Latest / The Photography & Video Show Podcast / 15: Expired Film Club, Canon EOS R1 and R5 Mark II hands-on, summer scavenger hunt young photographer competition
Transcript
- 0:10David McClelland: Hello and welcome to The Photography And Video Show Podcast for August 2024.
- 0:16David McClelland: My name's David McClelland and coming up today: Film is dead.
- 0:20David McClelland: Long live film! In this summer of sport I chat with expired film club phenomenon Miles Myerscough-Harris about putting vintage cameras to work in some of the biggest sporting arenas.
- 0:34Miles Myerscough-Harris: Film photography is fabulous.
- 0:35Miles Myerscough-Harris: And particularly, uh, when you're using these old completely manual cameras.
- 0:39Miles Myerscough-Harris: So the Canon F1, for example, that I use.
- 0:41Miles Myerscough-Harris: it's totally manual.
- 0:42Miles Myerscough-Harris: Everything's manual on it.
- 0:43Miles Myerscough-Harris: The, um, shutter speed, the aperture, the focus, everything's manual.
- 0:47David McClelland: Were you shooting with an F1 at the
- 0:49Miles Myerscough-Harris: I was.
- 0:49Miles Myerscough-Harris: Yeah, absolutely.
- 0:51Miles Myerscough-Harris: I thought it would be poetic to be able to do that.
- 0:54Miles Myerscough-Harris: Yeah, yeah.
- 0:57David McClelland: And we hear about a photography competition that's encouraging under 16s to go outside and do something less boring instead this summer with a chance of winning some Canon cameras and to have their shots shown in London at next year's in person Photography and Video Show.
- 1:15David McClelland: But first, joining us on the news desk this month, welcome back to Digital Camera World editor James Artaius.
- 1:21David McClelland: Hello, James.
- 1:23James Artaius: Good afternoon, David.
- 1:24James Artaius: How the devil are you, sir?
- 1:25David McClelland: I am very well indeed.
- 1:27David McClelland: It is, as we record today, sweltering outside.
- 1:31David McClelland: It's the hottest day of the year, I think.
- 1:34David McClelland: Uh, lucky you, you've been away for a few days in the, in the south west of England, did you pack your camera or were you able to fully unwind without winding it up?
- 1:45James Artaius: I actually packed a number of cameras.
- 1:47James Artaius: The main one I ended up using was a compact waterproof camera, the latest from Pentax.
- 1:51James Artaius: They're like, well, it's, I say latest, it's kind of last year's model, this year's number.
- 1:56James Artaius: So it's sort of a, an upcycled version of last year's, but a waterproof compact camera is, uh, anyone about to venture on a vacation or a trip anywhere, it's an immaculate thing to have because if you want to go and jump in the river on a hot day, you absolutely can.
- 2:07James Artaius: Uh, if it starts raining, as it sometimes does in England.
- 2:10James Artaius: Doesn't matter, you haven't got to put your kit away, and it's just simple, point, shoot, press a button, no, you know, malarkey, no, no monkeying around, so yeah, that's a bit of a secret weapon for the summer holiday for me.
- 2:19David McClelland: Aha! Well, I was at Farnborough International Air Show last week working, I should add, but I had a great time.
- 2:26David McClelland: On the whole, the weather was pretty good and I should say, well, hello to those of you who came up and said hi.
- 2:33David McClelland: There is an overlap between the Aviation and aerospace and photography worlds that I guess I should have expected, but certainly looking on social media, a lot of fantastic shots that you guys have taken of all of the aircraft on display there in Farnborough.
- 2:50David McClelland: Onto the news and, well James, I think there's probably only one story from July that we're going to be focusing on for now.
- 2:59David McClelland: It's, uh, well, Canon did what Canon teased, I suppose, a couple of months ago and it released the EOS R1 just in time for the Olympics, but that's not all it released.
- 3:10David McClelland: Uh, which of the, uh, which of these two should we touch on first of all?
- 3:14David McClelland: Because you've been, well, touching, you've been hands on with both of them, haven't you?
- 3:18James Artaius: I have indeed went over to, uh, to Germany, to the land of the, uh, of the euros at the time, um, where there was kind of a switchover.
- 3:24James Artaius: So we're using the, let's start with the R1, but we're using the Canon EOS R1, the new flagship camera alongside the Canon EOS R5 Mark II, which is not the flagship, but is arguably the most important camera in Canon's lineup.
- 3:36James Artaius: Um, and so those were being used by the press, by Reuters, by all the sports journalists at the Euros, you know, European Championships.
- 3:42James Artaius: Um, and then we had them for a few days, and then they went over to London for a day, and then they went straight on to Paris for the Olympics.
- 3:49James Artaius: So basically, um, there was a very short window where a select number of the press got to play with the cameras under some, you know, really interesting conditions, and, uh Yeah, we've waited four years for both of these bodies.
- 3:59James Artaius: Let's start with the R1.
- 4:00James Artaius: So this is the, uh, the, the first one series camera in the EOS R full frame mirrorless family.
- 4:06James Artaius: So prior to this.
- 4:07David McClelland: pre to, yes, pre to the R series, the 1D, 1DX, they went up to like, was it Mark 4 or maybe Mark 5 or
- 4:15James Artaius: It was the 3, the 3.
- 4:17James Artaius: Yes, the 1DX Mark
- 4:18David McClelland: Oh, okay.
- 4:19James Artaius: flagship, which was released in 2020, which interestingly was the same year that we got the R5.
- 4:24James Artaius: So the R5 and the R1 are both succeeding, uh, well, the original R5 and the 1DX Mark III.
- 4:31James Artaius: So, um, and those are very different times, of course, because that was sort of, uh, in the middle of, uh, of, uh, the new normal as it was at the time.
- 4:37James Artaius: I remember going to see these cameras in a, in a, uh, A little village just outside somewhere in, in Sussex, um, in the back of a church hall.
- 4:44James Artaius: Um, because that was as public as we could get to things at that point.
