Sony or Lumix for Gig Photography? Or Both!

With the Sony A75 now officially launched, Nick and Steve have a special guest in Luke Vaughan (no relation to Steve!), a professional rock and metal photographer who shoots Sony. The panel discuss the pros and cons of the new Sony camera, particularly versus the Lumix S1 II, which Luke now uses to deliver both widescreen and social media format video to his clients. 

Luke Vaughan Photography http://instagram.com/lukevaughanphotography

Transcript

Steve Vaughan (00:01.427)
Nick, you know how much you like having one Vaughan on the podcast? Yeah, well, like never. What would you think about having two Vaughans on the podcast?

Nick Church (00:05.506)
Mmm, I love it. Yeah, as you know, as I say all the time

Nick Church (00:14.766)
Well, my initial reaction would be a bloody nightmare, but it depends how similar you are, I suppose.

Steve Vaughan (00:18.472)
thank you. Well, we'll stop now then, shall we?

Well, of course I could have my lovely wife come and join us, Samantha. Yeah, yeah, she has occasionally interjected. And she's just got back off holiday from Florida. So she's behind that door feeling a bit jet lagged and being very brown. And I'm calling her all kinds of names because she's had a lovely week in Florida. No, I don't mean my lovely wife, actually. There is more than one Vaughan in my network. Yeah. And I don't mean immediate relatives.

Nick Church (00:25.752)
no, we have had two Vaunts, haven't we? We have had two Vaunts on the pod before. Yeah.

Nick Church (00:46.192)
right.

Come on, who is it? is it? Come on, keep us waiting.

Steve Vaughan (00:52.981)
Suspense is killing us. Let me introduce a good mate of mine and a fantastic gig photographer and videographer, Luke Vaughan. Luke, the devil are you mate?

Luke Vaughan (01:03.948)
I'm very good Steve, thanks for inviting me on. Been listening to The Last View and it's pleasure to be here.

Steve Vaughan (01:06.325)
great to you.

Just the last few. It's a condition of being on the show, you have to listen to every episode.

Luke Vaughan (01:17.07)
I'm off.

Nick Church (01:17.324)
The regular quiz at the end where we ask some potluck questions about various episodes throughout history. We'll see how you do on that,

Steve Vaughan (01:23.633)
fried. And if you don't make it, the show doesn't go forward. No, we're only kidding.

Luke Vaughan (01:27.68)
No, I'm sorry.

Steve Vaughan (01:31.935)
So guys, what are we going to look at today? So last time we did a show, obviously it was just before the new Sony A75 was due to be launched. And Nick, you put your crystal ball on it and your Mystic Meg and found out all the things that you thought was going to come on the new camera. And surprisingly, not surprisingly, you were pretty much bang on because it's been launched. It was launched two days ago. So what I thought we could do today is knock around what we think about that camera.

Nick Church (01:53.028)
Pretty much.

Steve Vaughan (02:00.533)
And Luke, you're also of course a Sony shooter, although you have another weapon now, which we're going to come on to. What do we think of the spec? What do we think is going to be good for any concerns we have about it? Are we going to buy one? Really take it from there, really. So, well, first of all, Nick, you were bang on specs, I think, pretty much.

Luke Vaughan (02:07.65)
Indeed.

Nick Church (02:20.58)
Well, what, what, what have you done this week, Steve? You're launching ahead past the, there's so many listeners that join just to find out what we've done with our last few days. And you've, you've skipped that until the whole, the whole section. I can imagine there could be up to a dozen listeners and half of them are falling away and stopping listening because you haven't mentioned.

Steve Vaughan (02:30.244)
okay, I completely bypassed that bit, didn't I? Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (02:42.109)
What have I done this last week? I've grown a beard, albeit not a very good one. And it's itching like hell actually, so scratching away. No, no photography, because the wedding season is over for me now. So I've been running training courses. I've been in Cambridge for a couple of days running a sales training course, which was fun. And pretty much that's it really. How about you, mate?

Nick Church (03:03.696)
Yeah, well, I did a shoot yesterday, day before yesterday at St. George's, a venue in Bristol, a really nice venue for a choir, choir called Sun Voices. That was, that was interesting. Very Christmassy actually, it feeling very Christmassy, but it was, they were brilliant. And it's like a really big choir of, you know, I guess 50, maybe 80 people, all retented. This was photography. So I was booked for the photos.

Steve Vaughan (03:13.555)
Steve Vaughan (03:24.693)
So this is just photography or video as well.

Steve Vaughan (03:29.877)
All right.

Nick Church (03:32.024)
I was speaking to the videographer. did have videographer as well. They came from London. nice young fella called Joe and it, he, he brought out, I saw it clipped onto his, like one of his, his, his camera straps, an old Sony camcorder, like, you know, VHS camcorder. I was really curious. I asked him what that was for and he showed me and it's fitting dark. He uses it as like a safety net. And when it's really dark because you couldn't use

Steve Vaughan (03:50.81)
wow.

Nick Church (04:00.528)
video lights, then you couldn't use flash. I can use flash, you can use video lights. It just is much better quality than like on a, you know, a normal camera. if you're going into, um, you've got all the side effects of, um, VHS kind of recording, you know, tape recording, but compared with just, you know, a black frame, which is what even it's sort of ISO 12,000 or do you know, that was what he was getting on his digital camera. It was really good. I was really, really amazed. And I thought, you know, and it, if he was sort of, um, you know,

Steve Vaughan (04:10.399)
Whoa.

Steve Vaughan (04:14.599)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (04:25.343)
That's just incredible. I've never heard of that before.

Nick Church (04:30.736)
our age, know, sort of 90, 95, then I would have thought, well, you know, it's just like a half the past, but he was a really young lad and just, you know, found this piece of technology that really worked for him. thought I'd like that. That's nice. You know, something completely different, but it was fine.

Steve Vaughan (04:34.037)
speak for yourself.

Steve Vaughan (04:42.409)
That's amazing. So was it like headshots you were doing or we just photographed the whole choir in action?

Nick Church (04:47.216)
No, the whole thing was about that. was a thousand, know, was a ram, it was sold out. So there's a thousand people there. So I was getting shots of the audience, getting shots of the choir and the choir leaders and stuff like that. So it was, yeah, it good fun, good fun.

Steve Vaughan (04:51.636)
What?

Steve Vaughan (04:58.943)
Amazing, yeah. And of course the kind of music you photograph looks very different.

Luke Vaughan (05:04.766)
Yes, just just a little bit. It's been varying a lot over the last year, but it's definitely kind of more on the new metal heavy metal rock goth scene Yeah, so definitely a variety. Absolutely

Nick Church (05:06.266)
Yeah.

Nick Church (05:19.76)
Which part of the country are you from Luke?

Steve Vaughan (05:20.053)
Okay.

Luke Vaughan (05:22.67)
So I'm down in Kent at the moment, just near Whitstable.

Nick Church (05:24.686)
So you're delicate. So I was on a music podcast called music that defines us at the weekend. And I got chatting to the guy that the podcast, so the host Jordan is from the milk from Milton Keynes. And I talked about my childhood being into sort of metal and death metal and that sort of thing. I I started us, I had this idea of what, did you call? So I, in Bristol, right in the Southwest, I don't know how localized it is. If you're into that sort of thing and you've got long hair, you've got

Steve Vaughan (05:31.474)
wow, you name dropper.

Nick Church (05:54.64)
tattoos and you've got a band t-shirt, leather jacket, you're a jitter. Right. So you're just a jitter. What, what, what do call those people from Kent from your, your way?

Steve Vaughan (05:59.51)
well.

Luke Vaughan (06:07.244)
We're just metalheads, no matter what the age. There's no, I have heard that word from friends at Bristol. I have heard that phrase, but yeah, no, there's no distinction. just...

Nick Church (06:08.496)
Just metal heads. Right, see you in a minute.

Steve Vaughan (06:08.709)
Hahaha

Steve Vaughan (06:13.78)
you too.

Nick Church (06:16.624)
So he was saying from Milton Keynes, that would be a greber. You're a greber if you dressed like that, if that was your...

Steve Vaughan (06:22.641)
I thought jitter was like digital noise, know, like J-I-W-T-E-R. Now I feel really old now because you two are of similar age, so you two can talk about bands that have existed in this millennia and I can talk about bands from the last millennia which is more up my era really.

