Gitzo Tripod
I picked up a vintage Gitzo tripod… and a cool Leitz ball head.
I talk about that. The A7R and the ‘apoceclipse’ of central oregon traffic.
billy newman photo podcast 8-18-2017
Produced by Billy Newman and Marina Hansen
Link
Website Billy Newman Photo http://billynewmanphoto.com/
YouTube https://www.youtube.com/billynewmanphoto
Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/billynewmanphotos/
Twitter https://twitter.com/billynewman
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/billynewman/
About http://billynewmanphoto.com/about/
Billy Newman Photo Podcast Feed http://billynewmanphoto.com/feed/podcast/billynewmanphotopodcast
If you’re looking to discuss photography assignment work, or a podcast interview, please drop me an email. Drop Billy Newman an email here.
If you want to book a wedding photography package, or a family portrait session, please visit GoldenHourWedding.com or you can email the Golden Hour Wedding booking manager here.
If you want to look at my photography, my current portfolio is here.
If you want to purchase stock images by Billy Newman, my current Stock photo library is here.
If you want to learn more about the work Billy is doing as an Oregon outdoor travel guide, you can find resources on GoldenHourExperience.com.
If you want to listen to the Archeoastronomy research podcast created by Billy Newman, you can listen to the Night Sky Podcast here.
If you want to read a free PDF eBook written by Billy Newman about film photography: you can download Working With Film here. Yours free.
Want to hear from me more often?Subscribe to the Billy Newman Photo Podcast on Apple Podcasts here.
If you get value out of the photography content I produce, consider making a sustaining value for value financial contribution, Visit the Support Page here.
You can find my latest photo books all on Amazon here.
106
Hey, what’s going on?
This is Billy Newman, and you’re listening to the Billy Newman photo podcast for August 18, 2017. We’re getting real close to the eclipse. I got some, some stuff to talk about some information about that coming up at the end of today’s broadcast, as it were, but today, it’s just Billy, I’m in the truck. I’m doing some mobile recording. And I have been thinking about a handful of things that I wanted to do a quick podcast about a couple updates of some of the stuff that I’ve been putting together, you know, I gotta get so I gotta get so tripod. It’s kind of cool. I don’t know if you guys know about that. There’s, there’s a couple of different tripod manufacturers. Seems to be the popular ones in the United States amongst the pro photography crowd. But I’m sure there’s lots of other stuff out there. And I know, you know, they get it gets hyped, it gets hyped too much. There’s a lot of stuff. There’s a lot of stuff with three legs that works great for tripods. But I was on Craigslist I was looking around as per reason I found the super good deal on this vintage gets out was this one built in France, I think since then they they moved to Italy. I think now they’re an Italian brand like it was a Made in Italy. These older ones it says Made in France, think it’s like gets hopper maybe as a German guy. So it sounds like gets harbor. But yeah, it gets turned into gets Oh, as the tripod name when they started started doing that. But I got this weekend performance tripod, it’s just kind of silly, small travel tripod, I think it’s about 18 inches tall or so. And it’s got these, these steel legs, it’s got an extendable set of aluminum tubes that run out, and it gets real flimsy, like when you get it above waist height as a tripod. So it seems like it’ll be kind of an interesting sort of backup travel tripod, but it’s real sturdy, or you know, it’s real set, it’s a good so it’s a good tripod, it’s well manufactured, even though it’s you know, 35 years old, and I think it’s probably made in the early 80s. And I bought it from this, this old hobbyist photographer guy out here in Oregon I got it for a steal, I was thinking that primarily that’s a big reason to pick it up is if I buy it for the price, it’s listed that I could list it now and get more than that much money I could flip it and get you know, a good return on the investment that I put into it and I could hang out mess with the tripod for a week or two, put it up online have that thing sell and I can make more cash off of it than what I paid for it. You know, the cool thing also is I got this you know the setting gets a legs those are nice but with it and kind of the the secret prize that might almost be worth more than that is I got this leads lights. Like it’s that kind of side like a name and brand. You know, there’s the Leica cameras, but I guess a lot of their gear maybe in some of their other stuff is kind of sort of bought or half bought or bought out it was. There’s two guys there’s like the Leica guy and then there is this lead sky, this l le II Tz guy. And they both kind of own like, so there’s sort of these these kind of confused names around some of the stuff but it’s this, this leads, ball hat, this tripod ball