- 4:47James Artaius: There was no big glossy event.
- 4:48James Artaius: We got to go and play with those for a little bit.
- 4:50James Artaius: This time was much different.
- 4:51James Artaius: We got to shoot some basketball, got to shoot some break dancers, got to shoot all sorts of fun stuff and really put these two cameras through their paces.
- 4:57James Artaius: So the R1.
- 4:59James Artaius: There has been a little bit of noise online about the R1, so if you're familiar with professional flagship sports cameras, they sit in this sweet spot of about 24 megapixels, and the R1 is no difference.
- 5:10James Artaius: It's 24.
- 5:10James Artaius: 2 megapixel backside illuminated stacked sensor.
- 5:14James Artaius: It's very, very fast.
- 5:15James Artaius: It's not a global shutter sensor, which Sony debuted with the A9 Mark III, which is capable of ridiculously fast shooting speeds, 120 frames a second on the Sony A93.
- 5:25James Artaius: The R1 maxes out at 40 frames per second.
- 5:29James Artaius: On the one hand, you might think, oh, that seems a bit curmudgeonly.
- 5:31James Artaius: Why isn't it as fast?
- 5:33James Artaius: It's speed, speed, speed.
- 5:33James Artaius: Why isn't it as quick as it should be?
- 5:35James Artaius: Reading between the lines from Canon, the thinking is basically, the people that need 120 frames a second are actually not professionals.
- 5:45James Artaius: Professionals, they know what they're doing.
- 5:47James Artaius: They kind of need maybe 20.
- 5:49James Artaius: 20 is absolutely fine for pros.
- 5:51James Artaius: So giving them 30 or 40, this is literally more than they need.
- 5:55James Artaius: It's much more than they need.
- 5:57James Artaius: But as far as the resolution goes, there's 24 megapixel resolution.
- 6:01James Artaius: There's been a bit of noise online.
- 6:03James Artaius: Oh, is that sufficient for a flagship camera?
- 6:05James Artaius: And I think people's notion of what a flagship camera is, is a bit muddied these days.
- 6:09James Artaius: Flagship cameras have always been cameras used by the press, by elite level sports photographers.
- 6:15James Artaius: You know, they're not for the likes of me and thee.
- 6:17James Artaius: They are for, you know, people shooting for agencies, for Reuters, for news.
- 6:20James Artaius: Um, and 24 megapixels is simply the most efficient size.
- 6:24James Artaius: We've got enough size to blow it up or crop in or do things with it while also being able to transfer this stuff from the field.
- 6:29James Artaius: I mean, bearing in mind, if you're a war correspondent, you can't rely on going to a nice cozy cafe, put your feet up, order a coffee and plug into the wifi.
- 6:37James Artaius: You need to be able to beam this stuff from the field, whether you're using, you know, 4G, 5G, um, if you've got a LAN connection, if you're lucky.
- 6:44James Artaius: So.
- 6:45James Artaius: Beaming up 50 megapixel images, you know, when especially when you're shooting thousands of thousands, it's not practical.
- 6:50James Artaius: So this sweet spot of 24 megapixels exists for a reason.
- 6:53James Artaius: So there's been a bit of blowback about that.
- 6:55James Artaius: It doesn't make sense to me because that's the nature of what these cameras are.
- 6:59James Artaius: If you do want more resolution, that's where the R5 Mark II comes in.
- 7:03James Artaius: It's 45 megapixels, which is the same as the original R5.
- 7:07James Artaius: But both of these cameras have a very clever trick.
- 7:10James Artaius: A few clever tricks, in fact.
- 7:11James Artaius: It's They have in camera neural network image processing.
- 7:15David McClelland: Whoa, neural network.
- 7:17David McClelland: So we're talking AI here, are we?
- 7:19James Artaius: We
- 7:20David McClelland: what are the subsets
- 7:22James Artaius: One of the, yes, Canon is very clear on this because I asked, um, I asked one of the Canon Japanese execs very directly, a bit of a cheeky question, but I wanted, you know, to get the answer.
- 7:29James Artaius: Would it be fair to call these AI cameras?
- 7:31James Artaius: And the answer was no, it's a bit much to call them AI cameras, but it's not unfair to call them AI cameras because for people who use software like say Topaz or these upscaling programs that you take a file, stick it in one of these upscalers and it makes it, you know, as big as the, as big as your house or big enough to print a billboard.
- 7:48James Artaius: The R1 and the R5 Mark II can do that in camera.
- 7:51James Artaius: So the R1 takes its native 24 megapixel images, and it can turn them into 96 megapixel images.
- 7:57James Artaius: You can do that in camera.
- 7:58James Artaius: You can also do it in post production, either through Canon's DPP software, or through a plugin available, or that will be available, for Adobe.
- 8:05James Artaius: With the R5 Mark II, its native resolution is 45 megapixels.
- 8:10James Artaius: It can turn those into 180 megapixel images.
- 8:13James Artaius: And there's no If you've used some of these third party software upscalers before, it's a bit hit and miss because they are using AI to fill in blanks.
- 8:22James Artaius: They're sort of scraping the cloud, looking for similar things.
- 8:25James Artaius: That's where you get funny textures, expressions may change, whatever.
- 8:28James Artaius: By doing it in camera, the camera knows everything about the image you've taken.
- 8:32James Artaius: It knows the temperature, the white balance, the ISO, the lens you've used, the optical distortion caused by the lenses you used, the frame rate, the shutter.
- 8:40James Artaius: It knows everything.
- 8:41James Artaius: So it can then reverse engineer all the steps that it's compressed to make the image as was and then go, Oh, okay.
- 8:47James Artaius: Well, we've got all the missing bits of data.
- 8:49James Artaius: It can use that to fill in the blanks and make a pristine 96 or 180 megapixel image.
- 8:55James Artaius: And I've really pixel peeped with these because to me, it's like, this is, this is magic.
