Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - Waveform’s Favorite Cameras!

Episode Date: December 23, 2025

We recorded one more bonus episode before going on holiday break all about one of our favorite topics...cameras! In this one, Marques, Andrew, Adam, and Ellis all try to be David's favorite. The crew each picked their favorite 3 pictures that they've all taken with wildly different cameras and David goes through them to give feedback. It's half portfolio-review/half chaotic camera comparisons. We hope you enjoy and we'll see you next year for regular weekly episodes. Happy holidays! Shop the merch: https://shop.mkbhd.com Links: Verge - Hasselblad review Becca Farsace - 1000 pictures with a Ricoh Music provided by: Epidemic Sound Social: Waveform Threads: https://www.threads.net/@waveformpodcast Waveform Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/waveformpodcast/?hl=en Waveform TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@waveformpodcast Hosts: Marques: https://www.threads.net/@mkbhd Andrew: https://www.threads.net/@andrew_manganelli David: https://www.threads.net/@davidimel Adam: https://www.threads.net/@parmesanpapi17 Ellis: https://twitter.com/EllisRovin Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/mkbhd Intro/Outro music by 20syl: https://bit.ly/2S53xlC Waveform is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

But I am a prime hater, so this is a great lens. Dang. Yeah, sorry. We won't have that fight again. We've had that fight too many times. One focal length. Are you serious? One.

What is up, people on internet? Welcome back to another episode of the Wayform podcast. We're your hosts. I'm Marquez. I'm Andrew. And I'm David. And yet, don't adjust your calendars. This is, in fact, not Friday.

Because this is a bonus episode. We figured we had some things that we wanted to try. Fair warning, this is probably best consumed as video. So if you're an audio-only listener, I would recommend video for this particular bonus episode. Yeah, Ian. Yeah, we're playing with some cameras today and the images that we've taken from the cameras. And the way we want to frame it is we've got a couple of the... Ah, frame it?

Yeah. It was unintentional pun. Museum quality glass. I'm going to probably make more of those puns. But we have some of the most hyped cameras on planet Earth in this room, and we have been using them. David's been using tons of different cameras. That's right. But did you do the reverb thing in other people's headphones?

I just heard a tiny bit of reverb. What? Yeah, there it is. The reverb is funny. But we've been taking pictures with all these cameras, and we figured it was worth talking about the cameras through the lens of the photos we were able to get with them. I'm really good at these points. I don't know if you've noticed. It's good.

But, David, you're our sort of residential, resident, resident camera expert. Actually, I have an apartment. Our resident residential camera expert. That's right. And so we figured we would show you the photos that we've taken on these cameras. And you can tell us what you think of the images while we talk about what it's like to use the camera to get these photos, if that makes sense. Okay. Does that make sense?

Yeah. This is basically us just like yearning for David's approval. So I think this whole episode will go fine. Yeah, I like that. Yeah. You should do compliment sandwiches so that we don't feel too bad about how bad our pictures are. Yeah, I'll be like, the color's great, the image is shit, but you're, you know. Composition.

Horrible. But you tried your best. But you tried your best, buddy. No, I want. This one's going right on the fridge. I want to start this episode with photography is subjective. So if I like something or don't like something, it doesn't mean that it's not a special picture. You are picking a winner at the end.

Mm. in that case. No, I would, I would like you to do a camera superlative, or a superlative for each camera by the end of it. So kind of like your, this is best camera for someone might doing this. Okay. You might be doing something like this. Okay. Cool.

Can do that. So like if you were writing like a SEO driven buying guide for a camera website. Best camera 2025, travel X100 V, photography. Road trip. Film emulation. Film emilipel. Cheap. Codec.

Under $100. Like a, like a, like a. Switch 2. Switch 2. Nintendo Switch 2. Yeah. That would be the SEO. So we've each taken a handful of our selects, I think, three photos each from our

camera of choice, and we've all put them on David's computer. You haven't looked at them yet, right? No. Okay, perfect. Yeah. Who do you want to look at the photos from first? Should I know whose pictures they are? Oh.

I would like. Oh. Well, they're all labeled by name. Well, so you kind of. I mean, if you want. I mean, if you want, you can take them all and put them on a separate folder. Are the actual images labeled by name? Well, so.

Yes. Oh. I would like, and I would like you to know because I think in the process of talking about the photos, that's a prime time. That's a prime time for the person who took it. A zoom time. There's only one zoom, I think. Or maybe else is a zoom? No.

Oh. Just me. They can talk about why they like the camera and things they like the camera. Maybe that's why they're taking photos like they did. Okay. Well, to start, why don't you all pick a number between one? and 10 and closest delta will start okay one and 10 who goes first one and let's pick a number between one and 10 to see who goes first one and 100 I'm going with 99 okay Brett's key wait I didn't I didn't come up with the number yeah

sorry you need to do that whoever's closest to David's number so you think of a number I came up with one now I'm just kidding all right one oh my gosh okay 99 okay Okay, 82. Nice. 42. All right, it was 77, so Marquez is closest. Wow, okay. I'm going first.

Very good, okay. All right, open that Marquez folder on your desktop there, and you should have three images. I want you to start with Marquez one. Okay, Marquez one, opening. So I'll do our best for our audio listeners, but really this is going to be a very descriptive podcast. Do you see an image one? This took a really long time to open. I will start with why.

It's a hundred megapixels. Why? What camera is it? So, oh yeah, that's a good place to start. So I, my three images, I feel like a top chef explaining. Uh-huh. My ingredient of choice was... What have you prepared for us today, Shepard? I have prepared images from a Haasoblad X2D Mark 2 using the 35 to 100 Prime, or Zoom, obviously.

Yeah. This is a brand... Can I interrupt you? Because I feel like there's a funny story before you launch into this, which is this camera came out and you turned around from your desk and faced the office and said, everyone tell me why I shouldn't buy this. And we all gave you tons of reasons. And then you went, you're right. And then you turned around and you bought it. Yeah. Asterisk, this is not the one I bought. True. I bought one from B&H who has pushed my delivery date back by weeks and weeks and weeks

at a time. It is currently mid-December. This is a review unit from Hossoblad that I've been shooting with in the meantime. However, I did buy this exact camera and this exact lens. They got like three weeks until DJI is banned. Yeah, I am crossing my fingers that I actually get the one that I bought. I think they have my money. No, so this is a new camera and a new lens that they made. I've shot with House of Blood stuff before. This one has, you might have heard about this camera, you've probably shot with it already,

has better autofocus, has built-in HDR, which you will notice in my images. So I'd like you to open an image number one. Okay. And I'll talk through why I think each one of them is my select. I'm going to turn the brightness all the way up, so we really get that HDR. perfect yeah you see image number one too so this image number one here is the first hour of me owning this camera of me having this camera and i shot this photo of adam this is the photo you said it was the best camera photo you ever taken is that you said yeah why you so okay

it's subjective yeah yeah yeah so number one is uh like i said it is a hundred megapixel medium format camera. This is fresh out the box, aperture priority. I haven't even really dialed any settings yet, but it nailed the eye for autofocus on Adam's face. And Adam is completely backlit in this picture. So Sun is streaming in in the background, as you can see in the parking lot and in the windows. But in the shadow detail, which I have pulled up a little bit, you can see Adam's face, the black hat he's wearing, and shadow detail like crazy. And feel free to zoom in super far. The zoo, like, the sharpness of this photo and quality is.

Adam's table tennis racket is so messed up that it looks like there is like shutter drag near the top of it. Yeah, it's a... But it's just that this is picking up the fibers that are falling off of it. Mark has this photo is 11,000 pixels wide. This is a JPEG that is 16 meg. I've given you all of the pixels. It is huge.