Luke Vaughan (06:23.136)
Excellent.

Nick Church (06:26.288)
Well, the lack of kind of not be able to sync sync the video signal, yeah.

Luke Vaughan (06:27.935)
You

Nick Church (06:40.976)
Yeah, I think my music knowledge, which became blaringly obvious halfway through this podcast, of stops at about 2005 fairly abruptly.

Steve Vaughan (06:49.877)
You

Luke Vaughan (06:50.734)
Did anyone do the Spotify rap and get their listening age yesterday? Where it kind of told you what your target was. Apparently my listening age is six years younger than my real age. I think it shows you what decade you're stuck into with your music.

Steve Vaughan (06:56.713)
Well, he's a c-

Steve Vaughan (07:03.733)
Is that a good thing?

Nick Church (07:05.89)
Yeah. Well, I can imagine that my, you know, Pearl Jam, Pink Floyd, I think, I think it'll probably get it maybe two or three years older than me.

Luke Vaughan (07:10.253)
Yep.

Steve Vaughan (07:14.485)
Mine would probably be 82 years old. mean, I don't use Spotify. It's a confession. I don't use Spotify. I use Tidal as a plug for all the streaming apps because it's slightly higher quality and more hi-fi because I'm still a hi-fi geek even though my hearing's not as good as it was.

Nick Church (07:27.906)
and crucially pays artists a bigger chunk.

Steve Vaughan (07:30.589)
It does. Yeah, it does.

Luke Vaughan (07:30.944)
It does. It absolutely does. So do most people. Yeah, yeah, actually just pays artists, but yes.

Nick Church (07:34.48)
Or actually just crucially pays artists. We could end that sentence there, which is what Spotify. Yeah. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (07:39.638)
Period. And amazingly, I've been doing the radio show that I do, another plug called the Steve Vaughan Rock Show on Incapable Staircase for four years now. And I have to use Tidal with that. It's incredible. I couldn't believe it. Yeah. As one of my few listeners said, he just seems longer. But yeah, and we have to use Tidal for that. Spotify, it's against the user license to use Spotify for that. Yeah.

Luke Vaughan (07:50.646)
Is it that long? Wow!

Luke Vaughan (07:56.962)
Ha ha ha ha!

Nick Church (08:06.578)
really? I wonder how got away with it. You know, I wonder how that would not got away with it me sound like a criminal. But I wondered what the licensing arrangement was of playing music like that.

Luke Vaughan (08:10.383)
Mmm.

Steve Vaughan (08:17.012)
Yeah, well there you go. So we're eight minutes into this podcast and all these thousands of listeners are dialing in to listen to us talk about cameras and photography. mean, we've wittering on about anything else. So should come back to cameras and photography.

Nick Church (08:29.038)
Yeah, let's get back to the A75 then shall we? you, so launched, officially yesterday. I didn't, I didn't catch the actual, was that, was there a big event? Was there a sort of live stream thing? So yeah, we, we talked through last time, didn't we? That the kind of, specs that we thought would be there. And I think, as you say, it's pretty much, and it sounds like I've got my real ear to the ground, but it's just that, you know, I found some rumors beforehand and collated them and

Steve Vaughan (08:36.786)
No, not me. No, I was running training course. Yeah, I didn't see it. Yeah.

Luke Vaughan (08:39.671)
No, no.

Nick Church (08:57.84)
It seems pretty good to me. mean, it's, it's, I think there was a wish for a sort of bit of a resolution bump from 33 megapixel, but, um, it's got a better view for a sort of risk screen. larger risk screen, um, image stabilization is well on this seven half on the Sony website. Um,

Luke Vaughan (09:08.303)
Mm-hmm.

Steve Vaughan (09:18.678)
Eight and a half stops I think I read for photography.

Steve Vaughan (09:24.095)
Okay.

Nick Church (09:24.624)
But yeah, compared with the, the five and a half for the A74. So that must be getting it towards the A7S3 and the A1 type levels of, of, um, stabilization. The, um, the video is indeed for uncropped, um, 60, yeah, um, 60 or 120 even. Um, but what else was I looking at? I thought wasn't battery life a little bit, you know, a bit better.

Steve Vaughan (09:33.51)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Steve Vaughan (09:43.946)
Hallelujah.

Nick Church (09:54.0)
Um, but that wasn't ever a major concern anyway. The, uh, doesn't have to compact flash express slots. Yeah. So it's just basically exactly the same as the, is the seven four on, on that, on that front. Um, the, the other thing, the thing I think that I've not seen people mentioned really as a, as a big thing, but I'm quite interested is this pre burst capture. I think that's quite an interesting feature. Not something I've never had a camera that has that is that got on your a one Steve. No.

Steve Vaughan (09:56.458)
No, no, not really.

Steve Vaughan (10:02.56)
Which is interesting,

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Steve Vaughan (10:16.278)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (10:19.74)
No, not me. Not that I found. Good Sam's camera anyway, because it did run the mine, but no, not that I'm aware of. So you shoot with A7 IVs, we've got a variety here. What's your main weapons of choice, Luke?

Nick Church (10:25.327)
Yeah.

Luke Vaughan (10:33.775)
So when I really kind of got into the gig photography and the concert stuff and I switched over, I chose the a7 IV as my two main bodies, largely because I wanted a hybrid that would do good quality video, but there would also have, and I'll be honest, partially because I'm lazy, partially because my industry requires it, I needed an autofocus system that just did its job. And having tested, absolutely, know, no disrespect, those cameras have been

Nick Church (10:56.624)
Mm.

Steve Vaughan (10:56.758)
So you were, I think like me, were a foodie shooter before, you? Yeah.

Luke Vaughan (11:03.161)
perfect for me and they're perfect for some users. I still have a whole bunch of my Fuji gear but for this work, having tested them and thanks to you to bringing some out to me for that, I had found nothing in terms of autofocus that worked like it did. That camera could see in the dark, it locked on, it would track people across a frame, you weren't repositioning a focal point, you would just left it in the center, moved over to where you needed to recompose it and it just did its job.

Steve Vaughan (11:11.915)
Hmm.

Luke Vaughan (11:28.745)
And I don't think I would have walked away with the last year and a half's photography if it wasn't for those cameras. But you know, they have their limitations like anything. But for me for imaging, they were perfectly good. They were just limited on video.

Steve Vaughan (11:44.32)
So who are your customers? are you delivering images and also video for typically?

Luke Vaughan (11:49.76)
So it's a variety. I do some work for a couple of online publications, which is a small percentage of my work. The rest of it is either direct for bands, PR companies, record labels, that kind of stuff.

Steve Vaughan (12:06.312)
Right. And why the need for video now? What's changed in recent years?

Luke Vaughan (12:11.187)
for, for the live entertainment world, and I think a lot of industries are going like this, unless you deliver video, you will not work. And that is, that is happening very, very quickly because. TikTok Instagram, people want recap reels. They want end of tour, end of show, when they're moving from one country to another, maybe they want to recap from that country, et cetera. And video is just very, very quickly becoming king.

Steve Vaughan (12:20.117)
Wow.

Steve Vaughan (12:39.637)
Mm-hmm.

Luke Vaughan (12:40.394)
particularly in the world that I occupy. the Sony has actually done me fine. And to be honest, I've actually done some shows entirely on an Osmo Pocket 3, where I just, needed both cameras for stills and I didn't want to be messing around. And actually the Osmo did a great job, but I am now having to deliver more and more video. If you look at the requirements when you're applying for tour work, there is massive video requirements, maybe 60%, 50 % of the work is video.

Nick Church (12:43.344)
Mm-hmm.

Steve Vaughan (12:51.115)
really?

Nick Church (12:57.551)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (13:09.503)
Okay.

Luke Vaughan (13:09.719)
So for me, I need something more competent, which is why I now have my Lumix as well.

Nick Church (13:14.874)
So just the listeners point of view, can have a quick look at Luke's photography. It's Luke Fawn photography. So that's Fawn, V-A-U-G-H-A-N, photography on Instagram. Yeah, some fantastic shots on him looking through as we speak.

Steve Vaughan (13:14.878)
Okay, so we're good.

Steve Vaughan (13:25.078)
The only way to spell it, yeah.