- 8:59James Artaius: There's gotta be, there's gotta be a crack in the magic somewhere.
- 9:02James Artaius: If there is, I can't see it.
- 9:03James Artaius: These are, these are absolutely, Crystal clear images, there's no muddying, there's no um, artifacting.
- 9:10James Artaius: There's nothing like when you use pixel shift mode, which obviously moves the sensor a number of times.
- 9:14James Artaius: There's, there's none of that.
- 9:15James Artaius: It's literally, you press three buttons, wait about four seconds and your image is four times bigger than it was.
- 9:21David McClelland: So from a, I guess a few things to unpack there, first of all, and if the processing is on camera, I guess over use, over time, it's going to be consistent.
- 9:31David McClelland: You know, if with this tool, pretty much what its limitations are, what its capabilities are, and what it is going to do.
- 9:39David McClelland: You put something in, you get something out that's, that's upscaled.
- 9:42David McClelland: Whereas if you were to send something up to the cloud with all of the hallucinatory AI, generative AI stuff that we see, there is.
- 9:49David McClelland: A lot of the unknown out there, so it's altogether less consistent.
- 9:53David McClelland: You dunno what you're gonna be getting.
- 9:55David McClelland: I wonder, given that we're talking about the professional uses for these cameras and, and you mentioned the, the, the, the, the R one there in particular being used in newsroom type, uh, well not in the newsroom, but actually to be being back to newsroom from, uh, sports Stadia and so on, um, what their take is, would they accept images that have been upscaled.
- 10:19David McClelland: They probably wouldn't need them, but would they even accept them given how tightly controlled they are with any image manipulation?
- 10:27James Artaius: This is a very good question and one that I actually think there's not an answer for just yet, because obviously this is emergent technology, we know that these cameras were used at the Euros, we know they've been used, um, they're being used at the Olympics as we speak, and there's 40 R1 units, and there's another 40 or so R5 Mark II, so they're being used at the moment by newsgatherers, by Reuters, by Getty, by all of the big boys and girls, and that's going to be one of those questions, especially we had, you know, the, the Royal incident not that long ago, where there became all these questions about what constitutes a manipulated image.
- 10:56James Artaius: Upscaling to me, it's, it's, uh, it's not a sinister manipulation, but it is a manipulation.
- 11:03James Artaius: Um, uh, also, pardon past all this, there's a, there's a facility where you can denoise an image by two stops.
- 11:09James Artaius: If you're shooting at a high ISO, you can denoise it, again, in camera by two stops.
- 11:13James Artaius: Again, that's not a sinister use of technology, but it is nonetheless manipulation.
- 11:18James Artaius: And I think as we get into things like content credentials, and people having to declare and digitally watermark the changes, yes, you could quite reasonably say that's unacceptable.
- 11:29James Artaius: I think the general context of what image making and image recording is going to be, that's probably going to be a thing that we come to accept, I personally feel.
- 11:37James Artaius: Um, but you're right, it's absolutely a question that doesn't yet have an answer, we may find.
- 11:41James Artaius: In a couple of months time, you know, Reuters and Co are going, actually we can't accept these for this purpose.
- 11:46James Artaius: Maybe other purposes will be sort of come clear.
- 11:49David McClelland: And then just referencing back to, uh, the noise that you mentioned online about, oh, the R1 isn't this, it doesn't have that.
- 11:57David McClelland: I guess this is where, really, where you come back to the definition of what flagship means, and it would be easy to conflate flagship with maximum technical capability.
- 12:09David McClelland: Uh, in terms of, in terms of frame rate, in terms of megapixel count, in terms of all of the other things that you could in theory throw at a camera.
- 12:18David McClelland: It'd be very easy to say if it's the flagship camera it must be the most technically capable camera, but I think to your point that would be a mistake.
- 12:27David McClelland: This flagship, it is, it's the warhorse.
- 12:30David McClelland: Uh, it is literally going to the most dangerous, the most, uh, action packed places on earth.
- 12:38David McClelland: And you've got to get in, and you've got to get that footage out.
- 12:40David McClelland: And that doesn't necessarily mean, to your point, that you need that 50 megapixel, 120 frames a second capability.
- 12:48David McClelland: You need to get something that's going to get the job done, and then get it out and get it back to base.
- 12:53James Artaius: Absolutely.
- 12:53James Artaius: And this speaks to the other part of that equation where I think this, as you say, this conventional understanding, I think we've all been spoiled by, you know, things like a GFX 100 megapixel camera.
- 13:02James Artaius: Why aren't all cameras 100 megapixels?
- 13:04James Artaius: That must be the new standard.
- 13:05James Artaius: Okay, for some things maybe it is.
- 13:07James Artaius: Canon is playing an interesting game by not chasing frame rates, by not chasing resolution, except for this AI version.
- 13:15James Artaius: What they're instead doing is this, this.
- 13:18James Artaius: Uh, neural network type stuff.
- 13:20James Artaius: And the other place this comes in is with autofocus.
- 13:23James Artaius: So we saw with the Sony a nine three, now I can't remember their clever name for it, but it was, let's call it predictive or skeletal predictive autofocus.
- 13:31James Artaius: Essentially what Sony's tech would do was kind of predict what the human skeleton does in the case of locomotion.
- 13:36James Artaius: It would go, Oh, someone's running.
- 13:37James Artaius: That must be a runner.
- 13:38James Artaius: And it would, it would have an algorithm to follow that.
- 13:41James Artaius: But if somebody actually turned out to be hurdling and then a leg came up, the camera would be thrown off.
- 13:46James Artaius: Canon has done some very interesting, the three case uses it's got, it's called Action Priority AF.
- 13:53James Artaius: You turn this mode on, specifically for ball sports, specifically for ball sports involving a circular ball, and in specific at this particular time, it's for basketball, soccer, and volleyball.
- 14:05James Artaius: So at the moment those cases are quite limited, but what the camera then does is it says, I'm in action priority mode, and I know there's a ball on the pitch.