head and it’s really nice. It’s kind of this, this brushed aluminum finish on it, and it’s got the ball head on the top with this wingnut that swings closed to lock to lock your tripod wherever you put it. But it looks like a really tight, nice little full tripod setup. especially great for a traveler or someone that was shooting with a light film setup, it would be awesome. So I know it’s a little bit of the way from the direction that I’ve been moving with some of the photography equipment I’ve been procuring recently. But it feels kind of good. It’s cool, having a vintage gets a tripod around, and it feels good to that I could sell it or I could make some bucks back from it if I needed to. But it’s kind of fun having that second tripod around. I’ve been trying to think of more more long exposure, more fine art landscape stuff. And you know, I think maybe you mentioned a minute ago in the US there’s like there’s two big tripod brands there’s there’s man Frodo, which is what I bought the last few times around. Right now I have a set of carbon fiber, what is it like the mag fiber set of legs for my man, my man photo tripod, and those are great. Those are like the best tripod legs. They’re outstanding. And then I’ve got this photo head that goes on top of it, which is acceptable, but it’s got that three way locking head. I think I really want to get something a little simpler, more like a ball head or something that’s just a little bit more flexible for some of my needs. But really, it’s just this quick release plate system that’s on top of the man Frodo, and it just really doesn’t seem to work for me all that much. I guess it isn’t enough. It works as much as I use it probably more than that. Maybe I can just throw that like a ball head on there.
Doesn’t seem to match up super well. But if I if I get a chance to win Guess why not. So it’s kind of cool to mess around with that. I’ve been a fan of like the the Gitzo tripod brand stuff for a long time. And I think it’s kind of kind of cool to mess around with that. But the way that they’re built, it’s just super sturdy, it’s cool. So I got that going, I’ve got the Sony A seven are going through its paces, it’s been really cool using it for the last last couple of weeks, I’ve been trying to figure out its idiosyncrasies. And there are a lot of them, there’s a lot of them with these newer cameras. And I can see definitely wherefrom the a seven are, or you know, from the first series of the A sevens to the a seven, two, and you know, so on and so forth with the better and different accentuated camera models, they get better, they really do get better. There are some things with the first renditions of the electronic viewfinder and the system of how that takes photos, how it kind of interrupts when you’re taking photos that don’t quite seem to the level of professionalism that I’m really trying to hit for. So I know that there’s a lot of custom settings that I have to go into and sort of tweak how that a seminar is going to be grabbing it photos, and then how it’s chipping. You guys heard of that before chipping, it’s I don’t know what it really has to do with but but it’s referring to when you take a photograph or you take a couple of photographs. And then you look down at that screen on the bottom of of your digital screen to the backplate of your digital camera, you look down and you see the photo. And then you come up, you recompose and you shoot again, come down and look at it. And it’s I guess, I don’t understand it completely. It just seems sort of like, like a modern approach to something that the technology allows you to do. So I think it’s totally acceptable. But for whatever reason, it is sort of an interference in the creative or in the photography process sometimes, and I know that there are many pros, all of those pros coming from a past world, that’s no longer here, a film where it wasn’t really acceptable to do to do half shutter press autofocus, like you have to do autofocus from the back. And then and then shutter is its own system. And then with that, there’s all these kind of silly rules about how you can use focus how you can use composition stuff, how you can set up your frame, when you can look at the screen, or when you can review the images, I guess these film shooters, they thought it was uncouth to be able to review or see the photograph before the film was developed, or before it was later on. Interesting. And I see kind of psychologically, there’s this, there’s this path that does seem to create better work or more intuitive photographs. And those are better, they are more needed. And I can see where some of these tricks might get you closer to that. But the idea of just looking at the back of the screen that doesn’t impede you so much. And it doesn’t, this doesn’t really stop you. If you’re a pro and you know what you’re doing, you look at the screen, you’re looking at the screen, because you know why you’re looking at the screen, it doesn’t really seem to make sense that there’s these sort of sideways rules about features you can and can’t use that are put