TWiT+ Club Shows 771 Transcript - Photo Time With Chris Marquardt #22
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. It's time for photo time! Photo time time! It is time of the time for photo time! Hello everybody, welcome to our Club TWiT members. Mwah! I give you a big smooch on the cheek, forehead. Doesn't have to be that intimate, but I do give it to you because I'm very grateful for you, because we wouldn't be able to do things like this if it weren't for you. I'm also grateful to this man I've known since, uh, good Lord 2005, smooch to you. Moin moin to Chris Marquardt, our photo guy.
Chris Marquardt [00:00:36]:
Moin moin.
Leo Laporte [00:00:38]:
Moin moin. Uh, it is photo time. We do this once a month. Chris actually is going on vacation, so we're doing a little bit early, uh, this month, but that's okay. And I'm also going to be in New York next week at this time, so we kind of— this was the only thing we could really do. So hello, Chris.
Chris Marquardt [00:00:55]:
Hello, Leo.
Leo Laporte [00:00:57]:
Uh, the assignment— and I apologize for not being here. Thank you, Anthony Nielsen, for filling in for me last time. Uh, I was waiting for the electrician, or someone like him, to come and install, uh, some special plugs. He was scheduled right in the middle of photo time to show up and install some special plugs so I could run a giant uninterruptible power supply so we wouldn't lose power Because a month before, we had lost power during Security Now, only for a minute, but it was enough to take down my network, and it took a half hour to get everything back up.
Chris Marquardt [00:01:30]:
Well, the question is, did the electrician arrive in that time slot? Because the craftspeople rarely do when you say—
Leo Laporte [00:01:36]:
No, I know. This guy is good. He's been my personal electrician since we built the original Brick House studio, so he is really good. He did. It was a little embarrassing because he comes upstairs and he says, yeah, Leo, I installed that the last time I was here, the 20-amp circuit, the special plug. It's right there. And I went, oh, whoops. Well, thank you for showing up.
Leo Laporte [00:02:04]:
We'll see you. We had other things for him to do, but it was like, I am an idiot because he had done it already because we had had— we had blown some fuses. He said, well, let me put in a couple of 20-amp circuits for you. For all the lights and everything. And that comes with— it's a special kind of— in Germany, your plugs are different anyway, but it's a special plug that has one up and down and one sideways. And, uh, I thought I didn't have such a thing.
Chris Marquardt [00:02:29]:
He said, yeah, no, you guys need a dryer outlet.
Leo Laporte [00:02:32]:
It's a little— it's smaller than that. It's still normal 120 volts, which is our standard in the United States.
Chris Marquardt [00:02:39]:
Oh, you guys with your 120. I know you're Flimsy 120.
Leo Laporte [00:02:42]:
Flimsy.
Chris Marquardt [00:02:43]:
Flimsy.
Leo Laporte [00:02:45]:
But it needs a special heavy gauge wire. He actually had, last time he was here, drilled a hole through the floor and everything to put it in. And I don't know why I just, I didn't put two and two together. And I looked at the plug and I said, oh yeah, it's got both. I can, yeah. But it's a good thing because then last week or the week before during Intelligent Mesh, actually it was during Windows Weekly, The lights behind me went out, which is a sign, because I don't have them on backup, it was a sign that, um, the power was out. And I was able to keep doing the show somewhat in the dark, but the lights stay on, the internet stays on, the computers stay on. Hallelujah! So it was lucky I put it in, but I apologize.
Leo Laporte [00:03:25]:
That's my way of saying I'm— I had a good reason for it. I apologize. Uh, sure. After he visited 1:45, I could have stopped in, but Anthony had it by then.
Chris Marquardt [00:03:39]:
We had plenty of fun. It was good.
Leo Laporte [00:03:41]:
I was still red in the face from embarrassment.
Chris Marquardt [00:03:44]:
It's like, oh, okay.
Leo Laporte [00:03:47]:
Thanks, Victor. Victor's the best. So smooth was what y'all decided. Now, the thing is, I'm really just— I'm okay, disappointed in you. No, not you, Chris.
Chris Marquardt [00:04:00]:
Don't be.
Leo Laporte [00:04:01]:
The viewers. How many submissions do we get for the smooth assignment, Mr. Markwart?
Chris Marquardt [00:04:09]:
Well, one. One?
Leo Laporte [00:04:11]:
One? Who was that one? But that's a guaranteed winner.
Chris Marquardt [00:04:17]:
Sort of. Then we filled it up a bit. Rene Silverman added one and I added one. You should see 3 actually.
Leo Laporte [00:04:25]:
I don't see 3, I only see 2.
Chris Marquardt [00:04:26]:
Oh, I think you need to be logged in.
Leo Laporte [00:04:29]:
Ah, now I see 3. Yeah, I'm not logged in. I just, I had to refresh. I'll log in.
Chris Marquardt [00:04:34]:
Yeah, that's okay.
Leo Laporte [00:04:35]:
While we talk about you people. You let me down, buddies.
Chris Marquardt [00:04:42]:
Anyway, I let me down because I could have submitted a smooth photo. No, we're a week early. We are one week early.
Leo Laporte [00:04:48]:
So it's only 3 weeks.
Chris Marquardt [00:04:50]:
And, uh, you, you know, you know what they say, nothing would ever happen if there wasn't the last minute. We took the last minute away from people. So, right.
Leo Laporte [00:04:59]:
That's why I didn't do one. If I had had one more week—
Chris Marquardt [00:05:07]:
I should have like one of those bat phones to call you in emergency cases.
Leo Laporte [00:05:12]:
Leo, emergency!
Chris Marquardt [00:05:13]:
Leo, we need photos!
Leo Laporte [00:05:14]:
We need photos! We need photos stat! Yes. Anyway, uh, that's lovely photos. For before our next one, so I'm gonna be in New York next week. I have some— I've I've taken some wonderful pictures in New York. I like New York. So that might give me an opportunity. And then I'm gonna go to Southeast Asia in a month. So I should have plenty of photos.
Leo Laporte [00:05:35]:
So if you can, make the subject for next month be rice paddies, will you? Is that in the bowl?
Chris Marquardt [00:05:42]:
I don't think it's in there. Later in the news, I'll have a gadget for you that will make you take even better photos.
Leo Laporte [00:05:51]:
Well, God knows.
Chris Marquardt [00:05:53]:
There you go.
Leo Laporte [00:05:54]:
I, as, as you know, it's for me, it's not the photographer, it's the gear.
Chris Marquardt [00:06:00]:
It's always the gear.
Leo Laporte [00:06:01]:
It's the gear.
Chris Marquardt [00:06:02]:
Always the gear makes you a good photographer.
Leo Laporte [00:06:03]:
Actually, and I will talk about the new Apple iPhone, which has a gear, but that's for later. Let's look at, look at, let's look at our winner.
Chris Marquardt [00:06:12]:
Let's look at our— no, let's, let's start with a, let's start with a photo of this weird Nubui guy.
Leo Laporte [00:06:19]:
This Nubui, that's— that sounds familiar. Who's Nubui?
Chris Marquardt [00:06:23]:
That's the colorful one.
Leo Laporte [00:06:24]:
Ah, smooth transitions. You don't sort your books by color, do you?
Chris Marquardt [00:06:30]:
These are not books, these are crayons, oil crayons.
Leo Laporte [00:06:33]:
Oh, that's pretty. I like that.
Chris Marquardt [00:06:35]:
And they're not even mine, but I came across them and I love the way these are sorted into kind of a rainbow thing, not quite, but So, very nice. Yeah, to take a photo. And interestingly enough, this is an iPhone photo, um, with a, with a 1x camera, the 24mm. Do you see how that bulges out in the middle?
Leo Laporte [00:06:59]:
Yeah, what's that?
Chris Marquardt [00:07:00]:
That cabinet, that's barrel distortion. This lens is horrible. That's the wide angle.
Leo Laporte [00:07:06]:
Is that the wide angle?
Chris Marquardt [00:07:08]:
No, it's the 24mm. It's the 1x lens.
Leo Laporte [00:07:10]:
It should not be distorted like that.
Chris Marquardt [00:07:12]:
Which is kind of wide angle and it was pretty close and it's a 16 Pro and it's old and—
Leo Laporte [00:07:19]:
You think computationally they would fix that because that's a trivial thing to do computationally.
Chris Marquardt [00:07:23]:
I thought they would, but I used the standard camera. It's, I think, not even raw. So I'm, yeah, I'll have to figure that out. I'll probably, you know, you know what nerds do in that situation? They go to the bathroom, they find tiles and then they use those to figure out the lines. So.
Leo Laporte [00:07:42]:
It's pretty funny. I would just say it's so smooth, it's swelling with pride.
Chris Marquardt [00:07:47]:
Yeah, probably. No, I was just, I was just very happy to see colors that way. And yeah, so good choice. That was my smooth contribution.
Leo Laporte [00:07:58]:
And then Renee Silverman, our beautiful, wonderful moderator, without whom the Tech Guy Photo Group would not exist. How long she's been the moderator? For a long time.
Chris Marquardt [00:08:10]:
Oh, for years, for years.
Leo Laporte [00:08:12]:
Thank you, Renee. An unpaid position that really the only thanks she gets is during the show. Oh, Renee, I love it.
Chris Marquardt [00:08:24]:
It's titled Shroom.
Leo Laporte [00:08:26]:
Shroom.
Chris Marquardt [00:08:28]:
It's kind of smoosh, smoosh, smooth.
Leo Laporte [00:08:32]:
I love that.
Chris Marquardt [00:08:34]:
So that's, uh, apparently growing in her. garden or something.
Leo Laporte [00:08:40]:
The thing I— and this is one of the things I love about photography is sometimes in life we ignore, you know, we, we, we don't pay attention. Everything is blurred over. We, we're moving so fast we don't see the little details. And it's photography, so it gives you a chance to slow down and look and pause. And that's what she did.
Chris Marquardt [00:09:01]:
Exactly the point. Yeah, the, the, the And it's about attention. It's about noticing things. And the attention that we spend while, let's say, scrolling a feed is not the same kind of attention that leads to good photos.
Leo Laporte [00:09:18]:
No, it's exactly the opposite. Exactly.
Chris Marquardt [00:09:21]:
So attention pointed at the right things is your key to good photography.
Leo Laporte [00:09:32]:
Yeah. It wouldn't be a bad life motto. It might really, with 2 words, say everything you need to know to go through life is just pay attention.
Chris Marquardt [00:09:44]:
Pay attention. And the second thing, which is also key in photography, but in so many things, is make decisions.
Leo Laporte [00:09:53]:
Oh, that's the hard one.
Chris Marquardt [00:09:55]:
But you have to make decisions. In photography, you have to if you just press the button. If you let other things make the decisions for you, like your camera makes a lot of decisions for you.
Leo Laporte [00:10:09]:
It does.
Chris Marquardt [00:10:09]:
Or if you refuse to, let's say, go through your photos and make decisions on which can stay, which do I delete, which do I work on, which is important. If you don't make these decisions, an AI will make this decision for you, and that will remove you from your photography. So if you want to be a better photographer, it's absolutely clear. You have to call the shots, literally and figuratively.
Leo Laporte [00:10:35]:
New motto, new bumper sticker: pay attention, make choices.
Chris Marquardt [00:10:42]:
Yeah, yeah.
Leo Laporte [00:10:44]:
That's just 4 words. I think we could fit that on the bumper sticker.
Chris Marquardt [00:10:46]:
I think that works out.
Leo Laporte [00:10:48]:
That's all you need to do in life.
Chris Marquardt [00:10:50]:
Everything.