- 14:13James Artaius: Therefore, I know who's the priority in this situation.
- 14:16James Artaius: Probably the person with the ball.
- 14:19James Artaius: If it's a person with a ball playing basketball, I recognize dribbling.
- 14:23James Artaius: I recognize going up for a shot.
- 14:25James Artaius: I recognize going up for a dunk.
- 14:27James Artaius: It's also been programmed to recognize, um, cooperative moves.
- 14:30James Artaius: So I don't know if you know what an alley oop is, David, in basketball.
- 14:33James Artaius: It's one player lobs the ball up towards the hoop.
- 14:35James Artaius: Another player comes in, catches it and slams it home.
- 14:38David McClelland: I, I know the move, but I didn't know the name for it, but I do now.
- 14:41David McClelland: Every day's a school day, James.
- 14:44James Artaius: So it can recognize, now an alley oop is something that most cameras would be thrown off by, because it was either, the camera would either detect the player, or it would follow the ball.
- 14:53James Artaius: This camera, and I've tested it, I tested it photographing people doing alley oops, it understands the motion of a player throwing the ball up, and it knows that someone's going to come in and catch it and slam it.
- 15:04James Artaius: It's just one of the routines it's been trained with.
- 15:06James Artaius: The same as if, you know, in football, it understands when a leg gets cocked all the way back, it's going to kick a ball.
- 15:11James Artaius: It's just been deeply, it's been trained.
- 15:12James Artaius: Deep learning.
- 15:13James Artaius: It's all about AI training.
- 15:15James Artaius: It knows these movements in volleyball.
- 15:17James Artaius: It knows when a player is going to go up for a spike, it recognizes specific skeletal movements.
- 15:21James Artaius: And so it can predict, it can anticipate, and it is ungodly good.
- 15:26James Artaius: I'm not even exaggerating.
- 15:28James Artaius: I took something like 3, 750 shots.
- 15:31James Artaius: Every single one was in focus on the subject that it was supposed to be.
- 15:37James Artaius: And this is a sort of a multifaceted thing, because on top of action priority, we also have a face or face priority AF, I think is what it's called.
- 15:46James Artaius: Essentially you can program in a bank of 10 faces.
- 15:49James Artaius: So you can either, if you're on the sidelines, take photographs of 10 people's faces, or if I know I'm going to be photographing a specific sports team, I can photograph their pictures from the internet.
- 16:00David McClelland: Right.
- 16:01James Artaius: then recognises those 10 faces and it stores them, and you can put them in order of priority.
- 16:06James Artaius: So your star player can be your top priority, maybe the bench player can be number 10, and if those two people are in frame at the same time, the autofocus will prioritise The same if you took this camera to a wedding.
- 16:19James Artaius: You say, okay, bride and groom, they're number one and two, maybe auntie Ethel is number four, and the reverend is number eight.
- 16:25James Artaius: Whenever all of those faces are in frame, it will prioritize whichever one you've told it is most important.
- 16:31James Artaius: It's so clever and so good and so reliable.
- 16:35James Artaius: And that's the thing.
- 16:36James Artaius: It's easy to say 120 frames a second.
- 16:39James Artaius: People understand what that is.
- 16:40James Artaius: If I say to you face priority recognition AF, that doesn't mean anything.
- 16:44James Artaius: And we've got to go through this routine now of explaining.
- 16:47James Artaius: This takes a lot more explaining, but that's a lot more impressive and a lot more useful than having a few more frames for a few more megapixels.
- 16:53David McClelland: I'll tell you where my head's at the moment, uh, and my head is taken back to the photography show, perhaps one of the earlier ones just after the pandemic or maybe just before, but it was a Canon concept camera that you and I would both have seen.
- 17:09David McClelland: It's probably, uh, Canon's Dave Parry who was showing it to us and it's, it's one of these PTZ, PTZ cameras that can just follow the action around whatever space it's in a party or something else and I'm thinking of what you've just described with that face priority programming it with some important faces and then mixing together that kind of PTZ consumer camera and say right okay I want whenever these four people who I've just shown you the faces of all appear in frame Just take some shots.
- 17:40David McClelland: You start bringing all of the AI machine learning capability, the automation, and some of the camera PTZ stuff, which Canon already does very, very well, then that creates a really interesting, and for all I know, they're already doing it, uh, capability there that almost takes photographers, uh, a bit out of the picture, as it were.
- 18:03James Artaius: Well, we've, I think I say this to you every time we talk about a new Canon launch, which is that for a serious chunk of time, Canon was sort of quite conservative in what it was doing.
- 18:12James Artaius: It sort of knew its workhorse cameras, it knew what people needed and wanted, it would make those, and that was all well and good.
- 18:17James Artaius: It wasn't really pushing any boundaries, especially in the days where it hadn't yet embraced mirrorless fully.
- 18:22James Artaius: Canon was very much a conservative kind of, we make what people buy sort of thing.
- 18:25James Artaius: In the last five years or so, these conceptual things, this AI stuff, it's.
- 18:30James Artaius: It's really impressive.
- 18:32James Artaius: It's really mind blowing in a sense, the kind of innovation that Canon is now sort of double downing on.
- 18:38James Artaius: The first thing I thought about the, obviously the in camera upscaling, there's plenty more about these cameras to talk about, but I think these are the most interesting features.
- 18:44James Artaius: The in camera upscaling is interesting to me because, okay, on the R5 Mark II, it shoots 45 megapixel, that's already a lot of pixels.
- 18:51James Artaius: If you're shooting jewelry or beauty or fine art landscapes or something, you can up, up res that to 180.
- 18:57James Artaius: Fantastic.
- 18:58James Artaius: So why do you need that on a 24 megapixel sports camera?
- 19:00James Artaius: Well, if you haven't got the right lens on, And you need to crop into your picture of a bird, or the player is a bit too far down the pitch.
- 19:06James Artaius: Okay, so you've just, you've just reduced your 24 megapixel image to a 10 megapixel image.
