Latest / The Photography & Video Show Podcast / 29: Volcanoes, icebergs and polar bears with Jeroen van Niewenhove, Sony A7 V and Canon retro camera rumours with James Artaius plus NEC show updates

Transcript

29: Volcanoes, icebergs and polar bears with Jeroen van Niewenhove, Sony A7 V and Canon retro camera rumours with James Artaius plus NEC show updates · The Photography & Video Show Podcast

• 0:09
  David McClelland: Hello and welcome to the Photography and Video Show podcast, your monthly fix of developing camera news and insights from world-leading photographers and filmmakers.
• 0:19
  David McClelland: It's me, David McClelland.
• 0:20
  David McClelland: It's January 2026 and coming up this month.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: With a drone, it's like you're you have this tripod that you can put down in a 3D environment.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: You can literally be anywhere you want in a 3D space, and that opens up a world of possibilities that you just don't have with a camera.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Landscape photographers are usually used to going to a landscape, and at best, you're waiting for the weather conditions to change, but the landscape will always stay the same.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: But now you have to imagine that the weather conditions are changing, but the landscape in front of you is changing as well.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: And that's something that can be very tricky.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's in a way it's almost like you're using wildlife photography techniques on the landscape.
• 1:06
  David McClelland: Award-winning volcano chasing photographer Jeroen van Nieuwenhofer shares how he captures dramatic images of polar bears, icebergs, and molten lava from the very edges of planet Earth.
• 1:19
  David McClelland: The in-person photography and video show is only a matter of weeks away.
• 1:24
  David McClelland: Saturday 14th till Tuesday, the 17th of March 2026, at the NEC in Birmingham.
• 1:30
  David McClelland: Tickets are now on sale, and Hazel and Ruth from the show are here to tell us what to expect.
• 1:36
  David McClelland: So another packed podcast for you.
• 1:38
  David McClelland: And joining me fresh from packing up his Christmas decorations is Digital Camera World Editor-in-Chief, James Arteas.
• 1:45
  David McClelland: Hello, James.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_03: Happy New Year.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_03: Happy New Year, David.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_03: Lovely to see you as always.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_03: I hope you had a lovely holidays.
• 1:52
  David McClelland: Yeah.
• 1:53
  David McClelland: Forgotten about already.
• 1:54
  David McClelland: Sad to say, uh, it goes all too quickly.
• 1:57
  David McClelland: But New Year it is.
• 1:59
  David McClelland: Um, any New Year camera or photography resolutions for you, James?
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, and I hope I can stick to it this year because I failed miserably last year.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_03: There was a lovely black and white photograph I was looking at, and I was thinking, oh, that would make a lovely print on the wall.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_03: And then I realised whether they're any good or not.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_03: I have quite a lot of, I think lovely black and white photographs that I've taken.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_03: And they sort of fester on my hard drive and live on my phone and never really get seen anywhere.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_03: And I really want to make an effort this year to print out some of my work and maybe hang it, maybe hang it in the loo or on the wall in the lounge or wherever it best befits.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_03: But it feels like I need to sort of unlock and unleash some of my stuff that I've taken because it's it's just a crime that we take thousands and thousands of frames and they never get seen by anybody.
• 2:43
  David McClelland: That sounds like a very wholesome, very admirable New Year's resolution.
• 2:48
  David McClelland: In a way, it's related to one that I've considered, but I'm not going to do, which is one of those photo a day challenges, uh, you know, popping i.e.
• 2:58
  David McClelland: all of the stuff that I take, actually posting it publicly on, well, I guess Instagram it would have to be.
• 3:04
  David McClelland: But I've been thinking about it and I really well, I've already broken the resolution because here we are.
• 3:09
  David McClelland: Um, but I I think there's a reason why, because it it's it's not for me.
• 3:14
  David McClelland: There's definitely something about building up that creative muscle and the discipline about posting something every day.
• 3:20
  David McClelland: But I think I know what I like, I know what I like making images of, and yeah, maybe I should think a bit broader, but I know what I like making images of.
• 3:28
  David McClelland: Um, and I'm not I'm not there every day.
• 3:31
  David McClelland: I don't do the things that I enjoy every day.
• 3:33
  David McClelland: I'm I'm doing day-to-day stuff, and yes, I could try something different and take creative images of the front of a MacBook or whatever it is, but I that's not what I want to spend my time doing.
• 3:45
  David McClelland: So maybe I will do something, whether it's a weekly thing, because even posting weekly would be good for me or on Instagram, um, just to try and create that bit of rhythm and of discipline and and something else.
• 4:00
  David McClelland: But certainly the photo a day thing, I I just I think I'm gonna fail.
• 4:05
  David McClelland: Well, I already have failed, but even if I tried, I I just knew it would cause me more stress and maybe more harm than good.
• 4:10
  David McClelland: Have you ever done one of those, you know, challenge yourself to make an image, post an image, share an image every day week or whatever?
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean, uh again, a very, very failed attempt to do a project 365 or whatever they call these things.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_03: And and like, you know, as you say, a lot of the times you were just not in an environment where any kind of creativity can be summoned, uh, and there's only so many times you can take a macro picture of the plant pot on your wall or anything like that.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_03: I think aiming for 52 weeks or 52 images is a really good start because then that means you've got you've got seven days.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_03: In one of those days, you're likely to be somewhere where there's something that captures your mind or gives you some you know canvas to paint on.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, one a week I think is a is a much more achievable goal.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_03: So maybe that's the thing to aim for.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_03: I can just about pull it out of the bag, I think.
• 4:54
  David McClelland: Yeah, achievable and enjoyable.
• 4:56
  David McClelland: It it feels like it's uh again a wholesome endeavour, a wholesome challenge.
• 5:00
  David McClelland: And I do not want to be, and God bless them, friends of mine, very close friends of mine who are much more into social media and make their living through social media, feeling that the machine is turning your handle rather than you turning the machine's handle.
• 5:16
  David McClelland: Uh that's that's not a happy place to be.
• 5:19
  David McClelland: So that's not a new year's resolution.
• 5:21
  David McClelland: But, James, if you were to push me into a New Year's resolution, I would say that my New Year's resolution is 33.0.
• 5:33
  David McClelland: Why?
• 5:34
  David McClelland: Why, why?
• 5:34
  David McClelland: Because that is the number of megapixels in the all new Sony A7 Mark V, which I think we should talk about for our news section today.
• 5:43
  David McClelland: Um, because this surfaced, what, four or five weeks ago as we're recording.
• 5:47
  David McClelland: Sony, it avoided that uh noisy Tectember sort of September-October period, didn't it?
• 5:55
  David McClelland: And it found some clear air right at the beginning of December, surprisingly, to launch its next generation of an already very, very successful entry-level big rabbit's ears there, deliberately so, uh, full frame camera.
• 6:10
  David McClelland: Uh, you've had some fun writing about this and experiencing the uh A7 V world.
• 6:17
  David McClelland: Tell me, tell me what you've made of it.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_03: As you I think you you've already hit the nail on the head with the with the air quotes with the rabbit ears.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_03: So once upon a time, the A7 line was introduced to be the entry level into the full-frame mirrorless ecosystem.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_03: And that's really, you know, Sony kind of built its empire on the back of that camera and its successive models.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_03: I think all the way up to the A7 III, you could still reasonably make the case that it was, you know, a uh an entry-level or a beginner kind of model.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_03: And with the A7 IV, Sony kind of took a sidestep away from that.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_03: And I think the A75, we've really just taken a big double-footed jump into the puddle of actually this is quite a serious camera, which is not to its discredit, it's just an interesting observation.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_03: There's a lot of pro-level features.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, there was something when I was talking to Sony, they were talking about things like FTP capability and you know.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, and that's not something that a beginner photographer needs to concern themselves with.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_03: All these sort of workflow things.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_03: The specs, of course, there's a lot of high, high spec stuff there.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, it's really fascinating to me that the market is very different from when the original A7 came out, I concede that point.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_03: But it's just, yeah, it's very notable.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_03: A constant refrain that we have is that there are less and less entry-level cameras being made and that are available today.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, this kind of just feels like it's really sort of tugging that large boat towards uh the full frame.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_03: I was gonna say the full frame ice at the uh the high-end iceberg.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_03: That's probably not the right thing to say.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_03: But um, yeah, it's just, you know, I I think I think about the poor folks today who are looking for an affordable entry-level camera, and I don't even know where I'd point them.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_03: But that's beside the point.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_03: Um, the A75 is a camera I would point people towards, and it's very capable.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_03: I guess it's ruffled some feathers in some respects, maybe with it sort of uh pushing towards the pro end, and people are expecting, oh, well, if why hasn't it got more of this or more of that?
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_03: Kind of overlooking that it's it's an incredibly capable camera.
• 8:05
  David McClelland: Right, so uh A7 IV, you mentioned how that was a kind of step uh diagonally up, maybe depending on how you visualize these things for it from where the three was.
• 8:16
  David McClelland: Putting the A7 IV, which is still on sale for a very attractive price, we should add next door to the A75.
• 8:24
  David McClelland: What is the leap if this is moving further towards not being an entry level but being you know a very solid mid-range, however you you might choose to position it?
• 8:34
  David McClelland: What are we getting now for?
• 8:35
  David McClelland: What is an extra what 1200, 1300 pounds or whatever it is?
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and I mean I mean to that point as well, I think Sony is always very canny in keeping its uh predecessor models on the market for a sustained period.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_03: So perhaps me being curmudgeonally and saying, well, the A75 isn't very beginner-friendly.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_03: Um, well, they do have more junior models in the line that you can you can still buy actively.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_03: So that's a point worth making.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_03: Um we don't have more firepower in the conventional sense.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_03: We're still talking about at its at its heart a 33 megapixel full-frame sensor.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_03: A big difference with the A7 V is that it's now partially stacked.