Leo Laporte [00:10:51]:
Yeah, maybe Stick with your choices once you make them.
Chris Marquardt [00:10:57]:
I think I think so too.
Leo Laporte [00:10:59]:
Liz is very decisive, and she always yells at me because she says, you're hot and you're cold, you're in and you're out, you're up and you're down. That's actually a Katy Perry song.
Chris Marquardt [00:11:08]:
But I think changing your, changing your mind on something is fine if there's a good reason for it. If there's no reason for it, hey, then she's right, uh, yelling at you. For sure.
Leo Laporte [00:11:19]:
She's very decisive. I like— I take my time and like to really consider the options, and it looks wishy-washy to her, but eventually I come to a conclusion. But I like to— I like to think about all the possibilities. Maybe that's not— yeah, I think for photography that's okay. It's just maybe you're a slower— I've said this before, this— the longest trip I ever took was driving up the island of Tasmania with a half dozen photographers. Every 5 seconds, it's like, wait, stop, there's a cow. Hold on, wait a minute, there's a tree. Every— they were paying attention, maybe too much attention.
Leo Laporte [00:12:02]:
So yeah, pay attention, make choices.
Chris Marquardt [00:12:05]:
Have you heard of the paradox of choice?
Leo Laporte [00:12:08]:
No, what's that?
Chris Marquardt [00:12:10]:
The paradox of choice is a It's pretty much about if you have too many choices, you will be less happy than if you have fewer choices because you will spend so much time trying to make the choice rather than going, yeah, it's good enough.
Leo Laporte [00:12:27]:
That's Lisa's point of view is that even if the decision is wrong, it is better to have made the decision.
Chris Marquardt [00:12:35]:
And there's nothing wrong in deliberating over something It's just, I think, a matter of—
Leo Laporte [00:12:40]:
You can do too much of it.
Chris Marquardt [00:12:41]:
The amount.
Leo Laporte [00:12:42]:
I think dither. Do not dither. You have that word in German? Dither? You know what that means?
Chris Marquardt [00:12:50]:
I know that word only in a graphical, in a photography context, in a computer context.
Leo Laporte [00:12:56]:
Oh yeah, dithering. You know, but the—
Chris Marquardt [00:12:59]:
But I can understand what it means. Yeah.
Leo Laporte [00:13:01]:
Yeah, you know what it means.
Chris Marquardt [00:13:03]:
Don't be too dilly-dally about things.
Leo Laporte [00:13:05]:
Yeah. Let me see, I'm gonna look it up.
Chris Marquardt [00:13:07]:
To fuzz over things.
Leo Laporte [00:13:09]:
Okay, it is a— Merriam-Webster says the state of being undecided. And then your technical concept, a form of noise which is intentionally applied to randomize errors which occur in the processing of both digital audio and digital video data. That's dithering. So they're not—
Chris Marquardt [00:13:30]:
So it's the random noise where those 2 come together. Yeah, somewhat.
Leo Laporte [00:13:34]:
Yeah. And the obsolete verb dither is to— it's like shiver— to tremble, shake, or shiver with cold.
Chris Marquardt [00:13:42]:
You know, I'm, I'm a fan of linguistics, of, uh, etymology, finding out what words mean, where they come from, what the roots— what they, what they have in common.
Leo Laporte [00:13:52]:
I bet dither sounds like it might be Anglo-Saxon.
Chris Marquardt [00:13:56]:
Doesn't sound, uh, like it came from our French We don't have a similar word in German, so, but that doesn't mean anything. It could be old.
Leo Laporte [00:14:04]:
Oh, you must have something. German has a word for everything.
Chris Marquardt [00:14:07]:
Oh, we do have words for that, but it's none that sounds similar or looks similar.
Leo Laporte [00:14:12]:
What is the etymology? Now you got me. I'm looking up the etymology.
Chris Marquardt [00:14:16]:
Welcome to the etymology show with Chris and Leo.
Leo Laporte [00:14:19]:
It is from Middle English, from the Middle English dideren, to tremble. It's related to tremble.
Chris Marquardt [00:14:29]:
German, to tremble is zittern. Dither, zitter. Yeah, maybe a common English root there. Yeah, yeah, potentially.
Leo Laporte [00:14:39]:
To tremble or shake. Huh.
Chris Marquardt [00:14:43]:
Anyway, uh, anyway, we have one more photo.
Leo Laporte [00:14:46]:
No more dithering, let's get on with the show.
Chris Marquardt [00:14:49]:
Let's, let's look at, let's look at Joseph's photo.
Leo Laporte [00:14:52]:
This is the actual submission.
Chris Marquardt [00:14:54]:
Titled Ferry.
Leo Laporte [00:14:56]:
Oh, it's— those are smooth. Those seats are smooth.
Chris Marquardt [00:14:59]:
Yeah, I think, I think, I think that's what, uh, he— but he didn't put any descriptions on that.
Leo Laporte [00:15:04]:
I just like the picture because the lone guy by himself. It's got a bit—
Chris Marquardt [00:15:08]:
it's got something, something— who would I compare that to? Look, looks like it's, it's, it's right up my alley. It's, it's one of those— there's lots going on, but everything is, is, is in sequence and in a grid, sort of. And then there's one human element, as in the human in that picture. And that makes him— I'm sure if he had panned a bit to the right, there would have been more people, but he decided to show this as a lonely single person, the last person, last man on earth kind of thing going on here.
Leo Laporte [00:15:49]:
So Larry says, I recognize it. It's the Staten Island Ferry. I ride it to work every Mm-hmm. But this wasn't your picture, right, Larry? This is somebody else's. You know, there's a very popular right now, the concept of— here's another word— liminal spaces. Do you know that word?
Chris Marquardt [00:16:12]:
Yes, yes, yes.
Leo Laporte [00:16:13]:
So liminal is dream, like dream state. And is it? Well, I don't know. What are liminal spaces?
Chris Marquardt [00:16:22]:
my understanding is it's an in-between space.
Leo Laporte [00:16:25]:
Yes.
Chris Marquardt [00:16:25]:
It's, it's not a space where you stay. It's a, it's, it's a, it's an, it, it's the space between two, like, like in a, in a parking garage. There's the parking garage, there's the inside of the hotel, and then there's a liminal space in between these corridors and things like that.
Leo Laporte [00:16:41]:
Yeah, there's a movie, very popular movie out right now.
Chris Marquardt [00:16:44]:
Yes.
Leo Laporte [00:16:45]:
Called Backrooms. That's all about the liminal spaces that are just out, out of reach. Um, it's, you know, this does have a liminal kind of feeling. It does, doesn't it?
Chris Marquardt [00:16:57]:
Yeah, yeah, it does.
Leo Laporte [00:16:58]:
It feels a little bit like a liminal space, like a dream.
Chris Marquardt [00:17:04]:
Well, it's a transitional space of sorts. It's a ferry. Like, you, you live on one side, you go on the ferry. Yeah, transition.
Leo Laporte [00:17:11]:
That's true.
Chris Marquardt [00:17:11]:
And then you end up on the other side. So yeah, it certainly works.
Leo Laporte [00:17:15]:
And because it's just one person in that whole Smooth space.
Chris Marquardt [00:17:20]:
Yeah, but when I saw this first, I thought, meh, sort of, it's a photo. But then, you know, even—
Leo Laporte [00:17:27]:
You realized we only had one.
Chris Marquardt [00:17:29]:
No, if you look at the— bring it up, bring it up again. If you look at the photo, um, color contrast-wise, it's almost monochrome. Yeah, but then there's this blue and the yellow part of the seats, so you have a color contrast. The lights are in the warm spectrum, the seats in the front are in the warm spectrum. Even the windows have this yellowish tint to them. So it's pretty much a 2-color picture, which simplifies it, which makes it just more like restful to look at.
Leo Laporte [00:18:04]:
It grows on you.
Chris Marquardt [00:18:05]:
This is a photo I would hang up on the wall somewhere in a space where people are more anxious to Oh, more of these. I like dentist's waiting room. That's the place where this photo should be.
Leo Laporte [00:18:18]:
Feels like a dentist's waiting room a little bit. Or me waiting for my concierge physician to show up.
Chris Marquardt [00:18:26]:
That's the same kind of thing. Look at this photo, go, um, and then everything will be good.
Leo Laporte [00:18:34]:
Oh, very nice. Well, I know we only had really 3 submissions but they were 3 really fun to look at and we got a lot out of it. Now, you know what comes next, ladies and gentlemen, we go to the fishbowl.
Chris Marquardt [00:18:49]:
The fishbowl.
Leo Laporte [00:18:49]:
Which is a liminal space of its own.
Chris Marquardt [00:18:52]:
Filled with— yeah, sort of a transitional thing, right?
Leo Laporte [00:18:59]:
Yes.
Chris Marquardt [00:18:59]:
We have— oh, I like this one too.
Leo Laporte [00:19:07]:
Refined.
Chris Marquardt [00:19:08]:
Refined.
Leo Laporte [00:19:08]:
Oh, I think that should be fun. I think that should be fun. Refined. Wow, I like that. Okay, okay.
Chris Marquardt [00:19:20]:
Refined. There's lots in there.
Leo Laporte [00:19:22]:
Next time it's refined. So, the way this works, first of all, it doesn't work at all if you don't submit photos and we're— and it's for your own damn good because Though this is not a competition, there are no prizes. The whole idea of this, and we've been doing this, Chris and I, since, I don't know, 2009 or something, a long, long time, is to get you out and about and taking pictures. And so having an assignment a lot of times helps us. Just all you need, a little nudge, just a little bit. Get out there. And you know what? You got 4 weeks. The way this is gonna work—
Chris Marquardt [00:20:03]:
5 weeks?
Leo Laporte [00:20:04]:
5!
Chris Marquardt [00:20:04]:
We have an extra week.
Leo Laporte [00:20:06]:
5 weeks. You can submit up to 1 picture a week, but they have to be since today. They have to be new. You have to— since right now. So since— if it must be dated September 11th after 13:30 Pacific time. Then, then that's a new photo. That's how we know. 'Cause with the— Sure, everybody goes through old photos and finds something refined, but that's not the point.
Leo Laporte [00:20:39]:
The point is to go out with that in your head, in the back of your mind, refined in your mind, and look and pay attention and be decisive and make a choice.
Chris Marquardt [00:20:53]:
There's 2 things to that.
Leo Laporte [00:20:54]:
Chris is thinking, I can tell.
Chris Marquardt [00:20:55]:
No, no, no, I'm in a different headspace because I've just handed in the manuscript for that book and it's—
Leo Laporte [00:21:02]:
Oh, congratulations!
Chris Marquardt [00:21:04]:
Lots of things, yeah, it's coming together.
Leo Laporte [00:21:07]:
Yay!
Chris Marquardt [00:21:09]:
So an assignment is a good thing. That's one of the reasons we do assignments because they give you a reason to get off your butt go out, take a photo. That's the main reason for it. On the other hand, 5 weeks is a very long time.
Leo Laporte [00:21:27]:
Yes.
Chris Marquardt [00:21:28]:
And the thing that a lot of us photographers are fighting with are those inner voices. There's one voice, and that's your inner critic. That's your inner— I like to call him your PR guy. Right? It goes back very, very long, like into prehistoric times. Just imagine you are a member of a group, you're hunters, you're living in a cave, and being thrown out of that group is deadly for you, right? You need to be in that group. It's important for your survival. So there is this voice in your head that wants you to stay in the group, that wants to make sure that you are not thrown out. And that voice will tell you things like, oh, what if they laugh?
Leo Laporte [00:22:24]:
Right.