- 19:10James Artaius: Now it might be too small for publication, but not if you up res it.
- 19:14James Artaius: Now it's all of a sudden back to 24 megapixels.
- 19:16James Artaius: So that gets you thinking.
- 19:18James Artaius: If you don't need a 96 megapixel camera, because you can have a 24 megapixel and up res it, do you need a 24 megapixel camera?
- 19:26James Artaius: Can you just have a 6 megapixel camera, And use the up resing to quadruple the resolution.
- 19:31James Artaius: Because if you do that, if we have the line now, I'm not saying Canon's going to release a six, the six megapixel camera.
- 19:37James Artaius: Um, but if they choose to.
- 19:39James Artaius: Wouldn't that get rid of a lot of the problems with overheating, of sensor noise, heat dissipation, 4K, all the stuff that causes cameras to be big and need all this stuff.
- 19:47James Artaius: If we just, you know, that will improve ISO noise because the pixel sites will be larger.
- 19:52James Artaius: There's a, there's a lot of ways of looking at this both ways.
- 19:54James Artaius: Oh, how can we get more resolution, but also how can we lower the resolution to get cleaner resolutions?
- 19:59James Artaius: So, this tech has a lot of potential applications that are really, really quite exciting.
- 20:04David McClelland: So, given the leaks, given the pre announcements, let's say, were there any surprises when these cameras were finally announced and you were able to get your hands on them?
- 20:14David McClelland: Obviously, you've mentioned some of the capabilities of the autofocus there.
- 20:17David McClelland: Was everything else pretty much as expected or did Canon manage to keep some of its cards close to its chest?
- 20:24James Artaius: I think probably the biggest surprise was what the camera wasn't.
- 20:27James Artaius: Because there were crazy rumors ahead of launch, this is going to have 80 megapixels and it'll be, uh, you know, quad pixel, dual, instead of dual pixel AF, it'll be quad pixel AF.
- 20:37James Artaius: And there were all these pie in the sky notions of what it could be.
- 20:40James Artaius: And, um, I think for me, the big surprise was they weren't.
- 20:44James Artaius: They weren't the sort of spec sheet technical numbers innovations.
- 20:48James Artaius: They were like, okay, how can we, we've kind of done all of that.
- 20:50James Artaius: Let's double down on what AI for the lack of a better term, or what deep learning can really do for us in terms of making this autofocus.
- 20:58James Artaius: Now the autofocus can recognize things.
- 21:00James Artaius: That's not hard.
- 21:01James Artaius: It can recognize dogs and cats and airplanes and trains.
- 21:03James Artaius: That's pretty easy.
- 21:04James Artaius: How can it put all those things together?
- 21:06James Artaius: How can it recognize the driver's head in the cockpit of an F1 car?
- 21:10James Artaius: How can it recognize, you know, a cyclist or can it recognize, Someone riding a tandem bicycle.
- 21:15James Artaius: You know, I don't think any camera can quite manage that just yet.
- 21:17James Artaius: It gets very confused.
- 21:18James Artaius: And I think that's where we're going now.
- 21:20James Artaius: We're going away from the megapixel arms race.
- 21:23James Artaius: You know, we're going away from the frame rate arms race, um, probably for the best because there's only so much those things can get you, but I'm really interested in what this AI stuff can do for us.
- 21:32James Artaius: It does, you know, you raise a really interesting point there of what, what we can do with PTZ type technologies in terms of taking the photographer or the videographer.
- 21:42James Artaius: And, again, that brings up all sorts of questions of like, are we all threatened by that?
- 21:46James Artaius: Or if I'm a wedding photographer, does that help me?
- 21:48James Artaius: Because I don't need a videographer anymore, I can have a camera set up that can recognize people.
- 21:52James Artaius: You know, there's lots of Pros and cons, but I think they're exciting.
- 21:56James Artaius: Probably because we're at the beginning of this journey, not in the middle, where we see all the things that have gone wrong.
- 22:00James Artaius: But at the moment, it seems really exciting.
- 22:01James Artaius: And yeah, these cameras were at once what we expected, and at once nothing at all what we expected.
- 22:08David McClelland: all right.
- 22:09David McClelland: So to wrap things up on this, I think I've got two questions.
- 22:14David McClelland: Uh, the first thing is the, the R1 has been a long time coming and since 2018 when Canon first, uh, went out with its, with its mirrorless system, it's been a gradual process in terms of the camera bodies and the camera lenses to fill out the full system.
- 22:35David McClelland: Is Are we there now, and is anything missing from the line up now that we've got that long awaited flagship camera?
- 22:45David McClelland: Is there any niche that Canon doesn't have covered with its, with its line up, particularly now that it's already iterating on some of its initial releases?
- 22:54James Artaius: if there is a hole in the lineup, it's just a more fully fledged, Cinema EOS representation.
- 23:00James Artaius: So for those unaware, we have EOS cameras, which are photography and sort of a little bit of video cinema EOS for the high end filmmakers, movie makers, um, documentarians.
- 23:09James Artaius: Um, and we do have, you know, we have the C400 recently released, which is along those lines, but as far as, you know, one of the, one of the real big guns, I think there's still room in that area or indeed at the lower end, so we've got things at the C70, which is a brilliant camera.
- 23:23James Artaius: But I think, yes, it's, it's the cinema EOS line that needs to be kind of more populated, if anything.
- 23:27James Artaius: But at the same time, that's a weird sector of the industry, because the EF mount, the old EF mount, is still very dominant in, uh, in cinematography and filmmaking.
- 23:37James Artaius: So trying to get the cinema industry to migrate over to RF is, uh, probably more of a long term challenge, I think, than photographers.
- 23:44, David McClelland: my second question to you really as a, as an upsum is, so we've spoken about the specs, we've spoken about the capabilities, you have, uh, a broad view of the industry, of the competition, what Sony's doing, what, what Nikon's doing, what the others are doing.
