Will Content Creators replace Photographers?

Content creators are becoming more common at weddings, but will they replace photographers and videographers? And has camera technology plateaued - can they get any better? And, if you are thinking of turning pro, have you considered all the fixed costs you will have - can you afford to do it? Nick is moving house, but can he take his studio with him? And where is Steve off to next in his world training tour!

Resources:

Sony Alpha Cameras - https://www.sony.com/electronics/interchangeable-lens-cameras
Fujifilm X-Pro4 (Upcoming) - https://fujifilm.com/products/cameras/x-pro4
Studio Ninja - https://studioninja.co/

Transcript

Steve Vaughan (00:01.326)
Hello and welcome again to the photography pod, a photography podcast for both working professionals and enthusiast photographers alike. My name is Steve Vaughan and once again I'm joined with my co-host, great photographer, all-around great educator and top bloke Nick Church. Nick, how you doing, sir? I might just reach for the sick bowl actually, now I've just done it. Hang on a second.

Nick Church (00:15.884)
I love these intros. That's great. Yeah. Hi, How are you? Did you see this will be in YouTube this episode and the viewers will realize that my video quality is not quite the lighting is not quite where it normally is. I just didn't have time to set up my Sony camera as I normally do because I've come straight from the Academy.

Steve Vaughan (00:34.286)
That's all right. It looks fine to be honest. You've been running your academy meter about you.

Nick Church (00:39.902)
Yeah. Yeah. The meetups, the, every month meetup that we do just finished about 20 minutes ago. So, and I don't bother setting up for that usually, cause it's just a informal chat. So it's on the, it's all built into the platform. the Nick church creative Academy has got a thing. You just click join and you're in, you know, have a chat about cameras and photography and loads of other random stuff is a bit like this podcast.

Steve Vaughan (00:47.31)
That's all right. So what's that on Zoom or something?

Steve Vaughan (00:53.097)
All right.

Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (01:01.006)
I'm already too, but it's here that we have already, we're already randomizing. So if it makes you feel better, I caught up with, cause I've been doing a lot of traveling recently, which I'll come on to. But I caught up with an episode of the rest is history podcast, which is probably my favorite podcast. it was one from, apart from this one, course. And it was one from a, a year ago. And they're obviously recording on Riverside like we do. And it cuts, when it cut to Dominic Sandbrook, he was.

Nick Church (01:17.42)
Hmm.

Nick Church (01:25.354)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (01:30.794)
orange. In fact, he was orangey yellow. God knows what was going on with their white balance and stuff, but literally looked like he'd been tangoed. And the whole video, bear in mind that, you know, they're probably one of the most popular podcasts in the world. The whole video was him looking like he'd been turned into some kind of Donald Trump-esque orange, you know, tango man. So if it makes you feel better, mate, your video is fine. Absolutely fine.

Nick Church (01:49.366)
God.

I'm quite, I would say not orange, more like &S cardigan beige. Isn't it? It's all quite beige. But I do find this. Gosh. Another reference for the younger listener.

Steve Vaughan (02:00.726)
Like an Austin Princess from the 70s, yeah.

Steve Vaughan (02:09.486)
Yeah, obviously you don't cut. So mate, apart from Wittring, what have you been up to? Because we haven't done a live show for a couple of weeks, which is my fault.

Nick Church (02:17.396)
We haven't, we haven't. just while I've been wrapping up the last couple of wedding films from last year, from late last year. so that's been good to get those off my plate. and doing a load of, Academy stuff. So there's a couple of, we've got this mentorship program called the hero mentorship, which is, basically some is a monthly subscription and it's somebody that wants to either start their business or grow their business.

typically in weddings, but other, I've got one in another, another genre as well. And it's all because you're faced with all these things about branding packages. How do I say pricing? And I said packages, how do I, what kit do I need? How do I run up, you know, all these questions, how do I get myself out there? How do I get bookings? So basically we just do that together. So it's like I did for my own business, you know, years ago and just doing with other people, which is lovely. So Ben had a few of those meetings.

Steve Vaughan (03:06.284)
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Nick Church (03:11.284)
recently. So yeah, we have regular catch ups through the month to see, to track progress and that kind of thing. And yeah, it's really good when they get a booking, you feel a bit almost like almost as exciting as get my own booking. Not quite, not quite as much, but

Steve Vaughan (03:21.006)
It's like an assist, isn't it? It's like when you put the cross into the box and somebody nods it in, you feel almost as good as if you nodded in yourself, really. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not that I've ever done that in my football days, but still.

Nick Church (03:29.419)
yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, feels like that. It feels like it's nice. Yeah, it's good. so that's going on. Boy, I've nodded across in

Steve Vaughan (03:37.006)
No, not in a few crosses, in W.O. Net actually, but that's enough story.

Nick Church (03:40.055)
Yeah. Well, it's why we've, we've, we've been selling our house. We've that's been, that's been occupying. You know, you think, uh, you read about being most stressful thing you ever do in us, you know, apart from when someone dies, it is pretty stressful. Yeah. But, um, you know, fine. It's fine. The main, the main sadness is my studio is likely to be something that gets, um, well, obviously I to leave it cause I can't take it with me, but the, the, it,

Steve Vaughan (03:52.202)
stressful thing. I haven't done it for a long time.

Steve Vaughan (04:06.144)
No, it's not IKEA flat pack,

Nick Church (04:09.48)
No, no, with me in it. He's like, press a button and say, hi, I'm back again. And yeah, you want a reduction? All right. So they yeah, so with the plans was to build something equivalent. And I would like my deal thing was because we can see the light. Let me move a camera. You can see that my lamp there, my light, my light stand, right?

Steve Vaughan (04:15.534)
I got Popsnick. You didn't know you were getting me with the house, did you?

Steve Vaughan (04:31.726)
Right.

Steve Vaughan (04:38.434)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nick Church (04:38.572)
that soft box behind me. for the list of that's just, if I stand up my head's above that and that's the ceiling there. So it's pretty low in here. So the idea is to get somewhere bigger where I can do things like headshots a bit more easy and get some more flattering light patterns and stuff. But the blooming price of these things. And I wonder how studio people that it is quite popular to build a studio for a photographer, but the prices are insane. mean, this place was 24 grand when I had it built in 2019, the equivalent size.

Steve Vaughan (04:46.604)
is pretty low. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Steve Vaughan (04:58.862)
Mm.

Steve Vaughan (05:05.262)
All right.

Nick Church (05:07.434)
that just fear is now forgetting about the ceiling height. The equivalent size is now 68,000 for the same from the same company for the same for the same building, which

Steve Vaughan (05:11.128)
Good grief.

Would there be an option, I'm just thinking because Sam, we were talking off air before we started recording, but my wife Sam now as part of our exit strategy for the wedding photography business, she's now taking on running a local business hub, which is something she's done in the past really. Is it not an option to sort of go somewhere instead? I know it's not as convenient. Yeah.

Nick Church (05:29.548)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Church (05:34.667)
Yeah, no, absolutely. And that's because you, it's 24 grand. You think, well, to have an office space 24 seven and somewhere that's set up for photography, bit of a no brainer. It's 64, 64 plus if it's going to be a higher place, you know, a higher height place, you're going to think how much revenue is that? Is that studio going to create that? Bear in mind all the Academy stuff I could do from a cupboard, you know, don't need to do that in a studio.

Steve Vaughan (05:49.997)
Yeah. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (05:56.397)
That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nick Church (06:00.244)
So that is likely to be the option that the property that the house that we're interested in is going to be pushing our budget to the point. I think the, any funds, the studio is going to get sidelined until a bit later. yeah, but I'll be looking at doing exactly what you said. Just go and find somewhere.

Steve Vaughan (06:10.602)
Mm.

