Welcome to episode 34 of The Circle of Confusion, the professional photography podcast.
This week, we talk David vs Goliath and the shock of seeing a D800E run a €40,000 medium format system so close it made Peter almost cry. (Actually, he didn’t but it makes for good copy to say he did).
We discuss the equally shocking result of a punch up between a photographer and Justin Bieber, and the grim wounds sustained by Neil and Peter during the filming of our D800(E) v IQ180 camera test. Photography is a dangerous game.
Peter talks about his upcoming book project and we revisit the transit of Venus, which is still going to happen.
To hear episode 34 hit the play button below. You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes. We’d love it if you did.
D800E beats up an IQ180
What can we say?
We were shocked.
You can read about the results here: David vs Goliath (Goliath wins on points)
For more audio go here: Shock Result or listen in the player below.
We’ll be releasing a video soon filmed over the two days of the test.
Bieber beats up a photographer
Bad boy of rock, Justin Bieber has allegedly assaulted a “celebrity photographer” who blocked Bieber’s car and refused to get out of the way. Bieber got out and a scuffle ensued.
We say Bieber was wrong to act the way he did. He should have driven over the photographer instead.
The photographer sustained chest injuries on the advice of a lawyer and was taken to hospital. He survived.
The police are looking for witnesses.
Transit of Venus
The transit of Venus is still on for 6th June next week. After that, it won’t happen again for over a century.
Just some quick links to help you if you’d like to view of photograph it.
Then if you want pre-made eye protection: My eyes!
My camera! (Choose the Astrosolar ND3.0 Photographic Roll or the Astrosolar ND 5.0 Visual Roll. The ND3 should not be used for visual observing, just for photography. The ND5 can be used for both).
Competition
Vanguard Skyborne 51 - as seen in Dynamic Range episode 2
There are only a few hours left in which to enter our video competition.
Bag maker Vanguard gave us one of its Skyborne 51 backpacks to review as part of a group test in episode 2 of Dynamic Range and we have that bag to give away. Despite the pummeling it got during the test, it is in almost mint condition and Vanguard has said we can either keep it or use it as a prize. So guess what? We’re keeping it using it as a prize.
All you need to do to be in with a chance of winning it is to purchase a copy of either episode 1 or episode 2 of Dynamic Range between 5th April 2012 and today, 31st May 2012. Your name will go into the hat and we’ll announce the winner on 7th June in the podcast.
It’s a great prize and we’d like to thank Vanguard for its generosity.
FREE SEGMENT FROM DYNAMIC RANGE EPISODE 2
We produced an abundance of great content for episode 2 of Dynamic Range. We can’t possibly include it all in the release next week, so we’ve decided to give you an entire segment for free here. It’s offered in full HD, and will play automatically at that resolution in full screen mode. If your broadband connection is having trouble with that, click the little gear icon near the bottom right of the player to choose a lower res.
If you like it, why not buy the full episode? It’s available here: Dynamic Range Episode 2.
What do you think?
As ever, we’d love to hear your views and get your feedback.
Disagree, agree or have a completely different take on what we’ve discussed? Please get in touch by leaving a comment or emailing us at mailbag@circleofconfusion.ie.
Also, if you see or know something you think we’d be interested in discussing on the blog, we’d love to hear from you too.
Lastly, if you’d like to put yourself forward as a correspondent (we’re especially keen to hear from female photographers to help balance our pool of photographers worldwide), then you know what to do.
Blatant plug for our wares
Don’t forget, you can purchase the first episode of our landscape photography video series Dynamic Range for just €9.95, and as a bonus, the pilot episode is just €4.95! You’ll receive the download link via email as soon as you’ve completed the purchase.
Hi Gents
I always enjoy your podcasts – however, I can’t seem to find a download link for episode 34 this week? (There may be one on itunes, but I don’t go there!)
Regards
Stephan
Hi Stephan -
Thanks for the comment, and glad you enjoy the podcast. Do spread the word!
We forgot to click the ‘enable downloads’ button in Soundcloud when uploading the podcast this week, but I’ve just corrected that so you should see it now.
Cheers,
Peter
Great podcast – been listening since day one and still enjoy tuning in. A few things I’d like to ask/mention: First off, when you started the podcast a couple of years back, Roger had a pretty gloomy outlook on the pro-photography scene in Ireland – 2 years down the line, what do you think of the state of things now Roger? Improved? Got worse? About the same? Do you think the lean times have led to more business for those that survived it (or are times still lean?), as photographers with weaker business models got wiped out in the economic cross-fire?
Secondly, would love to hear from Neil and Peter on selling landscape photography (not stock, actual prints). I’ve heard this can be the hardest gig in town since you generally need to find a buyer after you’ve taken the photo – in contrast to most pro-photography where you get paid to take the photo.