But this is part of my obsession with imagery. I've been shooting 8K video for years. I love cropability and malleability. And I had to relearn Hosselblad's focus software to really take advantage. Oh, right. So do you edited this? A little bit, yeah, just to get my exposure right. And, of course, to dial a little bit of HDR in.

So you can see little highlights in the trucks in the background. Yeah. It is interesting to see a camera that can shoot HDR that is not a phone. Yeah. Because it looks so much better. Yeah, it looks a lot better. And you can see more of the benefits of like what HDR is good for on a real camera. I think seeing all the shadow detail, like because he's so backlit is beneficial.

I'm assuming you bump the shadows a little bit so you can see more in there. Yeah. A lot of dynamic range. A lot of the radiation through like you can see the blue in the sky. It's incredible how much is actually in. that's true that's true in a totally backlit shot like this right yeah so that's that's photo number one okay i feel like uh you didn't seem to love it well that's that's my phone that's just because i'm in it but it's like it's it's it's one of the first again

this is in the first hour of testing this thing is is your reason why this is your favorite because i i took a little peek by accident at one of your other pictures and i just the thumbnail i like liked it more is the reason that you liked this photo so much more the technical aspects of like, oh my God, everything is in the tone curve. The reason I like this photo is because, so one, I've shot with Hasselblatt a lot in the past, and you have to be very intentional about nailing your settings on each exposure and, like, being super, super slow with every shot. And this one, I pulled it out the box, put the lens on,

and just started shooting to the built-in internal storage. And this was an effortless capture that I think is impossible on 99% of cameras. So I was just like, this sort of power in a zero-skill photo was impressive to me. That's why I like that. All right, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, okay, let's go to photo number two. All right. Photo number two is vertical.

It is 11,000 pixels tall this time. And this is me shooting Andrew shooting a photo. I don't know if the photo Andrew shot while in this photo is going to end up on the screen. You can really see the HGR on this one. Yeah, okay. Okay, so the photo now is a pretty symmetrical shot of down these train tracks. Andrew is crouched in the middle of the train tracks, taking a low photo. He's mostly in focus.

It's got the leaves falling in the background from the trees. The train, tons of garbage because it's carny, and nothing is lost to dynamic range. Again, you see the HDR, you see the pumps sky and the highlights of the rails, but there is a ton of dynamic range as well. And this was not cropped at all. I nailed the frame in camera. Wow. Yeah. Wait, I have a question about this one.

Yeah. Does, well, the camera in general. Does the camera give you two files, like one? Yes. Okay. It gives me a raw and it gives me an H-EIF. Cool. And I took the raw each time.

The H-GIF looks good and it's sharp, but color-wise and dynamic range-wise and obviously malleability-wise, I was playing a little bit more with exposure. Okay. So the H-E-I-F has. the tone map for the hdr built in yeah does the raw only apply a tone map once you bring it into the focus software does the raw only apply because a rod is not a container so it can't store the tone map data it allows me to change a lot it specifically and if i'm reading the ui right it allows me to change when the data is lost to hdr like pure highlight and also when exposure

is gone separately. So it's like if I move the whole exposure up, I can see the top of the exposure like a little bracket of like when it's going to pop in like HDR or whatever and I can also see the end of like when it's going to be pure white. Oh. And they're separate. David, can you explain for,

I mean our listeners definitely all know what this is, but I do not. I probably do either. What is a tone map? Okay, yeah. So a tone map is basically, so in an image you have multiple, You have like a luminance like value and you've also got like color saturation values.

A tone map for HGR is basically looking at the bright and dark areas and saying like these areas need to have more tonal range here. So in order to have HDR, you like in the container, the H-E-I-F container or the H-A-C container, you have the regular JPEG or H-EIF or whatever, or H-I-F or whatever. it is and then you apply the tone map on top and so I'm assuming the focus software can also create a tone map for ross while the camera itself is creating an hdr tone map just for the hc file got so it's almost like an extension to the lookup table that's like yeah right it's like an hdr tone map yeah thank you very much it only does this for certain shooting modes I'm trying

I don't remember which ones. I think full manual it won't do HDR. Oh. But everything else will. Interesting. Either way, yeah, it worked out. I think beautifully for this image, you can see the sun glowing off of the trash bag next to Andrew.

Beautiful, beautiful. It does, to be fair, it also does glow down the entire train track. The rails. Yeah, I was going to say this photo really accentuates the HGR in that the train tracks are glowing, but there is still detail in them, which kind of shows off the benefits of HGR It's like it's super bright, but you still have that detail, whereas normally that would just be lost. Yeah. I really, I think the Hossa Blod natural color profile that they built for this camera is also shining here.

Because if you zoom into the areas like near his feet where like the grass and the the wood is and the dirt, it's very, very nice looking dirt. Like it's, it's just that very natural, natural color that isn't like too saturated or too washed out. it's kind of a good a good middle ground the white balance was uh also sort of warmed a little bit in post oh okay because just because it was golden hour and it just looks really good when it's warm like this yeah and the trees look great yeah yeah yeah all the garbage everywhere so detailed unfortunately yeah when he took this picture i was like does it look like i'm taking a picture he's like yeah you can totally tell i don't think you can tell i just look like i'm like squatting squatty potty scrouched on the train tracks it's like the dog i walked past this morning um

but yeah very this one so I shot a couple versions of this while you were squatted there I shot like one at like F-22 and then one at F-10 and then this one's at like F-9 I think is my wide open one or not wide open it's my most open one oh really I think it looks best did you shoot a shallower one no this is the shallows one okay sorry I shot like a suit I like a F-22 one that looks a little more distracting and how much is it focused yeah so I like this one cool my picture from that came out terrible oh but I also had a 20% bloom filter on like with Golden Hour blaring. That's the best one.

Oh, I hate Blumfeld. Make everything look like you smeared a little Vaseline on it. Yeah, for real. All right. We're moving on to the last Marquez photo here. Last but not least, this one, I took in a very exotic location. I'll let you guess. Carney, New Jersey.

Yes, about 40 feet to the left of the last photo. GPS overlay puts me in the same place. No, this is also Golden Hour shooting almost all the way closed, but I just feel like the light coming through the plants here, everything being in focus, and the sky doing this really nice thing with the clouds in the background. I shot this and thought, this is one of my nicest wallpapers. It's going to be a wallpaper. No, yeah, for sure. I like this more than that first photo of Adam. Yeah. Thanks. This is literally a picture of grass. But it's tall warm. Most of my photography is pictures of grass. So, yeah, no, I think the color is

The natural color really shines here as well. The fact that you can see all the detail in the clouds is really nice. It really gives it that sort of like fine art photography look. Yeah. I think what might have been interesting is going to the other side of the cat tails and shooting against the light since the HDR really like, you know, allows for that. Yeah. I have a couple of those.

It was getting some lens flare too. Oh, yeah. Kind of crazy. Okay. And I think the gold of these cat tails could kind of come out a little bit more. If you want to really be wowed by the resolution, zoom all the way into the rightmost branch and you can count the individual berries on it. How many megapixels is this camera?

A hundred. Each one is a 100 megapixel shot. Oh, my God. You can see the little white markings on the bark of the, like, tree. Yeah. Yeah. The detail that this keeps is just wild. It is crazy.