Steve Vaughan (06:14.382)
Yeah, I think so before as well, because I've been in work today at Sam's center, just rented the desk there for a day really, because they do a hot desk. it's, and I spent hours in this little, you know, tiny little garage, which well, it used to be Gary's little office, really, I can almost touch both ends of it. And it's, you know, I've got lots of problems with my neck and shoulder and stuff at the moment. I'm just going to work somewhere different and actually having different people around you. Sometimes it's really good. Yeah, just have that different vibe, you know, and

Nick Church (06:40.171)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (06:42.589)
and chat with somebody over coffee and just the exercise because it's walkable for me. It's about half an hour walk.

Nick Church (06:47.215)
Yeah. Well, we had the one of my, um, Louie, um, step, step son who came back from work yesterday and said, Oh, that road still closed. I said, which road? And there'd been a rose. The end of our road is a road closed for about two weeks. I've got no idea. haven't been out that far. I've walked around the block and I've I've run round through the woods, but that's in the other direction. I hadn't, I hadn't, thought, yeah, I do need, I do need to get it. Yeah. It's dark. It's dark, but it is cold. So yeah.

Steve Vaughan (07:00.971)
Ha

Hopefully with the clothes on, yeah.

Nick Church (07:16.638)
Anyway, yeah, let's move on.

Steve Vaughan (07:17.453)
If you're in, where do you live again, Nail, what was it called? Feynland, why don't I say Nail and yeah, if we see something outside your window, close it to, I mean, really fast. Back to the economy stuff, I mean, we are jumping around with even thought, with six minutes in, we haven't even talked about our agenda yet, but I don't think people fully appreciate that. didn't until I sort of started digging around, but it's not just how to take photos. It's all about the business, how to run a business. It's lot more than just the photography, isn't

Nick Church (07:22.165)
Fae Lund, North Somerset.

Nick Church (07:28.371)
Yeah.

Nick Church (07:47.636)
Yeah, I think the, the idea behind it for me was that you can learn how to use your camera and get your settings right through YouTube. but that settings, that those settings won't work for another scenario. So it's teaching processes rather than settings. you know, so teaching, teaching people how to fish that kind of idea. But the other angle for the photography aspect is about that. Just knowing how to use your camera doesn't create good photographer. That's using light and being thoughtful about it.

Steve Vaughan (08:01.462)
Yeah.

Nick Church (08:15.532)
you finding mood in your shots and communicating something and all those other things, softer skills that they actually create difference in your work. And so it's a combination of those two is all the photography side. With the other angle being the business side where there's so many people that are great photographers moving into a new business as you have and I have moved into the wedding photography industry. As an example, it's just a blown in minefield of

Steve Vaughan (08:25.133)
Mm.

Nick Church (08:41.856)
how to navigate around and how, what's the vibe like in that industry. If you've worked in an insurance, been an insurance broker, say for 15 years, then you suddenly go to wedding photography. It's a pretty different landscape that you have to know how to, what the words are and what language they speak and that kind of thing. And what your branding needs to be like and all these other things. So that's something that these hero mentorships I'm finding people find that's really valuable. And that's, that's just lovely to have that.

Steve Vaughan (08:52.171)
is.

Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (09:03.83)
Yeah, I can see that. Because I know when we first started, you know, I was coming on the back of a breakdown in the corporate world. And Sam wanted to leave her job. Ironically, she's gone back into that kind of industry, not the same company. We knew we had to take photos. We knew we could take good photos and we knew we were good around people. What we did have was massive imposter syndrome. Massive imposter syndrome. What are we doing here? Why are we standing at these people's weddings?

look at all these wonderful photos and we're never going to be as good as that and how come they charge that much and it probably took us three years before I'd never felt that really. Did you feel the same?

Nick Church (09:40.456)
Yeah. Yeah. I was well, to an extent I was, I'm always there kind of like just go in at the deep end. I can do this and it dawn, it winds dawn up that I've just got this view of, think I could do that. I could, I could, I could do that. But you do that's not to say that I don't get that anxiety all the time of thinking, am I good enough? Whereas, you know, what's going to happen next for my business? I going to develop in that way?

You see other people's photos. think they're absolutely killing it. You know, you see other photographers and you start to compare yourself. And once you start doing that, it can be a very negative place to get into because everyone's different. And if you see something different in someone else's work compared with your own, the worst thing, the last thing you can do is to try and try and move yourself towards that other person because you want to do what fits your personality. Because with branding, that's the thing that people are going to buy into. If what you're saying,

Steve Vaughan (10:11.966)
Mm.

fatal. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (10:29.747)
Absolutely, yeah.

Nick Church (10:34.432)
how you sound, how you talk, your opinions, your sense of humor. If that's shown in your creative output, couples are gonna, that's gonna resonate with the right couples. If you're trying to be someone you're not, but it took me a long time to get that. And I was, you know, sort of aspiring to think, how do I edit my photo to look like that photographer's or, know, yeah.

Steve Vaughan (10:42.221)
Hmm.

Steve Vaughan (10:50.605)
Oh, we did that for years. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And it took us probably three or four years before we decided that was our look and that was our style really and our work. Funny enough, just while we're talking, got a Studio Ninja running in the background. I've just had a £1,600 payment pop in. So that's quite nice. So it's always pleasing when that happens. It is part of the business process. I think, you know, we need to photography in a minute. But I think what most people forget when they become or decide to become photographers, it's...

Nick Church (10:57.526)
Yeah, that's right.

Nick Church (11:04.361)
excellent.

Beer's on you then. It's your round.

Steve Vaughan (11:19.469)
a work in professional photography at least, it is 80 % not photography. It's 80 % running a business, all the stuff that you you're teaching the kind of SEO and marketing and networking and all that stuff. And if that stuff doesn't interest you, then don't try and become a professional photographer.

Nick Church (11:37.324)
Absolutely. Absolutely. It's one of the talk I did at the society's convention in January touched on that point that you've got to think, is this something you want to do? If you want to be a, if you want to move from being a either a hobbyist photographer with a proper job into being a full-time photographer, if you're doing that, cause you want to take more photos, that's probably not the right, that's not the right reason to do it because that's probably one thing that you're going to be doing less of. If you're a hobbyist, can, you can spend every hour.

Steve Vaughan (12:00.554)
Absolutely.

Nick Church (12:06.902)
that you're putting into photography, just taking photos with your business. You don't have that time. You don't have the luxury, you know, and you're lucky if you get time to take photos that aren't a client looking at you waiting for you to take them. So yeah, it's all those other stuff. yeah, it's something to just make sure that is something that you want to do before you start. And I think, you know,

Steve Vaughan (12:18.271)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (12:26.541)
It's super important. And I think that's one of reasons that we were successful. I've been successful with our business. We're facing it at as regular list as that was part of my semi-retirement planning to focus on my sales training. But because I've got a business background and a sales background, I started from the basis of how much do we need to earn to pay the bills, pay the mortgage and have holiday. Okay. So what does that mean in terms of how many weddings do we do? Could we do that many a year? Would that kill us? Or do we need to charge more? And it all falls into place from that really, doesn't it? Really? Yeah.

Nick Church (12:55.126)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I did a funny enough. I did a, in the, Academy for members, there's a, a stream of education content. did an article just today on, that point about how do you set your pricing when you, because we're not used to it really. When, when you work, when you, you're an employee at another company, your hourly rate is everything that's, and we tend to take that forward into our business and think, well, how much do I charge for that family session? If it's a family shoot, you think it would take me two hours.

Steve Vaughan (13:09.697)
Mm.

Nick Church (13:24.94)
So, you know, maybe two hours to edit and then you add up that multiplied by whatever hourly rate you want to earn and think, but that's what the price is. But it's forgetting about everything else. The insurance, the Adobe Photoshop, the fact your cameras are getting worn out and you've got electricity that you're using and laptops and all these other things that your company used to pay for you. Suddenly you have to take out of it. And it's really hard to sort of think, to try and separate that hourly rate away from your pricing and actually to come out of the other way. You work out all of your costs across the year.

Steve Vaughan (13:44.021)
Which affects costs, something like that.

