Our favourite Sony gear - and what isn't!

Steve and Nick delve back into their bulging camera bags and discuss the favourite - and least favourite- Sony photography and video gear.  Steve has been meeting podcast royalty at an unlikely location, whilst Nick has been getting lost in North Oxfordshire. Plus, is LinkedIn a place for photographers to get bookings?

Sony microphone that Steve couldn't remember the model number of (!) 

ECM-B1M https://www.sony.co.uk/electronics/interchangeable-lens-cameras-microphones/ecm-b1m

Transcript

Steve Vaughan (00:01.314)
Nick, am I right in saying that you said once on this podcast that you've photographed weddings with some famous people present?

Nick Church (00:07.544)
Well, lot of guests say that they've been at a wedding with a famous photographer that I've, I've been at. So, um, but I I did one of my first off shot. Yeah. Off shot. Cause it doesn't look great on the YouTube. Um, the, I don't know if I've said on the pod before, one of the first weddings I had was with England rugby player, Johnny May. So that was, um, but I didn't know who he was at the time, but I did, I did midway through it. thought, oh, there's lots of people to recognize here. And it became obvious that, okay.

Steve Vaughan (00:11.212)
well, there we go. Of course. Where's the sick bowl? There's a sick bowl here somewhere.

Steve Vaughan (00:27.991)
Mm.

Okay.

Nick Church (00:36.066)
that were rugby players and I just hadn't realised.

Steve Vaughan (00:38.424)
Did he say, aren't you Nick Church? that what he said? No, no, no.

Nick Church (00:41.056)
I said, yeah, I'm the Nick Church, you know, just to make it clear.

Steve Vaughan (00:46.35)
It's weird when you see people you know, you recognize out of, not out of character, wrong expression, out of scene almost, or in environment you don't expect them to, like a rugby player. Yeah, yeah, it's weird. So last Sunday I went along to a village cricket club here, a place called Middleton Stoney, because the champion I go to a networking event with, he plays there. And I didn't even know there was a cricket club there until recently. It's been going for 200 years, would you believe. It's on this big country.

Nick Church (00:53.398)
Yeah, at context. Yeah.

Nick Church (01:12.294)
well.

Steve Vaughan (01:13.848)
estate. Now it might not be there much longer because the grounds that it's on are up for sale for 18 million. And apparently Jay-Z and Beyonce are looking at it. And I can't imagine they're cricket fans, but you never know. We're not those kind of slips anyway. And we were, I said I'd come along and just take some pictures because we did sponsor them from a business issue, you know, a of a sponsorship and we've got a

Nick Church (01:25.56)
I can't imagine Beyonce in the slips, third slip, face guard on.

Steve Vaughan (01:42.134)
a 200 to 600 millimeter Sony F5.6, 6.3, just in case the bride's on top of a mountain and we need to photograph from a distance. That's what I told the accountant anyway. So I brought it along and I took some pictures and it was a lot of fun. And they were playing a team called the Authors, would you believe? Now, the Authors are what it sounds like. They're a team of traveling Authors. They don't have their own ground. They play away every week.

Nick Church (02:00.088)
Hmm.

Steve Vaughan (02:07.726)
And apparently this team has been going since Victorian times. And one of their former players is Arthur Conan Doyle, less. Didn't know he was a king cricketer. So anyway, I'm getting set up to, you know, to photograph this cricket, just for a bit of fun, know, nothing serious. And out comes no other than, than Tom Holland from the Rest is History podcast. Podcast royalty. You probably wouldn't recognize him. I recognize him immediately. Cause he's obviously an author who writes books.

Nick Church (02:14.326)
wow.

Steve Vaughan (02:36.374)
And he opened the bowling for the authors. And I was slightly starstruck, I have to say, because it's my favorite podcast. He wasn't a great bowler. Sorry, Tommy, for listening. He was a little bit floaty. yeah, when you run up and bowl, the idea is you hit the pitch with a little bit of vim. And his bowling was just kind of floated and dropped in like a parachute. It was a lot of fun, actually, seriously. And if you're listening...

Nick Church (02:48.728)
What does that mean, floaty?

Nick Church (02:55.595)
Yeah.

Nick Church (02:58.964)
Okay, yeah.

Steve Vaughan (03:04.246)
Mark Ford Langstaff asked me to come along. Thank you for asking to come along. They liked the pictures as well, which was great. So, no, I'd have been a gibber and wreck, I'd have said. Well, actually, I'm not sure if I agree with you about the Punic War, because I'm being an expert on that, of course, not really. I would have been.

Nick Church (03:09.41)
great. Did you talk to him? Did you sort of break the ice?

Nick Church (03:20.152)
The challenge is if he veered off, although you're pretty good at history, Jeremy, but the danger is if he veers off that topic on something else, you're suddenly thinking, bugger. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (03:28.302)
what do I talk about now? Now, I think I might've been slightly starstruck. There was another guy that I didn't clock his name, but apparently he's having a book made into a movie right now by some big Hollywood director. So yeah, it was quite an unusual scenario. A team called the Authors, who'd have thought today. We could have a cricket team called the Photographers,

Nick Church (03:40.379)
great.

It's weird, isn't it? Yeah. I don't know if I do. Do you play cricket? Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (03:48.992)
It was the one game I was quite good at as a younger man. I'm sitting here in my golf kicks. I've just been playing golf, I play golf like a cricketer, if that makes sense. But I used to play cricket when I was a younger man. I was a nippy left arm medium fast baller and a lower order batsman. And I got my front teeth rearranged by my brother with the cricket ball as a young man. I've been paying for it ever since.

Nick Church (04:04.192)
All right, okay.

Nick Church (04:11.612)
Literally. I joined our local cricket team when we moved here to where we are just outside Bristol. And I thought, I'm pretty good at You I've done a little bit, but I hadn't played in the club. But I was shocking, really bad. they said, well, we've got a gap in the Sunday league team. And I thought, that sounds right. And they were all, I was the youngest by about...

Steve Vaughan (04:20.728)
All right.