• 9:11
  David McClelland: Partially stacked?
• 9:12
  David McClelland: What does partially stacked make?
• 9:14
  David McClelland: Now you you you led me into asking that question.
• 9:17
  David McClelland: What is it?
• 9:18
  David McClelland: Sure, I've won the contact.
• 9:19
  David McClelland: Fully stacked.
• 9:19
  David McClelland: Do I want fully stacked?
• 9:21
  David McClelland: Partially stacked doesn't sound quite as good.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_03: Nor is it.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_03: So it's a curious technology.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_03: We first saw this with the Nikon uh Z63 or Z63, depending on where you're listening.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_03: So the stacked sensor technology essentially sort of sandwiches more um uh semiconductors to produce faster readout speeds.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_03: So a fully stacked sensor, as we see on flagship cameras like the R1 and you know the Sony A12 and such forth, um they basically give you you you'll know this very well, Dave.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_03: You notice it more on video than in stills.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_03: If you were to record a video footage of a lamppost and you sort of panned the camera back and forth, you would get that sort of wobbly rolling shutter.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_03: The rolling shutter, exactly.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so a partially stacked sensor does a really good job of mitigating the rolling shutter in particular.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_03: It gives you faster readout speeds in general, which will be something I'll come on to in a moment as an upside of that sensor, but it doesn't have the full, the full cost of a fully stacked sensor.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_03: So you know it's really fully stacked sensor, is a is very different sensor architecture.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_03: So if you are, again, you're in that sort of middle ground between uh between pro and whatever the the the lower end of that is, you may not want a fully stacked sensor, but partially stacked gives you improved performance in terms of rolling shutter and also in terms of burst speed.
• 10:33
  David McClelland: So And just to be very clear though, just to be very clear, yes, on video the rolling shutter is it can be noticeable if you're taking an image out of a train window or you know, on m on a safari and you're and you're in a vehicle and it's moving quickly, you might get the slanty thing.
• 10:48
  David McClelland: But that also plays out with still images as well.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, so with the A7 IV, um so the seal the burst ceiling was 10 frames per second.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_03: So that's again, in and of itself, a a lower frame rate will also mitigate the rolling shutter effect because you're taking less frames and there's yeah, but um the more frames you take, the more obvious the sort of disparity is going to be in the wobble.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_03: So the A75 can now shoot at 30 frames a second, which is very respectable.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_03: Uh you know, again, rivaling a lot of pro cameras and actually beating some pro cameras in terms of frame rate.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_03: But again, that's definitely above the remit of what a what an entry-level user might require.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_03: Uh where we're really seeing the the big upgrade um is in terms of the video sort of spec, which again is something that's that's in your wheelhouse.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_03: And I also think it's this is the area where folks have kind of thought the long and short of it is the A75 does not have open gate, which I think lots of folks were expecting.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_03: If you're wondering what open gate is, and if we haven't explained before, it basically means you get the full sensor readout when you're recording video.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_03: So typically video records in a sort of 16 by 9 widescreen frame, um, and you sort of lose the top and bottom, um, but a full uh open gate records the full uh height of the sensor readout.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_03: So a lot of folks were expecting, mainly because that's something Panasonic's been doing for a long time with the Lumix cameras, and it's something that Canon has done recently with the EOS R6 Mark III, which is kind of the direct competitor for the A75.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_03: So I think a lot of folks are thinking, oh, well, if anyone can, Canon can, Canon did, will Sony do the same thing?
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_03: And no, they didn't, which, as I say, has ruffled some feathers, but again, this is intended to be an entry-level or at least intermediate kind of camera, and I don't think people've really I don't think a lot of people need open gate, if I'm completely honest.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_03: Um but certainly the person who would in theory be looking at the A75 probably doesn't need open gate.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know what your thoughts are on the technology.
• 12:34
  David McClelland: Well, I mean that that ability, you know, so it's an upgrade in terms of video because you've got 4K, 120 frames a second now.
• 12:42
  David McClelland: So that's certainly an upgrade from where you were, I I believe, with the with a four.
• 12:46
  David McClelland: But like you say, it's not that 6k, whatever open gate.
• 12:51
  David McClelland: Where that comes into its own is the ability to reframe, you know, if you did want to get a 9x16 vertical video frame without, you know, without having to uh kind of down down sample dat down res, then open gate gives you that flexibility.
• 13:06
  David McClelland: You don't have that with this.
• 13:08
  David McClelland: But my question to you is given that there's another camera that Sony sells, which is more squarely towards the videographer, the the filmmaker side, I'm thinking of the FX3 and well the FX30 that I'm filming on here today, which are ripe, ripe for an upgrade, I would say.
• 13:28
  David McClelland: Is this Sony maybe just positioning its cameras a little bit cannally so that it's not eating, you know, it's not stepping on its own toes when whatever's going to be coming out later on in 2026 eventually lands?
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_03: I think so.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_03: And we may also see, because as we've discussed, this the A75 sort of arriving at the tail end of 2025 kind of took a few people by surprise because we'd have thought this might be a 2026 product, but there was also talk that it was due to arrive maybe earlier in 2025, and it was caught up in whether it was tariffs or all the other sort of machinations of the camera industry.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_03: So there is also a line of thought that this might be not they might not be um sort of aligning the product lines in a sort of thoughtful, clever, calculated way.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_03: It might just be this was what they planned last year and now it's FX3 time, it's just going to be you know hap happy happenstance, so things line up.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_03: But you're right, I think the FX3 series, which we mustn't forget, is actually, even though the FX3 is a 2021 camera, it's based on the guts of the A7S III, which is a 2015 camera.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_03: So it's really quite an old system, which speaks to how good it is because it's 12 megapixels, blah blah blah blah.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_03: Doesn't have internal RAW, all that sort of stuff, but it's it's still the best-selling camera by far.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_03: So, yes, long and short of that is it the FX3 is very much due an update, um, as indeed is the A7S line.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_03: So it would make perfect sense to me that actually the sort of the curmudgeness people are feeling towards, oh well, the A75 doesn't have open gates, it would make perfect sense for the FX3, as and when it were to appear, I would expect sometime this year, I might be wrong, for that to be where Sony sort of is actually, well, we're gonna open the gates, open the floodgates, and here's open gates.
• 15:08
  David McClelland: Uh and I guess a couple of other real practical differences that people shooting on the five would notice over the four.
• 15:14
  David McClelland: Um, I saw the battery life as well, quoted as 750 frames on a full charge versus 520.
• 15:23
  David McClelland: That's that's quite a leap there.
• 15:25
  David McClelland: Same batteries, I understand, same batteries, but just more efficient.
• 15:29
  David McClelland: And then the autofocus, you've got a new processor in there.
• 15:32
  David McClelland: So the subject detect autofocus is going to be a real winner for those who are, I don't know, wildlife that things like that.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean it's got the dedicated AI chip now, which um again speaks to that this is not the entry-level camera, because that's something we've seen previously in the higher-end Sony bodies.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_03: Incredible uh advancement of the autofocus capability.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, Sony has great autofocus anyway, but this now possesses sort of predictive, I've forgotten Sony's name for it.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_03: It kind of predicts body mechanics, that sort of thing.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_03: So if you're if you're photographing a sprinter, it has been deep learned in the you know where the body will move, that sort of thing.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_03: What it also does, which I think is quite clever, slash has an asterisk by it, is the we now have AI white balance.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_03: And of course, as Sony users will know, colours are not always Sony's forte.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_03: They can be a little bit sort of hit and miss when it comes to sort of um reds and and having a green cast and things.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_03: So again, there's been deep learning involved in training this camera or all of these cameras using the processor on what a typical scene might look like with different skin tones and things.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_03: So hopefully that will sort of help improve Sony's reputation in the colour sphere.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, it is worth noting that with the with the with the video side, because we've got the 4K 120, which which is cropped, I think that's a super 35 crop or an APS C crop, depending on what school of thinking your brain comes from.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_03: Um, the full fat, the 4K, the 4K60, does also have a minor crop.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_03: So in theory, all of the video is cropped.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_03: Sony didn't tell me exactly what the I think it's it's you know, it's one point something, it's tiny, tiny crop, it's not a big crop.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_03: But it is there nonetheless.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_03: So despite having a partially stacked sensor, there is still kind of a little bit of reframing involved to sort of maintain that top speed.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_03: Which again is to me is is neither here nor there.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_03: But I know to the to the video first folks, they're looking at all these things going, oh well it's not this isn't a cinema camera, blah blah blah blah blah.
• 17:17
  David McClelland: It's not meant to be.
• 17:18
  David McClelland: It's not meant to be.
• 17:19
  David McClelland: It's supposed to be an entry-level camera.
• 17:22
  David McClelland: But as a high, you know, as as a hybrid camera, it's got some stuff there, but yeah, you're right.
