her actual camera. There you go. Yeah.
Chris Marquardt [00:47:36]:
She took a lot of selfies.
Leo Laporte [00:47:38]:
Yeah. Before we called them selfies.
Chris Marquardt [00:47:41]:
She invented the selfie. Yeah.
Leo Laporte [00:47:46]:
The story about her, if you haven't read it, is fascinating.
Chris Marquardt [00:47:49]:
It's very fascinating.
Leo Laporte [00:47:50]:
Somebody found all these photos in an attic. She never was known in her time. And yet, amazing, amazing photos.
Chris Marquardt [00:48:00]:
Right.
Leo Laporte [00:48:01]:
So maybe this new Canon will create a whole new Vivian Maier.
Chris Marquardt [00:48:07]:
Possibly. Let's stay with film for a second, or with something that is akin to film, and that I found very funny. Because it's not a thing. So PetaPixel had an article about a company called PolarPro who makes a filter and they call it the Portra filter.
Leo Laporte [00:48:31]:
Oh, after the famous Portra film.
Chris Marquardt [00:48:34]:
They claim that their Portra filter makes photos look like they were shot on Portra film.
Leo Laporte [00:48:39]:
Which is a Kodak film, right?
Chris Marquardt [00:48:41]:
It's a Kodak. Kodak Portra is a color negative film, a very nice rendition of colors and contrast and so on. And that's a desirable film, a desirable look to shoot. And Petapixel had an article about it, and then the comments were kind of not as positive. And then they had a second article, that's the one you have open right now, where they cover some of the critique. Because if you look at the results from their Portra filter, which claims to emulate a Portra look, and you look at actual Portra film, which you can find a few examples further down on this page. So these are what you see here are the pictures that are supposed to look like Portra. And now scroll a bit further and this is what Portra looks like.
Leo Laporte [00:49:34]:
Portra is much richer, not aged.
Chris Marquardt [00:49:36]:
It's a different, very different look. So It's kind of funny that they are selling you a filter that supposedly emulates portrait, but it does not. Not at all.
Leo Laporte [00:49:49]:
They should have called it Dreamy, not Portrait.
Chris Marquardt [00:49:53]:
Have you heard of Pro Mist filters?
Leo Laporte [00:49:55]:
No.
Chris Marquardt [00:49:56]:
So there's a type of filter that will raise the blacks, it will make everything slightly misty looking. That's what it is.
Leo Laporte [00:50:05]:
That's more Technicolor, right? It's more—
Chris Marquardt [00:50:08]:
it is more Technicolor. It's more— it's more vivid. It's more, um, more contrasty.
Leo Laporte [00:50:14]:
Yeah.
Chris Marquardt [00:50:15]:
Uh, more— more saturated in colors. Completely not what they claim.
Leo Laporte [00:50:20]:
I like the portrait look. I mean, it's a beautiful look.
Chris Marquardt [00:50:23]:
It's also nice. Yeah, it's also nice for portraiture.
Leo Laporte [00:50:28]:
Yeah, people like it for portraiture because it's not so detailed. So it doesn't bring up all the—
Chris Marquardt [00:50:33]:
So the question is, can a filter emulate the look of a film? And the answer is no, it can't.
Leo Laporte [00:50:40]:
But you point out a filter can change the look quite a bit, right?
Chris Marquardt [00:50:44]:
It will, but it's not doing that. You can't have portrait look by just putting a filter on your camera. Okay. That's wishful thinking. That's wishful thinking. Go get some actual portrait film. Get some medium format Portra, put it in your Hasselblad, take some—
Leo Laporte [00:51:02]:
Is it only medium format Portra?
Chris Marquardt [00:51:04]:
No, no, it comes in different.
Leo Laporte [00:51:05]:
35mm.
Chris Marquardt [00:51:06]:
Different sizes, yeah. And then if you edit, if you want to edit your photos, here's the next one. Canva. You know Canva?
Leo Laporte [00:51:16]:
I do. We just talked to their evangelist, actually.