Is that why you prefer this camera mark, guys? Just the details. This is why I keep saying this is the greatest camera ever made. It's because it lets me capture as much as I, possibly can to then have the most flexibility in post so as long as i nail focus and and roughly get the exposure and the framing that i want the rest is is possible yeah it's a shame that it's digital i can't tell that if these like white spots on the back of the cat tails are haloing from sort of some from some sort of artifacting or if it's just light that's part of the plant i think they have

this sort of a cottony like seed that comes off and the light's gone through them so you I think it's coming from behind right now. The sun. The sun, yeah. Literally takes like a couple seconds for my computer and rerender parts of the image when I move around. You can be like zoomed in and be like, that's a nice picture. And then you just keep zooming out and you realize it's like one 16th of the frame. So very nice, Marquez.

Thank you. There's my three photos with a little HDR to brighten your day. I'd say if I were to rank these. Oh, sure. Photo three at my favorite. Cool. Photo two at my second favorite. Cool.

You can say it. It's okay. Podium. You can say it. Let's go. Top three, top three. And, yeah, number one is number three for me. It's not because it's Adam.

No, yeah, I'm sure. I love Adam. It's just because I never get to see outside of work. Can we do a something you would like to see Marquez do with this camera that could potentially... Oh, like something the camera would be good for? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like something, whether it be a subject, whether it be a subject, whether it be a setting change on something,

what would you like to see out of that camera? I think landscape photography with more like possible layers and subjects because the landscape photography that you did here is sort of like, there's only like two major things, you know, with the cat tails. The benefit of a camera like this, both because it's so high megapixel

and because it's got so much tonal range, is that you can create, create all of these different layers and you can zoom into different areas and really like capture the breadth of the scene. And things that are already sort of tight and zoomed in, you don't get as much value out of that resolution as much and also the tonal range. Is it taking photos? Is this distracting? A landscape of my, the landscape of my face. I feel like this is, I hate to bring it to like short form, but this is a like short form trend right now where it's like you see this.

beautiful photo and they pull out and it crops okay oh sorry he's like no it's just my brain raw version what i see what i take and it's so annoying all right marquins is there anything else you would like you have plans on doing with this camera yeah i just want to get out more with it i do want to do more product photography with it i think uh that's my favorite type of photography mostly because it's super controllable and you can kind of be as creative as you want and nail a single shot so I'm going to definitely do more of that but also just kind of take more photos in general keep it in your back pocket remember when you first saw this you were like I will not take more than 700 photos with this camera did I say that 700 it was something like that I've taken that many this

week I was going to say you plan on as your mind changed on that like you want to bring this with you and shoot more often yes I want I've been trying to shoot more with a real camera than not more than my phone but more with a real camera less with my phone in like shots that I want to be good and the lens is a 35 to 100 2.8 right it's 2 8 wide and I think it's four all the way in yeah yeah it's expensive the body is 7,000 or so it is cheaper than the last generation surprisingly even with the tariffs the lens is a lot also a lot of money but I I'm a prime hater so this is this is a great lens thing yeah sorry we won't have that fight again

We've had that by too many times. One focal length? Are you serious? One? Zoom with your feet, man. Not even two. Zoom with your feet, bro. Yeah.

All right. I'm glad I'm sitting next to Marquez for this. Because how many megapixels do you say you're? was? Is it 102? It's an 18. 102. This camera has 18 megapixels. 18? Okay. 18 megapos. Does your camera have in-body

stabilization? Yeah, I think it's like seven stops. Yeah, mine doesn't have any. None. No, no. Does your camera have a full-frame sensor? No, it's bigger. It's medium format. Yeah, mine does it. APSC. Okay. Your camera have autofocus? Yeah. No, mine doesn't. Continuous. That's crazy. I mean, I think mine does,

but I don't have any lens that use the autofocus. Okay. Yeah. Let's go. What other features is your camera? Ellis's camera is just like a box with a hole in it. Pinhole, baby. Digital pinhole. Yeah, I generated images.

No, just kidding. My camera has a three-inch screen. Okay. Max shutter speed of one over four thousand. Pretty slow. Workable. Four thousand is fine. Get this.

My camera has... It's normal. Aperture priority. That's great. Check that out. That's great. A continuous shooting mode of 4.3 frames per second. Okay.

If you hold that down for two seconds, the camera crashes. Sick. That's not a joke. Sick. This is the 2012. Yes. Canon EOSM in Panda.

By the way. The worst color way it comes in. Colt camera. Because it's actually quite good for video. Yes. Yeah. So would you like to know why I bought this terrible camera? For video?

Yes, because there's a community of people that do this sort of crowd-developed open-source thing called Magic Lantern, where old Canon cameras, it's like an open source firmware hack that puts lots of really cool features in this camera, the most famous of which is 14-bit raw video. Yeah. It's very noisy raw video, but it's 14-bit. Works better in 10-bit.

You can overclock the SD card, which I did not know as a thing before this. And I also bought this camera because I was really interested in getting into this. vintage glass and the EOSM system, which I believe is called ESM, has one of the shortest flange distances of any lens system. So a flange distance is the distance between the sensor and the lens mount. If you have a very short flange distance, then you can adapt more lenses because while those lenses have a longer distance between the end of the lens mount and the sensor, you can just put pieces of metal of various thicknesses that will allow it to be perfect.

space. You see, and that's exactly what I thought when I got into this and no one told me that everyone who makes lens adapters is terrible at it. And you will spend so much money going through lens adapters that do not let your

camera focus. Now Marquez, you should I tell that? I'll tell that story at the end because, oh my gosh. And it was Belarus. Marquez, you hate prime lenses. It's not that I hate primes, it's just there's no reason.

Right, right, right. So if you were to pick a focal length to be stuck at, sure. What would you pick? Huh. Probably somewhere in the medium telephoto, like 35-ish range. Yes. Marquez, would you mind reading the focal length of this lens?

Why is it an eight and a half millimeter? That's an eight and a half millimeter lens. Let's talk about equivalency. Let's talk about equivalency, everybody. Okay, 8.5 millimeters, that's also a TV lens. It's a, for an 8 millimeter. That is a mid-70s security camera lens. The sensor on a security camera is real small.

Yes. So, okay, here's another thing. So when people talk about focal links, when people talk about focal lengths, you know, they talk about like eight, they take about 23 millimeter, 35 millimeter, 50 millimeter, 100 millimeter, whatever. that that equivalent there is an equivalency that is dependent on the size of the sensor so if you have a small sensor a shorter focal length is actually a bit longer so famously Fuji makes APSC cameras APSC is about half the size of a full frame sensor size and so because of that

you have to do 1.5x or not half the size but you have to do a 1.5x multiplicative in order to get the actual equivalent focal links if you have a 23 millimeter Fuji lens, it's actually like a 35 millimeter full frame equivalent. There's a lot of math you have to do here because this is a lot of math. Well, this is a security. By 1.6. Okay. Wow.

Yeah, the security camera lens on an APSC sensor. Have you looked through the viewfinder? There's no viewfinder. Have you checked it out? Yeah, there's no viewfinder. Is your camera viewfinder? Yeah, mine doesn't. Fire it up. Yeah, I love this. It's tiny.

The image circle is quite literally an image circle. Yes. Something other people, another thing people don't know. When cameras project onto the sensor, they actually project a circle. They don't protect a square

because sensors are square. There have been people have experimented with making circular image sensors before so that you lose less resolution. What I'm hearing is that you guys are thrown away precious pixels. Exactly. Meanwhile, I'm over here, win it.

Yeah, so we got the, it's a circle of images. And so when you, So when you want to actually, you know, when you take it into the editing program, you've got to crop into a square aspect ratio inside of the circle. It's called calculus. That's what they do in calculus. I think the simplest way to describe this is looking through the view or the screen of Ellis's camera right now looks like the opening scene of James Bond. Where you're looking down the barrel of a gun.

