I’ve been spending a lot of time away from the computer in Portugal for both mental and practical reasons; I spend most of my waking hours in front of one on a normal day so it’s great to look up from the keyboard and not think about looking back down for several days on end. I have had to consult it here and there (where are we going? is there street parking? what time are the tickets? do we need ID to get in?) but I’ve tried to keep things as non-technological as possible. My Instagram feed is pretty quiet as well.
We’re back in Porto, where we have an apartment lent to us by friends, for the first time in five days, and we’re sitting on the couch relaxing while a tiny European washing machine gurgles on the patio next to us. Today’s itinerary is “fuck-all”, as we’re catching up from some travel through Portugal, into Spain, and back again, and waiting for clean clothes. We put about 745 miles on a rented Peugeot 308, staying in hotels along the way, and we got to see some amazing sights. Portugal is like what Ireland would be if it was in California: there’s another castle over every hill, except that they’re still in excellent shape and not surrounded by sheep. I’ll write more about the details later.
I made a conscious decision not to bring a ton of cameras on this trip after talking it over with Jen. Instead, we both upgraded our aging iPhones to new 15 Pro models, and I’ve used mine as my primary since we’ve been here. I also brought Dad’s 35mm Minolta X7000 and my DJI Action camera, but that’s the extent of what I’ve been lugging around. It’s weird not to be using a dedicated camera for the first time in 25 years, but what I’ve been getting out of the iPhone has been pretty damn good. And I’m not ashamed to say we’re leaning into the selfie on this trip, as we don’t have a lot of current shots of the three of us.
In preparation for our upcoming trip, Jen and I were talking about whether we were going to bring cameras to Europe. Having sold my lightweight Fuji rig earlier this year, I was looking at hauling around a full-size DSLR and lens if I was going that route, which was less than optimal. Looking at our iPhones, we both came to the decision that it was time to upgrade from our 4+ year old iPhone SEs to something a little more modern, and use those for shooting photos. Jen and I are slow-walking technophiles: we are surrounded by technology but we upgrade only when we have to. We tend to keep our stuff until it’s either broken down or technologically unsupported; she’s using a 9-year-old laptop and I finally upgraded an 11-year-old machine this year.
Our phones have been rock solid and reliable but they’re getting long in the tooth. My battery is only good for a couple hours and the single-lens camera is functional but not optimal. So we went to the Apple Store on Sunday to pick out some new phones. After a little research we both settled on the iPhone 15 Pro, which is only a little larger than our SE’s but all screen, with the fancy camera, better processor, more storage, and most importantly, a long-lasting battery.
We set Jen up first and went so far as to having the boxed phone on the counter, but AT&T’s activation servers were down so they couldn’t get the process started. So we had to leave empty-handed, and have to return tonight to try again.
Meanwhile, I’m considering taking the Yashica TLR with me, because I can’t be without a giant heavy mechanical object of some kind. Or maybe I’ll respool some film and take one of the 620 cameras instead…
I’m at the end of Day Three of the Comms retreat at work, and we’re doing a lot of talking about human-centered stories focusing on people working at the very tip of our spear: the men and women who are making change on the ground through initiatives and programs we’ve founded. Traditionally, we’ve sent people into the field to collect stories: a researcher, local handler, photographer or videography team. Back In The Day this would have been me; I was lucky enough to go to a number of foreign countries to capture footage and interview people, then come home and cut it together into a video.
But that’s expensive, and we’re facing shrinking budgets (while our overall financial health improves, go figure) and fickle audiences who expect different things these days. Vertical self-shot TikTok-style videos get the eyeballs while more polished videos don’t resonate with larger audiences. There are exceptions, and this is a generalization, but with YouTube and Instagram offering vertical reels and LinkedIn close behind, I have to accept that my cinematic way of doing things isn’t the best way anymore.
One of my colleagues, an ex-BBC journalist, showed me an inexpensive camera rig he’s been working with lately: a DJI action camera in a GoPro-style form factor with a ton of slick features I wasn’t aware of. He and I brainstormed the idea of setting up shooting packages for our country offices where we’d put together a camera and sound rig with instructions in a box and ship them to some of the places we want to highlight, and have people on the ground shoot content for us.