Chris Marquardt [00:51:21]:
There you go. Photo, I don't know, it's not a photo editor, it's a design website and everything runs in the browser. And they have just introduced a feature that I found interesting and it's called Magic Layers. So what do you do if you get a photo, just a plain flat photo that has people on it and text and foreground and background and so on, and someone asks you to change something? You would have to, they have a hard time taking everything apart, right? You have ways to remove the background. Yes, you have ways to extract people from a photo, but it's all single steps. What they now do is they automatically make your photo into layers.
Leo Laporte [00:52:11]:
That's amazing if it can do it really well.
Chris Marquardt [00:52:15]:
I've played with it. I've tried it. Yes, it does work. And it's better than I thought it would be.
Leo Laporte [00:52:21]:
So this is basically AI at work, huh?
Chris Marquardt [00:52:25]:
A lot of it.
Leo Laporte [00:52:25]:
Yeah.
Chris Marquardt [00:52:26]:
And if you have text on that, that text gets turned into editable text.
Leo Laporte [00:52:33]:
What? Editable?
Chris Marquardt [00:52:34]:
It's not just the text.
Leo Laporte [00:52:36]:
In the same font?
Chris Marquardt [00:52:38]:
Bit close enough, I guess.
Leo Laporte [00:52:41]:
That's pretty cool.
Chris Marquardt [00:52:42]:
And now you can drag and drop that person more to the left and that cactus more to the right and that building, make it a bit taller, change—
Leo Laporte [00:52:51]:
you can see designers love this.
Chris Marquardt [00:52:54]:
It takes, it takes, it takes 100 steps of skillful editing out of this thing and makes it easy for you to work with.
Leo Laporte [00:53:03]:
Otherwise you need a razor blade and glue.
Chris Marquardt [00:53:07]:
That's even earlier. Yes, that was how it was done. Yes, totally.
Leo Laporte [00:53:12]:
Wow.
Chris Marquardt [00:53:13]:
I remember a friend of mine, he's a video editor. He had Like when you would edit some documentary and you'd have some old photos that you would put in the documentary, just showing a flat photo was boring. So what he would do is he would cut out the person in the photo, fill in the background, put that whole thing in After Effects on different layers, and then just have a slight parallax motion and bring it alive, add some interest to this. But he spent hours cutting out people and filling in the background. This is just like drag and drop and done. So I guess, I guess we're looking at another part of the future of editing.
Leo Laporte [00:54:01]:
Yeah.
Chris Marquardt [00:54:01]:
This is in Canva. Others will do the same thing. That's a given. Pretty cool. They're the first one to have cracked that.
Leo Laporte [00:54:09]:
Pretty cool.
Chris Marquardt [00:54:10]:
Good enough. Yes.
Leo Laporte [00:54:12]:
I think that's really neat, actually. Certainly a lot better than having to do it by hand.
Chris Marquardt [00:54:18]:
It is. And then last but not least, I brought a little interesting piece of film history. So, um, there's a video that came out in 2003, and it's a skate film directed by Spike Jonze. And it is skaters in a skate park kind of thing, but their skateboards are invisible.
Leo Laporte [00:54:48]:
Oh, that's cool.
Chris Marquardt [00:54:50]:
It's a very cool effect. This is 26 years old.
Leo Laporte [00:54:55]:
How did they do it back in the olden days?
Chris Marquardt [00:54:58]:
That's the thing. How do you do that? That's the interesting part of it. It's wonderful to see them glide through the air on invisible skateboards and do jumps and slides and grind rails and stuff, the stuff you do.
Leo Laporte [00:55:15]:
Again, with scissors and glue, right?
Chris Marquardt [00:55:19]:
Not really. Not really. So someone has looked into that. It's probably been known, but I didn't know about it. And I wondered how did they do it? Because it's very, very convincing. Turns out this entire thing is is of course a production. It's not someone— it looks like someone has just shot some video. So they had green screen.