Chris Marquardt [00:22:25]:
What if someone looks at me weird because I'm kneeling down to take a picture? What if— what if they laugh? That's pretty much the main thing. Can't be cool. This is an old program that's in our heads, and it was at one time so essential. But the problem is that that voice doesn't know anything about photography. And the worst that could happen now isn't that, I don't know, we're going to be eaten by a saber-toothed tiger. The worst thing that happens nowadays is to potentially get to not get a like or to get a negative Instagram comment.
Leo Laporte [00:23:09]:
Right.
Chris Marquardt [00:23:11]:
So it's our job to understand that this voice is not really helpful these days. So giving someone too much time, and that's the thing, these voices take some time to warm up, to start the argument. So what I do in workshops is I often give people no time. It's like, okay, be back in 5 minutes with photos. So they have no time to start that inner discussion about, ooh, what if? And that really changes things. So 5 weeks of time, that's an added challenge. That long time is an extra challenge that you guys have. It makes it harder.
Chris Marquardt [00:23:52]:
Yes?
Leo Laporte [00:23:53]:
You said people put it off to the last minute.
Chris Marquardt [00:23:56]:
So don't. Maybe, maybe go out. Maybe don't wait 5 weeks to do it. Maybe go out now after this show. Go out after this show is finished, take the pictures, hand them in, and then you have, you have kind of, uh, over— what's the, what's the term for that? You have outsmarted that inner voice.
Leo Laporte [00:24:22]:
Outsmart your inner voice. Take your pictures today. Verona wants to know, he's watching on, uh, on YouTube right now, and he says, I'm new around here, how do we submit? I'm glad you asked, Verona. Very good question. How do we submit? Well, here's the deal. We have this Flickr group. Do you know about Flickr? Flickr is a great site for sharing your photos. It's been around for 100 years.
Leo Laporte [00:24:47]:
Well, and I know that because we've been using it for our show for about 100 years. And, but it's still here and it's still great and I love it. And it's now owned by SmugMug, which, who are real photographers. So they're gonna take good care of it from now on, which is great. So it's free to join. There is a pro membership. Both Chris and I have longtime pro members, but I don't know, let me just see how long I've been a— I've been a pro member forever.
Chris Marquardt [00:25:13]:
Forever.
Leo Laporte [00:25:14]:
Forever, ever, ever. So first thing to do, go to flickr.com and sign up free and look at the pictures. There's lots of wonderful, wonderful, wonderful pictures. But then you're gonna want to go to a group. You're gonna want to go to the Tech Guy group, and you'll know you're in the right place. You see my picture. I was a little younger. Sure, I know.
Leo Laporte [00:25:43]:
And, and you see that this is, this is the Tech Guy group because there are 14,008 members. What? 7,900 photos, 357 discussions. It's been very, very busy. You'll also know that you're in the right place because the wonderful Renee Silverman is the moderator. She's putting new pictures up all the time. There's a lizard. Is that your picture? That's a great lizard.
Chris Marquardt [00:26:07]:
And the next assignment is right on that page. If you look in the middle of your screen, there it says the assignment, the time, and there's instructions how to do it. So, there's no excuse. It's all in there.
Leo Laporte [00:26:20]:
So, what you're gonna do, you're gonna join Flickr and then you are gonna tag— well, first you're gonna go out and take pictures and you're gonna find some pictures that are just right for refined. We don't tell you what that means, by the way. You have to figure out what that means, refined. Could be an oil refinery. I don't know. Could be a very— it could be a professor at a classical music performance. It could be— I don't know what refined means to you. That's it.
Leo Laporte [00:26:47]:
That's for you to decide. Then you take that perfect picture. Well, no, don't worry. It doesn't have to be perfect. You just take a picture. Once you find one that you go, yeah, that's— I like that one. That's all you— it has to be something you like. Then once a week you can submit that picture to the Tech Guy group.
Leo Laporte [00:27:05]:
So you take it, you upload it to Flickr. It is— this is important— you tag it TG Refined for Tech Guy Refined. That way we know it's your submission for this group and for this assignment. TG Refined, all one word. And that of course is on the front page. So, you know, that's the easiest way. to see what the assignment is for this week. It's not there yet because we're still doing the show, but it will be.
Leo Laporte [00:27:33]:
Uh, and then you can upload it and you could do one a week. So that means you get 5 shots at this. I want to see 500 photos. That's what I want to see because one is not enough. One is, one is sad. One is very sad. They're also—
Chris Marquardt [00:27:49]:
make my life hard. Make my life hard. Yeah. I want you to make this hell for me. to choose between so many pictures.
Leo Laporte [00:27:56]:
That Godzilla is from one of our members, RB19. That is a great— see, you could have submitted that for smooth. That is a smooth Godzilla. Anyway.
Chris Marquardt [00:28:06]:
I think Godzilla was in the last week's—
Leo Laporte [00:28:09]:
Oh, was that rugged?
Chris Marquardt [00:28:10]:
Assignment, yeah.
Leo Laporte [00:28:11]:
Rugged, yeah. Yeah, it's pretty rugged too. Yeah, and that's the thing, it has to be new. Can't reuse it. So, new pictures, one a week. Tag it TG Refined, upload it to the Flickr, and then to the Flickr Tech Guy group. And, uh, in 4 weeks, 5 weeks, we will get together again and, uh, Chris will pick 3 that he likes a lot to talk about. Okay, Varuna, I'm expecting great things from you, Varuna.
Leo Laporte [00:28:41]:
Hello, Danny Green. He says, I keep missing the show, just caught it today. Welcome. Good to see you. I knew a Danny Green when he was a young man. I don't know if it's the same Danny Green. Um, I know his dad Fred and his mom, but I don't know if it's the same Danny Green. Uh, what is Anthony saying? No event after this, Chris, which means we can keep going.
Chris Marquardt [00:29:06]:
I was checking if we have a hard out at the top of the hour, but we don't. That's good.
Leo Laporte [00:29:10]:
No, we can keep Really? You think we're gonna fill, uh, fill more than an hour, huh?
Chris Marquardt [00:29:14]:
I had no idea. We can always cut it short.
Leo Laporte [00:29:18]:
We do not need to cut it short.
Chris Marquardt [00:29:19]:
I brought stuff to talk about.
Leo Laporte [00:29:21]:
Good. Yeah, so that's the first half of the show is photo and the photo assignment and your photos, and we love that. And please keep them coming. We just really appreciate those photos. They're fantastic. And no one will laugh at you. No one. We will only say, wow, that's great.
Chris Marquardt [00:29:37]:
Yep.
Leo Laporte [00:29:37]:
Now the second— there's another— there are 3 parts to this show. So that's part 1. Part 2 is photo news. Chris brings some interesting stuff to talk about. I have a question for you about the new iPhone, so I'm gonna add that in. And then we do photo time questions, and I don't know if we have any. If we don't, here's a chance for you to submit them. Go to— it's right there at the bottom of the screen if you're watching the video— tfttf.com/ That's tipsfromthetopfloor.com/phototimequestions, and you can submit a question and Chris will talk about it.
Leo Laporte [00:30:16]:
So there you go, there you have it. Let's talk about, uh, the latest news, Mr.—
Chris Marquardt [00:30:22]:
Okay, what's your favorite focal length?
Leo Laporte [00:30:25]:
That's a great question. Uh, I think the nifty 50 is nice. But I am kind of more of a wide guy. So maybe 28-35. You taught me that. You did a great book on wide-angle photography and that really kind of got me more interested. It's harder because more stuff's in there. So you have to make more decisions about what's in the photo.
Chris Marquardt [00:30:48]:
Decision-making. There it is again. There it is again.
Leo Laporte [00:30:52]:
Yeah.
Chris Marquardt [00:30:52]:
The reason I'm asking is because—
Leo Laporte [00:30:55]:
I also like the 85 for portraiture.
Chris Marquardt [00:30:57]:
Okay, how about something in between the nifty 50 and the 85?
Leo Laporte [00:31:03]:
I've never even heard of such a thing.
Chris Marquardt [00:31:05]:
Is, is there such a thing?
Leo Laporte [00:31:06]:
Is there such a thing?
Chris Marquardt [00:31:08]:
There is. 66mm. Leica is building—
Leo Laporte [00:31:13]:
Oh, don't. Oh, they're so expensive.
Chris Marquardt [00:31:15]:
Well, you'll bail once I tell you how much it is.
Leo Laporte [00:31:21]:
I already spent so much on my Leicas.
Chris Marquardt [00:31:24]:
So they are about to build 660, I think, of the new Leica Summicron 66mm f/2, which they say is inspired by a rare military Elcan 66mm f/2 from the US Navy spy optics of the early 1960s.
Leo Laporte [00:31:47]:
That's bizarre.
Chris Marquardt [00:31:49]:
It's very bizarre. It's super bizarre.
Leo Laporte [00:31:51]:
So this is a 50. This is my favorite 50 because it's so fast on my Leica M11. It's a 0.95.
Chris Marquardt [00:31:59]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [00:32:00]:
So, it's hard to shoot with because the focal—
Chris Marquardt [00:32:03]:
It doesn't focus on anything but a thin sliver, like on your eyelashes and the pupil is out of focus.
Leo Laporte [00:32:11]:
It's very tricky to shoot with. But if you get a good shot, it's remarkable. So, that's why I like it.
Chris Marquardt [00:32:17]:
Yes.
Leo Laporte [00:32:18]:
But 66, so that's just Why? I mean, it's a weird—
Chris Marquardt [00:32:22]:
it's a weird focal length. It again, it's inspired by an old military spy lens.
Leo Laporte [00:32:29]:
Seems like a strange length even for a spy lens. Wouldn't you want a telephoto?
Chris Marquardt [00:32:34]:
Not necessarily. It's apparently very good contrast and very interesting bokeh, the things you would expect.
Leo Laporte [00:32:42]:
And it was a Leica lens. I didn't realize this.
Chris Marquardt [00:32:45]:
It was a Leica.
Leo Laporte [00:32:45]:
So they did it for the Navy?
Chris Marquardt [00:32:47]:
Yes, they did. And it's— other than that, I think it's just a very interesting collector's item. I would doubt that many of those will actually be taken out of the boxes because, again, they are producing 660.
Leo Laporte [00:33:03]:
You know what's nice about them though, unlike a telephoto, is it's compact. And I bet that was one of the things the Navy wanted. They wanted something small, right?
Chris Marquardt [00:33:12]:
And it has a— it's supposed to have a very characteristic bokeh. You can see some test shots further down the page. That gave you some, some idea of that.
Leo Laporte [00:33:23]:
Oh, it's quite lovely. This, you know, I could have spotted that as a Leica shot right away. There's something about Leica color and bokeh and everything. It's just—
Chris Marquardt [00:33:34]:
The thing is, despite its price tag of $10,900, it has already sold out.
Leo Laporte [00:33:43]:
Good, thank God.
Chris Marquardt [00:33:45]:
Exactly.
Leo Laporte [00:33:46]:
To be honest, I have the Summicron Aspherical 50mm f/2, which when I bought it was considered by many to be the greatest Leica lens ever made, and it was $8,000. So this isn't that bad. Well, given inflation and all that.
Chris Marquardt [00:34:06]:
Of course, this lens would have made you a better photographer.
Leo Laporte [00:34:09]:
I would have been a better photographer had I just had—
Chris Marquardt [00:34:11]:
There's your chance Gone.
Leo Laporte [00:34:13]:
The 66. I wish they would superimpose what a 50 would give you of this frame because it would be like 90% of it, right? I mean, I don't—
Chris Marquardt [00:34:22]:
I don't know. It would give you more.