- 24:01, David McClelland: Where does this sit?
- 24:01, David McClelland: Where does this put Canon?
- 24:03, David McClelland: How, how do you summarize what these two cameras really mean?
- 24:09, David McClelland: And if you were looking to move in a particular direction, whether these should be the cameras that you would be looking at?
- 24:16James Artaius: Basically, if you photograph the Olympics, or if you photograph the NBA, or if you photograph, you know, Premier League soccer, you're someone who needs this level of camera.
- 24:24James Artaius: If you don't do those things, you don't need this camera.
- 24:26James Artaius: You just don't.
- 24:26James Artaius: There's no point.
- 24:28James Artaius: So if you're one of those people, or you work for Reuters, you're shooting for news desks and things, to me, this is a bit of a no brainer.
- 24:34James Artaius: Yes, it's a six grand camera, but that's what these cameras cost.
- 24:38James Artaius: It's just what they are.
- 24:40James Artaius: Um, it's going head to head with things like, you know, the A9 3, the A1 in some respects, the Nikon Z9 and Z8.
- 24:48James Artaius: If you shoot sport, there is no better camera in my personal perspective.
- 24:53James Artaius: Um, There are faster cameras.
- 24:55James Artaius: I don't know if you need the speed.
- 24:56James Artaius: There are higher resolution cameras.
- 24:57James Artaius: I don't know if you need the resolution.
- 24:58James Artaius: What you do need is the autofocus.
- 25:00James Artaius: This also has pre capture as well.
- 25:02James Artaius: So you get the 15 frames before you shoot.
- 25:04James Artaius: Uh, it also has the eye detect AF, so you can use, move your eyeball around the viewfinder and it'll focus on what you're looking at.
- 25:10James Artaius: So it's got all kinds of crazy clever things.
- 25:11James Artaius: If you are that person who needs elite level performance, this is worth the investment.
- 25:15James Artaius: Where does the R5 Mark II sit?
- 25:17James Artaius: I always thought the R5 was completely overpowered in 2020.
- 25:22James Artaius: And I think it's still pretty overpowered in 2024.
- 25:25James Artaius: And the R five mark two is the same story.
- 25:27James Artaius: It's a, it's a crazy good camera, you know, 45 megapixels off the memory card.
- 25:31James Artaius: 196 in camera if, or 180 in camera if you want it to.
- 25:34James Artaius: Does eight K 60 in camera, has some overheating stuff, but it's also got a grip that calls the camera down.
- 25:39James Artaius: The shooting times are longer than they were.
- 25:41James Artaius: Again, it's got the, um, eye control af.
- 25:44James Artaius: Um, if you are looking for a high resolution camera for stills or video.
- 25:49James Artaius: If you shoot 8K, you probably want something like the R5C, which has slightly longer recording durations.
- 25:55James Artaius: The Nikon Z9 has longer 8K durations.
- 25:58James Artaius: Um, but if you're primarily shooting stills with a bit of video, and the R5 II does have more Cinema EOS components in terms of some of the features that are rolled over, Um, it's a fantastic hybrid camera, probably the best hybrid camera there is, but specifically for stills, shooting sports and wildlife, absolutely fantastic.
- 26:17James Artaius: Um, if I had a few grand, I would buy one.
- 26:20James Artaius: I bought the R5.
- 26:22James Artaius: Um, I don't quite these days shoot enough sport to make it completely worth my while, but this is certainly, the next camera I buy will be the R5 too.
- 26:30James Artaius: I just can't afford it right now.
- 26:32David McClelland: Strong words there.
- 26:34David McClelland: And it's, it's difficult not to draw comparisons to the first digital EOS run.
- 26:40David McClelland: And I think back to how the 5D Mark II, it changed the game for, for a number of industries, really, uh, for, for indie filmmakers, for filmmakers, the video capabilities that were introduced with that camera.
- 26:58David McClelland: And that's not to say it, it stayed.
- 27:01David McClelland: being the best camera, but because it got a foothold, because everyone, even people outside of the industry, had heard about this 5D Mark II and, wow, this is great and we're doing things that we weren't able to do before.
- 27:13David McClelland: It, it changed the direction for a lot of filmmakers and I'm sure for Canon was an on ramp on to things like the C300 that came out shortly afterwards.
- 27:24David McClelland: So as we Now see a, uh, uh, an R5 Mark II.
- 27:28David McClelland: And you mentioned some of the video capabilities there.
- 27:30David McClelland: Obviously we're in different times.
- 27:32David McClelland: We're, uh, more than 10 years on from, from those days, probably 15 years on from those days.
- 27:36David McClelland: But it'd be interesting to see if cameras like that, hybrid cameras like that, just because of the heritage.
- 27:43David McClelland: Also, you've got people who are going to be shooting a lot of videos with the R5 Mark II, just like they did with the 5D Mark II.
- 27:49David McClelland: James, I'm in.
- 27:51David McClelland: Incredibly jealous of the cameras that you get to go hands on with there in your job and the places you get to go to try them out.
- 27:59David McClelland: I'm sure you've got lots of stories about the R1 and the R5 Mark II over on Digital Camera World.
- 28:07David McClelland: Where is the best place for people to keep up with Canon news and news about all of the other fantastic cameras that you get to get your mitts on?
- 28:15James Artaius: If you head over to digital camera world.
- 28:17James Artaius: com, that's the best place to go.
- 28:18James Artaius: And there's a lot of, there's a lot of my write ups and think pieces and, you know, a little bit of conversational stuff like you and I having now as to like, is this worth it?
- 28:26James Artaius: Would I want to use that?
- 28:27James Artaius: Um, you know, we've got all sorts of stuff over at digital camera world.
- 28:30James Artaius: com.
- 28:30James Artaius: And, um, yeah, if you enjoy my ramblings, that's a place to get more of them.
- 28:35David McClelland: Fantastic.
- 28:35David McClelland: Always love your ramblings, James.