Nick Church (04:32.696)
30 years, I would say, so they were all in their 70s and 80s. And they obviously thought that the Oxygenarians was the safest place to put me.

Steve Vaughan (04:40.106)
Yeah, that's probably what I'm good for now. I used to run a village cricket team. was my first wife's dad's team and I ended up running it for various reasons in Worcestershire for about three years. And it was just Sunday afternoon cricket. We had a load of fun. We had a one-armed bowler, would you believe, at one stage. He was a good bowler. Not much of a batsman, but a good bowler. And so many great stories. And later my brother, who sadly passed away now, my brother played for us as well. yeah, great memories.

Nick Church (04:52.812)
Yeah.

You

Nick Church (05:02.84)
I did enjoy it. It is a lovely time. That was when I had a proper job, but I'm not sure how I would be able to justify that length of time. But then it's the same with golf, isn't it? You you're off playing golf is what was that six hours?

Steve Vaughan (05:11.296)
It is, yeah, it is. No, well way I play sometimes. No, three and a half, four really, depending on celebrities really. So if you're a photographer listening to this and you fancy forming a cricket team with me and Nick, we're up for it. Yeah, the photographers. We could play Middlesbrough Stone here, I'm sure we could. So should we start the show?

Nick Church (05:16.76)
Okay, all right.

Nick Church (05:27.448)
Yeah, that'd be good. Yes!

Steve Vaughan (05:31.916)
So hello, welcome again to the photography pod with me Steve Vaughan and my good mate Nick Church. So Nick, what have you been up to since we last spoke?

Nick Church (05:40.568)
I've been meeting famous podcasters as well because I met you in Bista, um, in day before yesterday. And that was really good. So, um, for the listener, Steve was delivering some training on LinkedIn. And, um, so I attended that and yeah, it was really, good. Just what, just what I needed. Um, you know, when you go into it, when you know you need to, so it's with the Academy, I need to use a different platform than it's not really an Instagram or even a little bit more Facebook, but it's not Instagram.

Steve Vaughan (05:45.337)
you did? Yeah, yeah.

Steve Vaughan (05:57.058)
Thank you, I you find it useful.

Nick Church (06:09.153)
So I think LinkedIn is a much more successful place for it.

Steve Vaughan (06:12.014)
I think LinkedIn is a great place for business people to out and people used to say, well, LinkedIn is just business stuff, but I find that you can put personal stuff, friendly stuff in there as we talked about really, but it's a place to find business people. like for your sort of, for like headshot photography, that kind of thing, that's where people will be LinkedIn. Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad you found it useful mate.

Nick Church (06:22.103)
Yeah.

Nick Church (06:29.954)
But as, as, did you, was anyone late on that day? Steve. Well, it's cause I told you at the time I'm, it was just a ridiculous, I'd been working till about two o'clock in the morning the night before. And I just thought, me just Google how far it is to the training place in Bista just so I can find out how much sleep I need to get, give myself. And it just came at one hour. And I think what happened was.

Steve Vaughan (06:34.626)
besides a certain Nick Church. He did have a fair drive to be fair.

Nick Church (06:59.914)
It said one hour in Google maps, one hour and under 59 minutes or something. And I just, I saw the one hour thought that would do. That sounds good. And, didn't even, know I've, I've, shoot weddings that that way. So I know it's more than an hour, but in my, in my sleepy brain, thought perfect. So woke up and thought, got in the car. No, I was pleased. Yeah, it was good.

Steve Vaughan (07:05.294)
That we do forgot about the 59 minutes.

Steve Vaughan (07:12.781)
Yeah, yeah.

Steve Vaughan (07:17.614)
Well, you didn't miss too much. missed the preamble. should... I'm glad you found it useful. should say thank you actually to Robert Peckham of ImageX, the camera shop in Bista for hosting us and putting on a good set up. His studio up there was a great place for the training. Bit of Aladdin's cave as well with lots of film cameras, which I managed to avoid not buying.

Nick Church (07:33.112)
Mm-hmm, yep.

Nick Church (07:37.706)
I took a few photos of those. they all the what about five, six cabinets full of various film cameras and all really good price as well. That's the danger, isn't it? You think I could get three or four of those?

Steve Vaughan (07:43.864)
Shiny, shiny, yeah. I know, yeah, I know, I know, yeah. Don't be tempted, yeah, don't be tempted. So we've got a wedding tomorrow, so we've had little bit of time off from weddings. July was quite a quiet month for us, but August is gonna be full on, eight weddings in August, and I guess you're gonna be similar as well.

Nick Church (08:00.78)
Hmm. Yeah. Quite a few. And I've got one tomorrow. then the next couple of weeks is pretty full on, but it's full on the last few weeks. Actually. It's just been a really busy, a really busy chunk of time. And then I think September I've got much fewer than I had the year before. have a couple, you know, a few more in October. It just, it just goes in gaps.

Steve Vaughan (08:10.019)
Yeah, good.

Steve Vaughan (08:19.854)
funny how it works out. We've got a really busy October this year for some reason. It's just the way the bookings come really, isn't it? So yeah, interesting. So what I thought we'd do today, Nick, because we both shoot Sony and we've got bags and bags full of Sony gear, is just go through the Sony repertoire that we have really and like what's our favourite stuff and what's our least favourite stuff really. So that should keep us going for half an hour.

Nick Church (08:47.072)
Mm-hmm

Steve Vaughan (08:49.134)
to talk about it because between you and I, we've got a fair amount of Sony's finest and greatest. So, so what I thought we'd do is sort of go through cameras, lenses, all the, all the kind of stuff and what we, what's our favorite and if there's anything that's not our favorite, perhaps we, we should go onto it as well. So from a camera point of view, are you just Sony A7 IVs? Okay. Is that the only one you've ever used? Have you used any of those before? Okay. Right.

Nick Church (08:53.964)
Yeah.

Nick Church (09:08.481)
Asynchrosia.

