The Sony A7R Heat Wave
Billy Newman Photo Podcast | The Sony A7R heat wave and rebuilding a website.
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Produced by Billy Newman and Marina Hansen
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Hey, what’s going on? Thanks a lot for listening to this episode of The Billy Newman photo podcast. My name is Billy Newman. I’m a photographer. And I’m based in Oregon. I’m working on a handful of things today. And most days I’m trying to go through and I kind of, I kind of have this journal right, and I go through that journal, I write out some of the stuff that I’m going to be doing that day, some of the media stuff that I’m going to try and get up, I have a couple of goals, like what photos out to post or like what things I have to get to what kind of work projects have to work on, not what everybody does in their day. But I’m trying to talk about sort of the process of the photos and how I do stuff, how I get stuff. What’s interesting to me. And I try and do that every day, every other day, every three days, who knows twice a week, something like that, of spending a couple of minutes and putting together a short podcast that updates on some of the stuff of everything I put together. But this one’s not bad. I think it’s like a mark a demarcation of progress, which is cool. So I’ll get to that in a minute. But But yeah, appreciate anybody tuning in to whatever’s going on on Billy Newman photo COMM And if this feed is still working through whatever RSS setup I have, but I’m rebuilding the Billy Newman photo page right now, I think it’s actually kind of messed up right now I’m trying to strip all the graphics out. I’m trying to strip a lot of unnecessary graphics. And then I’m really trying to focus in on building it a lot more cleanly and trying to be more directed and more useful without as many extraneous pieces sort of pull out to different areas. But I think a big part of it, like I was talking about, as I’m really pushing out, to YouTube, to Instagram to Facebook, I’m really trying to focus on those places, I think, at least for this website. And I want a lot of content to kind of pull in from those places to the website. So I think I found a couple ways to sort of work around that there’s a few plugins, like doing some research on this plugin, to do a grid layout, but it’s gonna pull the posts that I have from from Facebook or from Instagram, it’s gonna pull those over in the text that comes with it. And it’s going to show that like on on my website, but it’s going to pull it as native content, and which I think would be really cool to do. And it’d be a lot less maintenance than sort of the silly multiplied system that that I have going on right now that sort of does the same thing. But like I talked about, I’m stripping down to just a handful of portfolio photos for a gallery. So I could like send the website to somebody, have them see it and say, Oh, yeah, okay, I see sort of the professional range of photos that this person is doing, or I see like, at least like some of the visual style that they have. So yeah, I get I get a taste of it. But it’s not overwhelming. And it’s not like an endless feed. That’s just sort of a duplication of like what I’m talking about for this other section of the site, a duplication of my social content, and like the feed of stuff that I’m trying to put out really quickly and regularly. So I want to spot this just specifically that portfolio. And I was looking at a couple of gallery plugins that go into WordPress sites where you can set up an auto responsive image gallery that can show your pictures really nicely. You know, it’s really impressive now in 2017, how they really worked out a lot of things to make mobile browsers really functional, like on the mobile phone, like between Android and Chrome, you know, in Safari dominating like, as a browser across a lot of the platforms, you really notice that you can do a lot of things with the Internet, and a way more functional ability than you used to do in the past. And that’s one thing that I think, as a slight tangent for one second to say that the real development of the internet, as we know, it, I think really comes from the browser, or like how that browser is able to interpret or work with code or work with whatever it is. But if you try to run a lot of these websites on on explorer 1.0, it would never be able to render the type of complex things that are going on, even on simple web pages that we see now. So it seems like the biggest thing of the improvement of, of what we’re able to do with the internet, where we have access to or how how we’re able to build on top of the application, it seems to be a lot of how the browser works. I know that’s kind of basic. And I know like the browser accepts a lot of things have to be everywhere else and served on servers and how you know, everything else works to it. But on the consumer facing ended. It’s interesting how important that is. And so it’s cool for our system of browsers, that we have mobile phones that can get two websites, that we can all build ourselves really easily. Like just drag and drop, I’m just doing drag and drop. I’m not I don’t I don’t have any skill to code. I tried to learn HTML in high school one time. So you can kind of scrape away with changing the color of something if I can figure out how to how to find that in the source code. I can’t I there’s hardly anything I can do. I’m just clicking on buttons and making gaps and sizes and stuff, trying to keep things centered. And simple text, simple colors, simple stuff. And then just a lot of the right photos and the right links out to the content where I’m active. So I think that’d be the cool stuff to do. But I’m really happy to build that website. And I know it’s good. It’s gonna take like a handful of days. So I’ll probably talk about how can lower the same thing again and again,