Luke Vaughan (13:26.361)
Thank you Shameless plug.

Steve Vaughan (13:32.694)
So I'm going come back to this video thing in a bit. And you mentioned the L world, Luke, which we will come back to. But just what you brought up, Nick, this pre-burst. So no, don't think we've got any camera that does that. And I can absolutely see why a wildlife photographer would find that useful. Because the bird decides it's going to flap its wings and take off. You've got that sort of slight lag between recognizing that and pressing the shutter, which probably at my age is probably like half an hour, but probably most people is like half a second or something.

Luke Vaughan (13:32.943)
Thank you very much.

Luke Vaughan (13:50.073)
Mm-hmm.

Steve Vaughan (14:02.167)
So I can see why that would be useful. Would it be useful in our kind of work, do think, in weddings and things?

Nick Church (14:04.176)
Mm.

Yeah, felt by, yeah, I I think anything's going to be, it's going to help us near that. And there's just been enough, enough times where however quickly, I mean, of course the issue is, it just capturing photos while it's focusing, in which case it's not particularly, they're not going to be useful shots anyway. There are, there have been times where something's happened. If it's not a planned shot, if it's something like, well, there's somebody doing this thing and you just grab your camera and you're straight in there. I've often looked back and think,

Steve Vaughan (14:10.902)
Hmm.

Steve Vaughan (14:21.194)
Hmm. No.

Nick Church (14:35.28)
it, you and was like, you've missed it by a second, you know, and it may be that in practice, like I said, I've never had it so, but it may be in practice. That second wouldn't help. I need it five seconds ago. you know, yeah, that's right. That's right. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (14:36.022)
Hmm.

Luke Vaughan (14:48.536)
Yeah, and it is a maximum of a second, I think, from what I've seen on the videos. It's after a second and I think only electronic as well. Only electronic, which would obviously make sense. But I think for, like I say, for wildlife, if you're a motor sports photographer, those kind of things where you're not worrying about lights and banding and all the other things that we do maybe indoors where you're not using an electronic shutter, then yeah, absolutely. I think it's going to be incredible for some people.

Steve Vaughan (14:50.762)
think it is a maximum of second, yeah.

was that right? didn't that that makes sense. So yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (15:02.922)
Yeah.

Nick Church (15:09.648)
Hmm.

Nick Church (15:14.936)
And talking about banding, just while we're on that a moment, the readout is faster with this semi-stacked sensor. So the readout is 15 milliseconds compared with 67 milliseconds on the A74. Luke, you'll probably have a good view on this. reckon that's fast enough to improve LED light banding or was that not going to make any difference? Cause I know it's still like six, seven, eight times slower than like the A93 or the A1.

Steve Vaughan (15:15.062)
Can you Yeah, yeah.

Luke Vaughan (15:21.466)
Yes.

Steve Vaughan (15:22.09)
Yeah.

Luke Vaughan (15:28.037)
Mm-hmm.

Luke Vaughan (15:41.326)
It's...

It's such a huge maybe because everything is dependent on the brand of light and how it works. And I've shot venues with no issues at all. You go into a venue with high-end kit, but it will just band on video and you can't predict it. I personally don't touch electronic shutters at all. I don't trust them. And quite often you won't see it until you look back either, particularly on images. So, you know, I'm mechanical only, but the shutter readout is exceptional.

Nick Church (15:56.688)
Hmm.

Nick Church (16:07.344)
Goodbye.

Steve Vaughan (16:07.402)
Mm-hmm.

Luke Vaughan (16:12.036)
That was a lot of the problem with the A4, even in imaging. So I think, know, huge benefit that they finally got there. The stacked sensor has brought that. So yeah, it's got a benefit with that, absolutely. But I'm not touching it.

Nick Church (16:20.794)
Mm-hmm.

Steve Vaughan (16:24.226)
And I guess one of reasons that we would use electronic shutter, Nick and myself is obviously in a wedding in a church where you don't want to make a lot of noise, but I guess at a gig, that's the last of your problems really. know, shutter go ka-chunk.

Luke Vaughan (16:30.81)
course.

Luke Vaughan (16:34.584)
Yeah, exactly. If it's quiet enough to hear my camera, something's gone wrong.

Nick Church (16:38.28)
Because even if, even if there's a power failure and there's no PA, if you can still hear your shutter, then everyone's being very extremely quiet in that stadium. The, got absolutely stung. We always get, I seem to get stung with it. The other day on my wedding, the, were doing a video as well. We had, one of the brides reading the other brides letter out, you know, I want to capture that on, on film. And so I want to take photos of that as well. So I'll switch to silent shutter.

Steve Vaughan (16:44.522)
Ha ha ha ha ha.

Luke Vaughan (16:48.149)
Exactly, exactly.

Steve Vaughan (17:02.354)
Okay, yeah, yeah.

Luke Vaughan (17:03.577)
right.

Nick Church (17:07.876)
grab some photos, didn't take it off then for the next kind of 20 minutes. And the rest of the shots during that whole section of the day has got banding. So I'm have to pick and choose and then dip in a Photoshop to, to sort that out, which is it is a nuisance.

Steve Vaughan (17:15.792)
okay.

Luke Vaughan (17:16.837)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (17:19.168)
What a nuisance. Yeah. So, yeah, the fast readout speed, stack shutter. think that's something which, you know, is a benefit, particularly for videographers who don't want rolling shutter and all that kind of stuff. Certainly the pre-capture, I think that's a benefit as well. One thing I haven't seen a lot of people talk about, just staying in the photography world before we venture into the dark side of video, is the fact, I think you mentioned it last time, Nick, that it's

Nick Church (17:32.848)
Bunch of shit, yeah.

Luke Vaughan (17:34.788)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (17:48.406)
14 bit raw chip as well. and with, you know, the full dynamic range that you'd expect from it, from this camera, I saw a review, Mark Gaylor, who's a Sony imaging ambassador in Australia. And I think he recently comes to All Frampton. You know, he's very technical, very detailed reviewer and he is comparing it with the Canon R6 III, which is still 12 bits in photo raw and also seems to have a

Nick Church (17:50.351)
Yeah.

Luke Vaughan (18:01.595)
Mm.

Nick Church (18:12.794)
Mm-hmm.

Steve Vaughan (18:17.706)
significantly worse dynamic range than say the new Sony, which would put me off that camera as a photographer, I must admit.

Luke Vaughan (18:24.529)
No, I agree, Steve. And I think actually one of the reasons that I came to Sony was the recovery of the files that I'm able to do on the four is astonishing. What I pull back in terms of highlights and shadows is just incredible. don't think I quite believe it sometimes when I look at the raw and then the new image. So, know, I think from a stills photographer point, if it's just going to get better with this camera, then fantastic if you are a stills photographer.

Steve Vaughan (18:32.798)
It is astonishing.

Steve Vaughan (18:41.056)
Hmm.

Nick Church (18:48.228)
Totally agree. Totally agree that that shoot for the choir, the, was pretty dark in there. it is as always the venue was saying, it's very well lit on the stage, but of course it's not, it? And I've got so many shots that when you were in Portman's Lightroom, just looked like they're completely black and then dug out some really good shots out of it. You know, it is just, it never fails to amaze me. And it's, only, I only

Steve Vaughan (18:49.726)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (18:58.016)
Yeah.

Luke Vaughan (18:59.043)
No, of course not. No, it's...

Steve Vaughan (19:06.122)
Really?

Luke Vaughan (19:10.747)
Yeah.

I think it will be interesting to see. I think it will be really interesting to actually test and get all the some of the files for it. And someone pointed out another thing which I don't know. I don't think it's on the A74, because I've never used it. It might be on the A1. Is that if you're shooting in burst, the A75 has divider frames. So at the start of each burst, you get a divider frame. So that when you load it in Lightroom, you get a blank frame with an arrow. And then you can see that that is your block of shots, which

Nick Church (19:19.076)
Yeah.

Nick Church (19:33.904)
Hmm.

Steve Vaughan (19:34.373)
really?

Steve Vaughan (19:39.382)
That's amazing, didn't hear that.

Luke Vaughan (19:43.248)
Yeah, absolutely incredible. Picked up on one of the reviews, whether it's on the other Sony lines, I don't know. But if you're burst shooter like me, incredibly useful, or if you're focus stacking or whatever you're doing, gone are the days where I'm sticking my hand in front of the lens at the start of it. And then, yeah.