Leo Laporte [00:55:41]:
Oh, green skateboards.
Chris Marquardt [00:55:44]:
The green skateboards. But what happens if you just have the green skateboards? Then you have holes in your footage if you cut that out. So what they used is they used a motorized camera. So they would have the same camera motion twice, once without the skaters and once with the skaters. So now you have the identical background. And all you have to do is then take the skateboards out and make a composite of those two. Very brilliant. And again, 23 years ago.
Chris Marquardt [00:56:26]:
So, I found this just an interesting bit of film magic, magic editing history.
Leo Laporte [00:56:38]:
That's very cool. Although 2003, that's kind of that era they were doing stuff with motorized cameras. I remember going to NAB, the National Association of Broadcasters shows and seeing virtual sets back in that time from actually even earlier. Because we were looking at it for TechTV, so it would have been the late '90s or really early 2000s. And you can have a green screen background with a person in front of it, like a weather person, but you can't move the camera because the background won't move, but the person will— the parallax will change. So you need to have the camera slaved to the background so that when the camera moves, the background moves as well. Kind of a similar idea to this. So yeah, this was, this was what people were doing around that time, uh, for a variety of reasons.
Leo Laporte [00:57:30]:
But yeah, you know, nowadays you got weather people standing on 3D renderings of the city and the rain's coming down and all sorts of stuff. We've come a long way in special effects, but things have changed 25 years ago. That's— this is kind of— this was state-of-the-art green screen and motion control cameras. They use motion control cameras to make Star Wars, actually.
Chris Marquardt [00:57:53]:
True.
Leo Laporte [00:57:54]:
Yeah, it's how you—
Chris Marquardt [00:57:56]:
anyway, did a lot of that stuff. That's the news.
Leo Laporte [00:57:58]:
Very cool news.
Chris Marquardt [00:58:00]:
Let's look at a couple of questions. Do we have a few more minutes for—
Leo Laporte [00:58:02]:
we sure do. It takes your time. Yes, absolutely. All right, I didn't mention that you can go to tfttf.com/ptq. That's Tips from the Top Floor, tfttf.com. PTQ is Photo Time Questions. And now Chris with PTA.
Chris Marquardt [00:58:18]:
We said this before the show and now we're looking at, yeah, the PTAs, the answers. Paul Holder asking, is there any news or new state of the art with regard to light field imaging? That one camera never really took off, but the idea seems promising.
Leo Laporte [00:58:36]:
Oh, that was really big. Was that Foveon?
Chris Marquardt [00:58:39]:
Lytro.
Leo Laporte [00:58:40]:
Lytro.
Chris Marquardt [00:58:42]:
Lytro. Lytro camera. They had this one camera that looked like a big lip lipstick kind of thing. And then the next one, the second one was a bit more camera-ish looking.
Leo Laporte [00:58:54]:
That was really weird, wasn't it? That was, and the idea was you were capturing images in multiple planes, right? Something like that.
Chris Marquardt [00:59:04]:
Sort of, yes, sort of. And what you could do then, you could focus the image after the fact. So if you had the focus off, you could focus at something close in the image or far in the image. And the big problem with that and the technology is that while it was kind of promising, it also had one big problem and that was resolution because they had like, I think, 16 layers and that means that 16, only a 16th of the resolution that went into the sensor and that ended up not being that attractive. And then that feature of choose your own focus. Required a server that the pictures were on and a plugin on your web page that would then pull the images and display them. And it was never, it was never as useful as you thought it would be. And then later on, there was the L16, which was another camera that promised something similar, and it had 16 cameras on the front with different focal lengths and a lot of smart mathematics behind it, a lot of calculation that didn't really turn into anything that consumers would like using for a variety of reasons.
Chris Marquardt [01:00:24]:
So at this point, I'm not aware of any of this being something, but I think in the age of machine learning and AI, we might see something like that again that might become a bit more A bit more interesting, but to be honest, it's like with your black and white camera. It's this make a decision, stick to it.
Leo Laporte [01:00:48]:
Yeah.