Leo Laporte [00:34:24]:
Like a little edge around the outside. I don't know. Yeah, look at— I do love the bokeh though. The bokeh.
Chris Marquardt [00:34:29]:
Anyway, so there's your— there's your Leica.
Leo Laporte [00:34:33]:
Um, see the color? What is it about It's, you know, with film cameras, the film was more important probably than the glass.
Chris Marquardt [00:34:44]:
Oh, it's the same here. It's the color processing, and it's very film-like. That's what they do.
Leo Laporte [00:34:49]:
It feels, it feels so almost liminal, dreamy.
Chris Marquardt [00:34:53]:
It's, it's a, it's a, it's a thing between the, the, the contrast, it's, it's the color saturation, it's, it's just a combination of a lot of things. And I don't think the lens is doing anything to the color here. I think it's the camera doing It's the sensor.
Leo Laporte [00:35:09]:
So they're just trying to do—
Chris Marquardt [00:35:10]:
And by the way, they're shooting these pictures at sunset and all—
Leo Laporte [00:35:14]:
Oh yes, absolutely. Look at that. Look at how golden.
Chris Marquardt [00:35:18]:
That's why it's so warm.
Leo Laporte [00:35:19]:
Yeah. Yeah. No, I don't need this lens. This is kind of my problem with Leica in general is it's starting to look like it's just a money grab.
Chris Marquardt [00:35:33]:
They have transformed into a luxury brand.
Leo Laporte [00:35:36]:
It's a luxury brand.
Chris Marquardt [00:35:37]:
They have all these special editions. I don't know, 500s, Safari cameras. And yeah, I'm done. Price tag on that—
Leo Laporte [00:35:45]:
I love this. This is the M11-P, which—
Chris Marquardt [00:35:48]:
and I'm not saying they make bad cameras, not saying they make bad cameras.
Leo Laporte [00:35:52]:
Great camera, but it's a luxury item. You know what I— you see what I do though is I tape over the red dot. Actually, this one doesn't even have it.
Chris Marquardt [00:36:00]:
As if that would help you. If someone wants to steal a Leica, they will know what a Leica looks like.
Leo Laporte [00:36:06]:
Yeah, it's more like I don't want to be bragging. Like, I don't want to say, see the red dot? Okay, you know what that means. Of course, it does say in, in, in classic Leica script right on the top, Leica.
Chris Marquardt [00:36:18]:
Fair enough.
Leo Laporte [00:36:19]:
Ah, but I just, I love this, and I'm going to take this to Southeast Asia. I'm going to Angkor Wat, the temple complex in Cambodia. I'm going to be in, uh, in, uh, Thailand. I'm going to be in Bangkok. I'm going to be in, uh, Bali. I'm going to be in Indonesia. I'm going to be in Singapore at night. Very cool.
Leo Laporte [00:36:39]:
I'm gonna be in some of the best places to take pictures ever. So I think this is the kit. But okay, so that's the question is, should I just take the 50? The nifty 50 f/2?
Chris Marquardt [00:36:53]:
Which one do you feel good with? The thing is, if you take too much gear with you out of fear to not get the shot, you will fiddle more with gear.
Leo Laporte [00:37:05]:
Just take one body and one lens.
Chris Marquardt [00:37:06]:
And actually concentrate on the photography.
Leo Laporte [00:37:09]:
Yeah, I was, you know, and I have a nice 35mm I could take. I think I'll probably take this though, because you don't have to shoot it at f/0.95. You could shoot it at f/8.
Chris Marquardt [00:37:23]:
It's, it's, it is possible. Yes, it is clearly a possibility to do that.
Leo Laporte [00:37:30]:
This thing is so wide that I have a neutral density filter on it Because you can't take a picture anywhere except when the, you know, it's a candlelight.
Chris Marquardt [00:37:39]:
Yeah, no, but seriously, if, if you bring the gear that you're comfortable with and that you know you can get photos with—
Leo Laporte [00:37:47]:
That's the big— the only issue I have with this, because it's, it's not big. It's, it's, you know, this is a little bit of a heavy lens, but it's not too bad. But it's because, A, a rangefinder You know, and B, f/9.5, about 1 in 100 photos is good. When they're— when I get that one, it's great. And the rest are like slightly out of focus or— I'm gonna bring it. I'm gonna bring it. Lisa's gonna bring the new iPhone. And she'll probably get all the good shots.
Chris Marquardt [00:38:25]:
Decent choice.
Leo Laporte [00:38:26]:
And if I get, you know what, if I get 5 Perfect shots from that 3-week trip, I'll be happy.
Chris Marquardt [00:38:36]:
Didn't Ansel Adams say, if I take 12 good photos in a year, I'm happy?
Leo Laporte [00:38:43]:
Yes. I mean, how many Ansel Adams photos do you remember? It's maybe a dozen.
Chris Marquardt [00:38:49]:
And how many of the photos in your archive do you go back to and look at?
Leo Laporte [00:38:53]:
Well, I have them on photo frames everywhere. So I see a lot of my own photos.
Chris Marquardt [00:38:57]:
Yeah, but you've seen them. Do you actually look at them? Is— are you— do you go and stand in front of them and admire your photography?
Leo Laporte [00:39:07]:
I go, oh, I'm looking at one right now.
Chris Marquardt [00:39:09]:
That's okay.
Leo Laporte [00:39:10]:
Oh, that's a nice one.
Chris Marquardt [00:39:13]:
Because that's one of the big problems. Most of our photography is somewhere on a hard drive somewhere.
Leo Laporte [00:39:20]:
Yeah.
Chris Marquardt [00:39:20]:
In the cloud or on our NAS. And it's, it's never to be seen again.
Leo Laporte [00:39:25]:
What should I do? Should I make a book? I'll make a book.
Chris Marquardt [00:39:29]:
Make them physical. That's a good thing. Make them manifest them in, in the real world and have them on your coffee table. Do that. Absolutely do that.
Leo Laporte [00:39:38]:
We used to do, uh, unfortunately we can't do it anymore. Bill Atkinson, the Apple, famous Apple computer programmer who's passed away, but, uh, he had a service that would print beautiful large postcards, and he was a photographer, so he would personally look at each photo. So you would take the picture and then have a postcard printed, and I would go on trips and I would send these postcards.
Chris Marquardt [00:40:05]:
I think there's still services like that around. I think you can still get that, but of course not by Bill anymore, unfortunately.
Leo Laporte [00:40:12]:
No, he would hand retouch them. He would— then they were And they were glossy and heavy. He blessed them first. Yeah, he blessed them. And they— I'll go get them. They were beautiful. And so I'd send them to family members. But it was also a little bit of a humble brag, you know, here we are on our trip, and here's a beautiful— but they were gorgeous.
Leo Laporte [00:40:32]:
And actually, my dad, after I got back, said, what do you want me to do with these? Do you want them? I said, no, that's all right. I have them. He did not appreciate them, I don't think.
Chris Marquardt [00:40:46]:
Well, I appreciate it. But then he was used to postcards. If you send a postcard to someone— It's true.
Leo Laporte [00:40:51]:
It was just another postcard.
Chris Marquardt [00:40:52]:
To a younger person who was like, what is that paper thing in my mailbox doing here? That's a very unusual thing. So that will be more cherished. I'm sure it will be put somewhere.
Leo Laporte [00:41:04]:
I need to find the best photo book maker. So I— because those were so gorgeous. The color was great. They— he printed on heavy stock. They were laminated, so they really were keepsakes. Uh, and he just— he said after a while, he said, I never made any money on it, so I just stopped doing it. It was more a labor of love than anything.
Chris Marquardt [00:41:26]:
That was wonderful.
Leo Laporte [00:41:27]:
Yeah. What else is in the news, Mr. Mark?
Chris Marquardt [00:41:30]:
Well, Leo, before you go out and buy that new iPhone, I think you should take a look at this phone. It's the Honor Robot Phone. Have you heard of that?
Leo Laporte [00:41:40]:
I know Honor is a Chinese company, probably Chinese brand.
Chris Marquardt [00:41:44]:
I don't think this one is available. You know that, you know, the product category of these, these handheld gimbals with small cameras like— yeah, yeah. Oh, look at that same thing built into the camera.
Leo Laporte [00:41:58]:
Did you see that? It's just a little arm that came up and it went— oh, so it looks like something you'd clip onto the camera, but it's actually part of the camera.
Chris Marquardt [00:42:07]:
It's a part of the camera. You slide something open on the back and then whoop, it comes out and it's an actual handheld small camera. It's a gimbal? Yeah, it's a gimbal. It's the same thing like in like your Osmo Pocket or your Insta360 Luna or a DJI Pocket 2, just in a part— as part of your phone. So do you still want that iPhone after seeing that?
Leo Laporte [00:42:31]:
We're getting raided in our Twitch stream by James Shoots Brides. I guess he's a bridal photographer. Hi, James. He's told all of his, all of his stream viewers to come on over.
Chris Marquardt [00:42:44]:
That is good. I don't see this. I don't see the chat, unfortunately.
Leo Laporte [00:42:47]:
So you have to go to twitch.tv to see it. Okay. Okay. Welcome. It's nice. It's great when photographers— we love photographers. Negative View Photo says James is good people. We are doing very well.
Leo Laporte [00:43:02]:
Welcome, James Shoots Brides.
Chris Marquardt [00:43:05]:
It sounds kind of a bit horrible, right?
Leo Laporte [00:43:08]:
Don't shoot them.
Chris Marquardt [00:43:09]:
You know, don't—
Leo Laporte [00:43:11]:
you know, my— one of my dearest, dearest favorite photographer friends, National Geographic photographer, never used the word take a photo or shoots a photo. Yeah, he would always say, I'm gonna make a an image for that very reason. He didn't want it to sound violent. And of course, he would go out and take— he was amazing because he was a National Geographic photographer. So, he would go out in the wilds of the world and he didn't like the word take. So, he said, I'm going to make an image.
Chris Marquardt [00:43:43]:
You know, the language of photography is very military.
Leo Laporte [00:43:47]:
It is. Shoot a photo.
Chris Marquardt [00:43:49]:
A rangefinder, that used to be a military item.
Leo Laporte [00:43:52]:
Yeah, that's a good point.
Chris Marquardt [00:43:53]:
see the range of where your cannonballs would go. A snapshot, it's a military term. There's a lot of very violent language around photography because, I mean, if you have like a long lens, it looks like a gun. You're pointing at someone, you're shooting. So there's a lot of weird language going on. Yeah, Bruce just didn't like that. And language is important, I think.
Leo Laporte [00:44:18]:
Yeah.
Chris Marquardt [00:44:20]:
Words you use. So I'm fully on board with that.
Leo Laporte [00:44:23]:
He was really good with people too. So I think it was part of it was when he asked people if he could take a picture of them, he wanted to, he didn't want to say, I'm going to take something from you. He didn't want to, he said, I'm going to make an image of you. And that was kind of more like a painter. He was such, such a talented photographer.
Chris Marquardt [00:44:41]:
And it is, it is, if you look at the entire process, um, of course you can take a picture. Or shoot a picture or make a picture and just take it out of camera. But normally, at least with professional photographers, that includes a second stage, which is, okay, now you sit down, you made a decision, this is the photo I want to work on, and then you work on that photo. You change the contrast, you apply a LUT for the colors, you crop it a bit, you maybe rotate it slightly to get that horizon straight, and so on. So that's making a photo. There's a lot of making in there. Making a photo.
Leo Laporte [00:45:20]:
Yes.
Chris Marquardt [00:45:20]:
Yes.