I've used the A7R3 and I had an A7-3 for a while as well. And then I've still got a couple of those actually. I'd use, I'd rent them out. But yeah, day to day is always the A7-4.

Steve Vaughan (09:23.542)
OK, OK. So that was the first camera. I think I'm right in saying that went to the newer menu structure because people often criticize Sony for their memory, memory for the menu structure with good reason, actually. So are you a fan of the new menu compared to the old one?

Nick Church (09:40.65)
I don't mind it. mean, I found with the old one, I think once you know where stuff is, but the trouble is when, when you're in a pinch and you need to change something quickly, that's when you just cannot think straight and you can't, you just can't just go straight to the menu. but, but I was, I was shooting with a second shooter in the week and she uses Canon and the menus are equally awful there. You know, you're scrolling up and down left and right. And I guess the problem's always going to be with cameras when you've got so much functionality and such a small screen.

that it's just going to be impossible to logically lay things out because logically in our heads is, I would place things in a different place too, because they've tried to put the, all manufacturers do this, try and put the most common things fairly early on, but someone might go in that bracketing mode or change practice all the time. And I know you can think obviously configure your buttons and stuff, but it's, it's, I wonder if, it's weird in. yes. In any operating system on a.

computer system or, you know, a phone even the context sensitive functionality is just so much advanced. don't have any context, sensitive functionality in. So something where if you're in a particular mode, then there's a menu that gives you, I don't know. I should pattern this in which case I'll have blown it by talking about it, but there should be a menu that comes that you could click that you could press button menu comes up with the most likely things you're going to.

Steve Vaughan (10:49.806)
So you have to explain to me what that means as a non-IT person.

Steve Vaughan (11:07.401)
Okay, yeah.

Nick Church (11:07.756)
want to shoot and that, and that changes based on the scenario, you know, that you were in there. I guess you can do that by using your, my menu setting or the quick menu, whatever it's called in Sony. So you can, you can configure those, but yeah, I mean, that's what makes most, if you look at something like Lightroom, if you look through all of the menu options in the develop and library module, there's so many options there and you never go into those because you're always right clicking and just choosing the right thing. So.

Steve Vaughan (11:17.262)
Yeah.

Nick Church (11:35.256)
which makes those things a lot more approachable, even though they're equal, if not more complicated, they are approachable because most of that stuff's hidden and it just shows you the things you're likely to want to use next.

Steve Vaughan (11:45.944)
So do you use the My Menu? Because I certainly do on the cameras. What kind of things do have in there?

Nick Church (11:49.856)
Yeah. Yeah. I've always got in the focus area because that's something that I do. That's something to be honest that I change mostly when I'm going into video. And I know you can set them up differently for video and audio, but sorry, video photography. what else? Sorry. Bracketing in there. self timer for bracketings in there. Just things that I, once I've run out of buttons,

Steve Vaughan (11:57.294)
Okay.

Steve Vaughan (12:03.094)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (12:08.053)
Okay, you stink.

Nick Church (12:15.18)
So I always configure the buttons with the things I change most often. Then the next set of stuff is then put into that menu so I can get to those things pretty easily.

Steve Vaughan (12:22.286)
That's quite interesting. I guess because you do bracketing for your property photography, don't you? Yeah, whereas I would never use bracketing.

Nick Church (12:27.276)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And it's, it's a pain. No. So I use it, you know, when I'm doing a property shoot is all, even if I'm just taking shots of some cushions, there's some nice light and it's a nice sort of design element. And I'm capturing that even if it's not a high dynamic range scene, I'll still use bracketing purely because it's slower to keep going out of it and then back in. And also it means in Lightroom, you've got to, when you're combining all of these images into HDRs, it's a pain if you've got individual ones that aren't

bracket sets. So you can then just stack by capture time in Lightroom. Oh, you've gone off topic already. can, we can, you can stack, you can stack your images by capture time and set capture time to one second. And if you shoot in the right way, like not going really mad, you know, crazy fast from scene to scene, then basically you end up with 300 say brackets, 300 stacks of three shots each, which is the wish is your brackets. Cause they're the only ones that fall within that one second. Select them all.

Steve Vaughan (12:58.081)
No, of course, yeah.

Steve Vaughan (13:04.116)
yeah, yeah.

Steve Vaughan (13:09.741)
Right.

Steve Vaughan (13:23.822)
Okay. I think I'm following you. Okay.

Nick Church (13:27.5)
Control, shift, H, that's where your HDR is and it goes off for about two hours combining them all. that's a workflow that I found depressingly late. It was someone.

Steve Vaughan (13:37.794)
We should do a show on property photography actually and get you to talk about that because it's quite a niche without giving away all your secrets of course, but it's quite a niche thing to do. never done it, but you do it fantastically well, don't, so for obviously Sam and I both got cameras ourselves, but I don't change any of the C1, C2, C3. So I have C1 as white balance, C2 as focus in point and so on. What I do do and all of the cameras I use at least is I do change the AF button on to eye focus.

Nick Church (13:48.02)
Thank you.

Steve Vaughan (14:08.526)
So I can pick the camera up, hit AFR, and it'll immediately lock onto an eye straight away. So when I need to get, you know, move quickly and work quickly in like drinks and nibbles time, that kind of thing, immediately lock onto the nearest eye.

Nick Church (14:13.793)
Yeah.

Nick Church (14:22.68)
I mean, to be honest, I think the probably most of those settings that I need to change more often is, is what I'm doing video. was doing video yesterday. I was doing interior, video shoot for, village hall. And that's the time where sometimes you want to get between manual focus really easy. You want to go to, know, you want to be able to just touch it. So, so I've got it set up in that in video so that it's manual because you don't want it tracking focus randomly when you're trying to do an interior for.

Steve Vaughan (14:34.029)
Right.

Nick Church (14:51.32)
talking heads fine because you weren't just lock on the eye anyway, but you want it in manual, but it's a, you just set it up in a way where we talk to people in the same pod. we do a sort of property one, really that you tap screen. So it goes out and manual into AFC focuses on thing. Once it's got locked drops back to manual again. So you just tap it where you want it. And then it's in manual. Then you can do your shots without, without risking changing, but with, with photography, um, Hey, what's the, what's the right most? AEL is it water exposure lock? Can't remember.