Steve Vaughan (19:47.19)
I've not said anything or seen the cameras.

Steve Vaughan (19:53.846)
I was going to say for landscape photography focus stacking as well. Yeah.

Nick Church (19:57.168)
Yeah, what would

Steve Vaughan (19:59.338)
Yeah, yeah, done that.

Nick Church (20:01.744)
Yeah. Or, um, I wonder if that would work with, um, what if it does that with bracketing when you're taking like a series of bracketed shots? Cause that'd be, that'd be pretty, that'd be super handy for interiors type photography that I do a lot of as well. Just be able to see where the edge of, know, cause I have to remember, was this five or, cause they all look the same in Lightroom, don't they? were in the grid view. If I could see that, that would be pretty handy.

Luke Vaughan (20:08.879)
Yeah, who knows? assume so.

Steve Vaughan (20:13.79)
Of it would,

Luke Vaughan (20:14.705)
Hmm.

Steve Vaughan (20:19.37)
Hmm. Hmm.

Luke Vaughan (20:19.665)
Cool, sure.

Luke Vaughan (20:23.855)
Yeah, really useful. No, really useful.

Steve Vaughan (20:23.904)
Yeah, I've not seen that look. I'd say it's really interesting to hear that.

Nick Church (20:27.95)
What about that composite raw? How useful is that going to be, suppose for landscape? That's a useful thing with it on a tripod. So this is where it's taking multiple raw files and then analyzing that to look for the noise free bits of each image and give you a cleaner result.

Luke Vaughan (20:36.357)
Yeah, absolutely, you know.

Steve Vaughan (20:46.262)
You still have to do all the compositing in the Sony imaging edge software though, rather than do it on the camera. Have I got the wrong end of the stick here?

Luke Vaughan (20:53.327)
Yes, you've got to bring into Sony software at the end, I believe, but I think if you're in those high dynamic range type scenes and you've got no other option and bracketing doesn't work, it looks impressive.

Steve Vaughan (20:56.864)
Okay.

Nick Church (20:57.04)
Hmm.

Steve Vaughan (21:04.821)
Yeah.

Nick Church (21:05.281)
And also if you, guess, if you're doing that, you're likely to have, you're looking for that hero shot, aren't you? And you're going to spend a lot of time on that one resulting photo. doing that, yeah. But like you say, for any, anything where you're taking large numbers of pictures, you don't want to go into that imaging edge. In fact, you know, you don't want to go image edge at all if you can help my experience.

Steve Vaughan (21:11.146)
Hmm.

Hmm.

Luke Vaughan (21:19.449)
No, not at all.

Steve Vaughan (21:23.794)
Sorry sir, I know you feel a stink. Yeah, I want to do some landscape photography this winter. For once we don't have any weddings or anything now. We've got one in January, but we're quite quiet until March. And although I've got some training commitments, I'm to have some weekends back for once. And I want to try and some landscape photography again. I was dusting off my tripod the other day and thinking, oh, know, by the time I got knee deep in mud and soaked and frozen trying to take a picture of something that didn't turn up because the sun didn't come out, know, landscape photography works.

Nick Church (21:38.559)
Hmm. Yeah.

Luke Vaughan (21:49.669)
You should come and do festivals, Steve.

Steve Vaughan (21:50.996)
That sounds great. Yeah. At my age. don't think so. All right. Let's talk about the video world then. before we, we mentioned the L word in a minute, I don't mean Luke. I didn't mean Luke, but you know what I mean? the, the, so 4k 60, we talked about that last time, 4k 50 for us, side of the pond and why that's a real benefit. Cause we can now do.

Nick Church (21:53.016)
Nice and relaxing.

Luke Vaughan (22:05.627)
Hehehehehe

Nick Church (22:08.793)
Hahaha

Nick Church (22:19.152)
Mm-hmm.

Steve Vaughan (22:20.982)
Otherwise the video without mentioning the up and gate word, just there it goes. What are the sort of highlights were there from the video? I didn't really see anything else that particularly leaped out from a video perspective.

Luke Vaughan (22:32.111)
not really apart from finally getting rid of that crop, which is incredibly useful if you do use it and.

Steve Vaughan (22:34.932)
Yeah, which everybody desperately wanted.

Nick Church (22:36.944)
Does it do Luke? you, have you seen if it does 4k at 120 frames? It's with a crop. it? I couldn't find out whether I had a crop. All right. So, but that's a, you know, that's pushing it a bit further, isn't it? At least that's, but as we've said before, yeah.

Steve Vaughan (22:42.922)
with the crop.

Luke Vaughan (22:44.005)
with a crop. That's where the crop is now.

Steve Vaughan (22:49.418)
Would you have it?

Luke Vaughan (22:52.079)
Yeah, it's still the same 1.4 crop I think that they had previously on the 50.

Nick Church (22:57.68)
Okay.

Steve Vaughan (22:58.688)
Just before we move on from that, what do you guys tend to shoot as a starting point for video in terms of picture profiles or whatever? Are you shooting S-Log3? Are you shooting any of the picture profiles?

Nick Church (23:12.76)
Yeah, I should, well, shoot in S log three. did, yeah, it was S log three. And then I personally use, film nitrate film convert in final cut or premiere. So sort of do the, do the look, the, the lights and also apply the film, the film look that, you know, that I like.

Steve Vaughan (23:14.986)
OK.

Steve Vaughan (23:22.48)
interesting.

Steve Vaughan (23:31.766)
What about you, Luke?

Luke Vaughan (23:33.683)
I must admit with the, with a lot of the venues, a lot of the log profiles do cause a bit of a problem with noise, particularly with shadows and things like that. So it's often easier just to shoot in one of the standard picture profiles in 264, 265. And, you know, I think a lot of people moan about the 4K, but the reality is a lot of this has been delivered on Instagram and TikTok. We're not burning DVDs anymore and producing stuff for people, you know? So actually does,

Steve Vaughan (23:41.119)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (23:48.362)
Yep.

Steve Vaughan (23:58.378)
Thank God.

Luke Vaughan (24:02.78)
people moan about four, it's only 4K. Well, how many clients do you have that need 6K video? It's very minimal for a lot of people. So actually the 4K is fine, produces a great bit. If you're not cropping heavily, it works perfectly good.

Nick Church (24:15.938)
And so you're just in standard or like pitch profile off effectively for that. Yeah. Yeah.

Luke Vaughan (24:19.76)
Yeah, for a lot of it, the delivery timeframe can often be a few hours. It can be finishing a show and you need it up by three in the morning or you're gonna get up very early and it's gotta be ready by 10 in the morning. So actually the time to go and grade and mess around is not there.

Steve Vaughan (24:25.421)
course.

Nick Church (24:37.796)
Yeah. I mean, I, yeah, just, it was just going to say, sorry to interrupt that, that, I did a commercial video a few weeks ago for a, sort of postpartum doula and, newborn photographer combines that they sort of provide this dual service. And I use the A74 for that. was a lovely, a farmhouse near Bath. It had lovely light coming in. It's just the perfect day. And I use my Osmo, but I'd left it because I'd done a little reel.

Steve Vaughan (24:38.144)
Remember when we had root? Sorry, Nick, go ahead.

Luke Vaughan (24:57.265)
Mm-hmm.

Luke Vaughan (25:04.658)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Church (25:06.82)
for social media, I'd left it in normal profile rather than D log. And so I shot the whole thing on normal and I was really annoyed afterwards because I thought, damn it, this is going to be a beautiful video. And then thought it's going to suffer. Didn't see it. It's fine. It just took me quicker. It just didn't take me as long to grade it.

Luke Vaughan (25:21.338)
It doesn't, it's stunning.

Steve Vaughan (25:21.43)
I'm sure it's fine.

Luke Vaughan (25:25.84)
I leave my Osmo in the normal picture profile as well. The less messing around I can do, the better.

Steve Vaughan (25:28.854)
you

Nick Church (25:31.204)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (25:31.758)
Yeah. I was going to say, remember when we had Rue Stain on a while ago, the videographer, know, great videographer up in the middle and I think he shoots everything in with picture profile off. Yeah. So I've never, I've never been brave enough to use Slog3. It always looks a bit scary that you have to overexpose it two stops and all this kind of stuff. And I've never had the goods to use it professionally. tend to use...