into your camera. But to speak about efficiency with a problem that I noticed about the seminar is that it will display the image to you for about a second and a half, two seconds. And it will display it on the screen but will also display it in in the electronic viewfinder for your eye. And you can shut this feature off. But there’s still a little bit of a hiccup around the time that you hit the shutter button. And the problem with this is if I’m framed up to take a photograph, let’s say I have a situation. I remember back at OSU when I was shooting sports a lot. Let’s say there’s a football game, I’m out in front of the action. And I see that the beeves set up a play, they throw a pass the guy gets it, he’s right in the pocket on the third of the frame that I have. And I have focused tracking on him; I want to take a series of shots with a high frame rate. So I can get that whole run of action as he moves towards me. And so the issue that I’m having is, in photography, you’re trying to select moments that look good, that’s kind of the point aesthetically, you want them to be choices
that are appealing. And that has to do a lot with gesture a lot with movement a lot with kind of positioning and framing and composition and sort of thoughtfully considering what does the person look like? How are all these things in the frame relating to each other, and isn’t going to work when you press the shutter. And the difficulty is with these seminars or even with the Sony A 6000 when I’m looking at it, and I take this series of photographs, I’m almost blind that whole time. Whereas before in the past when I would have been working with an SLR then there’s the shutter flap where you see black for just a moment, but it comes back and it’s optically correct. Immediately it’s optically correct to what you’re going to be shooting but with the Vf, there’s just enough lag that in high action. You seem to kind of miss where the gesture is obsessed moving around. It seems like you almost have to kind of guess or assume that the next moment is going to happen and then try and take it, but you can’t see it. It’s weird. It’s like it shuts off the viewfinder right At the time that you need to be looking through it. And so in some ways like that, it’s a little bit complicated. Am I framed up? Right? Am I looking at the thing right when I take the picture just shows me something else all of a sudden. And I know that they’ve solved a lot of these problems. Like if you look up the Sony A nine and some of the features that it has, if you if you bring that into high speed shooting, it’s got this interesting system where instead of having the electronic viewfinder, blink, black, or cut out, cut out completely have the processor move all of its attention to processing that image that it just captured, and then bring back the electronic viewfinder. momentarily later, what we see in the a nine is a system where there’s, there’s the bracket, there’s like, let’s say like a red focus bracket, that kind of goes around and you’re shooting, you’re shooting you’re shooting. But what you’re seeing is instead of instead of the electronic viewfinder, blinking out black, and then showing you a frame, or just blinking out black, and then coming back on, what we see is just that bracket, that red bracket, blink, yellow, or blink from black to yellow, or black to red or something like that. And all that’s indicating is that it is firing frames, but you’re just still seeing it completely normally, like you would view any action on a screen. And that’s a really interesting process. I think it’s like it’s like 20 frames a second or something like that. It’s almost video at that point when you’re shooting RAW frames. Are you kidding me raw frames on a Sony A nine. God knows what almost 50 megapixels that is shooting at. And you can do 20 frames a second just looking at the thing and then seeing a little black bar blink yellow, and that’s signaling that you’re, you’re capturing all that data. So kinda interesting stuff. Other big stuff the eclipse like I was talking about a little bit ago, try and get your eclipse glasses. They’re probably sold out in most places and good lord, get on Instagram. If you haven’t yet. Search Prineville or search Madras or search one of those spots. It’s in line out toward Grant County out toward the Chico’s I thought that section of Eastern Oregon east of the Cascades and is