• 17:28
  David McClelland: The uh the the R63 for a true hybrid shooter, particularly if you're already in the Canon ecosystem, there is more flexibility there with the open gate capability, perhaps, than what the A75 is is able to offer.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_03: It is, I mean, you know, it's it's it's it's hard to have a conversation.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_03: You know, we're talking about the A75, it's hard to talk about that in isolation because the R63 is out.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_03: They have roughly the same resolution, one's 32.5 megapixel on the Canon side, Sony is 33 megapixel with a partially stacked, so slightly faster sensor.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_03: Canon's got a little bit better stabilization, but it's really the video, the open gate.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_03: So the R6 Mark III has 7K 60p.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_03: It does OpenGate 4K 30, uh, it's internal RAW, so real and but but but the asterisk with that is because this is the now we're getting into the weeds of things, because the R6 Mark III is the hybrid photo camera, of course it has no active cooling system, so if you're recording open gates, you're going to have limitations on it's you're about half an hour of sort of high-end videography.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_03: Whereas with the EOS C50, which is the same sensor, same architecture, but it's the video hybrid that has an active cooling system.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_03: So it's not unlimited shooting, but it's you know much more sensible um, you know, videography cinematography type shooting.
• 18:37
  David McClelland: One of the stars from IBC back in September last year, alongside the uh the fruits of the Nikon and Red partnership finally landing.
• 18:48
  David McClelland: Um, there's so many more things I want to say, but I want to move on to talk about one more, maybe 2026 camera.
• 18:55
  David McClelland: I should say that there's also a new kit lens that comes with the uh A75.
• 19:01
  David McClelland: It's a 2870, not unfortunately a nice super fast uh f2.8, but it's uh f3.5 to 5.6, designed to work with the faster autofocus on the A75.
• 19:15
  David McClelland: So that that feels like it's uh a really nice complementary if you don't have any lenses already and you maybe you're moving uh into this.
• 19:22
  David McClelland: That sounds good.
• 19:24
  David McClelland: Um 2899.
• 19:26
  David McClelland: There are other deals available out there for the five, and for the four, uh 1,699, which is a stonkingly good price.
• 19:37
  David McClelland: It's great value.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_03: It's great value.
• 19:40
  David McClelland: Okay, okay.
• 19:41
  David McClelland: Well, if the A75 feels like a camera that we might have expected sometime in well, 2026 this year rather than in December 2025, what else, James, can we look forward to?
• 19:53
  David McClelland: Maybe with some degree of confidence in the year ahead.
• 19:56
  David McClelland: Canon, our friends at Canon, they've got a big anniversary for a much beloved camera coming up, haven't they?
• 20:02
  David McClelland: And what do you think they might be busy right now wrapping up to help us celebrate that anniversary with?
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_03: So this is this is not based on anything Canon has said, because they will be very cross if uh if we infer otherwise.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_03: But Canon has been very careful to not say, no, we are not doing this, which in Canon speak kind of you re- you can read between the lines.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_03: In April is the 50th anniversary of the Canon AE One, the very, very beloved old film SLR.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_03: Uh a lot of people's first, I mean it's my first camera, um, you know, from way back in the you know the nine 1970s, 1980s, it was hugely, hugely, hugely transformatively popular.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and it's the 50th anniversary.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_03: Now, as you and I and everybody knows, retro cameras are, I was gonna say they're all the rage, but I mean they they have been all the rage for some time.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_03: Fujifilm has kind of, you know, that's its stock in trade in in retro cameras.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_03: Nikon has found enormous success with the ZFC.
• 20:57
  David McClelland: The ZF certainly for a few years now, which is kind of built up this clamour, I think.
• 21:03
  David McClelland: Surely Canon, with its heritage with the AE1, surely it's going to do something.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_03: Well, that's it.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_03: And every time I've been lucky enough to speak to the Japanese execs at Canon, I've asked a different version of this question, which is like, oh, aren't retro cameras wonderful?
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, look at the the rest of the market doing retro cameras.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_03: And then at one point I think I asked um one of the Canon execs um what his favourite camera was.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_03: Luckily he said the AE1, and I sort of followed up with like, oh, you know, it would be great to have a sort of uh you know modern version of that with mirrorless gubbins inside and sort of he he gave me a very diplomatic answer, as he's given to many members of the press, sort of saying, Well, you know, that would be great, or you know, we we we listen to our customers.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_03: They basically didn't say no.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_03: So I think it's a pretty safe bet that come April we might be seeing.
• 21:48
  David McClelland: April is is what we're thinking about.
• 21:50
  David McClelland: Unfortunately, just after the photography show in Birmingham in March.
• 21:54
  David McClelland: But when April does come around, I guess there's two ways of what does it look like.
• 21:59
  David McClelland: There's the Physical form, isn't there?
• 22:01
  David McClelland: What does the AE1 look like?
• 22:04
  David McClelland: Is it gonna or well, what will the new version of it?
• 22:07
  David McClelland: I know you've got a name for what you think it might be called.
• 22:10
  David McClelland: And then what does it look like on the inside?
• 22:13
  David McClelland: What kind of camera is it gonna be for whom?
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_03: So I've been calling it, I think I I mean it it's but it's been picked up online, so I'm sure I'm not the only person with the sort.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_03: I've been calling it the the Canon RE1, sort of reflecting the R mount.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_03: It never had an A mount, but the AE1 sort of sort of automatic exposure one.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm just calling it the RE1 because it's got to have an R in it because it will have Canon mirrorless technology.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_03: It will be an R mount camera.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_03: I'm saying it will.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_03: If it does materialise, this currently unicorn camera, it will be uh an RF mount camera.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_03: It would seem astonishing for it to be an RFS, an APSC camera.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_03: It's gonna be full frame, it has to be 35mm, if for no other reason the AE1 was a 35mm film camera.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_03: Um so externally I think we can pretty safely expect it to look like uh a tribute to the AE1, much as Nikon did with the ZF and the ZFC.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_03: It's going to be styled pretty much like the old cameras were.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_03: Out of interest, in the middle of, I want to say it was 2023, Canon sent out some surveys in Asia about which cameras um consumers might like to see.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_03: And on there was like the Canonet and various other Canon bodies, and of course the AE1 was on there.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_03: So which is why all of this you join the various dots, you you you come to the conclusion that I've come to.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_03: So I think we can expect it to look a lot like an AE1, maybe with a few slightly more modern bells and whistles.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_03: Internally, we are probably looking from from the scuttle butt from the stuff that I've I've heard, we're probably looking at the same sensor that is in the aforementioned R6 Mark III.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_03: Oh brilliant.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_03: A 32.5 megapixel sensor, from what I understand, and this would also make sense given that this is kind of, you know, a tribute show to the beloved film camera of your, this will not be a video spec body.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm sure it'll record basic 4K, I'm sure it'll record, you know, perfectly serviceable video, but you can forget about, I think, you can forget about the open gate, the 7K60, partially because I don't think anybody buying a retro film camera inspired body wants video.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_03: And I think this is borne out by the Nikon ZF users because it's got some of the best video in Nikon's lineup, and they're all like, this video is in the wrong body.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_03: But also because obviously OpenGate, 7K, all of those sorts of things, they have a cost factor attached to them.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_03: And I think one of the things, especially because Canon's going out on a bit of a limb with this as far as they're concerned, because they don't really do this kind of retro camera.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_03: It's not something that they that there's in their playbook.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_03: So they need this to be a success.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_03: And I think pricing it at four grand is not going to sort of do what they ever want.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_03: So if they take out the higher-end video gabbins, no active cooling system, no 7K, but you've got that lovely 32.5 megapixel sensor, hopefully we can keep this under the two grand mark, which I I kind of think is a sweet spot.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_03: I'd love to see it cheaper than that, but I think market reality is if we can get it in a 1899 or something like that, that would make a lot of people happy.
• 24:53
  David McClelland: Yeah, and I'm sure given the uh anticipation for a Canon retro camera that's built up for a number of years now, there would be a healthy line of people at that sort of price point.
• 25:04
  David McClelland: Given where the competition is, you mentioned Fujifilm there, for example.
• 25:08
  David McClelland: Uh given where the competition is, who would Yeah they they would snap it up.
• 25:13
  David McClelland: Final question, final question.
• 25:14
  David McClelland: We've mentioned, you know, Nikon, ZF, ZFC, OM System, Fujifilm, Canon may be jumping in as well.
• 25:21
  David McClelland: Just taking us back to Sony.
• 25:23
  David McClelland: Now, if Sony were to come out with a retro, because I know Sony's that that's not Sony's heritage, at least as far as the camera systems are concerned.
• 25:34
  David McClelland: But I wonder what retro for Sony would look like if it's going to come back with a kind of like Sony Mavicer three and a half-inch floppy disk drive camera.
• 25:43
  David McClelland: That would sell so well, and people who I know well, he like the Gordon Langs of this world, you know, Gordon would love it, yes.
• 25:49
  David McClelland: Yeah, he would.
• 25:50
  David McClelland: I've got Gordon's book on top there, just uh just just behind me.
• 25:53
  David McClelland: Um but yeah, I I wonder if there is some mileage, given that kids today love the 80s that some of us remember well the first time around, whether there's something about those kind of 80s, 90s first round of digital camera going into 90s, 2000s, whether there is space for one of those to make a comeback, I wonder.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_03: That's that's really interesting because to my mind it's sort of like, oh well, gonna Sony does sort of own what's left of the Minolta brand.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know that Minolta is quite as quite as beloved in the same way that you know other brands are, but there is that.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_03: I don't think that would be the way to go.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_03: And now you've said that, I think that that would actually be a much wiser, smarter, more hip move is to release something with a memory, I'm sure they've got a box of memory stick duos sitting around somewhere in the warehouse.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_03: You know, something really quirky and cool from that era, maybe one of those digicams with a sort of twisty, you know, the lens points one way and the body points the other.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_03: There's all kinds of old tech, which I know it's a it's a microcosm of the market, but you go on eBay trying to find a Sony disk drive camera, they're not cheap.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_03: So the the the market, small as it may be, is willing to pay over the odds for that kind of thing.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_03: So I I think you you might want to sort of uh register a web domain or something there, David, and sell it to Sony, because that's a great idea.