Chris Marquardt [01:00:48]:
Don't move all the decisions to the end of the process. Try to put them in the front of the process.
Leo Laporte [01:00:53]:
They call that focusing in camera. I like the idea.
Chris Marquardt [01:01:00]:
Yeah. So it's, it's, it used to initially, I've found it really cool, and I thought it was a very appealing thing to have. And then a friend of mine bought the first Lytro, and he used it for 20 minutes, and then it sat on the shelf.
Leo Laporte [01:01:19]:
You kind of do that now in computational photography with iPhones.
Chris Marquardt [01:01:25]:
Yes, and they are not doing it by actually changing the focus, but by Well, there's a little of that, but mostly it's defocusing.
Leo Laporte [01:01:36]:
It's everything that's focused, and then it's defocusing.
Chris Marquardt [01:01:39]:
You have a virtual out-of-focus area, and then you tap on something on the photo, and then everything in front of it and behind it gets machine learningly defocused.
Leo Laporte [01:01:50]:
It has its drawbacks as well, and it's not perfect. And yeah, so although, you know, machine learning Isn't always bad. Sometimes it's quite good.
Chris Marquardt [01:02:08]:
Can I have that photo?
Leo Laporte [01:02:12]:
Sometimes it just speaks to the inner you. I don't know what is going on here. I keep losing you. I'm going to add you to all of these. There we go. Now you're—
Chris Marquardt [01:02:25]:
I'm back. He's back. Yeah. Another question by MJ in Monterey Park.
Leo Laporte [01:02:35]:
Hi MJ.
Chris Marquardt [01:02:36]:
That's an interesting one. Where does AI start and digital artistry end? He writes, we use Luminar AI and Luminar Neo, but don't consider ourselves AI photographers. It's easier to work with than other programs such as Photoshop or PaintShop or GIMP. Tools have been improving for decades, but AI to us is Bad faith art, it learns by stealing and consumes so many natural resources that could be used better. So I think there's a line between a tool, between AI as a tool and a generator. And it's about authorship.
Leo Laporte [01:03:12]:
Well, that's a good, that's a very good distinction. Tool versus generator.
Chris Marquardt [01:03:18]:
And the problem is in our discussion, we all throw this in the same bucket. It's the AI bucket. Now, as a tool, it makes things easier. And it's always been that way that photography and later on digital art, they have always been evolved through new tools, better tools. And this starts early, like with an exposure meter. That was a new tool. And early photographers, an exposure meter was frowned upon. And then there came something like autofocus.
Chris Marquardt [01:03:49]:
Do you remember the time autofocus came along in the '70s? Late '70s, that was frowned upon by "real photographers" in air quotes.
Leo Laporte [01:03:56]:
We had a Polaroid camera that had a sonar element at the top of it. It was very expensive. I remember my dad, who was, I guess, kind of an early gadget hound, bought it. And that was, as far as I know, the earliest I remember of autofocusing. Yeah.
Chris Marquardt [01:04:13]:
And I don't know, retouching used to be As you said, razor blades and glue and so on. And now it's a click of a button and you cleaned up your photo. So software, if software helps us refine the picture we took, the picture we saw, what we intended, then that is still our work. That's what I feel.
Leo Laporte [01:04:37]:
I can give you an example actually using Luminar. So if you use Luminar to take you know, you have a picture and that beautiful blue sky in it, but you wanted the sky to be a little darker, you could use a tool to make the sky a little darker. But Luminar also has a tool to replace the sky.
Chris Marquardt [01:04:54]:
Replace the sky. Yes.
Leo Laporte [01:04:56]:
If you had a picture, as many of mine are, because you don't, when you're traveling, get to choose the sunshine, where it's a kind of overcast day, and you go, boy, it'd be so much better if there was a blue sky and puffy clouds. Luminar will let you do that. but that's not your image that you're putting in there. That's somebody else's photos of a sky.