Steve Vaughan (14:53.454)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (15:08.108)
Yeah, neat. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (15:12.803)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (15:20.557)
Yeah.

Nick Church (15:21.088)
I have one for back button focus on spot and one for I auto focus. And then that I never changed my focus. So that, that covers every, every scenario that, know, if it can't find an eye, if it's not of somebody, if it's of some nibbles, whatever, or it can't find an eye, I choose the spot and use the other, the other button.

Steve Vaughan (15:27.758)
Oh, that's a good idea. Yeah, no thought of doing that. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (15:40.398)
Genius idea. That's something we're going to have play with tomorrow actually. So from a camera point of view, have Sam's A9, original A9, which is from 2017, the design is I think now. Yeah. It's old, it's, you know, it's it's still a good camera. What frustrates me slightly about it, if I use it sometimes, I don't want to do any burst mode is of course on that one, you've got to dial to change settings, whereas all the other cameras you've got to, you know, you've got to use the thumb wheel, unless it's an A1, of course I've never used an A1.

Nick Church (15:50.879)
Okay.

Steve Vaughan (16:08.174)
My favorite Sony camera that I've ever used is the A7R4, even though it's been to Sony a couple of times, I got fixed. just love the design. I like the resolution, know, the files. I love an A7R5, but I can't justify it now. My least favorite was the original A7C. So I've got an A7C too, which is our video camera. And it's what I'm talking to you on right now. But the original A7C only had the one dial, one thumb dial.

Nick Church (16:30.413)
Okay.

Nick Church (16:36.024)
That's right.

Steve Vaughan (16:36.302)
So you're doing everything with your thumb and also there's no focusing joystick, which on the A7C2 is fine because the AI is clever enough to find, you know, work out what it's doing. It's cleverer than me, but on the original one, it was just very, very frustrated to work around.

Nick Church (16:50.168)
Yeah, I must admit I did recommend it to, it was the A7R, the A73 was out of their budget, or an A7R4, the A74 and so on. And so I did recommend that because it seemed like a bit like an A73, but without the, without the viewfinder, but yeah, was pretty shit to be honest. It was hard to, it was hard to use. Yeah. And, and it felt like using a, an entry level.

Steve Vaughan (17:11.904)
a tiny little viewfinder. God.

Steve Vaughan (17:18.093)
Yeah.

Nick Church (17:18.54)
DSLR with that, with just one thing and then trying to hold down a button while you do the other or switching into aperture. gosh. Yeah. Not, designed for manual mode really, I suppose.

Steve Vaughan (17:23.488)
Exactly. The A7C2 is fine, but no, it wasn't. No, no. And it was very, very sort of crippled as a camera, think. So I'm not a fan of that.

Nick Church (17:34.68)
Well, you were a fan of the this. Well, I don't think anyone is a fan of crippling cameras, but what's your view on artificially crippling functionality so that it pushes people into, know, so it makes the higher ranges of relevance.

Steve Vaughan (17:46.774)
It's marketing. Yeah. I think, I think Canon are probably the most well known for doing that as a manufacturer really historically. Yeah. But I guess so Sony's much the same really. It's difficult because you've got to have reasons to have a range of cameras. And how do you make those cameras? mean, I've never built a camera obviously, but if you make everything each model totally bespoke,

totally one off the costs are going to go through the roof. Really. It's like, you know, sometimes people say, why, why do I want video in a camera? I don't want video. I just want a photo mode, but the cost of taking the video out would even, would be more expensive than just having a, you know, including it really. So, so I guess it's just build one camera, build one lot of software and just leave bits at all or disable bits for the, for the cheaper models, I suppose really is how they do it.

Nick Church (18:26.006)
Yeah.

Nick Church (18:36.16)
Yeah, yeah, certainly from a, a software maintenance point of view, that's much easier to have just a single thread of code that has got modules, which are the honor off. Otherwise, you know, if you, soon as you branch any sort of code base like that, then you make a bug fix to one, have to make sure it's ported to the others. And, you know, so it is, it is good to be able to do it like that. But, I think also it's done for marketing purposes. I you'll, you'll be expert on this more than me probably, but the, if you have just, let's say they just have one camera.

Steve Vaughan (18:50.657)
Right.

Steve Vaughan (18:58.36)
Yeah.

Nick Church (19:04.152)
because it's going to be the same cost, isn't it? Let's say an A73 isn't going to physically, it's not going to cost less than an A9 when they came out. was just, it was just, it was just loads more expensive. And if you have just one camera, you can't market it as effectively to individual groups. So you can't market, market, you know, things because it's just a one size fits all. then that you've got the problem of what does it then not fit anybody perfectly.

Steve Vaughan (19:08.898)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (19:16.876)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (19:22.976)
Hmm. Hmm.

Nick Church (19:32.568)
So the, the only thing on the seven four that I do find annoying is, again with video where the crop mode for if it's really frustrating. And I, I think there's enough in the seven three that they could, or maybe that's an exception where perhaps the processor can't, can't do it. I don't know, but it's such a pain when, when you want to shoot in, you know, just 4k 50, you're not going for 20 frames a second or anything.

Steve Vaughan (19:39.145)
it does my head in. The same with this one as well. Yeah, it does. In this day and age,

Steve Vaughan (19:53.698)
Possibly. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (20:02.124)
No, no, shall. Yeah.

Nick Church (20:02.402)
crazy slow mo, you just want a decent base bit of stock footage so you can then crop in, stabilizing or stabilize with slow down the frame rate for slow motion and just not be able to do that. Especially for interiors where you don't really want to take the hit for things like weddings. It doesn't matter as much because

Steve Vaughan (20:19.438)
No, but you don't want to take the 1.5 Crop D on the interior. So just go back what you just said for me. It just reminded me of something actually. used to be a football player played for Crystal Palace, I think it was, called Fitzhall. And his nickname was One Size. Yeah. Anyways, beside the point.