I was already looking at upgrading my GoPro rigs (now eight years old) for something easier to set up and use, and the DJI camera features a front and back touchscreen, automatic horizontal/vertical axis sensing, stabilization, and a host of other features (plus a swappable battery, something the GoPro Sessions don’t). I pulled the trigger and bought last year’s model from Amazon to do some testing with my YouTube project, and I’ll see if I can get a rig together that I can recommend for my colleagues in the field.
This year, our usual gang of truck nerds couldn’t make the date for the IH Nationals in June, so we decided to switch things up and go to the Harvester Homecoming, which is held a little further west in Fort Wayne, Indiana. That event is held on the grounds of the original IH assembly plant, so I’ll be taking Peer Pressure back to her birthplace. (IH Nationals is now held at the Truck Assembly Plant in Springfield, where the Travelall was built). It’s in the beginning of August, which will prove to be a hot drive, but nothing we haven’t done before. And that’ll give me a the summer to really shake out the cobwebs in the truck, which didn’t get run a whole lot last year. None of us have been to the Homecoming so we don’t know what to expect, but it looked like the event was fun and they had a big turnout last year.
DJI has released a cheap, tiny new drone which skirts under the legal requirement to get FAA registration. It’s called the DJI Mini 4K, and it can shoot 4K at 30fps for 30 minutes and has a range of 6 miles. The most important thing is that it’s priced at ~$300 for the basic kit, which is very tempting. Hauling the old Phantom 2 around in its giant Pelican case was a pain in the ass, and I’m sure the advances in stabilization, camera technology, and basic drone technology would make that old Phantom feel like a box camera under a kite. File that under toys I don’t need but would be fun to play with.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.
I’ve spent the last couple of weeks polishing my YouTube channel up to see what kind of traction I could get, and I’m actually quite impressed with the results of nothing but organic traffic so far. When I set up the account 15 years ago I posted a timelapse video of putting polyurethane on the office floor, which somehow generated 11,000 views over time. I dumped random videos there from time to time but never really took it seriously until I posted the Hudson recovery video last year, which racked up another 11,000 views in five months.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, I’ve spent a lot of hours watching or listening to about thirty channels on YT, mostly “Will it run?”-themed. From what I’ve seen a lot of the top posters in this category have 500K+ followers, allowing them to monetize the channel and buy their own racetracks or move to larger properties and build giant garage workshops. I’m nowhere at that level, but testing out the algorithm and learning how to produce the videos has been fun so far.
I’ve been working mainly with a couple of older GoPro Session cubes, Dad’s 12-year-old Canon Vixia camcorder, and my iPhone to capture footage. The GoPros are great for set-and-forget timelapse shots, which I’ve been leveraging heavily, and the iPhone is great for handheld interstitial shots with narration. I have a Hero Session 5 with built-in stabilization and a Hero Session which doesn’t, so I use the 5 along with my phone for any handheld work. The Vixia is definitely showing its age. Its sensor is old so it’s very contrasty, and the footage is grainy compared to the modern cameras. However, it makes for a good tripod-mounted talk-into-camera unit, and with a $10 DC-in cord and a $10 XLR to 1/4″ headphone cable, I can use an old shotgun mic from work to improve its built-in sound quality.
I think the working model for filming moving forward is going to be something like:
- The Vixia is set up on a tripod for into-camera shots, where I’m explaining something I’ve found or setting the stage
- The GoPro Session 5 is a hand-held/maybe head-mounted unit for showing what I’m actually working on
- The GoPro Session is set up as a dedicated tripod-mounted timelapse unit
- My iPhone is used for supplemental handheld shots—usually when I’m taking a break and giving updates.
For editing I’m using my old friend Final Cut Pro but I’m finding that even with an M2 chip in my MacBook Air it’s still laggy at times. I should have sprung for 16GB of RAM in hindsight, but for now it’s getting the job done, and like everything else I’ve ever done, I’ll keep working on a shoestring budget and making it work.
As I assemble each video, what I’m finding is that I have to spend a lot more time planning shots out to get better coverage, and also to narrate what I’m doing in the moment without repeating myself. The pros make it look a lot easier than it actually is. Usually when I’m working on the trucks I’m hustling flat out so that I can make the absolute most of the day, and any footage I pick up is a bonus. I don’t want to slow progress down but I do need to carefully consider what I’m doing, think ahead about how I can set up new shots, and fluidly move between tasks so that it’s not as jumpy. I’m also considering some kind of head or chest GoPro mount to easily capture what I’m working on up close instead of depending on tripod-mounted static shots.