Chris Marquardt [01:05:15]:
And that's the thing that the art, the digital artistry, let's call it that. I think it comes, there's a line somewhere where the system is not serving you and helping you improve things, but it's the moment it starts inventing content. The basic building blocks of your photo, when it makes these decisions for you, an aesthetic decision for you, that's when it ends. And that line is not a hard line. I might be the one that might be in a different place.
Leo Laporte [01:05:51]:
I mean, there are people who say, even as you say, I mean, it's our understanding has evolved that using Photoshop on a picture is somehow not that the picture should be exactly as it happened in the camera. But then wait a minute, because even then the camera has software in it that is changing the picture. The picture doesn't come into your camera in color, for instance. Right?
Chris Marquardt [01:06:17]:
And the interesting thing is, I mean, this is a very flowing kind of differentiation here, because I know an artist who who uses Midjourney to create photography, but he doesn't just put a prompt in there and say, make a nice picture of X, Y, and Z. No, he spends like 5 hours on a photo honing that prompt and making, deciding every single detail. And it's his photo in the end because he spent time designing it with the help of these tools.
Leo Laporte [01:06:48]:
So I don't think it's helpful to reject it out of hand. I think it's the It's very fuzzy now, the distinctions. And that's art. If it makes an image that's pleasing, that's art.
Chris Marquardt [01:07:02]:
Right, right. And I think where it becomes, for me personally, becomes an issue is when you outsource the authorship, when you have someone else make creative decisions on your behalf.
Leo Laporte [01:07:15]:
Yeah, it's got to be your choice. But even then, tools are in a way outsourcing. I think a lot of times people judge art by how long it took or how much labor it took, which is not a good way to judge art.
Chris Marquardt [01:07:29]:
You know, I've had this often, even myself, and I'm actually writing a chapter for a book on that. We often confuse the amount of effort that went into a photo by how good a photo is. Like, I could spend 5 hours climbing up a mountain, carrying my heavy large format camera and film, and it's early in the morning. I have to be there at sunrise, so I start at 5 AM and I'm up there and everything. That photo, that photo and I, we have been through a lot together.
Leo Laporte [01:08:00]:
But is it a great photo?
Chris Marquardt [01:08:04]:
I like it a lot, but I like it for not for the— not the reason I like it is not because it's an amazing photo, but because of what I've gone through to get to this photo.
Leo Laporte [01:08:15]:
They call it the IKEA principle. Do you have IKEA in Germany?
Chris Marquardt [01:08:18]:
Of course we do.
Leo Laporte [01:08:20]:
So the idea is you love your IKEA furniture because it was so hard to put it together. You have an investment in it.
Chris Marquardt [01:08:28]:
And then I take my iPhone and I take a snapshot and it's full of emotion and it's amazing and it makes me cry when I look at it. Which is the better photo? Right? We mix things up a lot. In that regard.
Leo Laporte [01:08:45]:
Now, it's an interesting point that Paul, who was just asking that first question, brought up in our Discord chat. Hello, Paul, and hello, Club Twit members. Is that in a way, photography is making, at least unconsciously in our mind, a kind of promise that this is an image made from life, that this is a capture of something that actually happened, but it never really was. Yeah, I don't even know if it ever was that way. Right?
Chris Marquardt [01:09:12]:
Of course not. But— oops, here we go.
Leo Laporte [01:09:19]:
I dropped and I came back. I'm back. It's— yeah, it's not you, it's me. Actually, it's Restream. It's not you, it's them. Uh, so that— I understand that psychologically we kind of think of photography as being, uh, a record of real life. I don't know if it ever really was.
Chris Marquardt [01:09:38]:
People were doing like double exposures Right from the beginning, right? It was never like that. Aren't they the Cottingley fairies? That's right. Lots of fabricated photography. But it used to be hard. That's the thing. It used to be hard to do these things. So they were somewhat rare. And the photo used to be a stand-in for this is truth, even though it wasn't, but it was close enough.