Nick Church (20:22.272)
No, no.

Nick Church (20:33.462)
That's it. I'm not great at everything.

Like a 2024 to 200 or 28 to 200 lens. Just not great at any of it.

Steve Vaughan (20:45.07)
Right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. One size fits all. Yeah. Although the Tamron is supposed to be good actually, a lot of people in the, in other sort of photography groups talk about the 28-200 Tamron has been a great walk around lens actually, but there we go. So, all right, let's move on to glass then. So, favorite bit of glass.

Nick Church (20:59.426)
Yeah.

Nick Church (21:03.576)
Hmm.

Two favorites that are always on my cameras at weddings is the 35 1.4 GM and the 7200 2.8 GM, both of which I think are just exemplary lenses, you know, in all cameras. I think I've never used two lenses in any camera system that are as good as that. think they're just brilliant.

Steve Vaughan (21:29.39)
agreed yeah one you're not keen on and one you don't use much or one you

Nick Church (21:32.184)
Well, I've always winded about the 85, the 85 1.4. It just drives me mad. I like the 24. Certainly later on it's good for first dance type, those sorts of things. Sometimes use it for interiors, for interiors I'll not be dropping down to my 14, which is another absolutely stunning piece of glass as well, that 14 mil GM. The pain, the only pain with it is, I used to have those,

Steve Vaughan (21:35.062)
cool, yeah, the original one, yeah.

Steve Vaughan (21:43.534)
Hmm.

Steve Vaughan (21:53.454)
I've looked at that but I couldn't justify it really for the work I do now.

Nick Church (22:01.304)
Do you the Baptist lenses, the Baptist range lenses, but the little already did I used to have, I used to have the, um, they didn't do a 14. think it was a 15 or 16, a 16 for that. Yeah. And they were slightly odd focal lens. was a 40. There's a 20, 25 or something. was a slightly odd focal. Yeah. Um, but they they were really good. anyway, I used to use the widest one. didn't do much real estate back in those days, but I used to use the widest one for, uh,

Steve Vaughan (22:03.222)
Yeah, yeah, never use them, but no of them. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (22:12.59)
There's isolates here.

Steve Vaughan (22:20.75)
There's a 25 I think, yeah.

Nick Church (22:30.2)
landscape top feels that knocking about, you know, put some filters on and just have a play with that. That's the only thing with the 14 mil is it because of the, it's got like a fairly bulbous front element. can't screw any filters on. So as he hasn't got a thread. So they have that crazy system where you, think you, yeah. I can't remember the company that makes it maybe nursing. can't remember. Yeah. It might be, yeah. But it really, so I've, I bought that lens and thought, I'm going to get that rear system because

Steve Vaughan (22:31.758)
Alright.

Steve Vaughan (22:40.744)
Mm. Mm. No, sure.

Steve Vaughan (22:47.16)
dropping at the back. Yeah. yeah, I know what mean. Kaser, Kaser, Kaser, Kaser, Kaser, something like that, yeah.

Nick Church (23:00.332)
That's one of the reasons I use that wide lens. I had to sell the wide battice as a, know, to fund it and then having put a single filter in it in that big bag ever since. it was a waste of money. think they were about 250 quid. It was expensive, the system to go in the Plus you end it. Plus you have to take the back of the lens off. So it's not for the faint hearted to put it in.

Steve Vaughan (23:01.774)
Mm.

Mm.

Steve Vaughan (23:11.982)
Wow. Yeah. Wow.

Hmm. No, I couldn't face doing that. No, particularly if you're up side of a mountain somewhere in the freezing cold or something. Yeah. So, for me, probably 24. I love the 24. Best bit of glass I've ever used, even though it distorts quite badly, but it's easily correctable. Hmm.

Nick Church (23:23.948)
Yeah.

Nick Church (23:29.464)
Mm.

Nick Church (23:33.622)
Yeah. Yeah. I think I started, I started to talk about 24 and then stopped when something else. I love it. through all of the evening part of the day, just slightly too close to people and you're getting a bit distortion, but that's probably a factor of the two, the 24 in it. That's the focus, but that's the 24 bits in it rather than the Sony, you know, it's not Sony's implementation of it. don't think that this caused that.

Steve Vaughan (23:41.229)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (23:46.158)
because you're not as nosy as me. say, cause I like to listen to other things. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, no. It's just 24 millimeter. Yeah. Yeah. Sam would probably say her 2470 is a, is a favorite. Yeah. Um, least favorite. Uh, that's a good question actually. What would be the least favorite bit of glass? Um, I bought the 40 millimeter F 2.5.

It came as a package with this camera I'm talking to you on right now, really the little stubby one, little G lens. And I thought it would be great, you know, for street photography and stuff, but also for just like drinks and things that time. But I've never really used it much really. It's a funny focal length 40. It's like neither here or there really. I know it sounds a bit tough. If perhaps, you know, when we stopped doing weddings, I had a bit more time in this street, I might fall in love with it, but I know a of people do love it, but it just seems a little bit.

Nick Church (24:15.16)
Mm.

Steve Vaughan (24:41.676)
It's a weird shape, you know.

Nick Church (24:43.0)
Well, I love the 50 on or the 50 equivalent on my Fuji film system. What's it the 33 isn't it? The so that works really well for just walking about because that's what I use that that kit for is not work and just, you know, bit of street photography and bit lens, you know, just just variety of things. Some people and that's a perfect lens. And I find that either that's on all the time or the 18. I've very rarely use the 23. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (24:47.171)
Mm.

33, yeah.

Steve Vaughan (24:56.334)
Hmm.

Steve Vaughan (25:00.461)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (25:10.946)
which is a 28 in full frame, yeah.