I would describe it much more as like a pirate telescope. Anyway, do you have any more questions about this camera before we look at some pictures? Yes. How much did you pay for it? I paid. I got it from what's it called MPB or MBP. It's the one that's not MacBook Pro. So I guess that would be MPB, which is like a used camera site.

It came with two batteries, a charger, a strap. It's missing a lug. So I haven't really been able to use a strap yet. And I think I paid about $2.50. Pretty good. Yeah. It might have come with, yeah. Yeah, notably that Magic Lantern software, all of the film students when I was in college had Canon T2Is or T3 eyes or whatever.

Kind of like GH4s. Yeah. And yeah, it's just a totally different software that allows you to shoot in raw. Well, it's not just that. It's like it's this open source firmware that comes in different modules. So if there's features you want to add. to your camera, you go and you grab those specific modules and then you add them. So if you want like focus peeking, for example, grab it, you put it in the camera.

If you want the raw video, you grab it, put it in the camera. If you want like crop modes, you grab it and put it in the camera. So it lets you sort of build out the software of the camera for whatever you're sort of doing that day. Hugest asterisk, you will brick your camera doing this. Like you will. Like I don't know how I haven't bricked this camera yet, but you will. So just only do it to cameras that you don't mind just like shredding.

And also I just want to say, I hate the way this camera looks. I love this guy. I've taken it to multiple countries, fits in my pocket, great battery life. Everything about it's so excellent. This panda colorway is just. Yeah. This is taking me really, really, really far back. But the first camera I ever really got to shoot YouTube videos was a Canon T2I.

But I was on the fence way back in 2009, between them. that and a, okay, Pentax, I'm not going to remember the modeling, but a Pentax that would have been if I had gotten it black and white, like white, mostly like this one. Yeah. And I'm so glad that I didn't get the white camera. If I could go back knowing what I know now, because like really, this was like the first camera I ever bought and I didn't really know what I was going to enjoy about owning a camera, what I was going to enjoy about photography. Yeah. I really wish I had gotten a like an older micro four-thirds Olympus camera. I feel like it would have had all the things

that I would have wanted it to do. It would have been just as adaptable to vintage glass. It would have had a much larger family of ecosystems. It would have had a viewfinder. I would not have had as much fun modding it because that doesn't really, oh yeah, it's a screw mount. There's no latch. You literally like screw it in.

Oh, wow. I guess it is a circle. It's fine. But yeah, so if you think you want to do this, I would highly recommend looking at similarly priced old like a four thirds

before we look at Ellis's photos I think that this is a good

example of a of talking about contrast because the thing about

Marquez's camera is that it has so much dynamic range that

everything's a midtone and the HDR Ness gives you a lot of flexibility

right because you can make the brights brighter you can make the

darker to like add that contrast but if you keep everything in the

middle of the curve which is like the highlights are on the right side the shadows are on the left side and then the the middle is the middle gray area of luminance it looks very flat and to actually get dimension out of images you need to have contrast now older cameras like the OSM who had I don't know probably shot like six-bit color or something they could not accept the highlight detail of being outside you know so So as we're probably going to see in a couple of these photos, we're going to have some clipped highlights.

That's fine sometimes. Like sometimes you want clip highlights. Excuse you. I know how to use that thing. No, I know you know how to use this thing. I'm not saying it's your fault. Anyway, let's, let's, hold. I want to find the DXO mark.

I want to see how many EVs, Marquez's camera is for dynamic range. It doesn't look like it. I think it's like 16. It's 16? I think so. Mine is also 16. I'm just kidding. It's 11.

Yeah. Okay. All right, let's look at Ellis photo number one. Let's do this, everybody. Okay. So, some nice vignetting in the corners. Thank you. You know, vignetting was famously used to draw your attention into the center of the image.

In Ellis's case, it was forced upon him. Featured on a bug. Can I say something real quick? Sure. All of the photos that you're going to see today are completely untouched. Very nice. That is a really good note. We talk about famous canon color,

historically has gone back pretty far to be pretty good for a very long time. So this is the image of a chair in the studio, but it's got very nice afternoon lighting. Also, we can see the sky detail, surprisingly. It's pretty good.

They're a little blown out on the chair in like a small area. It's more that the shadows are non-existent. Yeah. Well, I like that. Yeah, so there's some like really bright areas on the chair. The robot room is very very dark. There's an air of mystery in there.

You know, you don't really know what's in there. I would say overall, I really like the specularness of the highlights. There's some nice shine in the areas that are brighter. There's like a lot of sheen going on. This lens is a little bloomy. There's also a lot of chromatic aberration around the edges of this lens.

What the hell is that? Chromatic aberration is basically like color separation in certain areas. So if you look at, because there's, white light has multiple wavelengths of color and technically when they come together they create white light but if they get separated slightly because of the lens does not perfectly converge those rays then you get you get chromatic

vibration and in the window here there's some blue chromatic aberration coming out it's everywhere it's cool it's like it's beautiful yeah it's like almost like there are there are YouTubers I won't say who but who add like chromatic aberration filters to right yeah yeah exactly and they'll do it on the outside to bring attention to the middle, but it's like anytime there's a super, super high contrast piece, you can see the RGB split around it. It's kind of like a style. Yeah, they're trying to be like E. My take has always been the negative sides of like bad technology or non-advanced technologies can be used as stylistic choices in the future when you have the option to use them. Now, before you continue with your review, David, not just is this a cult

camera because of magic lantern. It's, I'm actually a member of another cult, another cult that has very fringe, conspiracy beliefs that many people dislike. I'd like to draw everyone's attention to the carpet in this picture. What does that have to do with the

cult? I would like everyone to look at the amount of textural detail in that carpet. And that is because I am a member of the conspiracy theory, the conspiracy theorist group. The pixel. That believes in microcontrast.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think that this lens and this camera are microcontrast beasts. What the hell is a microcontract? David? It's a very unproven thing. Is it the one one thousandth of a contrast? Because, okay, lens characteristics are very, some of them are big differences, right? Sometimes you'll have the famous Helios 44.2 lens that has swirl around the edges.

That's a very obvious lens decision in the production of the lens. A lot of other lenses when you get to like Sony lenses, right? Because they're just trying to make like, you know, the sharpest possible lens. It's optically close to optically perfect. But a lot of people don't want optically perfect. Now, microcontrast, what people would describe it as, is the look of 3D pop. So you know how you can look at some images and you're like, oh, that's a great photo. And then you look at some and you're like, whoa, it has like,

spatial like texture and it's sort of like coming out of the image it's a it's a conspiracy theory it's a conspiracy people argue about it in camera forums yeah and they talk about they talk about the existence of it and the non-existence of it they talk about how some lenses are better for it where other lenses are worse for it they'll post like data analysis like trying to prove

that this lens has more microcontrast and another person will be like no you're you're reading noise and the sensor yeah It's not true. It sounds like trying to like quantify soul in a song. Kind of, yeah. Okay. It's pretty much the same thing. Yeah.

Like how much does that image like pop off the screen, you know? I get the textural feeling that you're saying that you're talking about. You could taste that carpet. You could taste it. No. Your dogs peed on that carpet. And thrown up on it. There is definitely a lot of color noise in the carpet.

Yeah. This is a noise of camera. Noisy camera. So it's possible that the noise has to do with the 3D pop. Not to just like make you explain 10 million camera things. I mean, that's what this is not a backside illuminated sensor. Okay. What the hell is the backside illuminated the sensor?

It's where the back of the sensor, it has light shown onto it, which gives it more dynamic range. Perfect. Thank you. It's a newer thing. Less noise. And by newer thing, I mean like seven years ago, but this camera is way older than that. Yeah, less noise in the shadows. My favorite thing about this picture before we move on is I love the way the reflection of the chair comes out of the floor and how the camera, the lens plus the floor gives it this crazy sort of ghost bloom.