• 27:03
  David McClelland: Well, we can we can but hope.
• 27:05
  David McClelland: Uh listen, James, thank you so much.
• 27:07
  David McClelland: It's always great to chat.
• 27:08
  David McClelland: Uh, I think we've covered a lot of ground here about what the uh the the tail end of 2025 brought, maybe by surprise, but certainly looking ahead to what 2026 will have in store.
• 27:18
  David McClelland: Before I let you go, where can people hear more of your mellifluous tones and uh insightful forays into the world of photography?
• 27:26
  David McClelland: Where are the best places to keep up with you?
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_03: First and foremost, the best place is digitalcameraworld.com, where you can read news, reviews, tips, tricks, guides, buying guides, all of the good stuff uh in the written word.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_03: If you'd like to hear more of my verbal nonsense, you may check out the Digital Cam World podcast.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_03: We have a podcast called Boca Face, which you can thank my colleague Mike Harris for coming up with that name.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_03: Genius name.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_03: Um which you can find uh on the YouTube, on the Spotify, on the Apple.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_03: Um and uh if you don't follow us on Instagram, you can see little snippets of my slightly contentious sometimes where I rant and rave about uh people not holding cameras properly or shooting with lenses in incorrect way.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_03: But yes, listen listen to me, uh listen to me wax lyrical and rant muchly on the on the Boca Face Podcast.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you, David.
• 28:12
  David McClelland: Available wherever you get your podcasts.
• 28:14
  David McClelland: And also available at the photography show in March.
• 28:17
  David McClelland: James, look forward to seeing you very, very soon indeed.
• 28:20
  David McClelland: But thanks again for today.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_03: Pleasure.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you, David.
• 28:25
  David McClelland: So strong was Yeroon van Nuvenhoer's passion for fire and ice that a decade ago he resigned from his job as an IT technician, sold all of his belongings, and bought a one-way ticket from his Belgium homeland to Iceland.
• 28:40
  David McClelland: Now an award-winning photographer, Yeroon is renowned for capturing dramatic images of volcanoes, landscapes, and wildlife in Iceland, Greenland, and beyond.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: My work is uh very centered uh around the natural world, and I try to photograph in such a way that there is no or as very little as possible human elements in it.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I try to show nature as is without human involvement.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: I focus a lot on the natural world in Iceland, Greenland, uh, some in Antarctica, and I try to show really extreme places.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I think my main goal with my photography is that I want to show people what's out there.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: I want to inspire them to go and see these amazing things that I've seen.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I try to do that by not really editing my work all too much because I want you to see what I saw.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I want you to show you that, or like I want you to see that there are really amazing things that you can see without needing to uh manipulate it on a computer.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I try to yeah, try to maintain a sort of like a realistic style to my work.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I much prefer to wait for that exact right moment where we get beautiful colors or we get a combination of amazing natural phenomenon together in one frame to show you that these are actual real things that you can go out and experience.
• 30:09
  David McClelland: The work that I see of yours, you know, you you speak about that um not necessarily integrity, but that that that honesty about the images, the fact that you are not manipulating them, you aren't you aren't stacking them.
• 30:22
  David McClelland: This is as it was when you saw it through the eye of the viewfinder or your console or whatever.
• 30:28
  David McClelland: Despite that urine, your shots are magical, ethereal, almost impossible in my mind.
• 30:36
  David McClelland: They do look entirely otherworldly.
• 30:39
  David McClelland: And that's perhaps because the places where you do photograph, you mentioned them, Iceland, Greenland, uh, you know, the the very top and bottom of the world, they are otherworldly.
• 30:50
  David McClelland: They're places that many of us, I was gonna say don't have access to, but maybe don't feel as though we have access to.
• 30:57
  David McClelland: And if that's part of your your mission to actually show us that these places are there, that that they are available to us if we really want to go there, I think that's great.
• 31:08
  David McClelland: Um we speak with award-winning photographers, creators, filmmakers uh on the podcast very often.
• 31:15
  David McClelland: You have a couple of very fresh awards over the last couple of weeks or so that I think actually illustrate some of the points that you've just made very, very well.
• 31:24
  David McClelland: The first one I'm going to highlight is um International Landscape Photographer of the Year winning the Seascapes Special Award.
• 31:32
  David McClelland: This is like a whirlpool that you found at the at the foot of a big iceberg.
• 31:39
  David McClelland: That's that's what I see.
• 31:42
  David McClelland: Explain a bit more to viewers uh and listeners what it was that you captured there.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not like uh well, it looks like a whirlpool, uh, but it's not actually a whirlpool.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't there permanently.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like it wasn't like I could fly my drone there and then look at it, take the photo and be done with it.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: What I noticed was I flew out, uh flew my drone to an iceberg, and then I noticed how the swell, it was a very stormy day, how the swell was moving along the edge of his iceberg.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: And at one point, while I was trying to frame up the iceberg, I noticed that every now and then there was a sort of whirlpool forming very briefly, maybe like a few seconds, while the swell was going around this edge.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: And uh then I decided, well, I need to get a photo of this because this looks really interesting.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I had to swap batteries, I flew back uh with a new battery, hovered over it, tried to photograph it for half an hour, literally just had my drone hover above the same spot for half an hour, and it sort of happened, but not really.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it was like I got some images that look similar to what was the final image, but didn't really make the cut.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I tried with three different batteries for over an hour just to get this moment again that I saw.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and then I managed to to capture it.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: It was really tricky because yeah, I was so convinced this was gonna happen again at some point, but it took a really long time for it to to yeah manifest again.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: But I think that's kind of what what I try to do is like try to find these like brief little moments, like transient moments that you know that can be very beautiful.
• 33:24
  David McClelland: I love hearing the backstory behind the images there.
• 33:28
  David McClelland: But again, look looking on on my screen here at this image, if you didn't tell me that, uh I would look at this as a piece of abstract art.
• 33:37
  David McClelland: And it's it's ironic in a way.
• 33:41
  David McClelland: Compositionally it works, but it's ironic given that, and we'll come to your work with volcanoes very shortly.
• 33:47
  David McClelland: If I flatten this image, I'm seeing on the page this triangle, this white triangle, which is your perspective looking down on this iceberg.
• 33:55
  David McClelland: But if I flatten this, this looks like it's a volcano, and this looks like a swirl, a plume of smoke coming out the top of it there.
• 34:03
  David McClelland: So this works kind of on an abstract compositional level, but then when I hear the story behind it and I understand more about what went into it and exactly what it is, it works as well.
• 34:15
  David McClelland: It's the the blues are so rich there.
• 34:18
  David McClelland: I love, love, love that image.
• 34:20
  David McClelland: Uh, and I'm I'm not surprised at all that it has been recognised.
• 34:23
  David McClelland: Another one of your images that has recently won a photograph at the Lowland Photo Contest Um category winner there is also from above, but this time of a polar bear.
• 34:37
  David McClelland: Tell me more about that one.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, this was um this was an interesting moment.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: So this was on one of my photo workshops, uh, this one in East Greenland, and we had literally, I think we were in East Greenland, not even 24 hours.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and the only thing we had done at that point was get on the sailboat that we used to travel around the area, and then we sailed into the night to get to the first location that we were gonna shoot at.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I wake up at 5 in the morning because there's a lot of noise outside on the deck, so I go and look, and someone had spotted a polar bear inside of the slush ice that was in front of a glacier front.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: You have to imagine like you need a pretty good pair of ice to spot a polar bear inside of a slush ice in front of a glacier.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the polar bear was he was clearly looking for food.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, he was looking around a lot, and you could see him like sniffing the air.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: And then at one point, when he was, you know, he he walked on the slush ice, kind of jumped from one part to the other.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, he began swimming and then passed around the boat.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_00: I think we were there for like a half hour, a half an hour.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: He swam past the boat about five uh five meters away.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: It was an incredible moment.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: At that point, I decided, you know, like we were so invested in camera photography because he got so close, and then I thought, well, wouldn't it be really interesting to see him navigate this uh this slush ice?
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I decided to put up my drone, and I think it was about around 100 meters because I you know you can't really, or you can, but I don't want to uh fly really close above this bear because he will absolutely disturb him in his quest for food.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I kept uh uh an altitude of about 100 meters and then looked straight down.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: It was really interesting to see him swim, kind of you know, like a zigzag pattern in between the slush eyes.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: And at one point um he kind of just floated and was sniffing around to see if he could find a seal or something.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_00: And that's uh when he gave me the chance to take a proper photograph of him because uh it's really really difficult to use a zoom lens at that altitude, follow the bear, and then once the bear stops to reframe it because your drone will keep you know, it doesn't you let go of the controller and then the drone doesn't immediately stop, it'll slide uh a little bit more.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_00: So it was really, really tricky to get it framed up like that.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm really happy I got to see this magnificent creature in this way because it's a view that you don't often see.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like I've never seen how a polar bear swims, like how he navigates through the water and what it looks like when he's in between the ice.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_00: I thought it was uh yeah, an interesting perspective.
• 37:26
  David McClelland: Congratulations on those awards, and I know there are that there are many more.
• 37:30
  David McClelland: Uh, and and that brings me to uh something I'd like to land on for a little bit, if I may, and that's when when we think very often of wildlife landscape photographers, we think of that traditional handheld camera, long lens, or maybe wide-angled lens, depending upon the type of landscape photography you're doing, and so on.
• 37:49
  David McClelland: Tell me about the role that drone photography is now able to play in your work.
• 37:55
  David McClelland: How has that emerged, evolved over the last few years as the technology has evolved, and how do you think and work differently now that a drone is part of your equipment arsenal?