Nick Church (25:13.56)
Yeah. Those, and those two work, work pretty well. So I need, I don't use very often the 35 ish type equivalent, whatever that equates to. And I don't use the 56 mil version. I don't think I've ever put it on the 56 mil, um, which the 85 millimeter equivalent, uh, but because there's others who just do it, but for work, I feel the same. I'm not sure exactly. don't, know, when you ask yourself this, that, classic thing about do you want, do I need more kit? So you ask yourself two questions.

Steve Vaughan (25:20.525)
Okay.

23.

Steve Vaughan (25:41.1)
Yes. Case Sam's listening,

Nick Church (25:41.548)
Have I, can I articulate a problem? Yeah. So then this is why you asked yourself to do these two questions. Can I, have I got a problem with my current kit and can I articulate that? I do understand it. And will this solve a problem? I've got no problem that 50 mil for weddings and stuff is going to solve other than it'd be quite nice to have that 1.2.

Steve Vaughan (25:57.556)
Mm hmm. Well, as you know, that's a, could have said that for the favorite bit of class as well, actually, because that's a built in lens. Yeah. Yeah. Looking forward to playing with that tomorrow. So, okay. Okay. So what else have we done? What about accessories? Have you got any Sony accessories or add-ons or goodies?

Nick Church (26:02.264)
Mm.

Nick Church (26:13.396)
No, this time of year, well, certainly this year, I've been so flat out with the Academy stuff and weddings and commercial work and everything together that that's been a luxury that I just looking at kit and buying kit to haven't haven't come across anything that I've thought enough to or had enough time to actually research and buy. They, I do need at the end of this year, it will probably be time to both change my camera bodies.

Steve Vaughan (26:24.654)
Mm.

Steve Vaughan (26:39.704)
Yeah.

Nick Church (26:41.104)
And also my main computer as well. Cause this, this Mac, I don't know if it. Yeah, that's, that's what I'm hanging out for. think that that, would be, that, that would be a perfect thing. Although, know, the ACE, a seven, our five, maybe I'll be looking at interesting what the differences between the eight seven are five and the eight seven five. Cause the R is always a bit before, isn't it? It's the ours, ours out the ours out. When did that come out?

Steve Vaughan (26:44.494)
okay. Well, camera bodies, you'll love the A75 by then, hopefully. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (27:07.746)
The last time I fought him at about 18 months ago. Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Church (27:09.976)
Yeah, so it's always a bit of a pain that you think is going to be the same, but just high resolution, but it's cool. It is high resolution, but it's also then doesn't benefit from the more advanced functionality. Okay. All right. Okay. Well, that'd be interesting then.

Steve Vaughan (27:20.322)
Well I think it's not true with the A7R5 because it was one of first cameras to have the AI chip in so from a focusing point of view it's really the dogs do do's think really.

Nick Church (27:28.822)
So if they keep up with it, once the A75 is released and there's firmer updates to the A755, they mean they're basically the same, but that one's a high resolution. Then because of the real estate stuff, I think I probably would be looking at the R5.

Steve Vaughan (27:43.63)
having the resolution be useful for that. Yeah. I love, I love high resolution cameras. mean, data storage is cheap. So having big files isn't a problem really, but the ability to crop it. think the only thing you'd find with the A7R5, which might be a drawback because of what you do is I don't think it's a great video camera. Not so far as it doesn't shoot great video, but because it's such a high resolution scanner, doesn't, in sense, it doesn't scan that quickly. So I think you can have problems with rolling shutter if you're not careful with it. That's the only downside to it. I mean, the A1 would be.

Nick Church (27:50.007)
Yeah.

Nick Church (27:59.32)
Right.

Nick Church (28:06.85)
Yeah

Steve Vaughan (28:12.878)
The answer, course, one camera for everything, that's another step up. wise, I've never used an A1, lots of photographers rave about it.

Nick Church (28:13.975)
Yeah.

Nick Church (28:20.376)
Yeah, I've looked at it and the A12, is there, when did the A12 come out? That was, was that after the A7? Yeah. And that would be, I think if I did more professional video myself, cause I do, you know, say tomorrow, yeah, and it was on the pod last week, is shooting the film for me. So if I did more myself, then I think that would, that would make a lot of sense having the A1.

Steve Vaughan (28:26.446)
Last year, think it was really this year.

Steve Vaughan (28:43.31)
Hmm. I did buy this a weeks ago. It's one of Sony's microphones. It's the, oh, what's the modern number? Sony's modern numbers are terrible, aren't they? Is it the R1, is it the B1? can't read it. It's the longest. Oh, hang on. Let's look at the instructions. No, can't read it from here. What these glasses on? It's the longest shotgun might they do. So it was on, they had a cashback thing. So it was 200, I think, but.

Nick Church (28:49.236)
Okay.

Nick Church (29:10.241)
Okay.

Steve Vaughan (29:11.246)
We don't do a lot of video, but we're doing video tomorrow. But I was finding that the Rode shotgun mics, two problems with them. One, they would fall out the hot shoe, even though you try and screw them down. They didn't quite fit into a Sony hot shoe. you pick the camera and tip it back and the bloody thing would fall out. Not a big problem, but it's annoying. But what I love about this is the Sony universal hot shoe. it's a digital microphone. So you just put it into the hot shoe.

Nick Church (29:26.688)
really?

Steve Vaughan (29:41.078)
no cables or whatever. And it just records great audio for without cables, without setting audio levels. It's fab. Yeah. So I will make a note of what it is for the show and this, I can't, literally can't read it from here with these glasses on. No fun to get it old. But it's the, it's the longest shotgun my dear listener. Yeah. It's quite.

Nick Church (29:44.534)
without cables going into your 3.5 mil. Yeah.

Nick Church (30:03.089)
How do you find shotgun mic audio compared with clip on?

Steve Vaughan (30:07.63)
Well, I don't use it. I wouldn't use it, say, for the ceremony of speeches. It's really for, you know, when we do a little bit of video, like it drinks time, doubles time and stuff like that, Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So for for speeches and things, we use the DJI mics. And that's also got an adapter for the Sony hot shoe as well. So again, you can plug it on without any cables and things. they, and of course you can record 30 to a bit floating them as well. So it's, it's great. Yeah. Yeah. Can't fault them. Yeah.