Yeah. I think that's a really compelling part of this image. Yeah. No. The bloom out of this lens is very nice. All right. She popping. So this next photo, before you open it, the next photo is taken on a different lens, a much more standard camera lens, which is watching.

why this is going to look much more just like normal portrait photograph. I lied. Oh, beautiful. Thank you. This is the second photo. This is the second photo. Same flower. Same camera, different lens.

Wow. Beautiful. Straight out of camera? Straight out of camera. That canon color is really popping. I'll tell you that. Oh, Marquez is a thought. Nothing.

What is this? Is this pondering? Does anyone want to guess? what exotic location I capture these beautiful tropical flowers in your backyard is that cars in the background uh yeah this is the parking lot outside of our building no yeah so to give some verbal description of this this is flowers with the petals sort of hang down at the bottom of the flower with the bulb in the center kind of like they're very colorful they're orange and green they are pink flowers um the one on the left the highlights are clipped so you know You're right, they are. Could use a little more dynamic range, but overall, I think the, the bouquet, which is the out-of-focus areas in this image, are very creamy. Yeah. Because this lens gives a lot of that bloom that kind of, like, gives it to the bouquet, and the colors are wonderful.

And, yeah, if there was a little bit more dynamic range on that left flower, I could definitely see this. Actually, you know, even without that, I could see it on my wall. Yeah. It looks very beautiful. This one to me looks like a Windows XP wallpaper. And it's shot with a Canon FD-50 mil, which is a complete cheat code of a lens. If you want to pretend like you're a really good photographer, get a Canon FD-50-mill. Yeah, the FDs are famously great at microcontrast, right?

That's what they say. I'm a micro-contrast machine. In the conspiracy world. That is a 50-mill with the 1.6 crop factor, so it's more like a 70-mill. which is a really funny thing to have as a prime on your camera to only have like a 76 millimeter lens. Yeah, I really like this photo.

Thank you. Very pretty. Sweet. All right, let's look at the third picture from Ellis here. We're back to the TV lens on this one. Bang. Bang, yeah, city.

See, this is where the microcontrast starts to look incredible. We've got a believer over here, folks. Yeah, so this is a photo of a tree that's lost all of its leaves in the center with trees that have not lost all of their leaves around it, as well as the sky and a cloud.

And yeah, it's really popping. The contrast is popping really nicely. There's some nice shadow detail. The blacks are very black. There's a little bit of peeking in the top right. It's kind of got it all. You know, would you say it's filmic?

Yes. Because the thing I was going to say, the reason I don't like digital cameras generally is that shooting foliage with digital cameras sucks because there's this process called demosayaking, which we have talked about in a studio video before, where you take the photo and the sensor is like RGRB, RGRB, and it's this repeating pattern,

and it takes in these light values, and then the software has to basically put the image back together based on repeating patterns that it notices. But because of that, really, really fine detail is not good for digital cameras because the areas of contrast get lost in that restructuring of the image. And film is just a dye. So it's very granular in its like tonal shifts. Whereas digital cameras generally have this problem where it's like all the fringing on the edges is like very, you know, it just looks very like tack. I feel like it's

very tied to the resolution of the shot too. It's really, the more resolution you have, the more smooth it can appear to be. Yeah. But it's digital. Yeah, but it's still digital. Whereas this, and I think, ironically, the negatives of this camera are what give it more of that filmic look because of the chromatic aberration, the wavelengths of colors are actually slightly separated so that direct contrast fringing that you'd normally see

on a good camera are not there. And so it looks more smooth, more filming. The trees look more like real trees than you would get from like a high quality camera. And it lets you get away with how noisy the sensor is on this camera. I think in a lot of environments, this camera and this lens together are just, frankly, like unusably noisy. But when you have, I don't know, sometimes it just works. Yeah, I like this picture. This photo has simultaneously a ton of dynamic range and almost no dynamic range.

at the same time. It's really interesting. I like it. And then you don't have to review this one. I just thought this would be a good thing to bring up. And the bonus pick is one that I actually took with you, David. Oh, yeah. No, I lie.

This is not a picture I took with you. Oh, no. But when you point this camera into the sun, it shoots rainbows. Yeah. And I just think that is swell. That's cool. They use that in movies sometimes. Yeah.

It get a really cool effect. So, David, going forward, what would you like to? see me do with this camera more interesting interesting this one's hard this one's hard because because it's nonsense it's just like it's so purely artistic yeah so it's like you're taking he's telling you how to be an artist now correct you're taking like highly artistic pictures Ellis this first picture I think everyone in this office has taken a photo of yeah about armchair that's why I included it because I love this photo I think it looks so good I assumed one of you guys would also bring a photo of this chair?

I think everyone's taking that photo. Just like... Just the light is nice. The light that comes through, especially now when it's at like 4 o'clock and we're in the office when Golden Hour hits, as long as that wind turbine, yeah, isn't spinning and causing it to like flicker in that area. Like, it's just a beautiful little corner of our office. A little Alco.

Yeah. Very nice. There's even a dead Astrobot sitting at my favorite part. Yeah, that's my favorite. All right. It's Adam's turn. All right, Adam. Yes.

Tell me about your camera. It is I, Adam. I'm at the big boy table. This is the RICO GR4. It is one of the most hyped cameras on YouTube. And I love it. So I have been shooting with this for a month or two now, ish, something like that. And this thing is exactly what I want from,

an everyday camera. It is like one step above my phone, but a thousand steps below Marquez's camera. Also prime. Also prime. Oh, that's why it's so far below. Yeah. But, like, I can take this thing out of my pocket

and no one bats an eye. Quite literally a pocket camera. Yeah, no. It is a super small. It's super thin. It literally fits in my pocket. I don't even need to string it on like a sling or nothing like that.

That is basically the only reason I wanted this camera. I know nothing. about it technically. It was just, I saw the pictures that were coming out of it and people were like, okay, those are good pictures. And then I was seeing people just put them in their pocket. And I was like, that is what I want. The RICO GR series of digital cameras, because they also made GRs of film cameras, which by the way were even thinner than that. And the only way it was able to fit the film canister was in the grip area. But the body of the camera was thinner than the film canister. But if you put that in a hole, like the iPhone, that means it's

only as thick as it's thick as point right yeah yeah yeah yeah real quick Adam is that the regular version of the GR or is that the blurry version of the GR it is the regular very I want to get a blurry adapter thing on the floor there only is a regular yeah yeah right oh okay the three has the HDF yeah yeah so 50 mil yeah this is the rigor GIFR it just came out this is the newest camera out of all yeah yes it is it just came out and the rica GR-3 it got really popular because the Fuji X100 V popped off and then the X106 was popular for a long time and this became the counterculture camera to that, which is why it's now popular. Yeah.

Everything's a circle. Everything's a counterculture. And instead of releasing the GR4 for many years, RICO just decided to make multiple variants of the GR3. So they made the diary edition, which is like a street edition. They made a street, GR3X, which is a 43 millimeter lens, I think. The diary edition, which was like a cream color. but they made an HDF version which is high diffusion filter

which basically makes the highlights bloom I love that one yeah which you can you can like turn on and off when you want to which is nice and then the GRFR right now just has the regular version they did announce a black and white version which I want really bad have an orange button I don't know

I think he means the photos are black and white it's probably more expensive probably more times because they're going to make them a lot lower volume oh interesting yeah I don't think I'll ever understand that Making a... Did you watch our studio video? Making a black and white camera costs more.