Leo Laporte [00:45:20]:
You're making a photo. You're making an image, he would always say, like he's a painter.
Chris Marquardt [00:45:26]:
Yes.
Leo Laporte [00:45:28]:
Um, I should, I should, uh, mention his name because I keep saying Bruce, but I've forgotten his last name. I'm terrible. I'm looking. This was, this was, uh, I met him when Mikkel Oland, the great photographer, took me on this Lightroom adventure back, back way back in Tasmania. This was, this is when I was driving through Tasmania with a dozen photographers who would stop every 5 seconds. And it was a great idea because it's a book about Lightroom, but it was filled with beautiful images from professional photographers in Tasmania.
Chris Marquardt [00:46:03]:
And then you learn that those photographers, while they have a good eye and good timing and a good way to compose pictures, they will still spend time in software changing things in the darkroom. Absolutely. In the darkroom, changing, applying a bit more texture here, bringing out something, taking something back, desaturating a color in the background that's distracting. These kind of things. That's the making of the photo.
Leo Laporte [00:46:32]:
Yeah, that, I mean, obviously spending time with these guys was wonderful. Guys and gals was wonderful. That's where I met Catherine Hall. Was wonderful. But there was so much afterwards, or even during the conversation about process. And then, uh, you know, I would ask Bruce— by the way, here's his, uh, here's his website— I would ask Bruce, how do you know, uh, when you have a great picture? And, uh, he'd say, Leo, you feel it. You feel it in your gut.
Chris Marquardt [00:47:02]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [00:47:03]:
And you just know.
Chris Marquardt [00:47:05]:
And then, of course, what's the definition of great? Because you ask 10 different people and they all have a separate, different way of thinking what makes a picture great. Well, that's what— you know, if you've set up your IKEA furniture and you've spent time and sweat and tears over it to get all those bolts in and everything, you'll like this thing more because you made it. actually built that.
Leo Laporte [00:47:36]:
It's the IKEA. There's this kind of an IKEA principle.
Chris Marquardt [00:47:40]:
There's research about that. So making a photo is also going to do something like that to you. You're more happy with your photography if you actually do some work and not just have an AI do it for you.
Leo Laporte [00:47:56]:
This guy was 30 years as a staff photographer for the National Geographic.
Chris Marquardt [00:48:01]:
Look at that.
Leo Laporte [00:48:02]:
He was also, uh, and I like this about him, kind of a tech kind of fan. He really, uh, loved playing with the technology and doing interesting things. And yeah, really talented photographer. I learned so much from Bruce and the whole crew. I mean, this was the best photographers in the world. Mikkel put together an amazing group of people. It was just—
Chris Marquardt [00:48:27]:
You'll never forget that.
Leo Laporte [00:48:28]:
Never. Never, never, never.
Chris Marquardt [00:48:31]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [00:48:32]:
I felt very privileged because I— this was before there were social media influencers, but I was there as an influencer. I wasn't there as a photographer. And I don't know how Mikkel knew, but my job was to get— there's Bruce. My job was to take, by the way, not taking a photo, making an image of those beautiful children. My job was to help promote it and publicize it and make videos of it and behind the scenes. And I did a lot of behind the scenes stuff, and it was really fun.
Chris Marquardt [00:49:01]:
Look at that.
Leo Laporte [00:49:02]:
This is a classic because the, the blur, the motion blur. I learned so much, uh, from Bruce, uh, and but he was always the best with people. That was, that's, that was his really, his real skill. Anyway.
Chris Marquardt [00:49:16]:
People in photos that make, make all the difference often.
Leo Laporte [00:49:19]:
Yeah. Never took a photo Only made an image.
Chris Marquardt [00:49:24]:
All right, let's—
Leo Laporte [00:49:25]:
moving on, other stories.
Chris Marquardt [00:49:27]:
Let's move on. If I say Dyson, what comes to mind?
Leo Laporte [00:49:32]:
Okay, I know about this one because guess what? I ordered it.
Chris Marquardt [00:49:36]:
You bought it.
Leo Laporte [00:49:37]:
I did. I totally know about this one. It's kind of kooky.
Chris Marquardt [00:49:42]:
Well, it is camera adjacent, right? It's photography adjacent. It's a— it's a—
Leo Laporte [00:49:47]:
it's It's a camera in your mouth, boys and girls.
Chris Marquardt [00:49:50]:
That's the interesting thing. With Dyson, I would think of moving air either into a vacuum cleaner or out.
Leo Laporte [00:49:55]:
It looks like a Dyson vacuum, doesn't it?
Chris Marquardt [00:49:58]:
And what Dyson came up with, and they did a big keynote about it, is a camera built into a toothbrush, an electric toothbrush, and AI that looks at your teeth and then shoots water, a water jet in between your teeth and takes the plaque out. And I mean, technologically, I find this interesting.
Leo Laporte [00:50:22]:
This could go so wrong.
Chris Marquardt [00:50:24]:
It's a camera that has 100,000 pixels, so it's not a super high resolution. It shoots with 28 frames per second. And the reason why this vibration of this toothbrush doesn't give you blurry photos is that they have a strobe light in there that pretty much Lights up, and, and, and I think they have the, the frame rate synchronized with the toothbrush. So at the point where it doesn't move, it takes pictures, and then it feeds that to an AI, and that looks at your teeth and goes, oh, there's a huge amount of technology in this $500 toothbrush. It's $500.
Leo Laporte [00:51:06]:
By the way, I pre-ordered it the day they announced it, and it's out. You can't They, they're sold out. You can't get it now.
Chris Marquardt [00:51:14]:
So, I mean, I mean, Dyson, okay, they all at one point they had plans to make an electric car. So they are, they're just the Dyson. Mr. Dyson is, is an inventor.
Leo Laporte [00:51:25]:
And, and by the way, I don't know if you have to, but they have Dyson toothpaste and mouth rinse that goes with it. I'm guessing you probably do have to use their proprietary non-foaming.
Chris Marquardt [00:51:35]:
I don't think you have to, but, but the non-foaming part I think is important for the video.
Leo Laporte [00:51:40]:
Otherwise the camera can't see.
Chris Marquardt [00:51:44]:
So anyway, that's your photography news.
Leo Laporte [00:51:47]:
I'm gonna be locked in. I'm gonna be locked in. And this is my question, because it— so it pairs to your camera, they have an app, and you can watch your teeth as you're brushing them. Do you think I will use that more than once?
Chris Marquardt [00:52:01]:
Isn't that wild? I mean, I think it kind of depends on what your teeth look like close up.
Leo Laporte [00:52:06]:
Yeah, I'm not sure I want to see that.
Chris Marquardt [00:52:09]:
But I think I saw like some snippets of that keynote. I think Mr. Dyson said something about privacy and it's never going to leave. They're never going to go to the cloud and so on. So at least that's—
Leo Laporte [00:52:24]:
They don't have any more. So even though it's $500, which is about 4 times—
Chris Marquardt [00:52:32]:
Oh, trust me, they will make new ones. They will make new ones.
Leo Laporte [00:52:34]:
Yeah.
Chris Marquardt [00:52:35]:
If they can, why shouldn't they? Uh, I mean, the, the, this, that toothbrush doesn't have any RAM in it, or not a lot, so I guess they will be—
Leo Laporte [00:52:46]:
I guess, yeah, maybe that's where we're gonna get a bunch of gadgets now that no longer need memory or storage.
Chris Marquardt [00:52:51]:
Or maybe it has a lot of memory and that's why it's $500. Who knows? As an AI running somewhere, I guess on the phone. I'm not sure.
Leo Laporte [00:53:00]:
Lisa asked me, and I actually don't know the answer, she said, can I use it too? I said, I don't know if it comes with a It probably only comes with one head, I'm guessing.
Chris Marquardt [00:53:08]:
I think it comes with 2 heads. I believe it comes with 2 heads.
Leo Laporte [00:53:10]:
And then what happens when it wears out? Because the camera's in the head, right?
Chris Marquardt [00:53:13]:
No, no, it's not. It's in the— it's—
Leo Laporte [00:53:15]:
It's in the body?
Chris Marquardt [00:53:16]:
It's in the body and you— that head goes over.
Leo Laporte [00:53:19]:
Oh, it's a little head.
Chris Marquardt [00:53:20]:
Camera part.
Leo Laporte [00:53:21]:
It's just a little head. Oh, okay. That's good because otherwise you'd have to swap out a very expensive part.
Chris Marquardt [00:53:27]:
Disposable toothbrush camera. You buy it for $500 every time.
Leo Laporte [00:53:30]:
You'd be crazy. And it's another $100 for the head.
Chris Marquardt [00:53:33]:
That's, that's like buying a new car when your ashtray is full.
Leo Laporte [00:53:37]:
That makes sense. So good. So they thought about that. That's good. So yeah, I think they are smart enough to think about it. They're smart. I just feel like this is one of those things where they made it because they could. And it, it may be a, it may just be a complete flop, you know, who knows?
Chris Marquardt [00:53:55]:
Well, they sold out.
Leo Laporte [00:53:56]:
So yeah, either, either they only made 10 of them or I'm just glad I ordered it because, you know, for me, it's— I'm gonna demonstrate. It's like I'm gonna do a review. I'm gonna demonstrate it because there's interest in this. So maybe on the next episode of the Chris Marquardt Photos Podcast.
Chris Marquardt [00:54:12]:
You brush your teeth in front of the camera.
Leo Laporte [00:54:13]:
I'll brush my teeth for you and you can watch my teeth.
Chris Marquardt [00:54:15]:
That's good.
Leo Laporte [00:54:16]:
Oh, what a crazy idea. Ah, what a cray-cray idea, kids.
Chris Marquardt [00:54:23]:
All right, um, I'm such a— one more topic. Actually, actually, 2 more topics that we'll combine. The next 2 we'll combine into one, and we'll start with a long one. I'm pretty sure you're aware of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.
Leo Laporte [00:54:38]:
I think this is so cool, yes.
Chris Marquardt [00:54:42]:
This is wild, and it's also something that caught me by surprise.
Leo Laporte [00:54:47]:
It is at a Lagrange point, right?
Chris Marquardt [00:54:49]:
No, it's not. Oh, it's going there. It's going there.
Leo Laporte [00:54:52]:
So it's not there yet though.
Chris Marquardt [00:54:54]:
So they had this— okay, so the story is Well, first it's named after the first NASA chief astronomer, Nancy Grace Roman. She's also the mother of Hubble. Without her, Hubble wouldn't be where it is and what it is. And shorthand for it is the Roman Telescope. So that's what I'm going to call it. It's a flagship mission. It's under budget and under deadline. So they made it cheaper and earlier.
Chris Marquardt [00:55:23]:
And then last weekend, I think it took off. And I was not aware of it as much as I should have been. It is about the size of the Hubble Space Telescope. Its main mirror was donated by the National Reconnaissance Office, the NRO. It was originally— that mirror was originally there for a spy satellite, but they didn't—
Leo Laporte [00:55:48]:
Oh, so it's an optical telescope. It's not— because some of these telescopes now are not looking at Visible light?
Chris Marquardt [00:55:54]:
It is an optical telescope. It looks at infrared. And again, the NRO, I think, originally wanted that mirror to use that for a spy satellite. I believe what I heard is that it wasn't good enough for them. So I'd be curious how good their telescopes are nowadays. But they gave it to NASA and they put this in the Roman Telescope. Again, about Hubble size, but it has 200 times the field of view.
Leo Laporte [00:56:23]:
Wow.