Nick Church (25:39.061)
Mm Yeah, I've seen a couple. Yeah, they do that.

Luke Vaughan (25:41.702)
Yep. Yep.

Nick Church (25:54.416)
Well, it's, yeah, it's, it's a bit of a, it is a bit of a worry because yeah, you want to be, I tend to look at like one to one and a half, two stops over. But if you go over two, it still says two, but it flashes. So you've got to check, check whether it's flashing or not. It's a bit of a stress really.

Steve Vaughan (26:03.516)
All right.

Luke Vaughan (26:04.348)
Mm-hmm.

Steve Vaughan (26:07.958)
Doug. Yeah, I tend to use the, is it the Pitch Profile 11, the Ascinetone, which is quite flat. Yeah, a bit like the Fujifilm Eterna, Luke, from those days. Okay. All right, well, let's mention it then. So, Open Gate, it doesn't have an Open Gate sensor shock horror. So.

Nick Church (26:15.62)
Yeah, yeah, I've used that. It's nice. Yeah, that's nice. Yeah.

Luke Vaughan (26:16.668)
Yes, that's where I am.

Luke Vaughan (26:22.502)
Yeah, completely. Completely.

Steve Vaughan (26:34.182)
Why is that a problem? Let's ask you that Luke, because you're the guy doing both widescreen and vertical video.

Nick Church (26:38.202)
Yeah.

Luke Vaughan (26:40.146)
So does it matter? To a lot of people, probably not. It matters in my world because the extra little bit of headroom that you get by using that full sensor readout, because obviously no sensors are 16 by 9, you're always losing a little bit. And that ability of having that full sensor when you are trying to deliver both horizontal and vertical content just makes everything a little bit less cramped.

Steve Vaughan (26:44.425)
Mmm.

Nick Church (26:57.328)
Mm.

Luke Vaughan (27:09.02)
when you deliver that nine by 16, it gives you a little more room. So my widest that I use is 16 mil, 16 mil on 60 by nine when you crop it is very, very tight. And it just gives you that wider aspect. It gives you more headroom. I think for run and gun shooters who aren't necessarily spending a lot of time composing that shot, that little extra wiggle room in your frame is crucial.

And if you're an anamorphic shooter, then OpenGate is yours anyway and always has been. And that's what you use anyway. Did the majority of people need it? Probably not. Is it going to be useful to a small percentage of people? Absolutely.

Nick Church (27:48.9)
So wiggle room, you mean in post, right?

Steve Vaughan (27:49.014)
Well, it sounds like it is to you.

Luke Vaughan (27:52.241)
Yeah, in post because in terms of being able to crop and reframe that little extra that you get at the top and the bottom of the frame, if we're talking in a three by two full frame camera, can mean the difference between it actually looking good and it feeling very compressed and busy when you finally cut that in. I've often shot stuff in vertical, mounted the camera vertically on the gimbal, got to the end of it, delivered it, and then they've said, yeah, that's excellent. Can we get one for YouTube as well? No, no, no, you can't because we didn't talk about that.

Nick Church (28:13.104)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Church (28:19.824)
What?

Luke Vaughan (28:22.402)
And it would be much easier if I could just shoot one way and then deliver multiple which is where that that benefit of open gate comes in

Steve Vaughan (28:24.81)
Nah, I get that.

Nick Church (28:25.808)
Yeah.

Nick Church (28:29.978)
So for any listeners that are of my level of density, the, that, that ability of having your full sensor means that you can still take, if you, if you capture that full frame in video, you can capture a vertical 4K image.

Luke Vaughan (28:43.812)
Exactly you you you have the full sensor in front of you just like you would in the format of a photograph and then you could take 16 by 9 out of that 9 by 16 whatever you need to and Because you've got that full frame of the sensor if you want a 9 by 16 But you know what you just need to move it around in lightroom to get the head in the middle of the frame Well, you've actually got that wiggle room. So, you know if you're a run-and-gun shooter who isn't composing Perfectly at the time. I think there's a lot of use for it here

Steve Vaughan (29:11.744)
So my simplistic view coming into this podcast is of why can't you just shoot a bit wider? That doesn't work then.

Luke Vaughan (29:20.557)
Possibly you don't always have the chance to step further back. I want to have one lens on the body. I don't want to be chopping and changing bodies in the dark. And 16 to 35 works for majority filming. Barriers are where they are. You can't always move back. this is hence why the crop on Sony used to annoy me a lot.

Steve Vaughan (29:22.804)
No, guess, no, sure.

Steve Vaughan (29:28.81)
No, I shall.

Steve Vaughan (29:35.702)
Yeah, of course.

Steve Vaughan (29:41.152)
Yeah.

Nick Church (29:41.296)
But even if you do get back, Steve, if you were to, in final cut, say, if you were to take a vertical portion of that, then you're only at 2160 pixels high or whatever, rather than being the full 4K or whatever, know, whatever the maximum size is. Yeah.

Luke Vaughan (29:55.408)
Yeah. Rather than the full.

Steve Vaughan (29:55.51)
I you all the best.

Luke Vaughan (30:00.457)
Mm-hmm.

Steve Vaughan (30:00.502)
3840 yeah yeah yeah no of course I get that yeah yeah so

Nick Church (30:04.836)
Well, it'd be the 41 or whatever the actual sensor vertical pixel count is that that would be your maximum height, which is over 4K crucially if it's full frame, if it's, yeah, open gate.

Steve Vaughan (30:09.718)
Oh yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, so if you can be over here, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so for you, Luke, this was obviously a deal breaker then.

Luke Vaughan (30:24.591)
It was that I needed something else. I was going to get a third body because I wanted to be able to have two that were left dedicated stills with the right lenses on them that I could pick up and one that was then fully rigged with the cage and all the bits that I needed on it for video. And I looked around the R6 was an option at the time, their third iteration. But crucially, because you want that slow mo, I wanted something that shot at 50 frames per second and short of venturing into the black magic world.

Steve Vaughan (30:53.482)
Luke Vaughan (30:54.547)
Lumix was the answer because they are literally the only brand that offer OpenGate full sensor 3.2 at 50.

Steve Vaughan (31:04.8)
Wow, so which model have you got?

Luke Vaughan (31:07.187)
The S12, which was heavily discounted.

Nick Church (31:10.0)
Because the R3, the R3 loop then, it does do open gate, but only at the 7k30 or 2530. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (31:12.288)
How is it?

Luke Vaughan (31:16.883)
25 and 30. So this drops to 5.1K if you want the 50 frames per second open gate. But again, I don't need 5K. I'm delivering TikTok and Instagram. So actually the fact that it's not 6K doesn't bother me at all. They're bigger for sure.

Nick Church (31:24.506)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Church (31:30.062)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Steve Vaughan (31:30.356)
No, exactly.

Steve Vaughan (31:35.734)
So I've often looked at the Lumix cameras in camera shops and thought, I like the look of them. They look proper for want of a better phrase. So tell me a bit about the spec of that one. again, apologies if you're a Lumix listener, you're probably shouting down the phone at me now saying, of course you know you should know this, but I don't. So is it both phase detect and contrast detect focusing?

Luke Vaughan (31:57.3)
It is that was a bit of a that was a bit of a sore point in the Lumix world for a little while that it was it was not both they they fix that a little while ago I understand the line I used to always ignore I have a friend who shoots this and to be honest we we used to take the mic out of him quite a bit because he had Lumix but actually then when you start getting into some of newer stuff it's it's brilliant it's a partially stacked sensor much like the the new Sony I think they boast 15 stops of dynamic range within it

Steve Vaughan (32:01.461)
Yeah.

Luke Vaughan (32:27.059)
IBIS to be honest I tend to ignore from a photo point because I don't need it. I'm never below 125th of a second so photo in the IBIS for photos means absolutely nothing to me.

Steve Vaughan (32:34.39)
Yeah.

Nick Church (32:38.542)
because your subjects are moving more than you're likely to anyway, right?

Steve Vaughan (32:41.354)
Yeah.