Oh. It's lower volume. You know? It's lower volume production, but it's... I know they take one part off. They take one part off. Which is, yeah. You have to really want black and white.

Yeah, that type of... Like, that's your thing. Like, instead of just sliding saturation as far, you have to want that. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, GR4, it's APSC. It is a 2.8 lens. And it's got internal memory.

This is a prime. It is. Yeah, 18.3 millimeter APSC, which is like a 23. Isn't that a 23? Is this 28mm. You don't know what? Wait, what is the? 28 millimeter equivalent lens on B&H.

I don't think that's really true, but okay. Either way, I like it. It's like the perfect equivalent for like run and gun type stuff. Yeah. And personally, I do a lot of pictures of like watches, like my watch shots. And having it be a little wider that way looking down is awesome while I'm wearing. Nice. When I use the GR3, the one thing I didn't, well, the thing I didn't really like about it,

one does not have a viewfinder, which Ellis's camera also doesn't have. Yeah. It's hard for me to shoot without a viewfinder. That's half the fun. You don't know what you're going to get. The screen does not like flip out or anything. The screen is just fixed, so it's really hard to shoot from like different angles. Stop looking at your pictures, just vibes, man.

Just press the button. But like Adam said, when it's just like a run and gun really quick thing, I think it's pretty awesome. The thing, again, the thing I like it, the thing I like the most about it is that, that when I take it out of my pocket no one has to pretend to act a certain way like when I had my real I had a Sony A6500 a few years ago and I had like a giant lens on it

and I would take that to family parties and any time I would take it out to like people pose and they start smiling and they're like wait let me fix my hair that does not happen with this camera I just pull it out and I can take pictures and everyone's like oh look at that cute little thing it's also like stark black yeah very it's very low key

it also this video yeah you want to I guess what it does? What kind of video? I feel like that could do 1080. Yeah, 1080. Yeah, 1080. Yeah, that's fine. Not even 4K. Mine doesn't do video at all. That's fair. Yeah. Literally won't even shoot 720. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Let's look at Adam's pictures. Yeah. Picture number one is a spot that David is very familiar with. This is Central Park. Adam and I have been here together many times before. Or is this Prosso Park?

No, it's Central Park. We're looking at a fall scene. There is some fall color leave. and there's some dead trees. Importantly, this is not the grass part of the park. No. No, it's the water part of the park. Yeah. It's the water park. Water park.

He exposed it for the highlights so that, you know, the left side of the image is quite dark, which adds a nice level of contrast. But the reflection in the water of the color of the trees is very pretty, very nice. And... Central Park, baby. I did nothing. You know, it doesn't have a ton of resolution, so it does fall apart pretty quickly when you... you zoom in.

Yeah, we don't do that. But don't do that. It's got all the answers. But overall, I think this guy's good. Yeah, this guy's good. Another reason why people like these RICO cameras is the straight out of camera color is also quite nice. That is also very nice.

Yeah. Like, I also have it set to also give me the raw if I do want to mess with it. But thus far, I have not felt the need to. Yeah. Like, what it does is pretty spot on to what I would do. Yeah. And there's also a different setting you could do for black and white, which is cool. Oh, really?

Yeah. Cool. All right. All right. Very good. Okay. We'll look at image number two here. Numera dos.

Number two. This would go crazy with HDR. Oh, shit. This would go, no, Marquez, no. Come on. You know I'm right. It's the opposite of what I want for this photo. No, I'm right.

No, this would go crazy with the HDF version. That's what I'd go crazy. Yeah, yeah. This is, again, a picture of the corner that Ellis had. It's like a little chair. A little rearranged. A little rearranged. There's a different vertical aspect ratio, but...

Yeah, so the sun is shining through the windows is reflecting off of a picture of a car and it's got a really big highlight spot, which would look great with the high diffusion filter version. Yes, give me that, Rico. The color of the greens are incredible in this. Look very nice. The highlight roll off and the shadow,

sort of like the grays to dark colors are nice. Yeah, this is just a... It's a very nice golden hour shot, and I think the greens are amazing here. and HDR would look terrible. It would be blasted in this image. It would be so much brightness. It would be insane.

Yeah. Yeah, I like this photo. It's very nice. I like the white balance. The green in the helmet is almost the same as the plan. Yeah. That's good. All right.

And then photo number three is, oh, this looks good. Now, I will say pretty much any camera in extremely perfect lighting like this, like control lighting is going to look awesome. some. But this is just a quick snap. This is an example of why Adam loves this camera. It's a quick snap. Clearly, he didn't really like, you know, try to make it level or, you know. I actually tried very hard, but thank you. He clearly didn't. It would have been easier to see if, you know, you could see the screen or through the EVF that it doesn't have. But there's a photo of Marquez doing the Smartphone Awards live. A little BTS. It looks really good. Looks really nice. The

color is amazing. The color is really good. Yeah. I had to take advantage of the set that everyone had because everything was too nice. It looks great. Nice lights. I also like the highlights that are bouncing out the ping pong table. It's funny that we kind of use the ping pong table as like a bounce card by accident, but it looks great. This would also go hard in HDR. That key light over there.

Stay with me. It's just blasting into the camera as well as onto the subject. And yeah, this would really cook my irises. You want to move everything to the middle of the tone curve? What create, okay, what's the difference between a circle and a sphere? Depth. What creates depth? Z-axis dimension.

What creates dimension in an image? What creates... Hydro contrast! Shading, Marquez, shading. Shading. No, you're right. You're right. That's still here?

It's still That was the longest reverb of all time Anyway Anyway That's why I liked this camera Because I could do things like this Because if I had to pull out a whole other camera lens You would have heard it going off

It would have been too much This looks great This is nice I saw you in the corner of my eye shooting And I was like I'll just I'll pretend I'm not Yeah yeah just ignore him Yeah it's fine

That's what everyone does Very good Yeah so I think For the person that wants Like Adam said You know something you could just pull out of your pocket literally your pocket because this is literally a pocket camera

no one's gonna like be posing for every shot you can just quickly do this you know a lot of the people that use that you just take a vote I don't know I wouldn't know people use the GR for like they really are into street photography they're like walking around New York going like boom boom boom boom boom boom not really even paying attention to what they shoot

just kind of like trying to get that like hyper fast motion in the moment that's why they make the GR 3x which is the street addition which is a longer lens that's 43mm or 40 millimeter it's a little more street focal length

I mean a lot of people use 28 for street too but so yeah it is weirdly like twice the price of what the GR3 was they like basically doubled the price and I think they only did that because they knew how popular it was getting which is annoying

but the images look fantastic I spent a long time between this and I wound up getting an X1006 but like I was going there's a thousand videos comparing the two right yeah and I knew it was small but when we got it when Adam got it I was like wow this it is it's very restively compact and the build quality is really solid too like I assume being that small and the threes were cheaper I was like it's probably feels cheaper it does not at all it's a super I feel like a lot of the videos I saw comparing the two with the X100 series and this one they were like you know it's a lot

smaller but blah blah blah but like it's they're still both relatively like no this thing is small also uh fun little trivia rico and pentax are the same company owned by epson group the scanner company and the printer company back to printers at the end of the day they also own happy hacking keyboard they do really weird very random thing for them to yeah their portfolio cool portfolio yeah besides the scanner part besides the main thing that's the part that's the part that makes the money so they can do all the other things yeah out of my uh like these pictures thank you very good i think i heard that i won this competition so now i've noticed david being much nicer hmm no sandwiches just compliments all compliments he said i want

any midtime all right let's bring ender up here all right andrew let's talk about your camera all right i'm going to preface this with preface i think i am the least camera knowledgeable person here by a long shot. I've understood about 10% of the things you guys have said in this entire episode. But I love watching all you guys take photos. So it inspired me to want to buy a camera recently. Also having a daughter helps a lot.