Nick Church (13:53.054)
include and then just give yourself a salary. And that's just one of the costs you have to maintain. And then all that amount has to be paid for by the shoots you like to get. Now, how many shoots you're going to get as a business is a photography business is more difficult to predict, but they have to all pay that figure. Otherwise your business hasn't succeeded. And coming at it, the hourly rate way can very often, and I've seen it happen with people that I've worked with coaching result in people actually working not just for free, they're actually paying, you know, they're ending up making a loss on each shoot.

Steve Vaughan (13:56.941)
That's right.

Steve Vaughan (14:19.598)
Yeah, exactly. They're paying the business for the privilege of being a photographer. One of the first things I ever did when we first started doing this, and I still do it to this day, is I roll it out at least 18 months. It's a cash flow predictor. So I put in all the things you have to pay monthly, and there are too many, and I keep trying to have a call some of these, but things like Studio Ninja, insurance, Lightroom, all the things that you pay monthly.

Nick Church (14:22.816)
Yeah. That's right.

Nick Church (14:42.956)
Mm.

Steve Vaughan (14:49.762)
Then from student injury, I can work out when we're to get paid, because you know it's usually a month before the wedding, factor all those in, then factor in what we want to pay ourselves, when we want to take dividends out. And then I know pretty much to the nearest pound how much money we're going to have in September. Then occasionally somebody pays you early, which is great, it throws the calculation out. it really, it's that important to have that because so many great businesses can be very profitable but run out of money.

Nick Church (15:19.296)
Yeah. And, and certainly business, you can be flat out and thinking, well, you must be doing really well because you're really busy. And that is not, not necessarily the case, is it? Cause these fixed costs and that is the battle a little bit with the, want to use choose what was careful. don't want to disparage anyone that is a part-time, but the people that doing it as a side hustle don't often have the same, you know, it's very difficult. If you're doing a side hustle where you've got a full-time job and you may be doing five weddings a year, you literally cannot afford to have.

Steve Vaughan (15:19.436)
And that's the biggest challenge.

Steve Vaughan (15:24.536)
Mm. Yeah.

Nick Church (15:48.844)
insurance and everything else in place because you're not doing enough work to offset it. So this is why one of the challenges with a full-time photographer is those people that are doing it. The weekend warrior type, excuse me, photographers, because they are cutting corners. And I know, cause I've done it myself that before I, before I went full time, you know, that's where everyone starts. And it's a bit of an unfair situation, but then from a client's point of view, there's bride and groom or a corporate.

Steve Vaughan (15:53.314)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (15:59.757)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (16:06.017)
Yeah, we started that way, yeah.

Nick Church (16:16.652)
person that is booking headshots, they don't care, they? They're not really, you know, unless they happen to have a policy where they want to check your public liability insurance, they're never going to know.

Steve Vaughan (16:21.814)
Yeah.

Nick Church (16:26.496)
gonna see what's that the dogs kicked off.

Steve Vaughan (16:28.397)
Sound like somebody's just strangled a dog in the background. Yeah, that would be a nice thing. But no, I don't think so. think it's just, I think sounds just... So sorry if you're the RSPB, I didn't mean that. Honest.

Nick Church (16:31.006)
You

Nick Church (16:38.636)
No, there's no literal dog strangling, it just sounded like it.

Steve Vaughan (16:42.881)
No, there isn't. No, think it's just that somebody has to come to the front door anyway. anyway, let's, we've started talking about weddings and things. I think we'd let this sort of pursue that and things we said we were going to talk about today. And that was content creation and whether that the rise of the content creators fundamentally changing the wedding business. Cause, we've got probably half a dozen weddings this year where we know there's going to be content creators as in official content creators working there. suspect you've got something similar.

Nick Church (16:53.292)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Church (17:11.222)
So should we clarify for people that aren't wedding savvy? So a content creator is somebody that's not necessarily, but typically using an iPhone, maybe a state on a little stabilized gimbal and they're taking more behind the scenes type footage. And it's a very much a real, a realable, a tick tockable little, little clips that can be very quickly turned around. So by the next day, the bride or groom or couple have got

Steve Vaughan (17:14.761)
That's a good idea.

Nick Church (17:41.26)
a whole selection of social media, social media friendly clips that they can just upload. So it started out often from a lot of makeup artists and hairdressers started doing it because they've got ring lights. They always have good iPhones anyway, because they want to get photos of their work when the bride's been made up. So quite reasonably, and I would do exactly the same and think, well, I've got this kit. I'm finished at 12, the ceremony's at one.

Steve Vaughan (17:58.113)
Yeah, absolutely.

Nick Church (18:08.182)
Why don't I just offer to hang around a bit more and get some more behind the scenes type footage. that, there's, it's called ripples because anyone new to the industry, which, these people are when they start, need to know how to, how to operate alongside other creatives. They are, they've been employed on the day. So just things like, and there's, everyone's got an example of this. There's work with the content creator where I had an example where I had a video set up.

We had four cameras and the bribe we could have walked down the stairs with her father and the content creator came behind the bride with her phone. She wanted to get a nice shot, was a great shot. I'd love to have that shot, but she was in every angle. And that was on me because I should have realized that she was going to be doing that. And I should have made it clear at the start. didn't, didn't at that point that she was going to continue taking content. Had I known that I should have then said, right, let's just make sure we're not getting each other's shots because that's going to look a bit crap for both of us.

So that I think those sorts of issues are the same that would be faced by something new to the industry coming on and not quite working out how it goes. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (19:14.67)
Yeah, because that's the kind of conversation we routinely have with videographers, know, let's make sure we work well with each other and experience photographers, photographers always have that conversation, don't they? You okay?

Nick Church (19:22.124)
Yeah. No, no, no, where it seems to be getting my microphone leads having a bit of a meltdown, right? Where it seems to be going a bit more, causing a bit more friction in the industry is firstly around the video. So the video aspects. So what a lot of brides are thinking now that they're becoming aware that this is now a thing. two years ago, most couples wouldn't know that content creation was a thing. Now they very much do.

Steve Vaughan (19:50.147)
Yeah.

Nick Church (19:51.18)
And that's up there with a list of videographer, photographer, content creator, along with DJ fireworks and all these other things that they could choose to have. lot of couples are making decision about or facing decision, shall we get a wedding film, which might cost anywhere from what 1200 to 2000 pounds depending on all sorts of factors.

Steve Vaughan (19:58.978)
Yeah, it is. It is.

Nick Church (20:15.262)
Or a content creator and a content creators is very much they're not shooting a log profile. They're not creating a film. They're not creating a nonlinear story to music or anything like that. It's just basically clips which are then stitched together in iMovie or something quite quick and could deliver the next day. there's, there's

Steve Vaughan (20:31.892)
or even in the Instagram or TikTok software.

Nick Church (20:35.5)
Yeah. Oh, exactly. Yeah. Put it into edits and it's off. So that there isn't that thing, which means they can be charging three or 400 pounds rather than 2000 pounds. Now, when you're, when you're a creative, like we are, and you're in the industry, you can clearly see the difference between these two end products. They're totally different. And that's always been my stance is that I don't think it's a problem because they're offering two different things. It's like a Ford Fiesta exists, but so does Lamborghini and, and so does a taxi and an Uber and all those things.

Steve Vaughan (20:52.11)
Yeah.

Nick Church (21:02.988)
But the problem becomes comes from when you have couples that are not familiar with photography, which most couples aren't. I wouldn't be if I wasn't in the industry. Then they look quite similar. They sound quite similar. They sound like they're clips of your day put together into a film. And so you're looking one that costs three hundred quid, one that costs two thousand quid and.

Steve Vaughan (21:20.621)
think there's a few things to unpick there, really. mean, think first of all, who are we to say what Bride and Groom should have? It's their choice. They should have whatever product or offering that they should have. And I see some quite disparaging Facebook comments, oh, content creators, what would they do? Well, it's their choice if they would have that. It's up to them, really. I think from a technology point of view, they are relying very much on the...

Nick Church (21:23.148)
Ahem.

Nick Church (21:39.67)
Yep, absolutely.