Luke Vaughan (32:41.715)
Exactly, I'm never going to drop that below 125, 125th of a second. So that has never been a thing for me. It's a 24 megapixel sensor, I believe, which actually no full frame, full frame, but, know, 24 in the dark is probably a little bit better than, you know, going to the kind of 40 megapixels of the cannons and the Nikons. I'd draw the 24 for video. It makes a lot more sense.

Steve Vaughan (32:51.412)
Which is enough, yeah.

Nick Church (32:52.686)
Micro four thirds loop. Full frame, right.

Steve Vaughan (32:54.73)
Now full frame.

Luke Vaughan (33:10.029)
And yeah, overall it is. It's an exceptional camera. Would I use it purely for stills? No, because I don't think the autofocus is there for me, but the autofocus is perfectly good enough for most people. For me, it was bought for video and video alone, really.

Steve Vaughan (33:26.742)
And of Lumixes do have lots of additional functions for video. Do you have things like false colours and all that kind of stuff?

Nick Church (33:26.98)
Yeah.

Luke Vaughan (33:33.001)
They have everything. You have waveforms, false colors, you can preload in LUTs to the camera. You can record to solid state drives via USB-C. So if you don't wanna buy a Blackmagic monitor or an Atmos monitor, you can record to up to a two terabyte SSD straight from the camera in Blackmagic RAW, if you really wanted to. And if you wanted to pay money for the subscription, you can have the Array.

Steve Vaughan (33:39.875)
wow.

Nick Church (33:52.592)
I'm gonna go ahead.

Steve Vaughan (33:55.647)
wow, look at that, very big, big hard drives, yeah.

Luke Vaughan (34:00.981)
profiles and all the rest of it. You know, they really have gone very, very heavy with the video features. The codecs are absolutely mind blowing. I think six pages of codecs that you can record video in.

Steve Vaughan (34:03.2)
Gosh.

Steve Vaughan (34:11.882)
Wow.

Nick Church (34:12.496)
I've seen more when I'm doing more, more corporate stuff rather than wedding films. So people a bit more geared up for stuff. I am seeing more and more people having the mix setups. Definitely.

Luke Vaughan (34:19.688)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Luke Vaughan (34:24.584)
Yeah, I think for a while the GH5 series was kind of the travel vloggers camera of choice. It's what people were using because they were incredible in micro four thirds version. But honestly, I've been really impressed with this. This will get a full run on video this weekend. I'm out with Wheatus, the original teenage dirt bags. I'm out with them on Saturday and Brighton. So this will get a proper test run.

Nick Church (34:30.501)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (34:30.742)
which is micro four thirds. Yeah. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (34:42.966)
wow. Yeah.

Nick Church (34:43.82)
nice.

Luke Vaughan (34:49.872)
And it's looking good. It's very complex. There is a lot set up. There is a lot to get your head around with these cameras. I challenge anyone who thought Sony was complex to pick one of these up. The menu systems make just about as much sense, but there's more of them. However, without a doubt, it's an incredible camera. There's no doubt about that. And the price point over the last few weeks, I picked this up for $2,400 body only as a deal. I think it's back up at

Nick Church (34:59.364)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (34:59.626)
Hahaha

Steve Vaughan (35:16.374)
Pretty good.

Nick Church (35:17.253)
Wow.

Luke Vaughan (35:19.32)
2627 depending where you get it from which for what it packs into it I think this has been people sticking point with the Sony is perhaps at the moment. It is a little bit overpriced For what it is, know where the pitching at 2728 Indeed indeed so in you know installing 2700 2800. I think it's causing a bit of

Steve Vaughan (35:30.39)
So we're talking pounds of course for our international listeners. Yeah.

Nick Church (35:38.008)
That's mad, which is 500 quid less than you can pick up a new A7S3.

Luke Vaughan (35:44.966)
Exactly, exactly. think it's

Steve Vaughan (35:45.29)
Yeah.

Nick Church (35:46.094)
which, and the specs on the S3 must be kind of getting to the point where...

Steve Vaughan (35:51.038)
Unless you really need that low light capability.

Luke Vaughan (35:53.203)
No, S3 and FX3 on the video side again, it is getting to that point. I so I heard somebody say that the Sony, the new Sony A75 was Sony's Apple moment. But it wasn't that much of an upgrade overall. We had a few new features. They were still behind in a lot of respects, being talking about video, but yet the price was still right at the top end of the range. And yeah, I've heard that phrase a couple of times.

Steve Vaughan (36:06.39)
What do you mean by that?

Steve Vaughan (36:18.74)
Interesting.

And of course, once you get locked into the system, locked into the glass, but in this case, because you're doing it for a different application, having different glass and stuff isn't an issue really. What glass did you go with?

Luke Vaughan (36:32.596)
So with my Sony's I literally I don't want to complicate it set up at all So I have one lens on each body. They've never come off 16 35 on one side and the Tamron 35 to 150 on the other and in all honesty I can do as I'm sure a lot of wedding photographers do I can do 95 % of my day on that Tamron it is really good for the and this is where sick the um Lumix range falls down

Steve Vaughan (36:46.711)
nice. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (36:52.598)
I'm sure it could, yeah.

Luke Vaughan (36:59.604)
Although they have the L-mount Alliance, which is them, Leica and Sigma, there's a little bit missing. There's no 16 to 35 available at F 2.8. The only 16 to 35 is F4. The closest you get in the Sigma world is 16 to 28, which is what I went with. The other benefit for videographers is the 16 to 28 Sigma is internal zoom as well. So if you've got this balanced on a gimbal, you're not worrying.

Nick Church (37:03.525)
Hmm.

Steve Vaughan (37:09.055)
Really?

Steve Vaughan (37:12.778)
Yeah, that's it.

Steve Vaughan (37:19.05)
Yeah.

Nick Church (37:28.208)
Mm-hmm.

Steve Vaughan (37:28.969)
of course. Yeah, of course.

Luke Vaughan (37:29.83)
about that bit of the zoom. And then the other one I picked up just for size really was the 24 to 60 that Panasonic recently brought out. I'm not going to miss that 10 mil at 70 at all. And for the size and the compactness and the weight, absolutely. So that's what I went for for the Lumix and they'll definitely do their job for video for now.

Nick Church (37:31.247)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (37:41.46)
No.

Nick Church (37:49.968)
So do you do video and stills at the same, the same shoe, Luke? How are you like rocking out? What's your, cause in it, it's somewhere like a stadium type gig or a busy gig. You're not going to and from a camera place just in the corner, like we do at a wedding. what, have you got everything on you? How do you carry your stuff around so you can switch quickly?

Steve Vaughan (37:50.134)
And you got a job, yeah.

Luke Vaughan (37:55.452)
Unfortunately, yes.

Luke Vaughan (38:02.313)
Mm-hmm.

Luke Vaughan (38:09.829)
Some gigs I do exactly that I will run out and do the video bits and then I will run back and do the imaging bits and pick those cameras up. Sometimes the two stills camera or one stills camera will be on my waist or on my shoulder and then the other one will be in my hand but I do try and split it I'm not carrying both at the same time. If I am really far back at the room and I do need a still shot then do you know what the Lumix will suffice and I'll manage that one.

But generally for the ones where I'm doing both I've usually got a slot backstage where I can stick the case and I can run between the two But yeah, you just got to figure your roots out each venue. Some venues are very very easy to do it Some venues are very very difficult even with a small size because you're cutting through the crowd and you've got no route around the back So it's a bit of a mix

Nick Church (38:47.918)
Yeah, yeah.

Nick Church (38:56.164)
Well, and security wise, often presumably don't make it easier for people, anyone to get around the back, around to backstage areas.

Luke Vaughan (39:02.261)
No, it's difficult for me to get back where I want to sometimes. Because, you know, people are, you know, so, the security is so high. Some venues, the doors are coded to key cards and all that kind of stuff. So, it's a bit of a mix.

Nick Church (39:14.362)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (39:14.762)
Gosh. Wow.

Nick Church (39:17.86)
So you weren't at all tempted to go for a system where you could just go to a single device like the A12 or something that could do both.

Luke Vaughan (39:27.087)
no, not at the moment. I looked at it and then I thought, you know what, having had, having shot quite a bit of video over the last six months and then borrowed and tested open gate footage. For me, it was the way to go because you you talk about those things where you miss it. I was reviewing footage where I'm thinking, do you know what, if I was a little bit higher on that head, I could use that. whereas now I don't have that worry. I would love to have one system, which I can just flip between the two. really would.