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think for me, drone photography, especially over the last three, four years, has become a cornerstone of what I do to the point where I was actually looking through my my images from this year, um, and I noticed that probably around 85-90% of the images I shot this year were all shot on a drone.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I think what's well what makes it so important is that you can actually do a lot of new things with it.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you if you think about it, with a camera, you're kind of limited to a 2D plane.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: You can only be on the ground, and you can be a little bit higher on the ground, you can be lower on the ground, but you're always stuck to the ground.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: And with a drone, it's like you're you have this tripod that you can put down in a 3D environment.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_00: You can literally be anywhere you want in a 3D space, and that opens up a world of possibilities that you just don't have with a camera, just like the image with the spiral above the iceberg.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's something it's impossible to take a photo like that with a camera because even if you were in a plane, you're always looking at it on at an angle, you can't remove the depth by looking straight down on something like that.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's what I began realizing is that a drone is an incredible tool because it can be where I can't be.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and a lot of people seem to think that you need to use a drone to fly really high and show like these vast aerial uh aerial views, and you can do that.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_00: But what I found is that even using a drone to be in a place like let's say I'm looking at a mountain, but I just want a little bit more altitude just to see maybe down into the valley below, I can just fly five meters up and then take that shot that I can't from the ground, or I can fly over a flat uh a flat area of water and take a beautiful reflection shot, uh, which I've done a lot, is uh fly around icebergs and then use the reflection uh to take a really nice photo.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: And you could do that from a boat, but the problem is with the boat you create ripples in the water.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it's a way to do things that you can't actually do as a as a as a person, and I think that's where I see a lot of possibilities, and I can I can see a lot of ways to do new things because you know I live I live in Iceland, and the thing that I see a lot is that people it's you know for photography, they come to Iceland for bucket list photos, they will go to the same waterfall, go to the same mountain range, and then they'll try to recreate a photo that they really liked on social media, which is really fine, you know, like it's a it's a good way, you know, be out there and shoot and understand why a photo works the way it works.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_00: But with a drone, you can really take that to the next level and try to find new angles that nobody has thought of.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_00: And on top of that, you can it's very difficult to tell someone, okay, I took that photo from that place, because you can't really say to someone, you know, fly that direction, be that high, and be in exactly the same spot that uh that someone else took a photo from because you simply don't know.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and that's what I find really interesting.
• 41:34
  David McClelland: You explore some of the uh real frontiers of planet Earth, Iceland, Greenland, uh the at the northern poles, and so on.
• 41:44
  David McClelland: Do you feel as though at the moment you are also exploring some of the frontiers of photography, videography, imaging, the fact that you're making shots with this emerging, still emerging, still evolving drone technology that no one else is exploring or making yet either?
• 42:02
  David McClelland: Or at least few people are?
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's it it's definitely something uh I mean it's very new.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like drone technology is still evolving at a very rapid pace.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_00: If you if you look at cameras, they sort of plateaued.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like cameras get better incremental incrementally, but they don't, you know, add new features that substantially change the game.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I think with drones that's something that's constantly happening.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we have telephoto lenses now on drones, which opens up a world that I didn't have two years ago because now I can go back to locations that I've photographed a hundred times and do something completely new.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that's what I try to do.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_00: I try to very purposely use the drone to do something that hasn't been done before.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_00: I think in a way, yes, I'm like trying to explore the boundaries of this and try to find what else you can do with this.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_00: And um that's yeah, I try to sort of reinvent myself all the time in that way.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I very purposely, you know, when I've I've gone to a place and I've taken photos that I'm happy with, I'm not gonna try and uh redo that again and again and again, but I'll try to find ways to do that in a very different way using a drone, for example.
• 43:18
  David McClelland: So, in terms of the limitations, I mean you mentioned their telephoto lenses now available and so on.
• 43:24
  David McClelland: I mean, that as I understand it, and please educate me because uh while I had one of the first consumer drones about 15 years ago, a parrot AR drone, uh, that certainly was not a photography tool, but it was a proof of concept that hey, these drones are interesting, they might be able to do some new things.
• 43:41
  David McClelland: In terms of where we are at the moment, I understand battery life is still it's a factor, if not a challenge.
• 43:47
  David McClelland: Um, but then also the lack of there are some main players certainly in the drone space, but you don't have as much choice, do you, as you would as you do with handheld cameras, you know, where you've got any number Of lens manufacturers and body manufacturers.
• 44:03
  David McClelland: Just talk to me about where the where the technology is from your point at the moment and maybe where some of those boundaries are.
• 44:09
  David McClelland: That would mean in a couple of years' time, as this evolution continues, you might be able to revisit those same spots and maybe get some new things.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think you know drone technology is rapidly evolving, but in my eyes, there's really only one player on the market that produces stuff that is good enough to use it for photography.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I would love some more competition, you know, like I would love some more competition in the space because it only benefits the consumer.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_00: But it's still, you know, even though they don't have to, they are improving all the time.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I think battery life is it used to be a really big problem, you know.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like on windy days here in Iceland, you'd get maybe 10-15 minutes out of a battery.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_00: Today you can easily fly half an hour or longer, which has changed the game completely because then now I can do things like I've seen a moment happen and I can just hover and wait for that to reappear again, just like the spiral.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, or with volcanoes, I can hover and wait for the right shape of a lava fountain, uh, and that's not really a concern anymore.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like it used to be a big concern that you kind of had to time perfectly when you had to go to a place to take a certain photograph.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember in 2021 during the first eruption, I think I had a Mavic 2 Pro.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Mavic 2 Pro, and I got maybe 15 minutes of battery life out of it because it was very windy.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I had to fly, you know, I had to kind of anticipate when is the crater gonna, you know, when is the lava fountain gonna shoot over the crater, time that, uh, go there, take a few photos, fly back, and then put in a new battery and try again and again and again.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_00: And that made it sometimes really frustrating.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it has evolved tremendously, and I don't feel like the technology is stopping me at this point.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_00: I think you know, there's certainly things that are improving still or can improve uh still, like the image quality could always be better.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it would be great to have a variable zoom lens on a drone so I don't have to be fixed to fixed focal lengths, things like that.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, I don't think it's limiting the and especially there are workarounds as well, you know.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_00: Like I uh on drones with less uh uh less resolution, you can just use uh panoramas and kind of circumvent the problem, and you can also use panoramas uh to circumvent the focal length problem and just create your own virtual focal lengths uh so so going back, taking that in mind then, going back to one of the images of yours that we spoke about about the polar bear there in East Greenland, yeah.
• 46:55
  David McClelland: You mentioned that you were hovering hundred or so metres above the bear so that you didn't disturb it then.
• 47:01
  David McClelland: Um what what kind of focal length lens did you have on the drone at that point?
• 47:07
  David McClelland: Because there's incredible detail that that we're still getting in that image, despite the fact you're a hundred meters from your surface.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_00: This is about I think it's the equivalent of 160 millimeters or 170 millimeters.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_00: So it's pretty decent.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_00: The problem is that on these longer focal lengths the sensor size is not all that great.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um and it works in really in really good light.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_00: You can get nice and crisp images, but uh when it gets darker it very quickly drops off.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_00: So these are areas where there's certainly a lot of room for improvement in my eyes.
• 47:42
  David McClelland: Let's talk about another way in which uh drones certainly do come in handy, and it's about your area of work where I first came across you, which is your work with volcanoes.
• 47:52
  David McClelland: Now, like many people I do struggle to pronounce some Icelandic words and Icelandic place names, but I'm gonna have a go and say Sunakagigar.
• 48:03
  David McClelland: Sunukagar.
• 48:05
  David McClelland: This is a I think hopefully I haven't messed it up too much, and I know you've you've you've got a bit of Icelandic under your back now.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I speak Icelandic, so we we say Sunnukagigar.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_00: So almost there.
• 48:17
  David McClelland: Yep.
• 48:17
  David McClelland: I'm gonna take that.
• 48:18
  David McClelland: Um that was a volcano, and you've been working with volcanoes for for a good while.
• 48:24
  David McClelland: Um that was one that erupted in July 2025.
• 48:29
  David McClelland: You were in the right place at the right time, sort of, with the right number of drone batteries to to capture something very, very special there.
• 48:38
  David McClelland: But I understand that you very nearly missed the opportunity altogether.
• 48:41
  David McClelland: Uh just just took me back through that story.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I uh so this volcano has erupted now nine times, and we are actually waiting for it to uh erupt.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_00: It can erupt at any moment now again.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we know that because of the inflation level of the ground, so we know it's uh it's near.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_00: What happened that morning was it kind of started really unexpectedly, uh, and I was actually going with my daughter to uh Belgium for a family visit, and five minutes before we woke up to go to the airport, uh the volcano uh began erupting.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_00: So we drove to the we drove to the airport, and it was actually it was pretty interesting because you know my daughter's five year old, and we just parked next to the road, and we were able to see this four-kilometer long erupting fissure.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_00: And what's really interesting is that the volcanoes near Reykjavik have been erupting basically ever since um she was born, and she has seen multiple eruptions already.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_00: She's five years old, and she just she's almost like, yeah, I've seen it.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_00: Great, and you go back in the car.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's like not something special anymore to her.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_00: Just another volcano, daddy, over it.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I still get very excited about it, and maybe at a later age she she will understand how special this is.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_00: But I was very fortunate uh because all most of the other eruptions were fairly short.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_00: And this one a week later, when I came back from Belgium with her, uh the volcano was still erupting, so I spent the next four or five days uh photographing it and just trying to find all kinds of angles to it.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, I got some pretty interesting moments.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_00: I think one of my favorite moments was um yeah, this incredible moment where it started raining and the whole area was just engulfed in steam.