Berzerk out there, the facilities are not prepared to deal with that. And I’m amazed by the some of the stuff that I’m seeing. But if you look at Prineville, even if you look up, I think like ABC news, put up a Facebook video that was posted about it. And it is an insane amount of traffic. It’s just traffic for days and days and days, I think is it the 226 the 26 it’s one of the highways out there, once you get off of the 97 that runs north a band toward magis. Once you get off of that and start heading east toward Prineville toward clarino toward Mitchell toward john de toward the coast, would all the festivals would all the stuff that’s going on. It is a constant non stop gridlocked traffic jam for 15 miles, it appears like, and that’s it’s like Thursday, it’s next week that we’re having the thing. Is it gonna be like this that whole time? Maybe everybody was thinking they need to show up early. Maybe it’ll be better to show up Monday. But I don’t think so. I don’t think it’s really gonna get that much better. I think that they’ve been talking about a million new people showing up in just a couple days over there. It seems like none of those facilities have kind of prepared themselves for that. It seems like it’s almost an apocalypse for a local at that area. I don’t want to be hunkered down, I don’t think I’d want to be out at all, it seems like it would just be difficult no cash, they’re saying in their banks, or ATMs no gasoline at the gas stations, you know, just no food or water at some of the grocery stores. It seems like all that stuff is just gonna be swamped by the gajillions of people that are moving in to see this eclipse so fantastic for the local economy if they’re going to try and gouge everybody and get a bunch of bucks. But it might be really complicated for me because I want to go out there, I want to go see the eclipse, I want to get in the line, I want to be dead center for the totality. I’m really excited for all that stuff. And the opportunity to get to see a total solar eclipse is just such a rare occurrence. And it’s gonna be awesome. I’m really proud for that. But it’s just amazing, fantastically surprising to see some of this footage from Eastern Oregon of these roads that are just swamped and full. And so pass that let’s say, let’s say all the traffic gets through where does the traffic go? They’re all campers. They’re all people that are going into the chicos and each of those people, each of those families as parties that are grouped up traffic-jammed on the road, they’re all just moving into Forest Service land where they’re going to be camping for the next four days. So what campsites going to be left for me for my party. After all those gazillion people file into the wilderness of Eastern Oregon. They’re all going to fall in. So okay, great. Now the roads are open, but now I turn off into the Forest Service road to head up, and then that’s just going to be nonstop traffic jams up there. How are people going to get around up there all of those are just one lane little gravel roads that kind of cut around through a pretty forest Kind of mountainous area of Eastern Oregon. Is it really going to work? Are people going to get by? Okay, I’m sure most well, but man doesn’t seem like there’s just going to be some kind of incident some kind of issue. It seems like, because I like being around where events are, you know, where things are happening where the energy is. That’s kind of a big reason I’m drawn to go out there, I want to deal with all the trouble of Eastern Oregon that’s going on, I want to kind of see it and experience the event, I was in the chaos of
a POC, Eclipse. I was out in Eastern Oregon I was doing I was part of the scene,
I want to do that a lot more than where I could already benefit and just kind of go north about 25 minutes and be in totality. Out here in the Willamette Valley, where I have a really wide open view hour, it seems like there’s not a ton of people around. I could do that. But I’m super drawn to all the trouble of the otjikoto all that mayhem that’s going to be going on out there. I want to kind of I don’t know, I just want to be a part of that. I want to be a part of the the experience the social experience of it. I don’t want to be stuck in stinky old Eugene dealing with the riffraff around here. I wanted to kind of feel like, like a, like an event, like a life event sort of a thing. So it’s a lot to put on something. But it’s not a lot to put on an eclipse. A total eclipse, all those people out there, man, so much stuff. So I don’t know. I’m trying to think of a couple different things. Part of me is running down a couple little backup plans. Like Do I need to go a gajillion miles away out there? Is there somewhere closer I can go? What am I getting? I think Prineville it’s like a minute of totality. But if I just drive 25 minutes north, I’d be in Corvallis. And that gets like a minute and 45 seconds for totality. I get up to Monmouth that’s almost two minutes to totality. Why don’t I just go out there? I don’t know. What should I do? You tell me? I don’t know. Tell me on Instagram. That’s at Billy Newman. Tell me at my website. That’s Billy Newman photo calm, which has just finished kind of remodeling except for probably the more important part the gallery of photos of my portfolio that I’d show that’s gone. I don’t have that on my website right now, but I’m rebuilding it. But the front page looks really cool. the about page looks clean. I don’t know if it looks cool, but it looks clean. It looks redesigned. It looks pretty fresh. So if you get a chance, check it out billing him in photo comm at Billy Newman on Instagram and Twitter. You can give me give me a shout out there. Thanks. Thanks for checking out this podcast. I’ve got one bye