Steve Vaughan (21:45.877)
intelligence of the phone, you know, to manage the light and everything else really, you know, and those, I'm going to talk about technology a bit, but they're only getting better and better and better really, aren't they? you know.

Nick Church (21:54.22)
Well, and, and you know, you, everyone's done this test when they first got their iPhone, whatever it was, iPhone 10 or something, you go and take a sunset photo. You think, I don't reckon I could take that with my camera. I'd have to spend so much time editing it. And the same goes with video that in poor light and iPhone is going to do a really good job. And you'd have to work pretty hard to dig out some contrast like that. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (22:05.258)
No.

Steve Vaughan (22:12.527)
with all the AI software and everything going on really. and again, perhaps just waving the flag for content creators, they're not here on the pod really, but one of the things I hear when people say, because we do basically videography as well, well, we're not going to have a video because my friend and my brother had one and they never watched it once and they've watched it again. Whereas something that's on their phone, on TikTok and Instagram and all their mates are giving them likes and thumbs up and sharing it.

You get that dopamine hit, don't you, from everybody saying, you looked amazing. You look fantastic. You look awesome and, you know, wonderful. Yeah.

Nick Church (22:43.947)
Yeah.

Nick Church (22:47.972)
And you get the content when you're, there's another part of my, my talks I've done previously is when you've got a, for a wedding, on a couple's wedding days, when their excitement is at its peak. Now the problem is that after that, their excitement wanes a bit until you deliver their focus of video. And that if that's two months later, then you're hoping for a little bit of a lift on that, on that excitement graph, but often it's nowhere near as exciting as the excitement levels isn't.

Steve Vaughan (23:01.966)
That's right.

Steve Vaughan (23:07.33)
Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Church (23:16.948)
right where it was on their wedding day. And if they're getting content the next day, it's like right, right in the sweet spot when they want it, they want to share it.

Steve Vaughan (23:18.348)
What a good... Yeah.

Well, it's the same reason I try and get previews to them next day if I can for the same, exactly the same reason, because we know they'll share them and they'll tag us and collaborate and we get the social media juice on the back of that as well, really. So, so one of the downsides to it and really clearly doesn't quality. Yeah.

Nick Church (23:26.06)
Exactly.

Nick Church (23:33.259)
Yeah.

Nick Church (23:39.468)
Well, well, it's, this erosion. No, this, this erosion of videography is gone on for a while. And as exactly as you said, and I'm, I'm also not one of these people that there are people, for example, we saw, I saw one today that commented in my Facebook group that that's why they've always had in their contracts. They will not work with a video with a content creator. There's a content creator. They're out, they're out of there. And I, and I, I don't see that as, um, a very reasonable stance, particularly.

Steve Vaughan (24:02.988)
Wow.

Nick Church (24:09.406)
I can see why you would feel like that if you've had a bad experience like I have that, but I think that could, that taught me that I need to make sure I know if there's content creator and then I can have the right conversations at the right time. but yeah, it's, this erosion and sure. think what will happen is the brides and grooms and the argument is of course, if there is a couple, so let's say two brides are going to say, we're, we're going to go for content creator rather than the wedding film.

Steve Vaughan (24:18.956)
Yeah, exactly,

Nick Church (24:36.138)
If that's their choice, that's their choice. If they don't understand the difference between the two, that's also still their choice to do that. So it probably isn't the right market for somebody that's selling a two grand wedding film for that person. And so that protects you a little bit. But what's happening is that couples that do see the difference are still seeing there's an option of 300 quid, even though they know that's less and they know the difference. And so I think videographers are increasingly finding it hard to justify.

Steve Vaughan (24:41.462)
It is yeah.

Steve Vaughan (24:46.158)
Exactly.

Nick Church (25:06.058)
a much higher price because, because there is another option there. When that option was previously not having a video at all, then it's, it's easy to say, because you can just say, you're to have this forever. It's a film. You're going to watch it and all that stuff. lot of the same things can be said from a content creator as well. The content they produce, you can watch that forever as well. So what's happening recently, the last month is I've started seeing in Facebook groups. again, this clearly isn't my market. People saying, not sure whether I have a content creator or a photographer.

Steve Vaughan (25:15.266)
Yeah, yeah.

Steve Vaughan (25:21.976)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (25:33.917)
Nick Church (25:34.228)
So we're starting to see that that's now transgressed into photography as well. That people are comparing the two and presumably those content creators saying, I'll take photos throughout the day on my phone. And again, who's to say they shouldn't do that? Because if I decided to go to, you know, it was a thing in the, you know, 10 years ago when occasionally there'd be a photographer that used their iPhone because it was a fun wacky thing to do. But that's the same thing. It'd be producing the same thing. So.

Steve Vaughan (25:45.89)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (26:01.71)
We're saying like me sticking my Osmo action on top of a pocket on top of a camera and do a little bit of video as I go along. You know, it's a thing I can do rather than necessarily something I've got and market really.

Nick Church (26:14.912)
But seeing those, differences between them, and obviously I think anyone listening is going to be able to see the difference between an iPhone photo and a good professional wedding photo. This captured a moment and a bit of emotion. And the same goes for a video. If you look at a well-constructed wedding film that's been produced to music and you've got the cuts in the right place and the energy changes and there's emotional hits and it goes back and it refers back. You've got nice sort of LJ cuts and all these things that...

Steve Vaughan (26:40.559)
Absolutely. Yeah.

Nick Church (26:42.764)
really produce an enjoyable experience. And it's not just basically moving photos stitched together, then there's a difference. you know, do we educate our couples about that? Or do we just have to leave it to see, you know, to see where it falls? And I think we'll have to wait and see. But sure, if there are some couples thinking that a 300-quid content creator, and I'm saying 300 content creator in no way to disparage what they're doing at all. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (26:47.33)
Mm.

Steve Vaughan (27:09.088)
No, no, it's a product, it's an offering, it's like a 700 quid photo booth. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nick Church (27:13.152)
Yeah, quite. And if that is now an option for photography, then I think we've got a similar challenge in front of us to justify why that's why we can charge so much more money. yeah, we'll see. think it would also just to finish it. Sorry, Stu. just before I forget, I think it, cause you mentioned Osmo and a lot of us are thinking about putting little, little action cameras on top of our, our cameras or to the side or holding them to get this BTS type content.

Steve Vaughan (27:24.44)
think you just come back down to, you said a minute, go on, yeah, yeah, go on. Yeah.

Nick Church (27:42.634)
Now maybe, maybe we'll be meeting somewhere in the middle that I think a lot of, a lot of companies that do video and photo like I do, will start going down that horrific hybrid route and do more of those because I think that's a way that you can produce a wedding film at a cheaper price than hiring a separate person to do it. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (27:42.936)
Do it, yeah.

Steve Vaughan (27:57.07)
Mm.

Steve Vaughan (28:01.89)
I do put the Osmo on top of my camera now, purely for, I do use it sometimes for the films we make, but also purely for nice little surprises for couples and things like that really.

Nick Church (28:11.852)
I heard of a wedding last year where there was a photographer, a videographer, a content creator, the videographer, sorry, the photographer had their own content creator to get BTS shots of them, behind the scenes shots of them, had this crew of people.

Steve Vaughan (28:24.707)
Wow.

Steve Vaughan (28:29.69)
That's like a big event. Now, of course, of the pods we did the last few months, we talked about our negative experience about a venue that was trying to do content creation, but didn't know what they were doing and told a couple that were going to do it and completely gone in our way and everything else. So this is a different thing I think we're talking about here. you know, because I'm a salesman, I'm a business man, first and foremost, you said it earlier, you know, that's not my customer. think...

Nick Church (28:31.679)
A massive entourage.

Nick Church (28:45.984)
Mm.