Chris Marquardt [01:10:05]:
And that's not the case anymore. So We're losing trust in photography, which we might, we probably shouldn't have had in the first place. But I think it's just a matter of the times are changing and we have to develop new antenna, new radars to figure these things out.
Leo Laporte [01:10:26]:
This is why I'm fascinated by AI because it really moves the ground under our feet.
Chris Marquardt [01:10:30]:
It does. It does. Yes.
Leo Laporte [01:10:32]:
And that is unsettling. As you know, if you've ever been in an earthquake.
Chris Marquardt [01:10:38]:
I have at 6 AM, and I woke up and thought, who's shaking my bed? And then I went back to sleep.
Leo Laporte [01:10:45]:
Earthquake?
Chris Marquardt [01:10:46]:
I was 7 years old.
Leo Laporte [01:10:47]:
Oh, well, yeah. If you're walking down the street and there's an earthquake, it is extremely unsettling because you expect the ground not to move. Yes. And when the ground moves, it shakes more than your body. It shakes your beliefs. It shakes your fundamental principles of the world. And AI is kind of an earthquake right now.
Chris Marquardt [01:11:07]:
Then that's a great thing to end this show. No, we have one more question. One last question. One last, very last question. Yes. And that is by our friends Demilente. And they ask, would it be possible to include monthly photos from Leo and yourself? It would be nice to see how you guys interpret the word as well.
Leo Laporte [01:11:30]:
We should show more of yours.
Chris Marquardt [01:11:32]:
Ideas and examples of what could have been. In the radio days, back when this was on the radio, you would give tips like shoot through a paper towel tube for different perspective of things. We remember little things like that.
Leo Laporte [01:11:45]:
That's true. Yeah, you would do some fun stuff. Well, I showed a few pictures that I took, not necessarily the best pictures ever, but because I don't know, was that during the show or before? I think it was before the show. I'll do it real quickly right now because I got this new camera and I've been really enjoying— and this was just a walk I took the other day taking black and white pictures. You mentioned it has a red filter, which I turned on because there's something— it's hard, it's a subtle difference.
Chris Marquardt [01:12:14]:
What changes the contrast? The sky goes darker.
Leo Laporte [01:12:18]:
Yeah, I like the red filter. So these are— this is just on a walk that I took the other day, and I just had the camera with me, and I just took some pictures. But this is what I like about it, because this is a scene I've seen every day for the last 30 years of my life, but you see it a little bit differently. This is a missed picture. I wanted to get the guy and the dogs, but I kind of like the dogs coming down the street just by themselves, so I, I didn't throw it out. For some reason, somebody left some cymbals from a drum kit, uh, on the path. Okay. And then the mask, a mask hiding on somebody's stoop.
Leo Laporte [01:12:58]:
I did this quickly because I didn't want them to catch me taking a picture of their front stoop. And then I really, I kind of liked, and I think this is that red filter contrast, how the shadows and the light, yeah, uh, interplay. And that's what you see a lot more in black and white. You don't, you don't get distracted by color. And I kind of enjoyed that. So I've been Admittedly, my pictures are not your picture quality. I just, I'm a duffer.
Chris Marquardt [01:13:24]:
What is defined picture quality?
Leo Laporte [01:13:26]:
You take great pictures.
Chris Marquardt [01:13:28]:
You'd be surprised if you looked into my Lightroom, the secrets of my Lightroom basement. There's so much bad stuff in there.
Leo Laporte [01:13:39]:
It's good to throw out the bad ones. You're seeing the raw stuff.
Chris Marquardt [01:13:41]:
It's good to not show the bad ones. That's what takes an amateur and a professional apart is Learning to not show the bad ones.
Leo Laporte [01:13:50]:
Well, I'm showing all of them, good and bad. I like this one because this is, uh, right behind you right now, and it's something I see in color every day. But again, in black and white, you capture the light, and it's a different, uh, it's a different quality, and it becomes timeless. That's what I— that's exactly what I said to Lisa. These are somehow timeless. They're taken out of time and put into a different world, a, a monochrome world. So That's why it's kind of just gave me a new lease on life. That's sometimes it— that's the idea of new gear.