Thirdly, MF pricing – which you touched on in discussion of the D800/IQ180/Hasselblad last week, and which is of interest in respect to the result of your ‘big test’ – and which (unfortunately for everyone within earshot) happens to be a favourite rant of mine (and I am a MFDB user). Sadly, I think Peter’s right that Phase won’t do anything – they’ve had a policy of ‘reassuringly expensive’ for the past decade, and are so entrenched in that pricing model I think they’ll try and stick it out as long as possible. Never been a fan of that, nor a) the sales events they regularly put on that masqerade as workshops (or maybe I’m being a tad cynical there?), b) their afiliated pitbulls that inhabit forums on the net and who are sworn to defend the company from any criticism to their last dying breath, and c) the fact that there are no training courses for Capture One on video (a la Lynda.com etc.) even though it has thousands of users world wide and has been around for a millenia … can’t help feeling Phase won’t give their blessing to any such production in order to protect their Capture One ‘workshops’ (or maybe I’m being a tad more cynical there?). And by the way, that woeful attempt on LuLa doesn’t count – if anyone wants a copy they can buy mine. What Phase are missing I think is that MF isn’t just going to get squeezed from below (D800 etc.), but also from above (RED etc.), as more of their traditional user base turns to shooting video to generate an income. Mobile devices mean that advertisers want to move beyond still images and text, to video – it’s amazing just how many still photographers are looking to the moving image to generate an income. I saw a 16×20 print made from a RED EPIC frame (14MP) last week, and was mightily impressed. The kit cost, what, $75k+ – which is a hell of a lot for the likes of me – but ‘only’ 1.5x the list price of an IQ180, and I’m sure an easy to justify purchase in the elevated world of high end commercial photography. And you can be sure that RED, unlike Phase, will be looking to drop the price in the months and years ahead as there are more adopters of the technology (especially since there is going to be one-hell of a lot of competition in that sector from Sony and Canon). The fact that used IQ180s seem to be changing hands privately now for around $25k – a depreciation of 50% in just 1 year – says to me that Phase’s way of thinking belongs in the Jurassic. It has to change (a la Hasselblad) or the world is just going to pass them by, while they stand in the corner of the room stomping their feet and going red in the face whilst screaming at the top of their voice, ‘no, no, no’ (or whatever ‘no, no, no’ is in Danish – ‘ingen, ingen, ingen’ I believe).
Fourthly, I was listening to Roger’s podcast with Carl Weese – great interview, first class bit of listening – and started to look into Kickstarter, which Peter says is something he’s planning to get involved with. Traditional print-publishing is such a hard gig for 99% of photographers to make any money out of these days (or just break even to be honest), that the Kickstarter model is perhaps the way to go. My take on Kickstarter, however, is that if you can attract the interests of a US audience you have a decent chance (i.e. design some sort of robot that builds things out of hot plastic – firearms would be a good idea), if not then you’re maybe up against it a tad (depending of course on just how much you’re after). That said, a lot of photo projects do seem to get funded, but again they all tend to have US-centric themes. Does Ireland have any drive-in movie theatres? The (or an) equivalent scheme in Ireland is Fundit, which I don’t know much about…(naturally) looks much more small scale.
Finally, I was watching a clip on the Guardian website where the reporter Alastair Sawday went on a shoot with Joe Cornish, and as an aside to the camera whilst Joe was crossing a river in flood, during a torrential downpour, he mentioned his admiration for Joe doing what he was doing, given the uninsurable nature of all the gear Joe was using (“…the possible end to a man’s career if he should slip…”) – IQ180, Linhof, lenses etc. – which made me suppose the cost of insurance was so high, Joe had just decided to ‘self insure’. The clip can be found here – it’s a nice watch. As I’m currently getting (commercial) insurance quotes to cover me and my gear (actually just my gear, I’m expendible), I was wondering what the situation and rates were like in Ireland for pro photographers – is it easy to get the sort of cover you need, particularly now given that DBs smaller in size than a tin of beans can cost more than a decent sports car? What happens if you travel abroad with that gear – cross your fingers and pray? Depending on the quotes I get back, I may well have to explore self-insurance.
Cheers,
Jim
P.S. I should say, for anyone reading this who isn’t aware of self insurance, it’s basically taking your annual premium and ring-fencing it (i.e. sticking it in a savings account every year). If you assume that you’ll have a major incident once every 10 years, your odds are 1/10. Multiply your annual premium by 10 (taking into account yearly premium increases over the 10 year period), and if the total is less than the total cost of replacing all the gear you’re insuring, then you can basically say – I’ll take a big hit once every 10 years and still end up ahead. If it isn’t, or you don’t have the $$ to replace items as they are lost/damaged/stolen/vaporise in that 10 year period, then it could be the dumbest thing you ever do. It’s definitely not for the faint of heart, and you’ll definitely get ‘the sweats’ every time you check in any camera gear at the airport, that’s for sure, and it’s only really applicable to the cost of insuring gear you own, not public liability, loss of income, rented equipment etc.
Hi Jim –
Thanks for the comments. I’ll let Roger reply to your first point, although from my own perspective times are still very lean for professional photographers in Ireland, and have gotten more so over the last year or so.
We’ll discuss the selling of prints in an upcoming podcast as well.