Steve Vaughan (28:56.1)
you know, what is the ideal customer, you know, the ideal customer for you and for us, guess is, you know, somebody that has a certain budget, has a certain appreciation of the quality of photography, in our case, quite often an older couple who probably aren't on TikTok. If they're on Instagram, they won't be doing reels and things really, you know, second time around, have a good time, got a bit of money. You know, one of the best weddings we've ever did really was a couple where they were second time around and

We did two, they had two weddings and we did both of them. It was a really nice, nice earner. So they're not going to be looking for, for content creation in the mind of their friends doing a bit of stuff on the phone as they go along. Um, whereas, you know, Gen Z, we used to phrase, hate, um, you know, um, perhaps slightly lower budget, perhaps that's not our market. That's not a place that we play in. Anyway, that's not my ideal customer. You know, I'm honored to be the granddad. Um, so, you know, it's not, it's not.

Nick Church (29:45.484)
Yeah.

Nick Church (29:49.228)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (29:52.111)
not a place I want to fish really. I think, thank you mate. I'm quite old to be your dad actually. Yeah. I'm just going to get my Zimmer frame. going to second time. Yeah. I'm not quite that pretty old. I've got a must be a thought now. Yeah. so I think, know, who are we to say thou shalt not have that, Brian and Groom, it's your choice, isn't it really? You know.

Nick Church (29:53.792)
You don't have to be my granddad for God's sake. No, you're not. You're not.

No, we're think slightly older, slightly older, but more handsome brother is how I'd describe you.

Nick Church (30:20.012)
Yeah, absolutely. And, and it's interesting, isn't it? It's a change to the industry that happens every now and again that these things come along and, and it will change things. And I mean, video, you know, the, the migration of the video guy being a camera, you know, big, big shoulder mounted VHS thing where we were starting to use mirrorless cameras and they use those for ages. And now basically we're all the same skill set. That's, that's been another change that's happened over the last sort of 10, 15 years. So.

Steve Vaughan (30:39.119)
Hell yeah.

Steve Vaughan (30:48.695)
we had a videographer a couple of years ago who turned up with, not the VHS thing, but pretty much a shoulder mounted, almost like thing you'd do for outside news broadcast gathering. was reading me one of them, he looked like a beast of a thing to carry around all day.

Nick Church (31:01.996)
It's funny. It's funny how slow some, some suppliers are to move with the times, but there was a chap I used to bump into quite often at weddings a few years ago that even in, I think like 2019, 2020, he was there with a big shoulder-mounted thing and he would charge him extra if they wanted HD. Otherwise it was 720p. You know, I think, how are you getting away with that? And he's rushed off his feet, absolutely rushed off his feet with bookings. So just goes to show.

Steve Vaughan (31:06.947)
Hmm.

Steve Vaughan (31:22.447)
Wow.

Steve Vaughan (31:27.215)
There go. Yeah. Yeah. It'd be 4K now, of course, if you want 4K, but or 8K even, do I say so? Yeah.

Nick Church (31:34.25)
Yeah, think, yeah, for me, 4k again is a bit like the old drone, isn't it? It used to be that you could charge a bit extra for drone, but now it's like, the only reason to have a drone is if you haven't got one, you probably don't like to get many bookings. So it's a ubiquitous thing to have.

Steve Vaughan (31:41.743)
expected. Yeah, exactly. exactly. Which takes us on, guess, to a kind of associated topic really, which, you know, were out there shooting with state the Sony cameras and the new things coming out. I'm sure this year this room is going to be a seven or six, which is going to be 80 megapixels. Possibly there's a new probably new version of the the seven.

S3. there'll be an S4, which would be like a 16 megapixel high, high sensitivity, know, videography, video focus camera 12. Yeah. So, yeah, yeah, exactly. But also, you know, photographing or videoing in a coal mine, you know, so,

Nick Church (32:15.98)
Cause the current ones to work 12, right? Yeah. So it's so it was sport AK. Yeah.

You don't see enough videos taken in coal mines. That's one of the biggest problems with the closure of all the mines, of course, is that there's many fewer videos now of coal mines.

Steve Vaughan (32:29.346)
You don't know, funny enough, no black cats in coal mines, yeah.

Steve Vaughan (32:39.909)
As a staff at your lab born and bred in the kind of chase coal field, you're absolutely right. Yeah. Yeah. I went down the coal pit as a kid. It's one of the things I vowed to never ever to do ever again in my life. One of the things I had to do as a school kid was go to the local pit to see what your fate would be if you didn't do well at school. that, uh, I love me up. Terrifying.

Nick Church (32:49.004)
Yeah.

Nick Church (32:55.068)
It was absolutely bruised. I read a book recently about, yeah, I mean, it's just so dangerous. And they, went to one, I went to one with the kids, my kids little, there's one in Wales called Big Pit, which is, they thought really hard, but yeah, they turn the lights off and it is, you've never experienced sheer darkness with those lights off. But yeah, it was, you when you think man, the amount of time you're traveling. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. The mendips, lot of the,

Steve Vaughan (33:06.892)
Yeah, I've there, yeah.

Steve Vaughan (33:15.182)
Now, well, you live on the edge of a coal field as well. Yeah, they don't summer set coal field, they? Yeah, yeah.

Nick Church (33:24.768)
Yeah, lot of the, all the mandates was very, yeah, lots of coal mines and, and tin and zinc and all sorts of, all sorts of things.

Steve Vaughan (33:30.147)
Yeah, of course, yeah. Stanham and all that stuff, yeah, as a chemist, But anyway, this isn't the coal pod, this isn't the photography pod. Where was I going with all this? Yeah, technology.

Nick Church (33:39.617)
Mm.

Nick Church (33:43.879)
Yeah, so we're thinking about technology. So we've got increasing resolution, autofocus systems getting more more advanced. At what point do we reach the point of diminishing returns where it's not really making a difference? think with that already, don't tend to use any AI focusing apart from IAutoFocus, so that's completely contrary to what I've just said. But I use any object tracking. I pretty much have the same setup.

Steve Vaughan (33:56.495)
I think we're there. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (34:06.006)
Mm. Yeah.

Nick Church (34:11.252)
I've always had on my on my cameras. Yeah, so I do use that that that was a change from mirrorless. But other than that, it's back button focus, spot, focus area. And that's, that's the setup that I teach in the photographer unleashed online course, because it's just the most reliable one. And if the the argument of selecting a kid running it some sports, you know, and then you highlight them on the screen, let it track it is great until it's not then when it's not it's too late because you

Steve Vaughan (34:12.323)
Same here. Yeah. Yeah. I do use iFocus almost to me. Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Church (34:39.466)
lost control of it, you have to change modes and stuff. that that mode always works.

Steve Vaughan (34:39.568)
Yeah, you're lost here. Well, the A7 III, which is what now again, I'm 10 years old, wasn't it really that you could store people's faces on that and it would remember who they were and it would prioritize them really. So I'm struggling to think right now anything. So we've got four Sony cameras here. The most modern being the A7C II actually, the newest is the A1 but as a design is probably the A7C II which does have AI focusing. It's what I'm talking to you on now.

I can't think of anything that I could say and say, I wish you did this. really, you know, wouldn't it be great if you could do this or isn't it.

Nick Church (35:10.784)
Mm.

But is that because we haven't ever thought about it? Is that because it's something that we don't, we don't know what we don't know, we? Like before, eye auto-focus was a thing. Was, were people thinking with their D750s when they bought a brand new D750 when it came out at Nikon DSLR, they're thinking, God, wish this was a way that this could just focus on the eye and just lock onto the eye. We probably didn't know that that was a possibility until it was. And then that's, that one feature, friend of the Podgerite had a A7.

Steve Vaughan (35:32.301)
Yeah,

Nick Church (35:42.696)
are three were the first ones I'd seen. I saw it do that. thought, right, I said, I'm changing systems. That was like an absolute game changer that things. So maybe there is other stuff that we just don't know that it could exist at the moment. And, but it does seem, and, but when you look at, auto focus as an example, I wasn't, I don't remember looking through my old Nikon decent 50 pictures and God missed. I, I miss folks on the eye all the time. I never did miss folks on the ice, just a lot easier now. So the images are the same. So it's not.

Steve Vaughan (35:49.615)
That's why we changed the Sony actually, yeah.