excited for that. But the big news though, the exciting part is That today I’ve been working for a while, right? I’ve been trying to sell the d3. I tried to sell on my Nikon gear, I got rid of the f4. I got rid of a lot of lenses. I got rid of the big telephoto, the 20. Yeah, it’s all gone. But what I did is I turned all that into cash. And I have now finally received I bought and now I have received and a seven are. That seems like it’s in really good shape. So I’ve been pretty happy with the with buying used equipment like a couple years later. And this is probably the newest camera I’ve ever had last one was for 2007, the Nikon d3, I’ve moved up to a whole different kind of system switching over from one gear system to another gear system is kind of a weird step like I’ve not, I’ve actually not done it before, I’ve always had, I’ve always had this Nikon stuff. But switching over to Sony, it feels like a really good fit, I’m really happy with the way that I’ve been working with the a 6000. So that gives me a lot of confidence about what I’ll be able to do and
get this it’s
it’s like three times more resolution. And that’s highly the thing that I’m even the the top 20th most concerned about. But it’s three times the resolution of the 12 megapixel Nikon D three, this is like a 36 megapixel camera, I’ve never really even considered working with files that big before, like what you can do with that. But that opens up a lot of opportunities for what I hope to do with different landscape work, you know, have a couple good prime lenses, okay, and this is the funny part right? Is the goal is to get a couple of good prime lenses to work with this, this Sony a seminar, try and put together a lot of landscape photographs, try and put together a lot of stuff that is just sort of that fine art level of work that I was really interested in a couple years ago. And I’ve kind of been working on street process film, outdoor photography, outdoor lifestyle photography for a while. But I want to get into like steady on the tripod, long exposures during Magic Hour during blue hour during dawn or dusk. I really want to get more into that, because that’s really where I found the most serenity in photography. And I think really a lot of my best work, I’m really proud of a lot of that stuff. And so I want to get into that a lot. I’m really excited to have some equipment that’s going to be superior at it from what some of the stuff in the past that I had was, so that’d be really cool. But the downside right now is I’m super pumped, I just got the a seminar body. It’s an excellent shape, it looks really good. I’m happy to start using it. But then the thing is, though, what I realized, I mean, I’d realized before too, is that I don’t have any glass, I have no Sony glass, I really have hardly any Nikon glass, I’ve just, I’ve just like one I’ve been an ad and a 50 millimeter. And they kind of work so they’re really not worth really not worth much right now. I’m keeping that that’s the only camera I really have other than the word camera that I can, you know, sneak off photos of but this a seven, I have no glass, I have no Sony lenses at all. So the first one I’m trying to get is the 80 518. It’s like the $600 lens, the F one four, that’d be awesome and stuff, but it’s a pound heavier, and it’s $1,000 more, think about what that pound glass is inside that canister that’s $1,000. You kidding, I can’t go there. But I’m reaching just to get to this $600 spot where I can get a solid prime lens to get going. And then I want to get like a solid zoom lens around that or maybe a couple of the prime lenses, I think what I’m talking about first is an 80 518. And I’m trying to go with the the 28 millimeter f two. I think that was like a $500 lens. But it’s pretty interested in but I would be really interested in having an 85 for good portraits and a 28 for wide angle landscape stuff.
And then 5050 that’s,
that’s a lot of I mean, you know, I had a 28 and I had a 50 millimeter for for the f4 and the d3. And then I had a zoom lens, you know, I’ve never really had a lot of glass. So if I get even two of those lenses, I’m halfway back to what my my camera or my Nikon setup was before. It’ll be a long road for that. I don’t know, maybe shorter. I have I have other, there’s like I you know, it’s all spread around and stuff. So I’m going to try and get more lenses and stuff. But who cares. I got the seminar I’m going through, I’m trying to reset everything and like set the menu up. It was someone else’s camera before it was cleaned and wipes and stuff from kth. And then and then I bought it from them. That’s great, too. I appreciate cage for this part of it. Even though I had like sort of weird stories to talk about just the other day about the business back selling stuff to them, you have to be really specific, and you have to have something kind of direct and agreed to. And if it doesn’t really go that way, it’s probably most profitable for you to have them send it back to you is what I noticed about that part of it but the buying process if you’re willing to accept the market price for what they set, which is a little bit more than what a good deal on eBay would be or a good deal through Craigslist But it does seem like you get a few of the guarantees that I appreciate, especially with use gear. Like if you get it and you don’t like it, you have 180 day return policy. And it really is pretty fair to market price given given like the quality rating, that’s what I noticed a lot is yes, there were $800, a seminars on eBay. But a lot, but they really wouldn’t say it all the time. So be careful out there. But when you we look at the photos, you kind of inspect it a little more directly. You see, well, that’s really rubbed off rubber on the side on the hand grip. And is that a crack on the battery plate? It doesn’t have any pictures of the right side with what’s going on there. Is there a purple line that goes straight down the LCD screen? what’s what’s up with that part of it? Why are there so many, like, like, I’ve had a camera for a long time, and I’ve taken it everywhere. And I’m probably kind of banged it around, maybe more than you should but they’ve always looked clean, they looked nice, it looked straight, it looked really sellable. And it functioned fine. And then you go back and and you look at these lenses, right? Like I mentioned the other day, you look at them, and they’re all scuffed and charred