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I think those are probably my favorite images from uh 2025, even.
• 50:38
  David McClelland: Yeah, I I'm I'm looking at some of those images right now, and again, for those who are able to watch this on YouTube, we'll see if we can float some of those images up.
• 50:47
  David McClelland: Talk to me about some of the practicalities then and the challenges.
• 50:51
  David McClelland: I mean, this is definitely an environment where, to an extent, the further away you are from the subject, but close enough to understand what's happening, far enough away to be safe at the same time.
• 51:04
  David McClelland: This is where the drone really does come into its own.
• 51:07
  David McClelland: So just talk to me about some of those unique challenges, if you like, of capturing volcanoes as your subject.
• 51:12
  David McClelland: Yep.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think here in Iceland we've sort of pioneered drone photography with volcanoes because the the first eruption that was kind of accessible at the same time that drones became more accessible was in 2021, and that erupted for about six months, and then we sort of had to figure out you know what you can do and what can't you do, like how close can you get?
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there are a lot of problems around eruptions.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_00: One is convection winds because of the heat of the lava and then the cold air.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you can't see those winds, so sometimes it can be that the drone just inexplicably starts rising without you doing anything.
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_00: Then another problem is that the lava sort of radiates heat, and if the wind shifts while you're flying there, suddenly this air that's 700 degrees uh Celsius maybe gets pushed to the drone so you could easily melt while flying.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh then of course proximity to it uh plays a big role, and there's not really you know, there's no indication on the drone to kind of tell you I'm too close.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so after a while you sort of get a feeling for it.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and yeah, I've melt melted, I think, two drones, the underside of it.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_00: I never lost one, but I damage one because no, I try to be as careful as possible, but sometimes you know, when you get surprised by changing wind, then this can happen.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_00: You just melt uh the underside because ultimately it's just plastic.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_00: So um, but there are people who have like found ways to deal with that.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_00: They uh put like a like a sort of aluminium foil around the drone to kind of create a makeshift uh heat shield.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen people do that.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_00: I tried I tried to do, you know, for me, proximity is less and less of a problem because now we have the zoom lenses, so I can show these incredible details without going too close.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_00: But in the early days, I uh even at one point I flew uh almost into the crater because it was so windy, incredibly windy, and the heat got pushed away from the crater as soon as it uh exited the crater.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh got some really beautiful footage where you see it's almost like a sun.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_00: The inside of the crater is coated in hot lava, and at the bottom there's this puddle of lava.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it was actually used in Rings of Power on uh Amazon Prime video.
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh they use that footage for a scene.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's yeah, you try to, you know, it's like it's a little bit like you know, you you fly with the drone, and then every time you try to go a little bit closer, you try to kind of see what the boundary is, how far is it gonna let me uh do this?
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, then you also have problems with um uh like at certain temperatures the lava uh develops magnetic properties, which messes up the compass in the drone.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's around seven or eight hundred degrees Celsius.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen many drones fly into mountainsides, people who rely on automatic return to home, the compass is wonky, and the drone just flies in a direction you don't want it to fly in.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_00: So these are all things we kind of discovered as we were photographing it.
• 54:35
  David McClelland: That's absolutely absolutely fascinating.
• 54:38
  David McClelland: Uh you mentioned there that uh some of your footage was used in that in the Amazon Prime series, and that that leads me onto the question.
• 54:45
  David McClelland: Uh, again, looking around at your work, I see there is a strong video element to it.
• 54:50
  David McClelland: Um you know, I'm I'm seeing some wonderful evolving vistas as the lava flows and the steam, like you say, kind of flicks around it there.
• 55:00
  David McClelland: Um, what role does video play in your capture process?
• 55:04
  David McClelland: Are you sometimes taking stills from the video?
• 55:08
  David McClelland: How how does it work with your workflow?
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so before the first eruption, I didn't really do video all that much because I love photography so much more than videography.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_00: But when I saw the first eruption, I felt like this is just incredible, you know.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's almost like if you take only a photograph, it's almost like you're not giving it the credit that it deserves because you have these amazing, you know, like the the play between the lava and the steam when it rains, the way the lava flows, um how the lava when it's the lava field when it's expands, how it like topples over.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, these are things that you can't really show with photography, and you need videos for it.
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I much more started doing video at directions because a lot of this is, you know, like I was saying before, drone drones were very new in 2021, uh, and we were able to show things that people had never seen before.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the way lava kind of bubbles up in the crater, uh, the way it carves through the landscape, the incredible patterns it forms.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_00: Some of my videos they show uh, for example, lava moving over steam, uh, over steam, over snow, I mean, and it behaves completely differently than most people uh expect, uh, which is very interesting.
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, some people even think this video footage is AI, but it's very, very real.
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if if I would know how to do that with AI, then I would probably work in Hollywood as a as a special effects artist or something.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, this is you know, that's what I'm trying to do with this with video footage is show that this idea that we have about volcanoes and eruptions and how lava behaves is very often wrong.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah, so I try to show what it looks like in a special way.
• 57:02
  David McClelland: And again, this comes back to that thing of exploring not just the environments, the the the subjects that that you are capturing there, but also exploring the limits of the technology that you're using.
• 57:14
  David McClelland: Again, just as part of that exploration, are you using the drones to scout?
• 57:19
  David McClelland: Are you flying your drone and uh and looking for your subject as it's emerging in front of you, or are you seeing it first and then flying the drone purposefully to capture that?
• 57:29
  David McClelland: Is is there an element of the kind of it's subject exploration what when you're I think it's a it's a bit of combination of both.
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now, with the last couple of eruptions, they have been very, very big when they started.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_00: So there is not really a way to go close and look at look at it and explore what's possible.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_00: So very often I'll just maybe use a battery and fly around and find things that I find interesting.
• 57:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um sometimes um when it happens in an area that I can access fairly closely with a car, I will have a power station in the car, and I'm just kind of recharging my batteries all the time so I can continue flying.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_00: Because yeah, sometimes you know you're just exploring, flying around.
• 58:12
  SPEAKER_00: I remember one time I was using uh many many batteries, I think like four or five batteries to find something interesting because it's all really interesting.
• 58:23
  SPEAKER_00: But I try to find special moments uh like bubbles that form on flowing lava, or for example, with the steam, uh, that was very a very interesting moment, uh, which I nearly missed because I ran out of batteries.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's a bit of a challenge, like it's not like you go to a volcano, an erupting volcano, put up a drone, and on your first flight you'll get these incredible images.
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, it doesn't often work like that.
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you need to really look and try to understand what could happen.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, so the more I've seen eruptions, the better I understand how the landscape will be evolving because in in that way it's a very different type of photography.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's landscape photographers are usually used to going to a landscape, and at best, you're waiting for the weather conditions to change, but the landscape will always stay the same.
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_00: But now you have to imagine that the weather conditions are changing, but the landscape in front of you is changing as well, and that's something that can be you know can be very tricky.
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's in a way, it's almost like you're using wildlife photography techniques on a landscape because you have to adapt to what's happening in front of you.
• 59:32
  David McClelland: I understand part of your work now is helping other photographers to understand, to, to learn, to capture, and taking them to some of these locations as well.
• 59:44
  David McClelland: What's the accessibility like there in Iceland at the moment?
• 59:48
  David McClelland: I mean, we've spoken about how remote sometimes some of these volcanoes are, uh how how dangerous they are.
• 59:55
  David McClelland: Can anyone just rock up and take some video with with a drone or uh or a handheld camera of an of an erupting volcano?
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the the the first few eruptions were like that in 2021, 2022, 23 in the summer.
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we call them tourist eruptions here, so they're fairly small, fairly safe.
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's my kind of eruption.
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, an eruption is never really safe, uh, but it's safe enough.
• 1:00:21
  SPEAKER_00: It was fairly predictable and fairly small.
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_00: But in recent years that hasn't really been possible because of where it's been happening.
• 1:00:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, it's very close to infrastructure, very close to a town.
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, a lot of damage has happened because of the seismicity involved, and the size of it has been off the charts, also.
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_00: And this is where um where things have changed and all the area is restricted.
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I myself I have a special permission from the civil defense to go there whenever an eruption is happening.
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_00: We have to abide by all kinds of uh guidelines, safety uh instructions.
• 1:00:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I have a special radio with me, gas masks, gas meters.
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, this is all because I do some work for the foreign media as well.
• 1:01:05
  SPEAKER_00: But today that's not really been possible.
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I always hope that we will get a tourist eruption in a safe place that people can enjoy because it's incredibly beautiful.
• 1:01:16
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, nature is much bigger and stronger than we are, so there's no real choosing, uh, unfortunately.
• 1:01:23
  David McClelland: When did your love affair with volcanoes, when did you start volcano chasing, as it were?
• 1:01:28
  David McClelland: Because uh you are you are Belgian born.
• 1:01:31
  David McClelland: There's not not very many volcanoes in Belgium.
• 1:01:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, uh well I've always been interested in volcanoes, and I think that was kind of triggered by documentaries on BBC Earth and a lot of documentaries that were produced by two French volcanologists, Maurice and Katia Kraft, uh, and they perished in the eruption in Japan in 1991.
• 1:01:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but if you if you've ever seen footage of an erupting volcano, there's a very high chance that you've seen footage made by them because up to that point they were probably the primary source of um volcanic eruption footage.
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_00: And what's you know, over the years I kind of grew into an interest.
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, if they can do it, if they can go there and film these things, then maybe I can as well.