Nick Church (39:41.872)
Mm.

Steve Vaughan (39:42.032)
I could say that, yeah.

Steve Vaughan (39:51.594)
You don't have to worry about it, do you? No.

Luke Vaughan (39:56.604)
and it's how my Sony's are set at the moment, but right now I just need that bit extra.

Nick Church (40:00.912)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (40:01.3)
And let's be honest, if Sony wanted to have done it, they could have done it. It's like Canon used to do, they deliberately cripple the cameras, don't they? And think Sony could have done this if they wanted to. It's only firmware, isn't it?

Luke Vaughan (40:05.203)
I think they could have known.

Luke Vaughan (40:12.873)
Yeah, they are making a stills photographer's camera here. I think, you the hybrid is we do it and we do it like this and that's it. If you want something else, you move to our FX line. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (40:23.764)
Yeah, cinema-line cameras, yeah.

Nick Church (40:25.146)
But have they got OpenGate, the FX line?

Luke Vaughan (40:27.765)
I believe one of the line has recently been updated. It wasn't part of it. It's been brought in with a software update. But then, by the time you get into those cameras, actually the 12K Blackmagic cameras are £4,000 at the moment on Black Friday deals, which is not astonishing money when you're talking about Sony Cinema Line.

Steve Vaughan (40:30.07)
don't know.

Nick Church (40:46.48)
No. Yeah, right. Right.

Steve Vaughan (40:49.886)
No, no, exactly. Yeah, yeah. So I think, you know, I was I was skeptical about the whole open game, but having listened to you, Luke, and somebody who's doing this for a living, and, know, I can totally get it. I can totally understand why it would frustrate people.

Nick Church (41:03.81)
I think I'd initially thought about the flexibility of moving the frame around a little bit in post. I thought, yeah, that'd be kind of nice. I hadn't fully appreciated just taking a 4k for it's cool. You know, just shooting once and then using it for multiple purposes. I'd not, I'd not really thought about that.

Steve Vaughan (41:08.886)
Hmm.

Steve Vaughan (41:17.334)
Yeah, I totally get it. So the bottom line is, are you going to buy one Nick? That's an A75, mean not a Linux.

Luke Vaughan (41:17.619)
Yeah, completely.

Nick Church (41:26.36)
Yeah, probably, probably. I mean, I haven't decided yet because I don't, I'm not in a position I need to right now. mean, my, my a seven four that's got the lens communication issue that's going to be sent back. I'm talking to Sony, you know about that. So I'll get that fixed over the next month or so. Then I'll just decide, you know, I'll have this, always have this thing that you only make decisions late as possible. Don't you? There's no need, because otherwise it's just sitting there. If I bought one today, it's going to be sitting here when it arrives.

Steve Vaughan (41:32.896)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (41:38.846)
Hmm. Hmm.

Steve Vaughan (41:51.434)
Yeah.

Nick Church (41:56.136)
for the next couple of months, not being used, just decreasing in value. and when, who knows when that comes around, I might look at other options, but like you said, it's not so much the cost. is pretty hefty in cost. think, you know, it is, it is going to be quite a large chunk of cash, but they've kind of got you because it's almost like, what's the cost of moving to something different with all the lenses and that's, and that's what you're, know, you're kind of just pay paying to stay put, which is a bit of a shame really, but.

Steve Vaughan (41:56.278)
Yeah, Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (42:13.792)
Mm.

Steve Vaughan (42:19.519)
horrendous. Yeah. Yeah.

Luke Vaughan (42:21.845)
Absolutely, absolutely Nick.

Steve Vaughan (42:23.966)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Luke Vaughan (42:26.077)
No, I think if you all come in from, you know, the A7 III, then this camera's a steal. Because if you've sat on the A7 III, you probably don't need much else than what it offers. And the upgrades that this is going to offer you in terms of image in a huge, absolutely huge.

Steve Vaughan (42:32.264)
Mm.

Steve Vaughan (42:39.658)
Yeah. Yeah. We won't, we won't buy one. We've got four Sony cameras. and you know, with the still working to the plan of coming out of the wedding photography business by mid 27. I think when we get to that stage is what cameras do we want for us, you know, and perhaps do an occasional wedding, you know, as a second shooter or something might look at buying one then and consolidating the kit and keeping the A1 and getting one of them. But at this stage now we won't get one. There's no need for us to.

Nick Church (43:09.104)
I suppose I'm worried about it. is a great hybrid camera. And if you were coming into the industry now, let's say you had a lower range camera, maybe out of 60 X a hundred or something like that. And you were looking at, uh, right. I'm going to go to a full frame set up. now doing this as a full-time thing, whether it's weddings or whatever. I it's a great hybrid camera for sure. I mean, it's, and that's kind of what I use it for. My concern is if I get to get to a point, cause I really love doing film. It's just something I don't get that much opportunity to do myself.

Steve Vaughan (43:17.462)
Yeah.

Nick Church (43:39.088)
If I did more film and I've just bought two A75s and then in a year's time I'm thinking, I really want something that's a bit more dedicated, know, got something extra for the film stuff, then that be a bit of a pain because then I would be like in Luke's situation of then getting a different series and different devices for film. And I wouldn't be, not, it wouldn't be my, it still wouldn't be my main source of income. So I couldn't justify it as easily.

Steve Vaughan (43:56.63)
Sure.

Steve Vaughan (44:05.98)
By film you mean video work, not 35mm film. Yeah, just clarify the point.

Luke Vaughan (44:06.057)
No, it is.

Luke Vaughan (44:10.966)
Yeah. And I think it is exactly that, you know, it is exactly that is that more and more people are asking for. I think in the wedding industry, though, you are, you know, you have people that dedicated to that job and stills as a separate job. And now you've got wedding content creators coming into the scene as well, who are running around with Osmo pockets and phones and all the other bits that they do. But yeah, I think depending on your industry, I actually, Neil James spoke about this when we first met him, Steve, about the volume of

Nick Church (44:11.844)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (44:26.388)
Yeah, yeah, got a few of those next year. Yeah.

Yep. Yep.

Luke Vaughan (44:40.246)
internet searches that will be based on audio and video. And I think now 40 % of returned searches of video. Some crazy number like that. And we've got people under the age of 25 who use Google, use TikTok and Instagram as it is Google. So for certain industries, you're gonna need video without a doubt.

Steve Vaughan (44:43.744)
Hmm.

Steve Vaughan (44:47.988)
Is that right? Yeah, interesting.

Steve Vaughan (44:58.336)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (45:02.622)
I know photographers. So people like Adam Lans, Neil Redfern, who we've had on here as well, who are getting increasingly most of their bookings through TikTok. know, it's never going to be where I go looking for our customers, because I'm not particularly looking for what customers, if they find us great. But we're not necessarily looking for, but my ideal customer won't be hanging around on TikTok, put it that way. And I'm not their ideal photographer if they are, because I'm too old. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You have to laugh about it,

Luke Vaughan (45:08.756)
Yeah.

Luke Vaughan (45:13.579)
Yep.

Luke Vaughan (45:23.923)
No, of course not.

No.

Nick Church (45:29.392)
But it is how people, mean, those younger generation, like, oh, I've got four kids. And they all, if they're going to find a bit of information, they're going to TikTok or they're going to YouTube. If you say just, and they're showing me what they found, then it might be something to do with their car or something. I was just Google it, you know, but I might as be saying, go down the library. just found something, such an old duffer to say to them, go and Google it. Yeah.

Luke Vaughan (45:52.308)
Yeah, it's such an old-fashioned way.

Steve Vaughan (45:56.566)
You're getting hieroglyphics anywhere you can find it on. Whatever you do in your own time is your concern.

Nick Church (45:58.993)
Yeah, I've got brass rubbing I could give you.

Luke Vaughan (46:04.726)
Yeah, but I think this is it coping with socials is and you know, I speak to artists and musicians and I mean, Nick, these may have been a band for you. was was hanging out with Drowning Paul after their show in Margate and we were talking about this exact issue of, know, being in your mid 40s, early 50s and having to deal with social media every day and be present on it every day. it's it's not our game.