Steve Vaughan (36:10.787)
Yeah.

Nick Church (36:12.606)
It's not substantively changing the photos we're taking. It's just making it a bit easier.

Steve Vaughan (36:18.287)
I'm all for that. I'm all for technology making things easier on the day. Particularly as I get older and my reactions aren't quite as quick as they were. I mean everybody threw their hands up in horror and gone, how many rants were written on blogs and Reddit and things about the A75 not having open gate video. Well, really? Is it such a big deal on a serostopper? We are getting into...

stage. It's like the car industry, know, again, reminding everybody that I'm old, going back to this, the eighties, know, there were Skodas, East German pre-burning wall Skodas and Larders and Yougos and there were diet cars, you know, that pumped out tons of smoke and stuff. Now you can't buy a bad car, can you? Really? know, and it's the same with, you know, I mean, I watched the camera reviews, I watched the Pedapixel guys and all those guys, because I'm a nerd, I don't like watching stuff, you know,

Nick Church (37:03.115)
No.

Steve Vaughan (37:13.386)
Give any of us now any of the cameras that are available on the market today and we can go photograph a wedding with tomorrow. Micro four thirds, VPSC. No exactly.

Nick Church (37:17.592)
Yeah. Yeah, because they wouldn't exist otherwise, they? Which wouldn't exist. I always think it's funny about cars, because do you remember like in the 80s, that was every comedian's would have a skit about Lada or Skoda, wouldn't they? And that's interesting because you think, why did they, how did they sell such terrible cars? It also makes me think about, wasn't comedy quite poor? That that was like considered quite amusing to just keep saying about how hilarious a type of car was.

Steve Vaughan (37:30.927)
Mmm.

Steve Vaughan (37:36.003)
so cheap.

Steve Vaughan (37:43.823)
Oh, I don't know. There were some good comedians. I Jasper Carrow, Billy Connolly, all those kind of guys. What was the Welsh guy?

Nick Church (37:53.889)
Max boys. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (37:55.875)
Max Boyce, yeah, yeah, there were some good ones, yeah. And Dave Allen, of course, he would never be allowed now with his irreverent comments and swearing and sitting there with a glass of whiskey and a fag cigarette going, yeah, yeah, they were the days, but.

Nick Church (38:02.08)
know. With his glass of whiskey. Yeah. Although a lot of a lot of the the problems he had he faced later on his career was sort of anti Catholic Catholicism, sort of, you know, things from the from the church, but so yeah, have have cat or have cameras plateaued? Do you think then? Or is it just is with our current knowledge of what cameras can do, they seem to have

Steve Vaughan (38:18.105)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Church (38:31.052)
I'll tell you one thing that I could imagine it being something that comes up is when you think about what exposure mode to use, could use aperture priority, but that fails you when it's low light because it just says shutter speed drop too low. could use, shutter priority. No one uses that. You could use, that is a bit crap. You could use, manual mode with auto ISO, but that only works in poor, that only works in poor light.

Steve Vaughan (38:51.311)
Sportsphotographers do.

Steve Vaughan (38:57.913)
making that not as useful.

Nick Church (39:00.32)
doesn't work in good light because you can't run the, it doesn't, it can't run the shutter speed up. So maybe, so maybe there is an automatic mode that will take all of these things to account and do the right thing.

Steve Vaughan (39:11.555)
so a really smart program mode.

Nick Church (39:13.504)
Yeah, yeah. So you tell it what what shutters but I suppose all it's going to be doing is then just rocking the ISO back and forth, isn't it? So yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (39:21.935)
That's what it does already. I mean, Sam shoots in program mode most of the time. I use program mode quite often because it's, you know, let the camera do the work really where necessary. So, yeah.

Nick Church (39:30.06)
Mm.

Nick Church (39:34.092)
But if it could judge the scene and think, right, what movement is in this photo? Like if you come inside in a, let's say the new AI aperture priority, where you set F F five, cause you want a few people in short F six or seven, you a few people in shot inside. It's quite dark. They're moving because some of them's juggling because he's like wacky and all that. So he's juggling and the camera can then pick up, Oh, right. can't just go down to the one over the focal length on this particular shot because

There's a juggling there. So I'm to have to, you know, go to sort of forge at the second. If it could do that in real time. Yeah. If it could do that, then there may be, I don't know if I don't think program modes can do that right now.

Steve Vaughan (40:00.879)
Mm-hmm.

Warning, warning, warning changing aperture. Yeah, yeah.

Steve Vaughan (40:12.387)
No, can't, no. So what you're kind of saying is really is that the technology is still, if the sensor technology, you know, Sony dominate that, don't they? The lens technology, yes, there'll be nuances, you know, there'll be more stack sensors and things probably, but the real advances will come in software really rather than, yeah.

Nick Church (40:31.178)
Yeah, I think so because fundamentally cameras can still from 1910 or whenever they can still change the aperture, the shutter speed, the ISO now, rather than changing film. And you can decide what to focus on. That's the only four things you can do on any camera. So it's about all the technology goes into about how those two, how those four things happen and how you control them and how they interact. But fundamentally they're quite simple things. So can't think there's anything that's going to create better photo, but it

Steve Vaughan (40:39.268)
Yeah.

Stay to film, yeah.

Steve Vaughan (40:45.967)
Drop it, five.

Steve Vaughan (40:51.533)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (40:55.512)
It will be interesting to see what will come out this year. So I read the best selling camera in Japan right now is the A7C2. Interestingly, yeah, know, and I can say that's a many ways that's a flawed design. It's a crippled design. In the end, by the way, the conversation we had in the last pod was about when I went to my trips, what camera was going to take in the end, I took Samsung X106 because I just wanted something small in the end. Yeah. So I went to Dealey Plaza, by the way, I went to see where JFK was shot. Fascinating.

Nick Church (41:01.888)
That was it.

Nick Church (41:15.969)
Yeah.

Nick Church (41:23.166)
did you?

Steve Vaughan (41:23.906)
Absolutely fascinating. It's a whole museum on the sixth floor book depository where Lee Harvey ofzod or Diddy shot Kennedy or Diddy. It was really interesting actually. A place I always wanted to go to.

Nick Church (41:27.542)
Right.

Or did he? Or did he? Yeah, I bet. Yeah, that's such an iconic, just an iconic scene, isn't it? And it still looks the same. You can still like...

Steve Vaughan (41:40.847)
Yeah. Well, I wasn't there when it was happening, of course. I'm not quite that old, no. 63. I was seven months old, eight months old. It looks like it on the videos and on the, not the video, on the Zapruder film, wasn't it? The cinics that they did. Yeah. But I've always been fascinated in all the conspiracy theories. So I stood on the grassy knoll. I went around the picket fence and

Nick Church (41:46.272)
Was it 1965? 1963.

Nick Church (41:59.274)
Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

Nick Church (42:04.81)
Yeah, right.

Steve Vaughan (42:09.327)
You'd have to say if you were going to shoot a president, not that I'm planning to, in case Mr. Trump's listening. That's where I would go, rather than go to the sixth floor of a book depository with a piece of proverbial Italian gun. So we were digressing widely, but it was interesting to walk around and have a look. I also went to the Dallas Cowboy Stadium as well, which is the second biggest indoor stadium in the world. It has two...

Nick Church (42:13.972)
it.

Nick Church (42:23.702)
Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Church (42:31.104)
did you go back? That's quite a, quite a site, isn't it? It's hard to get your head around how huge.

Steve Vaughan (42:38.255)
There's two massive arches that hold it up. They're third of a mile from one end to the other. It's a third of a mile. England are playing there in the World Cup. Because they play on artificial pitch, they have to dig it all up and start laying grass down. Dallas wouldn't be somewhere I'd book on a holiday trip, but I was there on business. It was interesting to walk around for a day. No, I can't think of anything. I'm not sitting here...

Nick Church (42:43.34)
Alright

Nick Church (42:53.91)
Yeah.

Nick Church (43:01.484)
Mmm.