- 28:37David McClelland: Fantastic to have you on the show again.
- 28:38David McClelland: Speak to you again soon.
- 28:39James Artaius: Thank you, David.
- 28:40James Artaius: Bye bye now.
- 28:48David McClelland: Miles' mice of Harris is a photographer whose work under the expired film club handle rose to prominence online in the early 2020s.
- 28:57David McClelland: After leaving school, he worked in and around the music industry as a photographer, filmmaker and producer burnt.
- 29:03David McClelland: It was a passion for film that developed during the pandemic that helped his career find a new groove capturing tier one sports on antique analog cameras.
- 29:17Miles Myerscough-Harris: Expired Film Club, I suppose, is, uh, an online, I guess project might be the overall word for it, but it's, it's sort of, it's, as I'm known in the social media world, I started it in lockdown.
- 29:29Miles Myerscough-Harris: Um, and I, so to throw back to pre lockdown and everything else, I worked in the music industry for a long time.
- 29:37Miles Myerscough-Harris: And obviously when the pandemic hit, uh, that all ground to a halt and I was furloughed.
- 29:42Miles Myerscough-Harris: So I, uh, really got back into film photography as a real sort of passion.
- 29:47Miles Myerscough-Harris: I hadn't done filming in a while.
- 29:48Miles Myerscough-Harris: I shot stills and video in the music industry digitally, obviously.
- 29:51Miles Myerscough-Harris: And, uh, yeah, but then the lockdown hit, you know, looking for things to do.
- 29:55Miles Myerscough-Harris: So I found an old, uh, it was an Olympus OM 10 on Facebook marketplace from somebody near me.
- 30:00Miles Myerscough-Harris: Um, and just delve right into that and got really interested in exploring, you know, You know, all different types of film stocks as people do when they, you know, get into photography, uh, film photography anyway.
- 30:09Miles Myerscough-Harris: Um, and so I, I found a real interest in, uh, old vintage expired films.
- 30:14Miles Myerscough-Harris: I just love the designs of the, the boxes and the feel of them, the fact that there were so many different, uh, film stocks of weird and wonderful variations you could try.
- 30:22Miles Myerscough-Harris: So, yeah, I just got really into the idea of just experimenting with Finding really old, you know, roles of film and see what I could get.
- 30:29Miles Myerscough-Harris: So I started documenting my journey in this way through social media called the account expired film club.
- 30:35Miles Myerscough-Harris: Um, and it all just kind of gained, gained traction from there.
- 30:38Miles Myerscough-Harris: It was amazing.
- 30:38Miles Myerscough-Harris: I gained a following a lot faster than I could ever have imagined.
- 30:42Miles Myerscough-Harris: Um, I think on TikTok, I hit a million followers in, in about the first year I was doing things really.
- 30:49Miles Myerscough-Harris: And so to start with, I was just, uh, I've got like a typical sort of style of video that I do where I show a kind of first person POV of me.
- 30:59Miles Myerscough-Harris: hopefully somewhere particularly interesting,
- 31:01David McClelland: Mm.
- 31:01Miles Myerscough-Harris: uh, loading, uh, an interesting roll of film, whether it's expired or fresh, um, and then showing the process of, you know, the box, taking out the box, showing the camera I'm using, putting in the camera and then showing the view through the viewfinder and then the results at the end.
- 31:14Miles Myerscough-Harris: And obviously with expired film, it's quite random what you might get.
- 31:17Miles Myerscough-Harris: So everyone was different.
- 31:19Miles Myerscough-Harris: And yeah, so I started doing that and, um, being a lover of sports myself, uh, and music as well, I go to a lot of sports games, particularly football is my.
- 31:28Miles Myerscough-Harris: Kind of, uh, my choice sport really, I suppose.
- 31:32Miles Myerscough-Harris: Um, and, uh, I would go often with my younger brother, Dylan, who's also interested in this film.
- 31:37Miles Myerscough-Harris: And we take point and shoot cameras and stuff like that into the crowd.
- 31:41Miles Myerscough-Harris: And, um, I would do some bits of my content when we were at football games as well.
- 31:46Miles Myerscough-Harris: So like show it again, show myself learning role film, and then the results through the, through the viewfinder.
- 31:50Miles Myerscough-Harris: And through that, uh, I was very lucky, you know, some of my content went down really well online and I got approached by, sports clubs to then start doing it for them, uh, professionally.
- 32:01Miles Myerscough-Harris: Um, luckily I had a lot of the professional film gear that I needed.
- 32:05Miles Myerscough-Harris: So, um, uh, my camera of choice these days, I've got two.
- 32:08Miles Myerscough-Harris: I use a Canon F1 a lot and a Canon EOS 1V, which is, which is beautiful.
- 32:13Miles Myerscough-Harris: Uh, and I luckily had the big telephoto lenses and things that I need to use.
- 32:16Miles Myerscough-Harris: Yeah, and so I started getting invited down to sports games and now somehow I call this my career.
- 32:23David McClelland: Living the dream there, really.
- 32:25David McClelland: And, uh, I mean, I've followed your work for a long time, probably not long after lockdown.
- 32:31David McClelland: And, uh, as a sports fan myself, just seeing you in whichever national stadium, you mentioned the EOS F1 there.
- 32:39David McClelland: You were recently at, uh, at the F1 shooting.
- 32:43David McClelland: Uh, were you shooting with an F1 at the
- 32:45Miles Myerscough-Harris: I was.
- 32:46Miles Myerscough-Harris: Yeah, absolutely.
- 32:48Miles Myerscough-Harris: I thought it would be poetic to be able to do that.
- 32:50Miles Myerscough-Harris: Yeah, yeah.
- 32:51David McClelland: But your background up until then was largely in music though.
- 32:54David McClelland: So how, how, why is sports become the place where the expired film club has really found its following, do you think?
- 33:03David McClelland: Or is it just that the fact that there's a lot of sport most weekends at least, so there's a lot of opportunity for you to take those
- 33:10Miles Myerscough-Harris: Yeah, I suppose so.