and like scraped on and you think, man, this was working a lot, this is a worn out piece of material. And if it’s too worn out, and it’s still pretty expensive, it’s still kind of close to the top end market price of a used or new lens, even like I saw, I’d see use lenses for 450 and see the new one for five, I can’t really take that kind of risk, I can’t accept spending 90% of the money and still falling way short of the lifetime use of a lens that I would need. So I don’t know, I was thinking about it a couple different ways. But I think it’s almost important enough that if I’m getting a prime lens that I want to keep for a long time, that’s really expensive. And the use lenses are equally really expensive. I think I’m going to try and go with new lenses, which is going to be cool. If I can get one they’re so expensive. I don’t have any money. So there’s been a heatwave in the Eugene area. And it’s been like swamped, it’s been like 105, the last three days, it’s been kind of rough. I’ve been working outside, I’ve been taking pictures of cars, I have to get out there early and like I’m done at nine o’clock. Done would be a great word if I could actually be done. But it’s so hot you like really don’t be working or participating after nine o’clock, 930 10 o’clock, it’s already way worse than it should be. I think like, it’s just been really tough. So I’m hoping that the heat wave breaks a little bit, but it was kind of reminded me of the dog days of summer. And that’s why yesterday I posted this link to a podcast that Marina and I did a year ago, the night sky podcast, and it was about the dog days of summer and where the idea comes from and how it was related to astronomy. So I thought it was really cool. And that’s why I put it up in the Billy Newman photo feed just yesterday,
or it’s kind of a rebroadcast to that podcast and and think thanks to or just kind of like thinking about the year and stuff. And like I was talking about consolidating in the podcast, the night sky that IO domain name is shutting down, it is terminating, it was cool to run that project for a while. But we’re gonna move the astronomy stuff over to like the Billy Newman photo podcast stream that we’re doing here. We’re gonna move all those podcasts over here, so I’m probably gonna rebroadcast them over the next however many weeks as they’re relevant, scattered what I’d figured, or as they’re fun, that sort of thing. But any other astronomy stuff like a lot of the stuff for the eclipse I want to talk about on this podcast through this feed. And I want to try and direct most the attention back to just this one main one, as a problem before is that I would do a bunch of stuff, but it would just sort of get evaporated out until like one thing a week, one thing every other week, but it’d be like me constantly sitting and doing something. So I’m trying to concentrate that all down into one sort of specific direction sort of feels like a firehose of a lot of stuff coming out one spot instead of just a trickle from all these other different spots. So who knows if that’ll work out. But it’s cool. And I’m excited to talk a bunch about the astronomy stuff. But check out that podcast is the last one in the feed. It’s the the conversation about the dog days of summer real quick. It’s about Sirius, the star Sirius and the location of the sun. And where they are together when they rise. They used to think it was like more heat. Like it was two stars. It was two suns, putting energy to the to the earth. And that’s why I got hotter during this time of year
cooled
story, but I go into it more in that podcast with Marina. Check it out. The night sky podcast in this feed titled The dog days of summer. And remember the eclipses coming up. It’s, I don’t know. 90s less than 20 days away now. Yeah, it’s the 21st of the month. It’s Monday. It’s gonna be awesome. I’m really excited for it and never seen a total eclipse before. So that’s gonna be pretty cool. That’s a couple weekends from now, but this weekend I’m going to try and do a weekend out. We’ve been around Eugene for last couple. It’s been cool. Eugene’s all right in the summertime, but we’ve been smoked out too. It’s been really hot. It’s been really smoky. There’s some forest fire, which is a shame. I hope it’s under control, at least in some effort. Good luck to everybody. We’re going to try and do a weekend out, we want to get out somewhere and do something. I know I have a seminar. I have no glass for it. But I have no I can kind of I can kind of mess around with some stuff. So I’ll try and work out something with it. So I can go out, learn about it, take some photos, have a good time, and kind of get used to having a new camera body, which is pretty cool photos that are going up on Instagram. You can check it out at Billy Newman. There’s a cool one yesterday of me paddling through a big wave and Hawaii is this big storm was coming in. And there’s these big swells that were coming out these big like, eight 910 foot dips and waves that were coming in every few seconds. It was really cool. There’s nobody else out there. But we were just out on the beach on the west coast of Maui and kihei. I think it was beautiful. That was really cool. It was I think one of the first times I’ve really been in the Pacific Ocean in a place that was nice. You know, I’ve been whatever on the Oregon coast. Oh, that’s a different story that’s cold, CBD, all that sort of stuff. But this was beautiful. That was a cool time to be out. Sort of in a storm in the islands. It was interesting to have that experience. But it was cool. Having that photo Marina took that with a point and shoot camera that we had out in the water with us. Really fun time. It was really cool. So you can check that out at Instagram at Billy Newman. I got a bunch of stories stuff going up to about what I’m up to today. So appreciate it. Thanks a lot for listening to this episode of The Billy Newman photo podcast. I’ll be putting another one up the Monday, something like that. Maybe I’m taking the weekend off. I’m going to party I’m going out of town. I got this new camera, remember. Alright, thanks a lot for listening. Be in again soon.