Nick Church (30:15.158)
Yeah, so room noise and chatter and things like,

Nick Church (30:25.101)
Yeah.

Nick Church (30:30.508)
Mm.

Nick Church (30:35.416)
Hmm.

Steve Vaughan (30:37.708)
I just remind you I got a video I need to edit.

Nick Church (30:40.674)
So if you've got 32 bit float, just, do you set the record level on it or you just don't need to?

Steve Vaughan (30:45.582)
Well, so I always said it so I tried the audio into the camera. So if I can take the audio straight out of the camera, great. But the recording on the mics is backup audio. And I set that to 32 bit. So coming into the camera, it's not 32 bit. But it's a bit on the recorder. So basically, you know, you can't clip that basically, you know. Correct.

Nick Church (30:57.324)
Yeah. Not okay.

Nick Church (31:04.62)
Yeah. And the noise floors so much further away, any volume that you can just boost it to bring it up. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (31:10.134)
Yeah, and you can even just put one of the clip on mics just on the the table top table and just use that as like a, you know, a field mic almost because you can boost it as much as you want really. Yeah, it's quite, it's quite clever stuff. Yeah. Not that we're series videographers, but I like, I like doubling as you know, yeah.

Nick Church (31:18.71)
Hmm. Yeah.

Nick Church (31:25.996)
Hmm. I think anything, you know, if you're doing anything and there's a piece of kit that's relatively inexpensive, they can make an improvement quality. makes sense to have it. And even if we, you even if you're doing more casual, if people are doing, you want to be as good as possible, you want to be as good as possible, given within the confines of like spending thousands of pounds. And I think, know, yes, or getting a decent audio setup is so much underrated as an important thing to have a video, probably more so than video.

Steve Vaughan (31:35.182)
Hmm.

Yeah, it does,

Steve Vaughan (31:52.855)
Yeah.

Nick Church (31:55.832)
because most cameras are going to do video that's good enough, not all microphone systems are going to be, you know.

Steve Vaughan (31:59.938)
Well, as Jan was saying, when he was on the pod, really the importance of having plant B and plant C and plant D almost for audio, because it's the Achilles heel of most videographers, almost inexperienced videographers, shall I say.

Nick Church (32:05.228)
Yeah.

Nick Church (32:10.988)
Yeah. Like three, if you got somebody stands in front of two of your fixed angles and then you, you're back, your battery runs out. You can at least cut to some drone footage or some B roll or something, but if the audio stops, you're in trouble.

Steve Vaughan (32:21.08)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (32:24.396)
You are indeed. you do much of you leaping around all over the place really? But have you used chat GPT much for anything?

Nick Church (32:32.256)
No, no, think I've played, probably like most people a little bit, but play with it. And, I just, yeah, no, I haven't. And the reason is that I think that Google is most likely going to be getting better and better at detecting, content that's created by chat GPT. And so that, that was my very early resistance to it. And a of people said, don't be crazy. You know, it's.

Steve Vaughan (32:49.516)
I think that's right.

Steve Vaughan (32:56.302)
Hmm.

Nick Church (32:59.766)
doesn't create the same each time. So it's impossible to tell, but we'd have said a year before that, before chat, cheap chat, GPT, it'd impossible for an AI engine to create natural text. So everything's possible. And I think they'll just work out ways. They probably have already implemented it ways that they can just tell.

Steve Vaughan (33:18.19)
So the reason I ask is, talking about the LinkedIn course I did this week. So I asked Chuck Gibbet, just experiment really, to come up with some content to post on LinkedIn. So one of the things we talked about is posting useful content on LinkedIn. I said, because as you know, my other life is a sales trainer. I said, could you give me 10 reasons why technical salespeople need to prospect for new business? And it came up with 10 reasons. And I thought it was an experiment. I'm just going to copy paste it verbatim and paste it.

Nick Church (33:29.357)
Mm.

Steve Vaughan (33:46.914)
with a photo into LinkedIn. And normally when I do a LinkedIn article, you know, I 4,000, 5,000 impressions. I got about a hundred with this one. So I think it does, you know, even LinkedIn is clever enough to realise that was a copy paste. So the answer of course would have been to write it myself really. But,

Nick Church (33:55.094)
Hmm. Really? It already does, yeah.

Nick Church (34:05.376)
And what we, what we don't know from that experiment is whether LinkedIn has said, has decided the algorithms that picked up that it's AI or has it just the fact that it was using AI didn't have your personality coming across. And so wasn't as engaging to your network. And because people didn't engage with it, they didn't, they didn't like it. It didn't, but didn't share it. LinkedIn then didn't promote it around because it didn't seem to be picking up.

Steve Vaughan (34:15.512)
Who knows?

Steve Vaughan (34:21.912)
Yeah, I think it's sad as well.

Steve Vaughan (34:31.566)
Well, it used phrases and words that I probably wouldn't use myself. So that's probably a dead giveaway, isn't it? Really? So interesting. So I did also ask it. So possibly you want to do this for this podcast for the, for the business podcast, a run called the Luxury of Choice, which is a sales podcast. Uh, we've just about finished our season two, we're about to start again, season three, September. And I asked you to come up with 20 topics for podcasts and it came up with 20 topics. And to be honest, 18 of them were usable.

Nick Church (34:35.49)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (34:57.294)
Not the whole podcast, but just a heading which I thought, yeah, I can make a podcast. perhaps we need to ask ChatGBT for this one, Nick, and see if it comes up with some clever ideas.

Nick Church (35:04.568)
Well, we ought to be careful because there is a podcast with AI speakers as well. Yeah, there's one as a podcast. I don't know what it's called. I'll see if I can dig it out and put it in the notes. There is, there's a podcast where these two engines have been created and they just set them off and they just record it for half an hour and it, and just go down sort of rabbit holes and talk about stuff. And somebody, another podcast I listened to, the Alice and John podcast, they were saying that

Steve Vaughan (35:11.948)
Is it really?