I take most of my photos of Lane. This probably isn't the best camera to do that. But it's small and I always have it. That's a great camera to do that. Autofocus with how fast she is. It's been tough sometimes. But I only brought in pictures of other things I've taken photos of because it's still fun to pretend like I know what I'm doing. All right.

So I wound up getting this. Like I said, I was between a GR3 and an X100. The 6 was the newest one at the time, obviously. And I was looking through a lot of used ones. And people were selling them for like more than what they came out at, which was crazy. Yeah. And I got lucky enough that someone who actually listens to the podcast was like, yo, I haven't touched Biden in forever. Let me sell it to you.

Out to him. Shout out Abraham. That was awesome. He came to my beers and cameras event. Yeah, dude, he's awesome. He's really talented. We were following each other. We were going to follow each other on Instagram.

And I was like, oh, you follow, or Andrew follows you? And then he was like, oh, yeah, I sold him his X-106. I was like, oh. It is like kidded out, yeah. So it has a nice little, and it has a nice thumb grip from Polar Pro. It has, I bought this, I think it's from Open Glass Studio, a little grip on the side. Nice. And then I have, it's not on right now, but I have the moment Sinney Bloom, the 20%, which is a

lot. It's a lot. And the polar pro short stash filter that came with it also. So it's, it gives it a mustache. It's what I thought it did. It's like a polarizer and also one fourth. I do whatever that means. A diffuser. Defuser, yeah. It's fun. The diffusion stuff has been super fun. I don't think any of my photos have it. Yeah. Diffusion is like we talked about earlier with the high diffusion filter. It just makes everything softer and blooming. It actually helps with digital cameras because we talked about the fringing in digital cameras. It's like, it makes it better. It's just vibey, man. It's vibe. Yeah, the reason people buy X-100s is because they don't want to edit their pictures very much and the film simulations are great and they're vi-y. Are you speaking from experience

there? Yeah. Like Adam also, I take everything in raw and JPEG. I haven't touched a raw photo since I've done it because the colors are super fun out of this. They're just like, yeah, It's fun to take photos of Lane with it and take photos of stuff. Right now, Christmas time, with lights and stuff, and, like, one of the diffusion filters is just so much fun to the point where I'm like, I need to put this away and probably spend time with Lane versus just taking photos over and stuff. There's star filters that the specular highlights, like, the Christmas trees will, like, they'll, like, turn into star shapes. Okay. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah.

You'll have to show me one of this. All right, let's jump into here to see if I can pretend I'm artsy. Oh, wow. Oh, by the way. This is a prime, right? What's the... 23mm, it's like a 35. Yeah, like 35.

Dude, this is a cool photo. I... A little mat around this and it would look great. Oh. A white border. Yeah. This was, I was actually just like at a birthday party and there was this basketball court that just like you could tell has aged a bit.

And I thought the colors of it looked really nice. Patina nicely. The sky was beautiful that day. Yeah. And there's just no one standing there at all. And the grass was just so green. What film simulation did you use? I think classic negative.

I think almost all of these are classic negative. Yeah. This may have had the short stash filter on it. I still don't know what that means. It's just the guy. I think he's a YouTuber and I think he made a filter with PolarPro. Got it. So it's his filter.

Yeah, when I preview this, it shows it with like a mat. And yeah, this is a really nice looking picture. Compliments. Yeah, classic negative is a really nice. Sandwiches, David. Sandwiches. I hate. um which is not at all in this picture no this is a great picture Andrew thank you it's nice

um yeah i think i use that i have been it is so much fun to mess around with like recipes that people make yeah um following the like different Fuji uh subredits FujiX weekly yeah yeah and FujiX weekly and just going through all those and being like all right i'm going out and shooting blah blah today so i'm going to start yeah shutter speed but if you pick it up and spin that's ISO. That's cool. It's pretty cool. Yeah.

So Fuji recipes are basically just like preset settings because in the camera you can change the base film simulation, which they have like, they're emulating different old films, but then you can change like the saturation, the saturation of the blues. You can make it softer. You can change all these settings. And so people will create their own recipes to emulate either old films or just like a style that they like, you know, they'll call it like Italy in the summer or something. Pacific Blues is one that I have that I really like.

Pacific Blues actually was a film though. Was it? Yeah, it was a real film. Um, but they've become very popular. People share their recipes online. There's now an app that someone showed me at my beers and cameras event where you can, uh, you can just connect to the camera and it will flash the recipe onto the camera. Is it the Fuji app? No. It's not, okay, then I'll have to get that. Yeah, it's a third party app. It's not hard to enter them in. It's all just through the menu settings and stuff. It takes a while though. Yeah, it's a lot of just like, you know the joystick fiddling around and stuff like that.

And you can save some presets. That'd be awesome, yeah. Yeah. You will notice for some reason I only take a portrait. Vertical photos. Yeah, vertical photos only.

Maybe I should have bought the Fuji X half. But, um, but, uh, yeah, I don't know why I only take vertical for some reason. Damn, this is, this is great. Which is making it harder to view on a laptop screen because it's the second photo.

is of some berries on a bush. It's shot at a pretty shallow depth of field. Probably, probably have two. I think this is two, yeah. And it's snowing. So you can see, like, the flurries of snow. So it's probably like a 115th or 130th of a shutter speed. The benefit of this camera, too, is that it's got ibis.

And so you can handhold it for, like, a whole second. And it's awesome. It's awesome as long as things aren't moving, which, when I'm taking photos of Lane, changes everything. That's what's the metadata? Yeah. It was. It was super bright outside.

This was midday. It just started snowing when we were in Salem, which is why that house. The snow kind of looks like elongated, but. I think it was just big snow. Big snow. Big snow flurries. The house in the background is just like every house in Salem is just this beautiful house made in the like 1800s. Yeah.

And it's just a beautiful place. The colors in this photo are awesome. Thank you. I really like the pictures. I shouldn't take any credit. It's probably all food. Well, and this is why people buy these cameras, right? because you can just get stuff like this straight out of the camera with no editing.

Okay, now say something bad. I'm feeling jealous. Damn. It could possibly, I would possibly straighten this slightly different because you can see the lines in the back are not, they're like angled a little bit. This is something I think I have, maybe do this in post. Have a big issue with is I do feel like a lot of my photos are slightly not straight. And then sometimes I have problems. straightening the auto

straightening features I don't use auto straightening also so on these cameras too on the on the screen or in the view finder oh you have that on I have the 2D one on

the 3D one feels like it takes up so much of the LCD it does yeah but maybe I should do yeah I would just try one of the auto straightening features there's also like there's perspective

correction in things like lightroom where you just drag a line down one of the straight lines and it automatically fixes it. Okay. It goes crazy actually. Yeah, it's cool. I use it a lot. Because sometimes I'll go into the rotation tool, right? And I'll be like, that line

looks off. Fix that into a line in the rotation tool and be like, now this line looks off. And I don't know if that's me ticking. That's perspective issues. Okay. Because you're shooting this mostly straight on, but that house is like in the background and there's like curvature between the foreground and background. So

yeah, I would use a perspective correction tool. Okay. Which Lightroom has I'll have to find that because I think that would help me with so many. I also am terrible at taking a photo head-on of something. I feel like I'd mostly take photos now at an angle because when I'm head-on, I realize I'm like three degrees off at some point. Yeah. And I can't unsee it in a photo and it feels like it ruins the photo.

Yeah. Yeah, this is great. This is a good picture. Yeah, very nice. Ooh, ho-hoo. Andrew. I think this is all subjects. This is not cool.