Chris Marquardt [00:56:23]:
While keeping the resolution per degree at the same thing. So it has, I think, 300 megapixels of resolution. And it can maneuver at 1,000 times the speed of Hubble. So it can scan the same area that Hubble can in 1 month that would take the Hubble Telescope 100 years. So it's really good and fast. And it was even designed to get refilled. So if the mission— I think its fuel is up in 5 or 10 years, and if someone can fly out to the L2 Lagrange point, you can just put some more gas in it.
Leo Laporte [00:57:07]:
That's pretty distant. It's not— this is— this may be—
Chris Marquardt [00:57:13]:
It is a bit distant.
Leo Laporte [00:57:14]:
The idea of the Lagrange points are it's equilibrium, right, between the Earth You put something there, but it's not quite a point.
Chris Marquardt [00:57:22]:
It's more of something that the spacecraft orbit around. So the James Webb Telescope is up there as well, but there's no chance in them colliding or anything. So it's a bigger area. And yeah, you can put something there and it stays there. It doesn't go somewhere else.
Leo Laporte [00:57:40]:
Right. It doesn't degrade.
Chris Marquardt [00:57:45]:
So that thing is out there to explore dark energy, dark matter. It's also searching for exoplanets or will search for exoplanets. I'll get into details about that in a second. And it will make a high-resolution map of the Milky Way, which again, if you have a telescope that takes long to take individual pictures, you can't really scan as in take multiple pictures in a short time and then turn that into a kind of movie and see how things actually move.
Leo Laporte [00:58:23]:
Oh, look at the size of the image. Wow.
Chris Marquardt [00:58:26]:
Exactly. Astronomy used to be a very static thing. You point your telescope at one point and then you take a picture over hours or days and that's it. And then you might revisit it years later. This one will make these— this motion much, much more visible. So interesting tech fact is Hubble sends us 3 gigabytes a day. That's a lot of data, right?
Leo Laporte [00:58:54]:
It's a lot of data, yeah.
Chris Marquardt [00:58:56]:
James Webb sends us 60 gigabytes of data per day.
Leo Laporte [00:59:00]:
Wow.
Chris Marquardt [00:59:01]:
The Roman Telescope will send us 1.4 terabytes a day.
Leo Laporte [00:59:04]:
What?
Chris Marquardt [00:59:05]:
That's the scale of the amount of data we're looking at.
Leo Laporte [00:59:09]:
Holy moly.
Chris Marquardt [00:59:11]:
Yes, that was my thought. And that data will from day one be public.
Leo Laporte [00:59:17]:
Oh, that's nice.
Chris Marquardt [00:59:19]:
You can build your own data center and just slurp those 1.4 terabytes a day right from their website.
Leo Laporte [00:59:27]:
Well, if you have a good AI, maybe you could do some stuff with that. You could figure some stuff out.
Chris Marquardt [00:59:31]:
I think there will be a lot of— that will make a lot of citizen Yeah, there's a lot of citizen astronomers.
Leo Laporte [00:59:38]:
In fact, a lot of the discoveries, you know, the asteroids and comets and so forth, are normal people in their backyard. So I think there'll be a lot of people very interested in this.
Chris Marquardt [00:59:51]:
Right. So it is on the way to the L2 Lagrange point, and I think it's 1.5 million kilometers, a million miles away or something. It will be hovering next to the James Webb Telescope or in that vicinity in galactic proportions, of course. It'll take 30 days to get there. And then it'll take 70 days for its system checks. And then it will start doing science sometime early December.
Leo Laporte [01:00:21]:
We'll start getting— that's exciting.
Chris Marquardt [01:00:26]:
It has 2 instruments on board. One is a wide— the wide Yeah. ...angle infrared instrument. I don't want to talk about that. I want to talk about the second one because I think it's way more interesting. It has a coronagraph on board. A coronagraph is not— it has nothing to do with the virus. A corona is what you see when the moon covers the sun in a solar eclipse.
Chris Marquardt [01:00:54]:
The corona is the crown Nice. So the question that it will answer is, how do you photograph a planet right next to a sun? Because that's what it will try to do. It will try to visually see exoplanets, which is very, very, pretty much impossible right now to do. Because just imagine you have a car in the dark shining its high beam at you and you hold a pea next to it. Try to see that pea. Not possible, right?
Leo Laporte [01:01:30]:
Yeah.
Chris Marquardt [01:01:31]:
So what that instrument will do, and it will do it better than any of those coronagraphs that have been built so far, is it'll be able to suppress the light of a star to make planets visible that are like 100 million times dimmer than the Sun. or the star. And it'll use some really interesting— you can't just put a disc in front of it, like a black disc. That doesn't work because you have what's called diffraction at the edges. So a lot of light will come in anyway. So you need a very complex set of masks and phase effects and very precise optics. And And deformable mirrors. So they have mirrors that have little tiny pistons on the backside that can then be moved around by the width of a hydrogen atom.
Chris Marquardt [01:02:29]:
So no motion, pretty much no motion at all, but enough to counter some of the effects. And they are planning— this is a demonstrator. This is not a fully science— full science mission with the coronagraph, but they plan to filter out— okay, let me get those numbers right— 99.999999% of the unwanted light of the star next to it. That's important actually. So they want to actually see exoplanets around faraway stars.
Leo Laporte [01:03:08]:
They're looking for planets.
Chris Marquardt [01:03:10]:
It's impressive. It's very impressive what they do.
Leo Laporte [01:03:12]:
You know what's amazing?
Chris Marquardt [01:03:13]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:03:13]:
We theorized that maybe there were Earth-like planets, but we had no idea until about 20 years ago.
Chris Marquardt [01:03:22]:
That's a brand new discovery. And the best way right now to see exoplanets, and it'll do that too, is if they transit in front of a star.
Leo Laporte [01:03:31]:
Right.
Chris Marquardt [01:03:32]:
If you look at the star and then I mean, just a size reference, right? There's the star, it fills the entire field of view, and then there's this tiny little planet going in front of it, and it dims that Sun by, I don't even know, a thousandth of a thousandth percent or something. Really just a little bit. And that dimming is an indicator that there is a planet going around the Sun. It of course has to transit in front of it, right? It can't go around it this way, it has to be in front of it. And they can then also use a spectrogram to see how the composition of the light spectrum has minutely changed by the light going through the atmosphere of that tiny planet.
Leo Laporte [01:04:17]:
That's amazing.
Chris Marquardt [01:04:19]:
That's one way to deduct that there is an exoplanet. But this, again, they're trying to actually see them, which is—
Leo Laporte [01:04:27]:
So the first exoplanet was discovered in 1992. They now have 6,366 exoplanets confirmed.
Chris Marquardt [01:04:39]:
And we haven't seen anything yet. This is gonna be wild.
Leo Laporte [01:04:44]:
The more planets there are, it seems the more likely there might be life out there, right? Yep.
Chris Marquardt [01:04:50]:
There's no doubt. There's no doubt. It's just so far away that, hey—
Leo Laporte [01:04:56]:
They can't get here from there.
Chris Marquardt [01:04:59]:
Probably not. Or they have seen our television broadcasts and they don't want to come.
Leo Laporte [01:05:06]:
They said, that's the planet where Laverne and Shirley live. We're not going.
Chris Marquardt [01:05:10]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:05:11]:
No squiggies for us.
Chris Marquardt [01:05:13]:
Probably.
Leo Laporte [01:05:15]:
You have no idea what I'm talking about, but that's okay.
Chris Marquardt [01:05:18]:
I've never heard of that.
Leo Laporte [01:05:19]:
No, I know.
Chris Marquardt [01:05:19]:
It's fine. What sitcom does he go back to? Sitcom from the '60s?
Leo Laporte [01:05:27]:
Did you ever hear of a thing called Happy Days?
Chris Marquardt [01:05:31]:
Yes, I have heard of it. That's where the Fonz is in, right?
Leo Laporte [01:05:34]:
The Fonz and Richie Cunningham.
Chris Marquardt [01:05:37]:
Never watched them, but I know of it.
Leo Laporte [01:05:38]:
Yeah, well, Laverne and Shirley was a spinoff, I believe. I may be wrong. Am I right? I think it was a spinoff of Happy Days. I didn't watch either, so I don't know. Oh, okay. Yeah, my pop culture knowledge Well, I'm sure there are German sitcoms I've never heard of. Do you have sitcoms in Germany?
Chris Marquardt [01:05:58]:
I'm pretty sure they're all German sitcoms that you've never heard of.
Leo Laporte [01:06:01]:
Yeah, well, German— I mean, this is, I'm sure, uh, you know, prejudiced, but you're not— Germans are not known for their sense of humor.
Chris Marquardt [01:06:12]:
No, they're not. No, they're not. For good reason.
Leo Laporte [01:06:16]:
Okay, you, you admit that. Okay.
Chris Marquardt [01:06:18]:
I mean, I mean, Robin Williams once said on stage that, um, Um, they're— the Nazis killed them all, the funny people.
Leo Laporte [01:06:27]:
Oh my God. Oh geez.
Chris Marquardt [01:06:29]:
It's very dark but—
Leo Laporte [01:06:30]:
That's dark but maybe not untrue. Yeah.
Chris Marquardt [01:06:34]:
But a lot of—
Leo Laporte [01:06:35]:
Most comics are Jewish, aren't they?
Chris Marquardt [01:06:38]:
A lot of comics in Germany were at that time were Jewish. Yes.
Leo Laporte [01:06:42]:
Yeah. That's a fact.
Chris Marquardt [01:06:44]:
That's a fact.
Leo Laporte [01:06:45]:
But I think by now you must have a sense of humor. Sense of humor. I just think maybe it's the language that lends— it's, it's more precise. You know, Germans are thought of as great engineers.
Chris Marquardt [01:06:57]:
I mean, I, I grew up with a lot of American sitcoms, a lot of stuff from, yeah, from the States.
Leo Laporte [01:07:04]:
Einstein was German, right? I mean, they're great German engineers and scientists, but maybe not so many great German comics.
Chris Marquardt [01:07:12]:
Although— German humor is very special, let's put it that way.
Leo Laporte [01:07:15]:
I remember I The Good Soldier Schweik, very funny novel, German novel, I believe.
Chris Marquardt [01:07:20]:
Yes.
Leo Laporte [01:07:21]:
So maybe that's just a misapprehension that we, we Americans have.
Chris Marquardt [01:07:29]:
Well, sitcoms are, are an American thing.
Leo Laporte [01:07:33]:
Renee Silverman says, yes, Laverne and Shirley was a spinoff of Happy Days. Thank you, Renee, our moderator, also an expert in '70s sitcoms.
Chris Marquardt [01:07:43]:
The only thing I know about Happy Days is that that's where the term jump the shark.
Leo Laporte [01:07:47]:
Jump the shark. Yes, it did. Yes.
Chris Marquardt [01:07:51]:
But again, I've never seen a full episode, only snippets on the tubes.
Leo Laporte [01:07:55]:
Yeah, I'm sure it's playing somewhere in Germany right now. It is for sure in the United States. There are whole channels devoted to individual sitcoms over here.
Chris Marquardt [01:08:10]:
You guys are weird.
Leo Laporte [01:08:11]:
We're weird. We are, I will grant you, very.
Chris Marquardt [01:08:17]:
All right, how about we look at the questions? We have 2 questions that came into our photo—
Leo Laporte [01:08:26]:
Wonderful.