Steve Vaughan (43:06.062)
You know, the edge of my seat, I'm eagerly anticipating Sony's new product launches this year. We'll see what happens when it comes along. The only thing I might be tempted by as part of planning what I want to use when I stop doing weddings is the Fujifilm X-Pro4 allegedly is going to come out. So I always like the X-Pro rather than the X-T. You've got an X-T5, don't you? Yeah, I always like the X-Pro version, which is the rangefinder style one. So it's like the X100 with interchangeable lenses.

Nick Church (43:14.156)
Yeah.

Nick Church (43:23.082)
Okay.

Nick Church (43:26.539)
Yes.

Nick Church (43:34.698)
Okay, yeah, I know, yeah.

Steve Vaughan (43:37.481)
and the current one is 3 and it's quite old now and it has this really weird screen where you have to fold the screen out to be able to read it.

Nick Church (43:47.072)
you can't flip it around the other way at all. Right.

Steve Vaughan (43:48.813)
No, but on the back you've just got like a very small screen which emulates the film simulation like you used to put the film box in the camera. So to read the display you have to fold it out. if you're doing street photography it's great because you can hold it at your waist but if you wanted to do something up here you've to hold it like this or whatever. But anyway, I believe so. So the X-Pro4 would be interesting when it does finally come out.

Nick Church (43:56.374)
The film, film clip, film sticker. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I've seen that. Yeah.

Nick Church (44:09.962)
I think that half X does that as well, doesn't it? Yeah, it's got that little rear screen.

Steve Vaughan (44:19.416)
this year. yeah, I don't know. I'm glad I'm not a product manager for a camera brand or a software designer.

Nick Church (44:25.706)
Yeah, because getting, because getting that wrong, choosing the wrong set of functionality to implement, could just kill a brand, it? And I think that's why there are like the brands like Fujifilm are a little bit behind Sony, for example, because there's no, they probably aren't in the market to be a front runner. They want to see what are the, what are the people doing and doing things in their own way, but getting that functionality to be consistent. Like the, I'm sure the X-T6 that comes out, I'm sure that will be, that would

Steve Vaughan (44:31.628)
Well...

Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (44:54.414)
Yeah.

Nick Church (44:55.276)
be much more rapid in terms of any of the slightly slow focusing and things it would have.

Steve Vaughan (45:00.599)
It's a brand with incredible brand loyalty and I've still got a bit of it myself really. I guess the difference is, well, Sony is a mega corporation as well. For Fujifilm, the camera brand bit is a tiny part of their business. It's probably, I don't know, less than 5 % of what they do because Fujifilm is an enormous chemical company, a biopharmaceutical company and all that.

Nick Church (45:03.67)
Yeah.

Nick Church (45:20.651)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (45:26.243)
The imagery part I think is part of Japanese companies are very conscious of their history and their roots and everything else really. But I remember Andreas Georgiadis saying the number of people actually working in Japan designing cameras, not that many. It's tens, it's not hundreds.

Nick Church (45:39.062)
Yeah.

I suppose a bit like Olympus in the other imaging, industrial imaging and stuff that they do, the cameras was a very small concern. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (45:45.038)
Well.

or medical devices is their big business. The hospital analysers, when you go and have your bloods done, often it's the limps instruments doing it. So yeah, interesting. So good. Okay. What else are we going to talk about? That's the two of big topics we're going to cover today.

Nick Church (45:53.308)
Mm. Right.

Nick Church (46:04.408)
What focusing mode do you use? We talked about focusing a little bit earlier. What's your setup on your? Yeah. Yeah. Are you switching between AFC and AFS or you are back?

Steve Vaughan (46:09.369)
Do you mean AFC, AFS or... Well, never use AFS on a Sony. There's no need to. Never,

Nick Church (46:19.735)
You're just moving the focus point to wherever you want it. So you're never holding recomposing. So you're not using back button focus.

Steve Vaughan (46:23.471)
I.

No, I've stopped doing that ever since the days of Sony. I used to do that with Fuji. So my standard setup is I have not the wider screen, but the second box. they are there. And I point the camera in the vague direction of the person I want to focus on. And then I've got my AF put and programmed to eye focus. So I basically just point it roughly at the brides over there. Bang, locks onto the eye immediately. And then I just hold it.

Nick Church (46:40.225)
Yep.

Nick Church (46:49.301)
Yeah.

Nick Church (46:56.106)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (46:57.007)
Until I stopped taking pictures of her really or him really. then I'm, you know, oppositionary in the box where I wanted to be, you know, in terms of obviously not necessarily set, set to frame, but focus and recompose. I've stopped doing that really ever since we went to Sony really, unless I'm doing landscape or something. Yeah. What about you?

Nick Church (46:59.926)
Yeah.

Nick Church (47:03.808)
Yeah.

Nick Church (47:13.868)
Well, do when it's similar with the auto focus or have that on one of the rebounds that are which one just my thumb goes to it. I F there's one effort. There's the hold and yeah, so that that will just lock on to his off and that's I'm pressing holding that in which case it's locking onto the eye. The other one I always set a spot, the smallest spot and just use a, a, re traditional back button focus. I just, just for me, I just find that

Steve Vaughan (47:20.431)
You

There's an AE lock button as well.

Steve Vaughan (47:34.916)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (47:39.991)
right

Nick Church (47:43.052)
Because all of the, all of the other modes, there are scenarios where it's problematic. Like you've got less, let's say you're a sports photographer and you've got a load of runners coming past you or motorbikes coming past you. You want to focus on the bit they're going to be at, and then you want to let go and you want it just, and then as they come through, you want to just hit high speed burst. Whereas if you're doing anything like trying to position the frame or click on the screen or, you know, do anything.

Steve Vaughan (47:49.124)
Mm.

Nick Church (48:12.266)
At that point you've missed it. And so I think, probably sports shooters are probably using back up focus almost entirely for that reason. imagine landscape photographers use it because you can then find your hyper focal distance, set it on there. Lock, let go of the back button, wait for half an hour of a cup of tea, wait for the perfect sunrise and just take a load of shots. And you know that focus isn't changing every time. yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. So, yeah, I think.

Steve Vaughan (48:13.741)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (48:27.129)
Correct.

Steve Vaughan (48:35.724)
or the rain, more like in this country, was still.

Nick Church (48:41.77)
And I don't do much of those things, but I do like a system where I can just use one setup for everything. So everything's an AFC and I just decide if I want AFS type behavior by either letting go of the back button or keeping it held down, in which case it's like AFC. just, so you could be taking a picture of a, bouquet at a wedding. And we did a lot of wedding chat today, but bouquet wedding and holding back button, focus on that. Let go recompose.

Steve Vaughan (48:53.911)
Yeah, I can say that. Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Church (49:08.756)
like AFS behavior, then suddenly some flower girls start running towards me, hold it down again, point at them and they're in focus and or in that case, I might just hold the auto focus button.

Steve Vaughan (49:15.16)
Yeah, yeah. So the only variety I would do to what I've just said is if obviously like a bride and groom coming or a bride and the father coming down the aisle. So then I will go to a small point, obviously, just to make sure you got them and then. Yeah.

Nick Church (49:26.892)
make sure you are getting out. Especially if there's any distractions in the front like their partner, their bride or groom or whatever in the front.

Steve Vaughan (49:33.315)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And then I've got it set so it will track, although I've never needed to interrupt, but I've got it set so it will track. And I just bang off eight frames a second or something like that, really. But AFS on Sony's is lousy, really. It wobbles back and forth quite a bit, really. don't know. Yeah.

Nick Church (49:46.41)
Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Church (49:52.276)
Yeah. Yeah. Hunts a little bit. which, which all contrast detect, you know, systems do. if you are now, don't know, I think it depends on model, whether that send because one advice on DSLR of using, even if you've got like a D850 or Canon equivalent, know, where you've got almost the whole screen. Yeah. So with a really large number of focus points that you can select, the center one is still usually better as to you usually that.

Steve Vaughan (50:12.463)
5D Mark IV, something like that, yeah.