Andrew came up with this idea for this bonus episode, and I think he was so much show off. Seriously. Linking his scripting to his store. Wow. The colors on this are awesome. Where did you find this? This is in Salem also. Okay, so this is a payphone that has a ton of spray paint and different stickers on it.

And then the wall has a big mural on it. But the colors of the mural are the same as the colors, both spray paints it on and on the stickers of the payphone. So it looks really cool. Looks really nice. Wow. We drove by this. Dang, dude. And then I, later, when Lane took it up,

walked back to go take a photo of this because I was like, that just looks really cool. It, like, matches the mural. And it's cool because, like, the, the foam cord is, like, ripped off. Like, this is very clearly a thing that hasn't been used in forever. And people just, like, vandalized it, slash turned it into what felt like an art piece on the wall.

That is probably my favorite part about carrying an actual camera versus my phone. Like, you drove. past it and you were like i'm coming back for that i need this i need that picture the cool thing is that this is also a 40 megapixel camera so you can like you can zoom in pretty decently yeah looks really nice sure i would i like the angle that you took this a lot i would i would be interested in seeing what the perspective of straight on would be which you know it's just something you could do in jemini three but just make it for you just that's wait that is a lightroom thing you said i could

perspective. Well, not like that. Yeah, they'll probably add that to Photoshop soon. Yeah, the colors of this are great. I think noticing how the colors play off of each other is a big part of photography. And I like the, yeah, the 45 degree angle that you took it out is also really nice. Thank you. Wow.

I think that's a crutch for me. I think I like straight on photos. I just keep messing it up. Do you have like a piece of advice to making sure you're straight on? Straight on is difficult because. our eyes notice any of those like small tilts more so using perspective correction is very helpful for straight on stuff because the symmetry is so important and we we notice that a lot more when it's straight on okay so it's hard it's kind of hard to get a straight on photo that

looks like incredible you know you just have to make sure it's perfectly aligned but the way I do it so the way I do it when we're doing robot shots is like because so often the robot's not exactly straight with the object. So what I do is I push the robot all the way till the table till it presses flat on the edge and then pull it back and don't go off that axis. I don't think I could do that in real life. Just like walk forward until I'm flat

and then walk all the way back and try and be perfect. Yeah. My train tracks are pretty straight. I think they're pretty straight. Yeah, thank you. I think I also, I would like, I don't know if you have a quick piece of advice

because I don't have an example. All of my good photos are center subject, center frame. Uh-huh. And I don't know how to, I feel like, correctly balance a photo, which is probably why I'm taking so much vertical because it feels easier to do that. Rule of Thirt is a good, like, default. Yeah, maybe I'm just not finding it correctly in the shot,

in the framing of what I'm looking for. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like the eye for something. I see all you guys take photos of these like corners of like a bench or and all that. And I just like walk around. I'm like, I don't see that yet in my everyday life. I feel like that with like car photography.

Like I see a lot of people take great pictures of cars like the hoods, the hood ornaments from different angles. And then I'll pass a cool car and be like, oh, I'm going to try to get this picture. And I just cannot get it. It's so difficult. Yeah. I think that's what I've been trying to do lately is. I want to take this camera out all the time when I'm walking around. Yeah.

Because when I get back, I'm going to dump 200. photos and maybe like one of these is cool and I hate the rest of them and but if I hopefully just keep doing it maybe I'll have the eye for how I could have gotten that cool scene into a cool picture yeah it's a lot of like I think when you're learning you can just you can um look at a lot of photos that you like and try to understand why you like them just be like what what is it about this image that I find compelling you know and then try to recreate that It's the exciting piece of the beginning of skill development where your taste is above your skill.

Yeah. I know that that's good. I know why that's not that, but I don't know how to get that to be that. Right. It might be the biggest detriment of working here. Like when it comes to media things, the talent and the gear that we have here is so insane. Anyone here at any time can probably think, like,

I can do that. I watch us do it all the time. And then you do it and you're like, wow. Well, that's almost why the X100 is such a good camera for like 99% of people because it does so much for you but it is it's APSC you know it has less dynamic range than other things like Marquez's camera like with the HDR capabilities the amount that you can do with that extra dynamic range if you want the creative control to actually do that is like awesome you know and you have all that creative control and what you can do later

whereas this you know it's a much more compressed sort of like amount that you can do it but it's so much better straight out of camera for a lot of people so so give me your uh your h2s which are the best for what oh yeah i say if you're writing an article in h2 headline it's just like the bold part oh lord nissom yeah i could resate i'd say the x100 series is probably the best like starter camera for anybody which also pros use it as their secondary bodies to just have fun with So, you know, it's both a starter camera and just to have fun camera. I saw a wedding photographer doing it. Their main camera was some crazy canon or whatever, and then they just had one of these slung over their shoulder.

I mean, yeah, take photos of that at a wedding, and people are just going to instantly love it, you know? I've been on photo shoots where the photographer is taking like three to five thousand photos on the main camera, and then every once in a while just pulls out an X100 and then goes back to the pro shots. And then only sends the X100 photos. I say that Adams is probably the best for just run and gun, like, street work, just being as pocketable as possible, you know, wanting some just, like, quick snapshots of their life that they don't have to, because even on the X100, you're deciding on what film recipe you want to use, and, like, you're still doing some work to get it where you want it to be, but for the GR4, it's more about just, like, in the moment, being there. marquez's some recipes but yeah there's like fuji yeah it has some recipes marquez's camera is best for the like pro pro pro that wants like the most out of the camera possible the most resolution the most dynamic range to play with the most to like flexibility yeah flexibility to like craft an image with if you really like mid tones and then um ellis's camera hundred megapix is the mid most mid camera ellis's camera is the best for coltman members um who for microcontra want yeah for microcontro uh yeah the thing i do like about ls camera a lot is that in the photography community there's you know people will argue and complain

about what camera is best whatever whatever but there's also this subset of people that just tries to just try to do insane shit with like the worst camera possible just for fun because it's like worse but worse is also better in 2025 in a lot of ways because everything's good everything's good we're so used to seeing everything with like everything is within like everything is perfectly exposed everything's perfectly sharp everything is the autofocus is great this is great blah the resolution's great so it's almost like a differentiator to see something that is well composed but with a trash camera that has like low dynamic range how much money people spend and how much time people spend to like get that chromatic aberration that's in my lens that's right i think

The tinkering aspect of Ellis's camera sounds like so much fun. That's the kind of stuff that's super fun. And then when you go take the photo that's good and know what you had to do to get to that point, makes the photo feel. This is why I always say Ellis would be great with an Android phone, but whatever. Sounds like what I'm hearing, the best camera you can buy in 2025 is the one you already have. No, no, no, no, no. That's the compound answer. 2D.

It's a Canon EOSM from 2012. It's 35 to 100. No, yeah. It is definitely subjective. That is the beauty of it. It is basically it's art and the art, well, no matter who you are, will be subjective to who you are. And there's probably a little bit of each of these cameras in somebody's favorite camera.

Yeah. I'm jealous that your camera has LiDAR auto focus. I think that's dope. Yeah. It's great when it works. That's true. Well, yeah, thanks for watching. hope you enjoyed and like looking at a lot of our photos and maybe you have suggestions for how some of us can take better photos as well leave your compliment sandwiches below and we'll be back with your regularly scheduled programming pretty soon see you soon happy christmas peace

wave forms produced by adam elina and ells ribbon part of the dog's media podcast network and our trotra music was created by vane still Happy Honda days, everybody. Merry Toyota, Ron. Lexus December to remember. Sales event.