Chris Marquardt [01:08:26]:
Guy tech time, PTQ, whatever. You know what I mean. Yes, PTT, PTQ. So, 2 photography questions. One is photography adjacent by Paul Holder. He asks, at the risk of giving Leo another chance to wax poetic Oh dear. If we eventually have hardware personal AI robots, do you think they'll come with a built-in high-quality camera and lens so they can take your pictures for you? Would you accept a photo created by proxy as a photo contest entry? That's 2 questions. First one is, again, as I said earlier, then it's not your photography anymore.
Chris Marquardt [01:09:09]:
Then it's a It's a surveillance system of sorts. My prediction for the far future is that at one point, we'll probably not really take pictures anymore, but what we'll do is what I call photographic archaeology, which means there are so many cameras everywhere that you can pretty much reconstruct any scene from any point of view in retrospect at one point, and that's what we'll do. If you want a picture, then— I mean, the iPhone started it with the last— with Apple AI, with being able to now reframe a photo, as in change your point of view. Like if, let's say, a tree is growing out of someone's head, you can— and you would, if you had noticed, you would have just taken a step to the side. can do after the fact now because the phone will make like a 3D reconstruction of the scene for you and these kinds of things. That times 1,000 is just somewhere in our future for sure. So you'll be just able to go into a 3D space that's reconstructed from all the cameras that saw it at the time and choose your picture. Maybe do a virtual, maybe do a holodeck kind of photography.
Chris Marquardt [01:10:29]:
experience, like you go in there and pick a place in space and time in the past and just take your pictures after the fact. Possible? I mean, not 100% now, but it's definitely something that I think will be a reality at one point. Not in my lifetime, but let's say 50 years from now, maybe? But then who knows with AI going this fast right now?
Leo Laporte [01:10:59]:
Who knows? We don't know what's going to happen.
Chris Marquardt [01:11:02]:
No way to know what's happening next week, much less in a year or 15 years.
Leo Laporte [01:11:06]:
I said this on one of our shows. It's a chaotic system at this point. There's so much happening and it's so unpredictable. It's chaotic.
Chris Marquardt [01:11:16]:
But what Paul envisions is like your humanoid robot, holding your DSLR, taking pictures for you. No, no, no, no, no, no. And he asks, would you accept a photo created by proxy as a photo contest entry?
Leo Laporte [01:11:31]:
Oh, that's a deep question.
Chris Marquardt [01:11:33]:
That's a deep question. That's a deep question. I have no good answer for that. Probably not. I mean, this is the thing. If I do a workshop, we never talk about AI on the workshops. Nothing about generated images. It's about the photography.
Chris Marquardt [01:11:49]:
It's about the act of Noticing and capturing something that is there that you see with your eyes. It's a very human activity.
Leo Laporte [01:11:59]:
Let's be clear. We want AI to do the things we don't want to do.
Chris Marquardt [01:12:04]:
I want AI to take my trash out and dig the garden up and things.
Leo Laporte [01:12:07]:
Exactly.
Chris Marquardt [01:12:07]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:12:08]:
Do the chores. Leave the art to us.
Chris Marquardt [01:12:10]:
And I think that's completely reasonable. Not even digging up the garden because then it takes away a lot of my pride of having dug up the garden and the tomatoes grow on the soil that I dug up first, you know?
Leo Laporte [01:12:23]:
AI is great for going through your email, kids. Let it do that. No one wants to do that. Let the AI do that. And you make the pictures because, you know, yeah, that's the fun part. I don't think it's far-fetched, however, to think within a decade that there will be AI personas out in the world that we'll interact with. much like we would interact with people, and that there will be people in our chat room, personas in our chat room, and personas submitting photographs that are not human. The question is, how are we going to treat them? Are we going to treat them like second-class citizens? Are we going to accord them—
Chris Marquardt [01:13:08]:
Right.
Leo Laporte [01:13:08]:
The respect that we record humans, accord humans? I'm inclined toward the former, but I think most people are inclined toward the latter. I mean, I want to give them respect as entities.
Chris Marquardt [01:13:20]:
Most people don't. I avoid calling them clankers because who knows what's going to happen in 10 years, you know? You called us clankers 20 times.
Leo Laporte [01:13:29]:
Here's your book. I have a lovely relationship with Quicksilver, my agent. We have great chats.
Chris Marquardt [01:13:40]:
All right, next question.
Leo Laporte [01:13:41]:
Yes.
Chris Marquardt [01:13:42]:
Next question. Demi Lente, our friends, asked, we were trying to get a photo of the smooth water at the pier. Unfortunately, the results were not good. Instead of smooth, the image was just overexposed. We tried f/22 and 30 seconds. If we tried less time, the results were not the smooth water. What could help? Thanks for throwing us a softball. That is an ND filter.
Chris Marquardt [01:14:07]:
That's a job for an ND filter.
Leo Laporte [01:14:09]:
An ND filter.
Chris Marquardt [01:14:11]:
Even at f/22, you'll need—
Leo Laporte [01:14:14]:
What's cool about this, this is a variable ND filter. So as you— I guess it's polarized. I don't know how it does it.
Chris Marquardt [01:14:22]:
It's 2 stacked polarizers.
Leo Laporte [01:14:23]:
Yeah, as you turn it, it gets darker. So you can choose how much darkness you want. That's what I keep on the f/95 because sometimes I'm inside, I don't need as much darkening. So what is a neutral density filter? What does that do?
Chris Marquardt [01:14:39]:
Well, it makes it darker. That's pretty much all it does without changing the colors. Ideally, without changing the colors, even though that's not always the case, but it makes— it's like sunglasses without coloring. It's neutral sunglasses. So it allows you to take longer shots. And if you have a really strong ND filter, I'm not going to go into how they are named because that's very confusing, but go on Wikipedia, look at neutral density filters.
Leo Laporte [01:15:07]:
This goes from ND 0.3 to ND 1.8. Which is pretty opaque.
Chris Marquardt [01:15:13]:
So yeah, but there's like 3 different ways you can name the density of it.
Leo Laporte [01:15:19]:
I didn't know what to buy, so I just— I knew I needed it. That's all I know. This is a Heliopan. I think Heliopan makes pretty good ND filters.
Chris Marquardt [01:15:28]:
They do. B&W make good ones too. Again, depending on how long you want to expose, you'll have to bring down that brightness and the ND filter in front of the lens is what does that for you.
Leo Laporte [01:15:42]:
And this one's always on my 0.95 because it's such a wide open aperture. I can't shoot in any kind of light unless I have a filter on.
Chris Marquardt [01:15:51]:
You have to turn nocturnal. You have to turn into a night owl and—
Leo Laporte [01:15:55]:
It'll be great for night scenes. Singapore at night.
Chris Marquardt [01:15:57]:
Oh my God, at night.
Leo Laporte [01:15:59]:
This is going to be great for that. But I could still shoot in the daytime and I just turn up the ND filter and—
Chris Marquardt [01:16:06]:
That is true.
Leo Laporte [01:16:07]:
And then I still get all that great bokeh and the great color and all of that stuff. I don't lose any of the quality of that lens, or not much. I suppose I lose some quality, but I don't lose much of the quality of the lens.
Chris Marquardt [01:16:16]:
Yeah, I mean, you'll want to wipe down that filter, make sure it doesn't have any fingerprints on them.
Leo Laporte [01:16:21]:
Now it does because I took it off.
Chris Marquardt [01:16:24]:
You handled it, yes. But that's the same with your smartphone cameras, right? That's the biggest problem when we shoot with our smartphones is that we have touched the lenses and you get smudges. And so it's the thing I do every time I pull the phone out of my pocket to take a picture is t-shirt, rub it quickly.
Leo Laporte [01:16:47]:
Better than a t-shirt, I keep a— what do you call it?
Chris Marquardt [01:16:51]:
I use the t-shirt. It has a sapphire cover.
Leo Laporte [01:16:54]:
It's pretty strong.
Chris Marquardt [01:16:55]:
It doesn't scratch.
Leo Laporte [01:16:56]:
I use it— what is it, a lint-free cloth? What are they called?
Chris Marquardt [01:17:01]:
I don't even care about lint at all in this context.
Leo Laporte [01:17:05]:
It's a special cloth and special cleaning solution.
Chris Marquardt [01:17:09]:
Yeah, no, I'm just against having to carry a ton of different things and—
Leo Laporte [01:17:14]:
This is Japanese.
Chris Marquardt [01:17:15]:
Do you put a little spritz of—
Leo Laporte [01:17:17]:
Oh no, I'm sorry, it's German, so you know it's good.
Chris Marquardt [01:17:21]:
Oh, it's gotta be really good if it's German.
Leo Laporte [01:17:24]:
Mr. Sika.
Chris Marquardt [01:17:26]:
Never heard, never heard of that.
Leo Laporte [01:17:27]:
Never? You don't know the Mr. Sika?
Chris Marquardt [01:17:29]:
No, never heard of it. Uh, I doubt they're German.
Leo Laporte [01:17:34]:
It's, uh, well, it's, uh, maybe they're not German. I thought it was actually Japanese. It says it's from Frankfurt, but maybe not. I don't— I think it's Japanese is what I think. But anyway, uh, it's a, it's a lint-free cloth that has no grit or anything, so it's safe for lenses. And, uh, that's how I keep my— I have a— but you can't just wash them in the washing machine. You have to do a special solution to clean them, and it's a pain in the—
Chris Marquardt [01:18:03]:
No, trust me, t-shirt is good enough.
Leo Laporte [01:18:07]:
T-shirt and spittle. All right, let me ask you, because I think this is, uh, I'm surprised you didn't cover this. Apple announced a brand new phone Just a couple of days ago. But what's interesting about this phone, it has a physical aperture. It has blades in it.
Chris Marquardt [01:18:27]:
It does, and I think I know why.
Leo Laporte [01:18:30]:
I'm shocked.
Chris Marquardt [01:18:32]:
Well, okay, so your, your non-X iPhones doesn't have that. It's always wide open, and that's a good thing because with a sensor that size, you can use all the light you can get, right? And so the aperture changes, well, it changes a few things, but first of all, it's not gonna let more light in because it can only become smaller. It cannot make the opening bigger. It changes your depth of field, which means—
Leo Laporte [01:19:03]:
That's key. And they showed some shots with some beautiful bokeh.
Chris Marquardt [01:19:07]:
True, true. What the phones do now and will still do is portrait mode, which is an artificial bokeh, which is computational.
Leo Laporte [01:19:19]:
So, and this isn't very many blades too. I couldn't count them, but it didn't look like a—
Chris Marquardt [01:19:23]:
6 blades.
Leo Laporte [01:19:24]:
So isn't more better?
Chris Marquardt [01:19:25]:
6 blades and straight blades. Normally what camera manufacturers try to do is have rounded blades.
Leo Laporte [01:19:31]:
Like an iris.
Chris Marquardt [01:19:32]:
That the hole is more rounded because that makes for nicer bokeh. You can see the bokeh in point light sources, as in if you shoot something with a Christmas tree in the background with little point light sources, you will see the shape of the aperture in the bokeh, as in this case, little hexagons.
Leo Laporte [01:19:55]:
Right.
Chris Marquardt [01:19:56]:
But one thing straight aperture blades do, if you stop down, if you make that hole smaller, is they make a nice starburst.
Leo Laporte [01:20:06]:
Yes, that's what they showed. It was a starburst. Yes, a 4-point starburst. It wasn't a very—
Chris Marquardt [01:20:13]:
6 points.
Leo Laporte [01:20:13]:
Or 6 points.
Chris Marquardt [01:20:14]:
Yeah, because it's 6 points. The starburst is when you have a point light source and it becomes a little star. And that is a very pleasing effect. It's a very nice-looking effect. It's— you can, of course, artificially create it, but if it's real, there's something interesting and special about it. And I believe that that's the reason they used only 6 blades. Also because it's harder to make more blades in that size.