• 1:02:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the first time I really tried to attempt capturing an eruption was in 2014.
• 1:02:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, there was a big eruption here in the Icelandic Islands, and uh traveled to Iceland because this was before I moved, traveled to Iceland multiple times to try and see it.
• 1:02:37
  SPEAKER_00: But every time I went uh went there, I couldn't uh fly over it because the weather was so bad, which is uh another trait of the Icelandic uh Icelandic nature, and I got really frustrated.
• 1:02:51
  SPEAKER_00: So when in 2021 this uh eruption started very close to the city, uh then it was like no, I need to, you know, I need to go 200% into this because this is this has been a dream.
• 1:03:03
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and that's exactly what I did.
• 1:03:05
  SPEAKER_00: I was there probably um multiple times a week.
• 1:03:09
  SPEAKER_00: At one point, one of my friends said, uh, when are you gonna change your postal code to the volcano?
• 1:03:15
  SPEAKER_00: So I was spending a lot of time there capturing uh yeah photos and videos.
• 1:03:19
  David McClelland: And also Greenland is somewhere that that you visit as well and take other photographers to.
• 1:03:25
  David McClelland: Uh talk to me about Greenland, because Iceland I feel as though, while I I've never been, I would love I would love an opportunity to go.
• 1:03:33
  David McClelland: Greenland isn't somewhere really that's fallen on my radar in particular.
• 1:03:37
  David McClelland: Uh how accessible is is Greenland, and do you get a sense that it's becoming more accessible, more welcoming to photographers and explorers such as yourself and those who you take on tours there?
• 1:03:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Greenland is a little bit I I often describe it as Iceland on steroids.
• 1:03:55
  SPEAKER_00: Everything is uh bigger, bigger, more raw uh the nature.
• 1:04:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like a lot of the nature is completely untouched.
• 1:04:02
  SPEAKER_00: There are very few people living there.
• 1:04:04
  SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't say it's an easy place to travel to because um I mean the thing that you have to understand about Greenland is that you can't drive anywhere.
• 1:04:12
  SPEAKER_00: If you see a car, it's a car that drives around the settlement or the town that you're in, but it you can't use it to drive to another town.
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, there's no interconnecting road system, so everything is done by boat, by plane, by helicopter, and that makes it quite challenging to travel there.
• 1:04:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and tourism, tourism is uh an interesting thing in in Greenland.
• 1:04:36
  SPEAKER_00: I think you know the population is probably kind of split 50-50 on whether they want tourism or not, um, and it's becoming more and more of a yeah, like people are seeing that there's a lot of money to be earned in tourism, so it's becoming more and more interest uh interesting for people, and I think the Greenlanders they are now sort of at a crossroads as to where they want to take this, um but it's definitely you know for photography it's an incredible place, but I would never get on a plane and just go there uh just to do photography.
• 1:05:11
  SPEAKER_00: You need to, yeah, it's a good idea to get some information about where to go, when to go, and maybe go on an organized tour to get experience it to the fullest, just because you can't just go everywhere.
• 1:05:24
  David McClelland: Iceland, Greenland, incredibly rich subject matters like like you've uh described there, that that you are that you enjoy that you're very passionate about.
• 1:05:33
  David McClelland: But is there anywhere else in the world you're in that that you would like to visit and explore?
• 1:05:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there are many places.
• 1:05:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um I would love to see more of Antarctica, and I'm fortunate enough in a few weeks that I'm uh going back for a second time.
• 1:05:48
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, but I would love to see see more of New Zealand.
• 1:05:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, that's a place that has um has interested me a lot.
• 1:05:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Svalbart, I want to see more of that.
• 1:05:58
  David McClelland: Okay, yeah.
• 1:05:58
  SPEAKER_00: Baffin Island.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_00: A place that not so many people know, but it has the most incredible mountains, the strangest mountains.
• 1:06:06
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, it's like places that are largely untouched.
• 1:06:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's kind of where my interest lies.
• 1:06:12
  David McClelland: Svalbard also feels as though it's becoming uh more accessible than ever before at certain times of year.
• 1:06:18
  David McClelland: But uh I I'm not gonna lie, I have I've looked at how I could get myself up there uh and uh and experience that.
• 1:06:27
  David McClelland: Listen, you're gonna be joining us later on this year at the photography and video show at the NEC in Birmingham in March.
• 1:06:34
  David McClelland: Uh I I know we're a good few weeks away still, but uh do you uh do you have any idea what you'll be sharing with visitors to the show?
• 1:06:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'll be speaking about my work around volcanoes in the last five years, and actually the photography show is almost exactly five years after the first eruption began.
• 1:06:52
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a sort of a celebration uh presentation, I guess.
• 1:06:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll share five uh important moments in my work around those volcanoes uh during our presentation.
• 1:07:02
  David McClelland: Well, I encourage anybody watching or listening uh to the podcast here today to look up Yurin at the photography and video show 14th, the 17th of March, uh, because uh his work is, despite the the purity that you mentioned right at the beginning of this conversation, uh, it is nonetheless otherworldly at times visually stunning uh and so dramatic to see.
• 1:07:27
  David McClelland: Yourin, thank you very much for joining us today.
• 1:07:29
  David McClelland: Look forward to seeing you in Birmingham in a few weeks' time.
• 1:07:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yep, thanks for having me and look forward to seeing you as well.
• 1:07:37
  David McClelland: Thanks again to Yerun.
• 1:07:39
  David McClelland: Links to his website and socials in the show notes.
• 1:07:42
  David McClelland: And a reminder that Yerun will be joining us at the photography and video show, which is only a few weeks away now.
• 1:07:49
  David McClelland: And last month I promised I'd be speaking with somebody from the event organizers team right here on the podcast.
• 1:07:55
  David McClelland: And well, I did better than that for you.
• 1:07:56
  David McClelland: I managed to collar two of them.
• 1:07:58
  David McClelland: Event director Ruth Volkard and group marketing manager Hazel Soper.
• 1:08:05
  David McClelland: So, photography and video show NEC in Birmingham from the 14th to the 17th of March 2026.
• 1:08:12
  David McClelland: We'll come to that in a moment, but first up, I said back in our December episode that I'd be looking for questions from the community.
• 1:08:21
  David McClelland: And I have one here, first of all, for you.
• 1:08:24
  David McClelland: You're back in Birmingham.
• 1:08:25
  David McClelland: Brilliant.
• 1:08:26
  David McClelland: You're back in Birmingham.
• 1:08:27
  David McClelland: Is this for good, or is the plan to go back to London?
• 1:08:31
  David McClelland: Obviously, that was what happened last year.
• 1:08:33
  David McClelland: What can you tell us about what the the plan is for the show over the next couple of years?
• 1:08:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, I'll take this one.
• 1:08:38
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the the plan is that we will be back in London in 2027.
• 1:08:43
  SPEAKER_01: We do feel that it's um important at the moment to uh to introduce as many new people to the show as possible.
• 1:08:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so yeah, we'll be back in London in 2027 and then back at the NEC again in 2028.
• 1:08:57
  SPEAKER_01: And we'll then we'll see where it takes us.
• 1:08:59
  David McClelland: Yeah, 2028 feels like a long way ahead still.
• 1:09:02
  David McClelland: I I guess one of the questions is though, that that that move to London last year was a big move.
• 1:09:08
  David McClelland: What what what did you try to get from it?
• 1:09:10
  David McClelland: And I guess the question is, what did you learn from it?
• 1:09:13
  David McClelland: Looking back now, what did you learn from the London 2025 experience?
• 1:09:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh well, uh we learned that well, lots of things actually.
• 1:09:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we learned that there were obviously lots of people who hadn't heard of the show before or had or had heard of it but hadn't been to it.
• 1:09:28
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it was something like 60% or or so of our um was it really so a lot of our audience were brand new to the show in 2025, which is is incredible, really.
• 1:09:41
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we we we kind of take it for granted that being at the NEC and in the in the middle of the country that we attract as as as you know a really wide circle of people, and and we do for sure, but that there's a lot of people down in London in the south east who um you know who who hadn't experienced the show before, and um, well, the numbers tell us tell us that that they loved it too.
• 1:10:01
  David McClelland: So and in terms of uh the what people who did go there what what they wanted from the event, and I I think it's fascinating how 60-70 percent Hazel of people hadn't been to the show before.
• 1:10:15
  David McClelland: So in terms of bringing the show to new audiences, then that that's a big tick in the box.
• 1:10:20
  David McClelland: What what did you learn about that audience?
• 1:10:22
  David McClelland: What was maybe different between the Birmingham and the London events?
• 1:10:26
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the the we always expected the London audience to be perhaps a little bit more video driven and and content creation driven, just because of the you know, the demographic of the the area, really.
• 1:10:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um they really, really enjoyed the content.
• 1:10:44
  SPEAKER_01: So the um the sessions that we put on, the programme that we put on, more so probably than the Birmingham audience, because I think the Birmingham audience just love to go out and get a good deal and and and get get you know hands-on with with all of the kit and everything.
• 1:11:01
  SPEAKER_01: And then the sessions uh that we run are almost a kind of secondary part of that.
• 1:11:05
  SPEAKER_01: But um yeah, the the London audience was very keen to learn and and and and get new skills alongside visiting the exhibitors.
• 1:11:15
  David McClelland: Fascinating.
• 1:11:16
  David McClelland: More on London 2027 in due course, I'm sure.
• 1:11:20
  David McClelland: But let's bring the focus back to what's happening single-digit weeks away, Birmingham 2027.
• 1:11:26
  David McClelland: So sorry, sorry for mentioning that.