Steve Vaughan (50:20.387)
Hmm. Hmm.

Nick Church (50:21.088)
that cross type this is going to be better. So there are, there are advantages there as well of having back button focus where you can just hold recompose with that front, that front thing. definitely, I definitely seem to find on my a seven fours, definitely on my seven three. And I think on my seven four as well, that if I'm using some focus point on the edge, it's not as accurate as if it's hunting as soon as I just press it, jump to the middle locks on straight away. that. Yeah. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (50:43.992)
Yeah.

I think the phase detect points are more central, aren't they, in the contrasted ends. I think the AFS wobble isn't because it's contract, it's just the way single point autofocus works. It goes back and forward and this confirms that in between the go back and go forward is where it needs to focus really.

Nick Church (51:03.052)
Yeah, that is contract. But it has to go. It has to, it's just very in the focus, isn't it? And it has to go, it only knows it's at its sharpest if it has, if it goes beyond it and then comes back a little bit. Yeah. So, yeah. So I suppose when I say hunting, that is hunting, hunting, I suppose more usually is it continues to do that forever. And that's just, which I thought I was filming a funeral once, um, a live stream of your funeral and, um, realized I'd set it on, I thought I'll just set this on face.

Steve Vaughan (51:12.804)
That's right. Yeah, it's exactly it. And on the

Steve Vaughan (51:18.448)
It's just how it works. Yeah.

Yeah.

Nick Church (51:32.448)
You know, the, the, the, the pre-focus face detects wages are focused on the person that's doing the readings. thought I don't want to get focused exactly accurate. So I'll just stick on FAA F nine or something. And it was just hunting throughout the whole, the whole thing. Cause it was just, there wasn't enough contrast. Everything looked sharp to the camera. So it was just moving it backwards, forwards all the time. Luckily I delivered, I was recording in 4k delivered it 10 AP. It was fine. That hunting was because it was such a small aperture. The depth field was so big that the hunting, luckily the lens, it wouldn't have been my

Steve Vaughan (51:34.756)
Mm. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (51:49.657)
Yeah.

Nick Church (52:01.962)
GM because that would have the, the focus, what's it called? The, where it zooms a bit when it's focusing.

Steve Vaughan (52:07.952)
Focus assist,

Nick Church (52:10.976)
Now there's a term, it's like a negative thing like, like you don't on the lens. So when you, when you focus, it also zooms a little bit as well. You know, it's not. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So it's late. Yeah. Focus breathing. Yeah. So luckily it didn't exhibit that always I'd have been screwed, but as it was, because it didn't that whatever lens that was didn't have folks breathing. The fact it was, it was hunting a little bit once rendered down to 1080p. can see it. Thank goodness.

Steve Vaughan (52:13.947)
you mean on the lens or the camera?

Steve Vaughan (52:20.72)
I feel like it's breathing. Yeah. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (52:36.9)
Back to what we need a camera with. That's something I quite like using and I started using when I was doing some filming last year. They've used the focus mapping thing on the Sony. So you know where you can have focus peaking where you get on manual focus, you get like a shimmering when it's in focus. With the newer Sony's you have focus mapping. So you basically get colored blocks all over the screen. And I forget which one it is, but if you get blue blocks, it's...

Nick Church (52:46.891)
No.

Nick Church (52:54.444)
Mm.

Steve Vaughan (53:06.414)
it's out of focus in the foreground. you get orange boxes out of focus on the foreground, and when you get clarity, it's when it's in focus. And it works really, really well. And that's something which I think only Sony's do. Focus mapping, think it's called. I'll do that a lot, yeah.

Nick Church (53:08.384)
Yep. Okay.

Nick Church (53:14.432)
That's good.

Oh, yeah, because I use folks peeking often. But you can guarantee I'd be like the world's worst cinematic focus puller because I go the wrong way. You'd have thought it'd be 5050. I go the wrong way every time. But if you've got a visual guide about which way you need to go, that'd be quite, that'd be pretty handy.

Steve Vaughan (53:27.288)
me too.

Yeah, that's exactly what it's for. Yeah. I think it's cool. It looks like you got a game of Jenga going on your screen, basically all these blocks. But when it's clear, you've got the focus nailed really. there is room for new technology, certainly. I think we've just about done really in terms of the list. think we, yeah.

Nick Church (53:37.281)
Yeah.

Yeah. All right, OK. I might look at that.

Nick Church (53:46.188)
Mm.

Nick Church (53:49.996)
I think we have it's yeah, we've we've we've rabid it on for 54 minutes. Yeah, which given that there's been no guests that we've actually been able to interview this given us useful content and interesting content. This has been an absolute success as a triumph. It'd be it'd in the guardians an absolute triumph five stars. That'd be

Steve Vaughan (53:57.166)
Yeah, accounting. Yeah. Yeah. So.

Steve Vaughan (54:08.194)
It has, a roaring success. The absolute triumph. Well, the reason we have to be guests to be fair is that we've both been super busy. I've been traveling the world and I continue to do so with my sales trading business. So I'm in Amsterdam next week for a couple of days, no time for photography, unfortunately. And then two weeks after that I'm in Singapore and I will have some time then for a bit of walk around. Second time I've been there, there's a great Chinatown and everything in Singapore. But yes, if you are listening to us thinking I'd love to be a guest on the show, then yes, we'd love to hear from you really. You don't have to be...

Nick Church (54:27.506)
wow, yeah.

Steve Vaughan (54:38.221)
a mega superstar photographer. You could be somebody who's just starting off your journey. We'd love to hear from somebody who's just having a go at being a wedding photographer or just an enthusiast photographer who's just passionate about what they do really. You don't have to be a mega star.

Nick Church (54:42.124)
Yeah.

Nick Church (54:53.152)
So we've got coming up somebody of that caliber exactly, which is one of my, somebody that I'm mentoring who is, really lovely Brazilian guy called Matt. He's actually shooting a wedding in Brazil next week. And I thought that'd be really interesting to hear his experience, how he got on on his first wedding shoot, especially somewhere where it's like a three day wedding, like they do over there. So that'd be fascinating. And, if people are interested in what the benefits might be of

Steve Vaughan (55:10.608)
That'd be super.

Nick Church (55:19.884)
mentoring if you're at that party business whether it's me or anyone else then he'd probably be quite good for that.

Steve Vaughan (55:24.048)
That's a great idea. Yeah. I look forward to hearing from them. Certainly. Okay. Well, Nick, I'll let you go back and work out your mortgage calculations and start flat packing the studio. I've got a quiet day tomorrow. I've got a 4 a.m. start on Monday because I've got a lot of training calls for somebody in Singapore as prelude for the classroom stuff. So I'm going to have a quiet weekend this weekend as well. No weddings for us this weekend. So, but

Nick Church (55:30.25)
Yeah, thanks for that. Start deflating myself in my studio within it. Vacuum pack myself up. Yeah.

Nick Church (55:48.598)
same.

We're on holiday next week. we'll at four o'clock in on Monday morning, we will be in Heathrow airport. Yeah. No, get no is he through here? Not Galwick. Antigua. It's going to Antigua. got a really good value deal. So think the hotel probably be quite crap. But Dawn's got family out there. So go and visit them. Who cares? Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (56:02.544)
Where going? wow. Okay.

Steve Vaughan (56:14.32)
Absolutely. Yeah, sounds great. Well, I have a great time. So I guess we'll be back in a couple of weeks in that case. yeah, so yeah. Thank you for listening to the list. Don't forget to give us a review on Apple or Spotify. We are trying to catch up with the YouTube channels as well. So bear with us. We'll get more and more of the video out onto YouTube as well. Whenever you are photographing this weekend, if you're in the UK, don't forget to take your raincoat and your brolly, but wherever you are photographing this weekend, have fun doing so. We'll talk to you again soon. Happy shooting.

Nick Church (56:17.398)
Thank you. Yes. Yeah.

Yeah, thanks everyone.

Nick Church (56:40.81)
Bye bye.