Leo Laporte [01:20:44]:
It's a tiny little thing!
Chris Marquardt [01:20:45]:
But also the straight blades, which a lot of people wonder why on earth did they make straight blades. Straight blades will make a nicer looking starburst. And I believe even though they didn't really They didn't really harp on about this. They just showed it a couple of times. I believe their calculation is people will see that and will give them a very visceral, under-the-skin argument, belly kind of argument that goes, oh, I kind of want that because it looks pro, it looks sweet, it looks nice. I think that's their, that's their thinking. Yeah, so I believe, I believe those blades are the way they are mainly for the Starburst. That's my hot take here.
Leo Laporte [01:21:33]:
So I want the folding one because I like the size and shape of it.
Chris Marquardt [01:21:40]:
Doesn't come with a—
Leo Laporte [01:21:42]:
And it doesn't come with any— it doesn't even come with a telephoto lens. It only comes with 2 basic lenses.
Chris Marquardt [01:21:47]:
Why would anyone want this kind of, that kind of a folding phone? I never understood that. Never got that.
Leo Laporte [01:21:53]:
All of that aside, I'm feeling like, oh rats, don't I want the telephoto lens and the blades? But you're making me feel a little bit better about it because it is, I mean, a teensy-weensy sensor.
Chris Marquardt [01:22:09]:
It gives you control, but then the depth of field on the sensor this size is not shallow at all.
Leo Laporte [01:22:16]:
So they're doing it computationally, in other words.
Chris Marquardt [01:22:19]:
No, no, no, no. You can get real shallow depth of field. The more you zoom in, like you take a telephoto lens, the longest lens on the phone, you will get shallow depth of field, but only for things that are really close to the camera.
Leo Laporte [01:22:37]:
So—
Chris Marquardt [01:22:37]:
So— I don't see the point in doing that unless you really want to make people go, oh, that's nice. For the starburst. That's my guess.
Leo Laporte [01:22:48]:
Well, I don't care about the starburst, so that's good to know that I'm not— you're making me feel— I guess what I'm saying is you're making me feel better about not— because I do want the folding phone for reasons I understand you think it's dopey, and I don't blame you. But I want a little iPad in my pocket, and I like the little square aspect ratio. The point I make several times now is that this phone is designed this way because they want you to be able to put the speaker at your ear and the microphone at your mouth. But since I never talk on the phone anymore, although I did just before the show, I actually was holding it like this.
Chris Marquardt [01:23:28]:
I saw you do it.
Leo Laporte [01:23:30]:
But that's very rare. I don't need it to be this form factor. Really what I think, to me, these aren't phones anymore. They're computers in your pocket. I think a folding phone of that aspect ratio is a more useful computer in your pocket for looking at video, things like that. But I'm giving up a good camera.
Chris Marquardt [01:23:52]:
Maybe I'm just being an old fart. I can't—
Leo Laporte [01:23:54]:
I know you're being an old fart.
Chris Marquardt [01:23:55]:
Imagine a folding phone.
Leo Laporte [01:23:56]:
I know you're being an old fart.
Chris Marquardt [01:24:00]:
So go, go get your folding phone. I'm pretty sure it's awesome.
Leo Laporte [01:24:03]:
I may regret it. I'm willing to regret it. It's very, very expensive, but I'm going to get them. this, you know, the cheapest one they have. Um, and, you know, we'll see. But, uh, I feel like, first of all, the 17 Pro Max camera is fine. And I'm—
Chris Marquardt [01:24:19]:
I think I'm still on the 16 Pro and it's fine.
Leo Laporte [01:24:22]:
It's fine.
Chris Marquardt [01:24:23]:
And good.
Leo Laporte [01:24:24]:
Let's not forget, Leo spent a ridiculous amount of money on this actual camera. So as you say, if you have too much gear You get in a decision crisis.
Chris Marquardt [01:24:37]:
I have just handed in that manuscript for the book.
Leo Laporte [01:24:40]:
Oh, tell me about your book.
Chris Marquardt [01:24:41]:
What is the book? And the photos with it, and a significant portion of the photos have come out of my 16 Pro iPhone.
Leo Laporte [01:24:50]:
Wow. Well, that's saying something. Is this a book about iPhone photography? Nope.
Chris Marquardt [01:24:56]:
It's a book about attention. It's a book about making decisions. The exact same things we talked about earlier.
Leo Laporte [01:25:01]:
It's a philosophy book.
Chris Marquardt [01:25:03]:
It's sort of. It's also a lot of exercises of getting you to a point where you can maybe understand what I'm trying to tell you. But yeah, it's a book about what happens before the picture and what happens after the picture. Nice.
Leo Laporte [01:25:22]:
Oh, I love that.
Chris Marquardt [01:25:23]:
It's a very, very personal book, a very different book from photography books.
Leo Laporte [01:25:28]:
I can't wait to get it.
Chris Marquardt [01:25:31]:
Well, it's a good question. Will it be licensed by an American publisher? Because it's—
Leo Laporte [01:25:35]:
So it's going to be in German only?
Chris Marquardt [01:25:37]:
Well, for now, and the book market, the photo book market is not doing well.
Leo Laporte [01:25:44]:
The book market in general is not good.
Chris Marquardt [01:25:46]:
If you know a publisher or someone at a publisher in the United States who does photo books, that might be an opportunity for a very interesting different I wish I did.
Leo Laporte [01:25:57]:
I don't, but maybe somebody listening. We have so many influential listeners. What's the name of the book in German?
Chris Marquardt [01:26:05]:
Abenteuerfotografie, Adventure Photography. And adventure doesn't mean you have to go to big places and the adventure starts the moment you leave your house, go outside. I'm gonna have to look at the world.
Leo Laporte [01:26:20]:
I'm gonna— I'll just have my AI translate it. Go to discoverthetopfloor.com. It is in German, but Google Translate's gotten pretty good.
Chris Marquardt [01:26:31]:
Well, it will be— there will be an English version of it pretty soon.
Leo Laporte [01:26:35]:
And as soon as you do English language workshops, they'll be here, right?
Chris Marquardt [01:26:42]:
Absolutely. 100%.
Leo Laporte [01:26:44]:
That's a good translation. Eat your vegetables.
Chris Marquardt [01:26:47]:
Well, that's the actual title in German.
Leo Laporte [01:26:49]:
Oh, okay. Didn't have to translate that one.
Chris Marquardt [01:26:51]:
No.
Leo Laporte [01:26:52]:
discoverthetopfloor.com is Chris's site. He does workshops, he does coaching, he has great books. He does— his other books are available in English, including his book about film photography, his book about wide-angle photography. Uh, he has, uh, so much wisdom and talent, and it's just not fair to the rest of us. discoverthetopfloor.com. You got any, uh, workshops coming up that people should know about?
Chris Marquardt [01:27:20]:
Well, it's all on discoverthetopfloor.com. Again, unfortunately right now they are in German, but I'm working on a few things.
Leo Laporte [01:27:29]:
So yeah, things will happen. Really, it was slowed down by COVID, frankly.
Chris Marquardt [01:27:35]:
Oh, totally.
Leo Laporte [01:27:35]:
Absolutely. Yeah.
Chris Marquardt [01:27:37]:
Yes.
Leo Laporte [01:27:37]:
So, but that was a few years ago now, Chris. I think it's time to get back in the Oh, I'm getting there big time. Good, good. Well, we appreciate what you do here every month.
Chris Marquardt [01:27:51]:
I appreciate you.
Leo Laporte [01:27:52]:
Yeah. Uh, the book— I'm sorry, the, uh, subject, uh, for next month, you've got 5 weeks to take a refined photo. This time I'm gonna be much better, and I am gonna go out and take some photos with my fancy, fancy Dan camera. I'm not doing iPhone things.
Chris Marquardt [01:28:09]:
5 weeks.
Leo Laporte [01:28:11]:
I'm gonna have an iPhone that looks like a passport. It's not gonna be— actually, I'm not gonna have it for the trip because you can't order it till next month. So it will arrive after I'm out of the country, which is too bad. Lisa's getting the new phone with the aperture with the blades. So expect some starburst photography from Lisa.
Chris Marquardt [01:28:33]:
Probably, yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:28:34]:
Yeah, she said I could play with it. I, you know, I'm honestly, I don't feel any urge to upgrade at all. Uh, but I do want to take a look at this folding one just to see, just to see. And, uh, we will be back in 5 weeks' time. When is that?
Chris Marquardt [01:28:52]:
5 weeks' time. When is that? On the 16th of October.
Leo Laporte [01:28:57]:
October 16th. I am leaving the country October 20th. Oh, so the subject of the 16th will be what camera should Leo take? What— actually, I know what camera. What lens should Leo take?
Chris Marquardt [01:29:13]:
No, no, no, you will tell us what decision you made.
Leo Laporte [01:29:17]:
Okay, I'll be decisive.
Chris Marquardt [01:29:19]:
Or will you leave that to the last second?
Leo Laporte [01:29:21]:
No, I'm pretty sure this is it. This is when I bought this, and I did, by the way, I got it used, which was great. Used, consider used for a lot of stuff because there's plenty of people like me who buy it and go, yeah, never use it, and they sell it used for half what it costs new. And this is, you know, as good as new. So, um, I don't feel quite so guilty about it. And I, and I love it. I really enjoy taking, uh, pictures with it, partly because it's so hard, which is counterintuitive.
Chris Marquardt [01:29:55]:
Nope. It's not counterintuitive. It forms you, it shapes you.
Leo Laporte [01:29:59]:
Yeah, I have to—
Chris Marquardt [01:30:00]:
It gives you— okay, last thing here. There's 2 kinds of friction in your photography. There's the friction that keeps you from taking pictures, as in, okay, there's an inner voice that tells you that, oh no, I'm not gonna go out, it's warm in here, I have chips, I have crisps, I have chips, I have Scrolling, or the friction that is your—
Leo Laporte [01:30:29]:
Inner critic.
Chris Marquardt [01:30:30]:
That's your camera. No, that's not— the friction that is your camera being ready, your memory card being full, your battery not being charged.
Leo Laporte [01:30:38]:
Battery's charged, I'm ready to go.
Chris Marquardt [01:30:39]:
You know, that's the kind of stuff that keeps you from taking pictures. That's negative friction, but it comes with a positive sign as well, because If you limit yourself to one focal length, if you limit yourself to 5 minutes for these photos, that is positive friction. That is friction that will make you— that'll force you to take an extra step, that'll force you to spend an extra minute, that'll force you to look closer. That's the friction that makes us more creative.
Leo Laporte [01:31:14]:
Yes.
Chris Marquardt [01:31:15]:
By the way, that's also from my book. Yeah, everyone look at that photo, at that camera, and then when it's— the 5 weeks are over on the 16th of October, let's see if Leo still holds it up and will say, I will take this camera on vacation.
Leo Laporte [01:31:32]:
Smile, everybody. I'm taking your picture right now, and I will see you all. There you go. Very nice smiles, by the way.
Chris Marquardt [01:31:40]:
And a very smooth shutter sound.
Leo Laporte [01:31:43]:
I love the sound. I love it. This camera. Uh, I will see you— Chris and I will see you all, uh, on the 16th of October, where we will see many hundreds of very refined photographs. I think so.
Chris Marquardt [01:31:59]:
Yeah. Yes.
Leo Laporte [01:32:00]:
Thank you, everybody. We'll see you next time. And thanks especially to our Club Twit members who make this possible. Auf Wiedersehen!
Chris Marquardt [01:32:08]:
Bye-bye!