Chris Marquardt [01:14:20]:
It'll give you a new perspective on your photography and some motivation to go out and play.
Leo Laporte [01:14:26]:
And an empty wallet.
Chris Marquardt [01:14:27]:
And we want to be playful.
Leo Laporte [01:14:30]:
I shall take some black and white playful pictures too this week, and we will put them on our Flickr. I hope you will too. You can upload a picture a week. We're going to be 4 weeks out. When does that make the next show, Anthony Nielsen? So you have 4 chances. You upload them flickr.com, tag them TG Playful, and then send them to the Tech Guy group. Uh, and make sure they're new pictures. We want you— the whole point of this is to get you out there taking new pictures.
Chris Marquardt [01:15:00]:
April 17th.
Leo Laporte [01:15:01]:
April 17th, we shall reconvene.
Chris Marquardt [01:15:03]:
I'm here.
Leo Laporte [01:15:04]:
I will be here too. We will reconvene for another thrilling, gripping photo time with Chris Marquardt. You'll find Chris at discoverthetopfloor.com. I would have mentioned it's still all in Germany.
Chris Marquardt [01:15:17]:
Yes, it is.
Leo Laporte [01:15:19]:
Okay, as soon as it is— as soon as he leaves his native land, we'll let you know if he's doing workshops out elsewhere. But— and he's come to the States, he's traveled all over the world, Svalbard, Bhutan, for photo expeditions. And when you start doing that again Or even just the Christmas markets of Bavaria. I will let everybody know, but you can find out ahead of time at discoverthetopfloor.com. Uh, he is N-U-B-U-I on Flickr if you want to see his photos. N-U-B-U-I, Nubui, on Flickr. He does upload— you still upload photos there?
Chris Marquardt [01:15:55]:
Yes, occasionally. Yeah, I'm, I'm distributing things in different places these days.
Leo Laporte [01:16:00]:
My best photos, and I haven't uploaded anything lately, uh, are all at leo.camera, which is a SmugMug site, the McCaskills' original site. Before they bought Flickr, they had SmugMug. And leo.camera has mostly travel pictures from, from my past, but I'm hoping maybe there'll be some black and white images, uh, being uploaded there soon. Actually, some of these are not so old. Some of these, uh, and it even says if they're from, um, they're from, um, the Leicas or whatever cameras. There's my mom. I, I do like black and white. This is though black and white with a color, uh, you know, taken out of it.
Leo Laporte [01:16:46]:
And I think that this might have been even better had I had it, uh, that monochrome camera. So I shall— nice, very nice. There's another— this was— these are all taken— we have a event in town called American Graffiti Days. And these are all taken at American Graffiti Days there, which is a car show based on the American Graffiti movie, which was shot in Petaluma. And so that's an option, uh, opportunity for me to take some fun photos like these.
Chris Marquardt [01:17:13]:
So these are really nice photos of Lisa. Isn't that nice? Looking through something, framing her in that window.
Leo Laporte [01:17:20]:
Yeah. And it says it— you can't really read it, but it says, uh, enjoy the something.
Chris Marquardt [01:17:25]:
I can't remember, but, uh, yeah, it's a strong photo.
Leo Laporte [01:17:29]:
Very fun. It's fun. That's a Leica. And these are, these are all— this is when I'd— for— that's my mom. These are when I first— and I submitted this one way back when, um, when I first got, uh— it's a fun photo of some of our local characters. It's, you know, I love taking pictures even if I'm not the best in the world. It's, it's a very enjoyable— so leo.camera is where I put my best, my best stuff. Uh, thank you, Mr.
Leo Laporte [01:17:57]:
Mark Wart. What a pleasure for having me talking about my favorite hobby with my— one of my favorite photographers. Next time, Playful, April 17th. We'll see you then, Chris.
Chris Marquardt [01:18:11]:
Playful. See you then. Thanks.