Nick Church (46:14.711)
All right.

Nick Church (46:26.786)
It's exhausting.

Steve Vaughan (46:27.638)
Try being in your 60s guys. Look, before we wrap up, it would be great just to get a more of a feel for the bands you photographed, any people we would know, even me at my age, any stories.

Nick Church (46:40.624)
Yeah, great question.

Luke Vaughan (46:41.854)
I mean, I've had a fantastic year. We kicked off the year. I spent a full day with Bowling for Soup and Wheatus in Brighton, which was just absolutely fantastic. I've been out with some really close friends on some small runs, kind of 500 person venues up and down the UK. I've got to shoot some of those target bands where you've been buying their records for 20 years.

Steve Vaughan (46:50.038)
Yeah, heard of them.

Steve Vaughan (47:01.109)
Nice.

Luke Vaughan (47:08.576)
and then all of a sudden you're hanging out with them. Drowning Pool at Margate was exceptional. That was through some friends in a new metal act called Nonpoint. It had been on the scene for about 20 years. English band, fantastic English band called Creeper, who are a mix of everything from, you know, goth to Billy Idol to Meat Loaf. You know, their influences are so far ranging and they're such a fantastic live act as well.

Steve Vaughan (47:24.758)
I it then.

Luke Vaughan (47:37.639)
Who else we had? Like I said, we've got at the back end of this year, Skin Dread. It's been a slower year for me this year than it was last year. last year I went from photographing two, 300 person gigs to being at Wembley and the NIA inside three months. But I'm concentrating a lot more on the, like I say, on the video work and pushing that. I've got some music videos for bands coming up, a few festivals next year, but yeah, it's...

Steve Vaughan (47:41.888)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (47:54.014)
Wow. Amazing.

Steve Vaughan (47:59.68)
Mm.

Luke Vaughan (48:06.111)
It's kind of crazy when you're stood with these people who, you know, their records are in your collection. You paid money. You paid money to go to their shows and now they're in your WhatsApp.

Steve Vaughan (48:08.597)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Church (48:11.576)
Yeah, that must be weird.

Steve Vaughan (48:12.222)
Yeah. Yeah. That was super cool.

Steve Vaughan (48:17.718)
Amazing.

Nick Church (48:18.574)
Well, you, you, and you've, you've paid them 1.6 pence for their album on Spotify. least they could do is give you a, give you opportunities.

Luke Vaughan (48:23.435)
Yeah, correct.

Steve Vaughan (48:23.478)
That much. We both like the band, the Canadian band, Commoners of course. And I saw them last year. I know they are. I'm not going get to see them this time. Yeah. But I saw them last year at Planet Rockstock, which is the festival at a holiday park where you get reserved spaces for mobility scooters. It's that rock and roll. And I couldn't go this year, unfortunately. I should have gone last weekend, but unfortunately I had a couple of dogs to dox it because my wife was away.

Luke Vaughan (48:28.097)
Correct.

Luke Vaughan (48:33.355)
who are back over at the moment. They landed yesterday.

Steve Vaughan (48:53.35)
It looked like it was a good fun gig anyway. yeah, it sounds great Nick, Nick and Luke as well. Sounds great Nick as well, but it sounds great Luke. And you get to meet some fantastic people by the sound of it.

Luke Vaughan (49:02.421)
You certainly do, you certainly do.

Nick Church (49:02.468)
Yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure the, the, the envy rating is going up among the listeners. It's just be such a great environment to be in as a photographer. think a lot of us starts when we're, when we're starting out in photography, sort of start shooting bands and stuff, because it's all bands want photos and footage, don't they? You know, so, but it's, it's even, it's very hard to actually get them to pay money for it. And so anyone that's done that to make a commercial business out of it is just fantastic.

Steve Vaughan (49:19.168)
Go see there.

Luke Vaughan (49:25.535)
Yeah, and it is... Do you know what? It's who you know. It really is. Am I the best in the game? No, by a long shot. But it does come down to who you know and those relationships that you've built. And it's lot of networking and maintaining that. you know, it does pay off. you know, people think touring is fantastic. It's like Groundhog Day most of the time. It's not the rock and roll life people think. But would I change it? No, I wouldn't change it for the world.

Steve Vaughan (49:28.512)
Yeah, great. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (49:41.023)
Yeah.

Nick Church (49:54.384)
And I think saying it's, you know, it's who, know, is being a bit coy because it is your, the networking that you put in beforehand and your personality and the fact that you've, you've sort of created connections with these people. That's what it is. There is a lot of legwork there and it isn't just a, you know, you've just lucked out. It's, it's, you know, it's, it's kudos to you for that.

Steve Vaughan (49:54.87)
Fantastic, mate. Fantastic.

Luke Vaughan (50:08.213)
Yeah, absolutely.

Luke Vaughan (50:13.311)
No, not at all. Thank you.

Steve Vaughan (50:14.378)
Yeah. And your work is pretty good to be fair, mate, as well. We will link it to the show notes. also if you send us pictures as well, put them in the Facebook group as well for people to, yeah. Yeah. Thanks mate. So, so well, what are you up to next couple of weeks, Nick? Anything exciting?

Nick Church (50:18.809)
Yes.

Luke Vaughan (50:19.755)
Thank you very much, gents.

Luke Vaughan (50:24.106)
Wonderful, we will do.

Nick Church (50:31.768)
loads of Academy stuff. loads of Academy promotion and building out the courses. I'm chatting to some sponsorship brands, some of which we've talked about before. they're potentially going to sponsor some modules in the Lightroom course, for example. so, yeah, so it's exciting. Yeah. Lots of stuff going on and I'll update everyone when they're ready, but the courses are available. They're still on the half price.

Steve Vaughan (50:33.981)
Okay, tell us more.

Steve Vaughan (50:44.352)
Mmm.

Nick Church (51:01.57)
offer the launch offer. So I've run it for the next couple of weeks to the end of the year. And so they just go to Nick church, creative academy.com and head to the online courses and you'll see the light run, each photographer unleashed and Photoshop unleashed. So yeah, loads of stuff go on on that side. And I've got tons of wedding films to edit. So I should be doing a lot of that as well.

Steve Vaughan (51:20.884)
I've all but done all our wedding photography editing, which is great. And we're going back to your Academy stuff. I've had a look at some of the content and it's really, really good, mate. So, you know, really recommend people check it out. It's a really useful resource for people. So, well, if you've enjoyed today's episode, thank you for joining us. Don't forget to give us a review on Spotify or Apple podcast. It does help us and also we're in a wonderful ways. And also don't forget if you want to ask us anything here for the podcast to talk about, or even got some ideas for guests for the future, we'd love to hear from you.

Nick Church (51:28.085)
thanks Steve. Awesome. Thank you.

Steve Vaughan (51:50.144)
The email address is Nick knows I never remember. So Nick, the email address is.

Nick Church (51:54.074)
studio at the photography pod.co.uk.

Steve Vaughan (51:57.59)
You went louder then, you went almost like a TV advert mode then. Do you remember the Christmas adverts for Aftershave, like Hi Karate and Brute? You're a bit like one of those. Well, just in case you need some Christmas work, you never know. Luke Whatsewell, thanks for coming and joining us on the pod. It's great to have you and no doubt.

Nick Church (52:01.552)
High compression journey adverts.

Nick Church (52:09.488)
Yeah. All right. Okay. Some extra work. Yeah.

Luke Vaughan (52:22.346)
Thank you for inviting me gentlemen, been a pleasure.

Steve Vaughan (52:24.884)
Yeah, no doubt we'll meet up in a hostel somewhere in London every Christmas as well for a beer or two.

Nick Church (52:28.398)
Yeah, we'll go out for a couple of bits. Sponsored by Lynx Africa.

Steve Vaughan (52:32.859)
Hahaha!

Luke Vaughan (52:33.856)
Sponsored by Motorhead Beer from Cameron's if I get my way.

Nick Church (52:36.429)
yes.

Steve Vaughan (52:37.34)
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, well tell us more about that if that works out. Yeah, yeah, so thanks for listening to the list though. We'll be back again in a couple of weeks time. In the meantime, happy shooting out there and we'll talk to you soon.

Nick Church (52:46.81)
Bye bye.

Luke Vaughan (52:48.062)
Bye everyone.