I followed some basic instructions for how to set up a channel and for how to post each video with the right information—adding the right titles, descriptions, keywords, and leveraging the built-in tools to cross-promote other videos in the channel. From what my analytics show, I’m getting a fair bit of views from my embedded posts on The Binder Planet, but there are a lot more folks finding it through organic search on YouTube.
As a basic exercise it’s been really good to practice shooting and editing skills, and develop a workflow for collecting and editing all the footage (there’s so much footage from each one of these) as well as the ins and outs of building a social media channel, which is helpful for work.
I’m one of those guys who has a stack of boxes in the basement that were used to package electronics. Phones, laptops, tablets, watches—I’ve got every one of them down there in a stack. When the thing is unboxed, I collect all of the manuals and wrappers and tuck it away neatly to collect dust downstairs. It feels strange to throw them out after spending all that money, and many of them are objets d’art in their own right.
I’ve also got several bags of decommissioned camera gear: mostly old Nikon D series stuff that hasn’t seen daylight in years. It’s all so old now that I can’t get much money for it; the camera bodies (a D90 and D50) are ancient technology and the glass is mostly entry-level stuff. I don’t know why I’m holding on to it, but I also don’t know what to do with most of it. I donated a lot of my Dad’s ancient gear and I’ve sold what I could on Craigslist, but there’s still a bunch of it kicking around.
With that in mind, after nine years in the Fuji ecosystem I decided it was time to sell off my gear, as I wasn’t really using it anymore. I had been shooting with an X-T10, which is the cheaper version of the pro X-T1 from 2015, and while I enjoyed my time with it we never really, uh, clicked. Looking back I realize I spent way too much time trying to adjust to how Fuji was doing things instead of finding a camera setup that worked the way I liked, and choices like placing a giant ISO dial on the top and other important settings buried in the menu systems never made much sense to me. Their lenses were beautiful (if sometimes too slow) and I have nine years of beautiful photos to show for it, but it’s time to say goodbye while the gear is still worth something.
So I went to the basement and dusted off all of the Fuji boxes I’d carefully kept, repackaged four lenses and the camera body, as well as extra accessories I’d picked up along the way, and packed them neatly into a larger box for a reseller to appraise and exchange for cash. I felt bad leaving the package sitting behind the counter at the FedEx store, after taking that rig with me almost everywhere for nine years, but it also feels good to relieve myself of stuff and work on a little personal growth.
When I got home I set up another quote for two of the Nikon lenses and a flash unit: they offered a little over $100. I think I’ll take them up on it, just to get the shit out of here.
Huh, this finally looks like it turned into something: the I’m Back Film digital back for film cameras looks like it’s a shipping product; the claim is that it’s an adjustable unit for any 35mm film camera, shooting a 4/3 image sensor, which you can then use with a wide-angle adapter for “full frame” size images. At ~$500 it’s pricy for use as a walk-around toy, but it’s nice to see the technology is advancing. (previously.)
This seems like something that should have been A Thing five years ago, but is only now just appearing: Orion is an app for the iPad that lets you use it as a second monitor for any device with a HDMI out port—things like digital cameras or video game consoles, for example. The obvious choice here is a digital camera; I’d love to try this with a camera up on a 10′ pole to preview the image, for example, or to really take time to compose an image and see what it looks like before hitting the shutter button. Brought to us by the folks who built Halide, a more powerful (but somewhat obtusely designed) camera app for the iPhone. One caveat: it requires iOS 17, as Apple finally built external webcam support into that release.
Collectiblend appears to be a pricing website for antique camera gear, pulled from current eBay pricing and other online sale locations. There’s an option to build your own collection; I’m currently waiting for the admins to approve my submission.
Well, that fucking blows. Amazon is announcing all kinds of cuts across the board, and one of them affects a site I used to use quite regularly: Digital Photography Review was bought by Amazon back in 2008 and has an incredible archive of detailed reviews spanning 25 years. They will be shutting down, offering the archive for a short while, and then…?
I remember when it was a viable business model to start up your own review site, get a foothold on traffic, and make a living off of it. And companies would send stuff to you for free! So it goes.