Nick Church (35:33.482)
is actually not terrible. There's definitely worse podcasts on present company excluded, of course.

Steve Vaughan (35:39.982)
Well, I've been meaning to tell you for quite a while, I am actually an Android. And this is a hologram, this isn't the real me. The real me is elsewhere playing golf right now. If only that was true. Nick, I know you've got a dead stop, so we should wrap up this episode. Where are you photographing tomorrow?

Nick Church (35:42.636)
Yeah.

Well, that'd be kind of

Nick Church (35:57.512)
I'm at a place called Burrick Lodge, which is just outside Bristol. It's lovely little venue actually. It's by, you know, Cribbs Causeway, the big sort of shopping area. It's kind of just near there and it's sort of tucked away and you wouldn't imagine it's there, but it's a beautiful venue. And I really liked the staff and it's just, just really good. So yeah, we're going, I'll be meeting Jan at the bride's parents' house doing prep and all that sort of stuff. And then off to the church and yeah, it be good. Looking forward to it. What's the, I don't know what the weather's like tomorrow.

Steve Vaughan (36:00.928)
nice. I've heard of that,

Steve Vaughan (36:11.022)
Steve Vaughan (36:21.57)
We're at Arlington House, is near Wantage. It's owned by the same people that own Lane's Barn. So it's a nice sort of country house. It's a marquee wedding and it's kind of our kind of couple. Not many pose photos, they just want to enjoy themselves and we're gonna capture it away. So we're really looking forward to it and looking forward to getting back into the saddle. been a few weeks since we've done a wedding.

Nick Church (36:29.219)
nice.

Nick Church (36:36.684)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Nick Church (36:41.944)
I had a wedding last, last week. think it was the day before, might be the day before. was why I started going to bed the day before I came up to Vista. And you you play, you play Russian roulette with the sunset. You're waiting and waiting and waiting. And this couple, I'd taken them out twice and I thought, I don't think they've got another one in the, the, there's no more gas in the tank. You know, cause my couples don't tend to want to do loads and loads of post things. And so, so I was waiting, waiting.

Steve Vaughan (36:55.491)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (37:08.12)
Same here, yeah.

Nick Church (37:11.436)
we suddenly got this burst of sunset at Cougmarge and so I just grabbed them and we went off and there's a filmmaker with us as well. So, and it was for about three minutes, it was perfect. It just, I got some beautiful, I can't wait to edit them. They've got some beautiful shots and then it had gone. It just shows if you, if you don't jump on it, you know, if you're not, and I remember when I first started out, I would have been probably a little bit shy about it thinking, should I ask them or not? And wouldn't have done it. And then I would have missed it. And I'd been really annoyed.

Steve Vaughan (37:24.11)
Yeah, literally goes that quickly, doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (37:36.92)
Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Church (37:38.376)
so are you, are you wedding and wedding in all day tomorrow? Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (37:42.092)
Yeah, it's full day. Yeah. So thankfully groom and bride prep's at the same place. So, I can drop, can, we don't have to sort of go a different direction. So we'll get there. Sam could do the bridal prep. I'll have a, I'll have a lie down and sleep for a while and then I'll start doing the meter with the groom. No, won't. but it's nice when it's in one place cause we don't have to mess around with two cars and things like that. So yeah, looking forward to it. So we'll have a good day. Enjoy your shoot. and I'll catch you again in a couple of weeks time. If you've enjoyed today's episode, listen, then don't forget to give us.

Nick Church (37:59.436)
Yeah. Yeah.

Thank you very much. Thank you.

Steve Vaughan (38:11.336)
review on Apple or Spotify just help us in lots of weird and wonderful ways. forget also to check out our Instagrams also check out check out Nick's Academy the Nick George Academy if you're an up-and-coming aspiring photographer want to upskill yourself want to learn lots of things and Nick has got a great Academy more details again are in the show notes and also on Nick's website which is

Nick Church (38:35.8)
You can find that at www.nichurchcreativeacademy.com. So yeah, it's really picking up and there's lots of activity on there and yeah, which is just brilliant. You know, apart from being really pleased that it was worth all the effort, but it's been really good. So it's going really well. So yeah, do go and check that out if you need expert advice on Lightroom, there's Lightroom course, which is a really deep dive course in everything you need to know about Lightroom.

Steve Vaughan (38:44.462)
great.

Steve Vaughan (38:50.082)
Yeah, I you put a lot of work into it, mate. Yeah, yeah.

Nick Church (39:02.252)
And there's a photography focused core online course as well. that's really, that's a photographer unleashed. yeah, so that's going really well in terms of the podcast, guests we're going to have on Steve. A guest that is a curator for the hope, hopefully they're coming on so that they've expressed interest. So I'm sure they mind me, mentioning it for the, international wedding talk of the year awards. Now, if you've ever looked on, so I'd ask.

Steve Vaughan (39:28.619)
Wow.

Nick Church (39:31.768)
um, listen to go and look at the Instagram for, um, international wedding of 12th the year is the initials of that, which I'm not going to work out in life. Um, but the, images on that are just, it may be, you know, you think they're just exceptional. And I thought it'd be really interesting to ask them how do they, firstly, how do they choose from all their submissions? Because it must be incredible quality and what, what sort of things, you know, cause you could then reverse that what might, what might they be looking for? And that might help inform.

Steve Vaughan (39:45.518)
sure dropping here.

Steve Vaughan (39:52.013)
Mm.

Nick Church (39:59.992)
people that are looking to submit to these sorts of places to choose or select images that they think most likely to resonate with that thing. Yeah, yeah, look forward to that.

Steve Vaughan (40:06.082)
Wow. Well, that'd be great if we can organise that. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And of course, dear listener, if you know, if you fancy being a guest yourself or you've got something else you'd like to suggest as a guest, we would love to hear from you as well. We'll be back again in a couple of weeks time. Until then, happy shooting out there and we'll talk to you soon.

Nick Church (40:23.0)
See you next time.