• 1:11:28
  David McClelland: Uh, what can you tell me, Ruth, first of all, about what it is that you're bringing to this year's show, 14th to 17th of March, at the NEC in Birmingham?
• 1:11:37
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, well, firstly, we cannot wait.
• 1:11:39
  SPEAKER_01: So we will be bringing a lot of excitement with us.
• 1:11:41
  SPEAKER_01: I don't if if if anybody uh sees us when we first get on site, we're kind of bouncing off the walls.
• 1:11:46
  SPEAKER_01: We're excited.
• 1:11:47
  SPEAKER_01: We've got uh lots of lovely stages and lots of lovely speakers um that are going to be at the show um as well as usual, I hope.
• 1:11:56
  SPEAKER_01: The analogue is coming back again.
• 1:11:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh it's a definitely a growing area for us, and there's some really cool stuff planned for that area as well.
• 1:12:04
  SPEAKER_01: We've got sort of most of the usual stages that you'd that you've experienced before, so behind the lens, in motion, um, editing and post, all of that.
• 1:12:12
  SPEAKER_01: So we've got some really um exciting stuff lined up and a lot of speakers that are well, lots that are on the website already, but there'll be some more to come as well.
• 1:12:21
  SPEAKER_01: So watch watch this space.
• 1:12:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, and some some fabulous um speakers bringing their kind of wealth of experience to uh to to that educational programme.
• 1:12:31
  David McClelland: So and of course, we're incredibly fortunate here on the podcast to have the opportunity to speak to so so many of them in the build-up to the show as well.
• 1:12:39
  David McClelland: Kind of uh appetite wettaner, if you will.
• 1:12:42
  David McClelland: Um what names are you are you able to share?
• 1:12:45
  David McClelland: Uh of course people can take a look at the website, but but what names are you able to share that you have confirmed so far?
• 1:12:50
  David McClelland: And I know that this is a changing cast the closer we get to the show as well.
• 1:12:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it is.
• 1:12:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, well, and obviously you've interviewed a few a few of them, as you've said.
• 1:12:59
  SPEAKER_01: So the lovely Sophie Darlington is uh an amazing wildlife cinematographer.
• 1:13:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um so if you if you haven't listened to that episode with her, please do go back and and listen.
• 1:13:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but she's coming to the show to talk about her work, which um is is incredible.
• 1:13:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we have Charlie Waite, legend of landscape photography.
• 1:13:18
  SPEAKER_01: He's coming to to speak at the show.
• 1:13:20
  SPEAKER_01: Dennis Morris, uh music photographer, very well known for his work with um the Sex Pistols and Bob Marley.
• 1:13:26
  SPEAKER_01: So he'll be at the show on the Tuesday.
• 1:13:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um for a Yovari, uh fantastic fashion and uh and high-end portrait photographer.
• 1:13:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I mean, she's just fabulous.
• 1:13:37
  SPEAKER_01: She's gonna do uh the plan is for her to do a workshop as well as uh speaking on on stage.
• 1:13:42
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, there's loads of um loads of uh exciting stuff lined up.
• 1:13:46
  David McClelland: Yeah, uh Danny Loquir, Bill Ward, of course, who we've spoken to on the podcast as well, your own this month too.
• 1:13:52
  David McClelland: So yeah, uh a good a good variety of of speakers.
• 1:13:56
  David McClelland: And and Hazel, something it's it's easy to forget is that obviously the speakers, the the the content is there, but it is that ability to get hands-on to sort of try before you buy that's easy to forget, but is such an important part of the overall event experience at the photography and video show, isn't it?
• 1:14:14
  SPEAKER_01: It is, and and not all shows um offer the um the option for people to buy on site.
• 1:14:20
  SPEAKER_01: We have two retailers this year, London Camera Exchange and Wex Photo Video.
• 1:14:26
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of the exhibitors will sold directly from their stands as well.
• 1:14:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um we always have a lovely set of show discounts which are exclusive to the show, uh, which is really lovely.
• 1:14:38
  SPEAKER_01: We like to see people walking out with bags and bags of stuff.
• 1:14:41
  SPEAKER_01: From my perspective, in in this day and age, making myself, so I'm very middle-aged now.
• 1:14:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um the online purchasing experience can be a little bit nerve-wracking, really.
• 1:14:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I think you need to get these things into your hands, particularly if you're going to spend a lot of money on a camera or a tripod or whatever.
• 1:15:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you need to be able to use it and and get a feel for it and talk to the people behind the design of it and the making of it, and talk to the experts about what best suits you.
• 1:15:15
  SPEAKER_01: And there is no better place than our show to do that if you are into photography or or video.
• 1:15:22
  David McClelland: Yeah, and it it's also an opportunity to have a little peek into the future as well, and some of the brands bring along the stuff that isn't generally available yet.
• 1:15:32
  David McClelland: And this isn't just in a little room in a in a crystal case that only journalists and and whoever can see, you know, whether it's on the on the Canon stand or on the Nikon stand, the stuff there which is we don't know if this is going to work or not, we don't know if this is ever going to be a product.
• 1:15:46
  David McClelland: Give us your feedback, get it in your hands.
• 1:15:48
  David McClelland: So, in a way, you have an opportunity to directly influence what the products of the future may look like, which I think is absolutely fascinating.
• 1:15:55
  David McClelland: Ruth, obviously we've spoken about the content and hearing amazing videographers, filmmakers, photographers talk about uh how they do what they do.
• 1:16:04
  David McClelland: Hazel's just spoken about well, you have an opportunity to pick up new kit to try before you buy.
• 1:16:11
  David McClelland: Uh if you are bringing your own camera kit though, it it's not just a case of buy or listen to.
• 1:16:17
  David McClelland: There are things for you to do there.
• 1:16:19
  David McClelland: There are features, there are workshops and so on.
• 1:16:22
  David McClelland: There are things, you know, whether it's the creator zone or other things, there's an opportunity for you to try to, I guess, to photograph stuff that maybe you don't normally have access to.
• 1:16:32
  David McClelland: Tell us about the uh, I guess the experiential elements and the workshop elements there.
• 1:16:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, we we've um you mentioned the creator area.
• 1:16:41
  SPEAKER_01: We've got that that right in the middle of the show this year, so it'll be uh Oh right.
• 1:16:45
  SPEAKER_01: Right, like right in the middle, so you you won't you won't miss it.
• 1:16:48
  SPEAKER_01: It'll be right there.
• 1:16:49
  SPEAKER_01: There's lots of um kind of interactive sets in there that you can get get stuck into um and just have a lot of fun, really.
• 1:16:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um other than that, there's photo walks um that we'll be doing.
• 1:16:59
  SPEAKER_01: So the NEC grounds that people can uh people can explore with their cameras, um, and a host of workshops as well.
• 1:17:07
  SPEAKER_01: So um we have uh Belinda Richards coming over, the uh the famous pet photographer.
• 1:17:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um so she'll be doing uh she'll be doing a workshop on pet photography and yeah, I mean there's all sorts.
• 1:17:17
  SPEAKER_01: Also a little macro zone that we're looking at as well, so um so where you can really kind of get stuck into some some macro photography with some little scenes.
• 1:17:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, it should be really fun.
• 1:17:27
  David McClelland: Oh, brilliant.
• 1:17:28
  David McClelland: Listen, I'll I'll let you go.
• 1:17:29
  David McClelland: I know you've got a lot of stuff that you need to do in the next in the next few weeks, but thank you both for taking time out to join us.
• 1:17:37
  David McClelland: Uh I know that there's a certain amount of stuff that maybe still needs to be confirmed, you can't quite talk about yet, but I would advise people to stay tuned to your socials.
• 1:17:47
  David McClelland: That's where you'll be publicising all of that.
• 1:17:49
  David McClelland: And if you can keep on talking to us here on the podcast as well, we'll make sure that in the February and the March episode of the podcast, which drops just before the in-person show um begins.
• 1:18:01
  David McClelland: We'll make sure that we're we'll communicate everything that we can if there's things that people can get involved with.
• 1:18:07
  David McClelland: But for now, Ruth Hazel, thank you very much for joining us.
• 1:18:10
  David McClelland: And uh, well, thank you in advance for all of the all of the work you do into making this such a fantastic in-person experience.
• 1:18:18
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 1:18:19
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, David.
• 1:18:23
  David McClelland: And as if you need reminding by now, it's the photography and video show NEC Birmingham, Saturday 14th to Tuesday, the 17th of March, 2026.
• 1:18:32
  David McClelland: And there, alongside Yeroon, who we spoke with on this month's podcast, will be friends of the show, Sophie Darlington, ASC, Bill Ward, landscape legend, Charlie Waite, fine art macro photographer, Daniel Laur, and many, many more.
• 1:18:44
  David McClelland: It's a packed four days of photography and filmmaking, fun and inspiration.
• 1:18:49
  David McClelland: Head over to photography show.com for tickets.
• 1:18:52
  David McClelland: And if you are a professional photographer, filmmaker, or content creator, then you can apply for free entry to the show.
• 1:19:00
  David McClelland: Full details right there on the website and on the socials as well, on Instagram at the Photography Show.
• 1:19:06
  David McClelland: I'm there on at David McClelland TV.
• 1:19:09
  David McClelland: DM us there if you like.
• 1:19:11
  David McClelland: You can also find us on Facebook and you can send us a good old-fashioned text message.
• 1:19:16
  David McClelland: Just tap on the link in our show notes.
• 1:19:19
  David McClelland: That's all for now.
• 1:19:20
  David McClelland: We'll be back next month with more photography and filmmaking, news and chat.
• 1:19:24
  David McClelland: But for now, from all of us here, bye bye.