As for your comments on Phase One, I think you’re being a little unfair. One thing you need to be aware of is that the medium format digital market is a vanishingly small one. Margins have to be high as the volume of sales is low. However, I don’t believe the margins are nearly what you think they are. Remember, the cost of R&D and production are being balanced over a very small market. It’s not like Canon and Nikon who shift millions of boxes per year.
As far as the PODAS workshops go, their purpose is unabashedly to sell gear, and everyone who attends one is well aware of that fact. However, there is no hard sell and the 20% discount that’s offered generally wipes the cost of the workshop out entirely, so the participants get their new gear and a largely free holiday into the bargain. I bought my own IQ180 as part of the PODAS workshop I ran with them last year, in fact. It’s announced early in the trip that gear is for sale and what the discount is and then it’s left to the participants to approach the salesperson who comes along if they’re interested. There’s nothing nefarious about it!
I agree with you on Capture One training. I didn’t think the LL download was very good either, and while I’ve learned a good deal from the PODAS trip, it would be good to have more available.
However, the lack of content on Lynda.com is less to do with any reluctance Phase may have to training on that product (which is silly idea , I think – they are selling it and the more people who use it, the better their overall bottom line will be), and more to do with the fact that Lynda.com offers training on software there’s a large market for. For example, DaVinci Resolve, an excellent video grading programme has no video there because they haven’t seen sufficient demand to make one.
Your views on video are interesting and there’s certainly a real groundswell among stills photographers towards it, but I don’t see how it’s relevant to the MF discussion. I don’t see how RED can squeeze Phase out of its market as a 14mp still from video isn’t going to come anywhere close to an advertising shot from an IQ180. By the time video stills get anywhere close to that, we’ll be pushing 200MP in stills, I imagine.
I hope all this doesn’t turn me into an ‘affiliated pitbull’, but I really do think you’re being overly harsh here.
As for equipment insurance, I have full cover on all of my gear including the IQ180 for accidental loss and breakage. It’s not cheap, but it’s certainly manageable. I had no issue with adding it to my existing commercial all risks insurance.
Cheers,
Peter
Peter, you make a lot of fair points, however whilst the world of ‘places’ that images can be used is ever expanding, the actual size that those images need to be is shrinking. Who needs 200MP for an iphone, ipad, netbook, macbook, HDTV, X-box? In advertising, billboard size images are still relevant … but for how long? Did you see Google’s funky glasses with the embedded internet browser? Ok, it’s a future-sci-fi-concept-type-thing, but it’s not so far from the way things are headed. And for all these devices, 14MP is way more than enough – and if the client gets the images for ‘free’ – because they’re taken off the back of the video, well, nuff said (or is it the video taken off the back of the images? Strange times indeed). In fine art landscape photography the situation may be different – it’s a world I’m not familiar with – but if 40MP is enough to print a 60×40 (not sure I’ve ever seen a framed 60×40) – then maybe not; in advertising the sands are shifting quicker now than they have in a long time.
Maybe my comment on Capture One training was a ‘silly’ one … but then again, Lynda.com (for example) produce a video for the 3.25 people in the world who use Excel on a Mac, so maybe not. We’re gonna have to agree to disagree on this one. In fact, you could prove me wrong and produce a series of Capture One training videos … but then who would pay for a Capture One workshop or seminar, or sign up to Capture U?
Hi Jim -
You may not need 200MP for small devices, but there still is (and always will be, I imagine) a place for high end, high resolution photography. The same campaign that uses small JPGs for iPhone use will use that image in large format advertising, for example. The clients that would be happy with a 14MP still from a RED wouldn’t be in the MF market to begin with, I imagine.
Whether the images from the video would be free is a very interesting idea. I haven’t looked into it, but I bet it’s an area of licensing that’s going to see a few interesting debates as we go forward!
I do agree that the sands are shifting and who knows where we’ll be in 10 years time. It’s going to be an interesting ride. Companies like Phase One will either adapt with it or die. I think they’ll survive, as I’d be amazed if the high end niche ever goes away to that extent.
Agree to disagree it is! As for producing a series of C1 training videos I don’t consider myself enough of an expert to do so, and even if I did I can’t see the market being big enough to warrant the cost =)
Right you are Peter, but if you ever change your mind, the Capture One 6 intro video on YouTube has gotten 60,000+ views so far … at, say, $39.95 for the (yet to be made) training video, multiplied by 10,000 (assuming 1 in 3 views is a unique user) then … gets abbacus out … that could be a tidy sum indeed – you might even make enough to afford the IQ200 … if and when it ever appears
Hi Jim -
You might be surprised at how just low the conversion rate might be between free content and paid =)
Cheers,
Peter
Is the transit of Venus still on?
Just had a look at the met.ie website. Not looking good.
I do hope the forecast is all wrong! Best of luck!!
JL
Maybe Peter – but you wouldn’t be pitching the product at a cold audience. The folks you’re after have already been warmed up by shelling out $300 for the software. If the training video was priced at (say) $30, they’re only being asked to invest a further 10% over and above their original outlay in order to get the most out of the software they’ve bought, and the images they create off the back of it.