- 33:12Miles Myerscough-Harris: I like the whole nostalgic vibe.
- 33:14Miles Myerscough-Harris: I think people are on that now.
- 33:15Miles Myerscough-Harris: Funnily enough, I'm wearing a vintage Man United shirt for this interview.
- 33:18Miles Myerscough-Harris: Um, but that kind of, particularly in football, I think that like, Football nostalgia is a real kind of tangible thing now.
- 33:25Miles Myerscough-Harris: It's a bit, a bit of like a, I don't know.
- 33:27Miles Myerscough-Harris: It's like a fashion statement.
- 33:28Miles Myerscough-Harris: I was just at a festival yesterday, actually, and the amount of vintage football shirts that were around was amazing.
- 33:33Miles Myerscough-Harris: so I guess it kind of plays into that a little bit.
- 33:34Miles Myerscough-Harris: Um, sport, obviously, like you say, There's no end to the amount of sport that's on any given week.
- 33:41Miles Myerscough-Harris: Um, and particularly, you know, this year we've had the Euros and now the Olympics are going on.
- 33:45Miles Myerscough-Harris: Um, and then there's been, you know, I've been at a lot of stuff recently.
- 33:48Miles Myerscough-Harris: I've been, like I said, the F1, I've been at the golf in Scotland.
- 33:51Miles Myerscough-Harris: I've been at the tennis has been Wimbledon and Roland Garros and loads of stuff.
- 33:55Miles Myerscough-Harris: So I guess there's always opportunities, um, to be shooting sports.
- 34:00Miles Myerscough-Harris: Um, so and I think maybe just a combination of that, you know, the old vintage style photography on the modern day sporting world is a bit of a juxtaposition and it adds to that kind of nostalgia to it, I suppose.
- 34:12Miles Myerscough-Harris: So, um, so yeah, but I couldn't pinpoint exactly why.
- 34:15Miles Myerscough-Harris: This is the thing, like, I seem to have hit on this weird niche that I, I kind of created for myself and didn't even really realize that I was doing it.
- 34:23Miles Myerscough-Harris: None of this was intentional particularly.
- 34:25Miles Myerscough-Harris: I didn't set out and be like, I'm going to do this to.
- 34:28Miles Myerscough-Harris: You know, get loads of followers on social media.
- 34:29Miles Myerscough-Harris: It just kind of all happened quite naturally, which is quite nice
- 34:32David McClelland: But as you say, a big sports fan yourself, it's not something you're going to turn down when those opportunities come along and one job's led on to another there.
- 34:41David McClelland: In terms of the image output, you know, the name is Expired Film Club.
- 34:47David McClelland: You are working with some film that maybe you don't know where it came from or what state it's going to be in.
- 34:54David McClelland: does that kind of give you a bit of jeopardy?
- 34:56Miles Myerscough-Harris: Yeah, uh, there is an element of that absolutely what I tend to do now obviously when i'm doing these these bigger sports shoots professionally is to make sure that I've got plenty of film that I know I can rely on and get results out of.
- 35:07Miles Myerscough-Harris: And I always bring some, some weird stuff just to see if, uh, if I can get some, some decent results out of it.
- 35:12Miles Myerscough-Harris: Because there's always a fun story there.
- 35:13Miles Myerscough-Harris: I mean, it's um, it's been nice recently what I've done as well.
- 35:16Miles Myerscough-Harris: I use loads of very old cameras as well.
- 35:19Miles Myerscough-Harris: And I've got this camera from 1897 that I found at an antique store that still works.
- 35:23Miles Myerscough-Harris: It's amazing.
- 35:24Miles Myerscough-Harris: And I've managed to adapt it to take, uh, 120 film, which you can get readily nowadays.
- 35:29Miles Myerscough-Harris: And that, I mean, it's this crazy thing.
- 35:31Miles Myerscough-Harris: It folds out, it's got this big bellows that you pull out like this.
- 35:33Miles Myerscough-Harris: And the only way you can tell what you're focusing on is the, the bellows have a little metal arrow that points to how far away, you know, feet and inches you're focusing.
- 35:40Miles Myerscough-Harris: There's got this little range find a little mirror in the top.
- 35:43Miles Myerscough-Harris: using stuff like that, I find really fun.
- 35:44Miles Myerscough-Harris: I went to do a shoot in Sweden recently with a team who had a, they had the special centenary kit that they released and they really wanted me to take it on this old camera.
- 35:51Miles Myerscough-Harris: But again, at that, in that moment.
- 35:54Miles Myerscough-Harris: What they really wanted of me was to take the team photo before the game of them in this hundred year old kit using this hundred year old camera.
- 36:01Miles Myerscough-Harris: Um, and so obviously that's, so they, you know, they shake their hands before the games.
- 36:06Miles Myerscough-Harris: They come and they, they stand, uh, what, I had my brother with me for this shoot as well.
- 36:10Miles Myerscough-Harris: We had to, we had to measure out how far away from me they needed to stand so that where I could set the focus.
- 36:15Miles Myerscough-Harris: Anyway, look down through the, the viewfinder, take one photo, and then the goalkeeper was like, okay, that's it, and they run off.
- 36:20Miles Myerscough-Harris: And so I was stood there and I was like, I've come all this way.
- 36:23Miles Myerscough-Harris: I've taken one photo and I've got no idea if it's in focus.
- 36:27Miles Myerscough-Harris: So that was a nerve wracking one.
- 36:29Miles Myerscough-Harris: And like, again, that was, we have one where I was thinking, you know, if I, if this doesn't come out right, then, uh, I'm a bit screwed.
- 36:36Miles Myerscough-Harris: But, uh, there's, there are moments like that.
- 36:38Miles Myerscough-Harris: I do take a lot of expired rolls to games now, but, um, they're always best when you use them in, uh, like bright conditions.
- 36:45Miles Myerscough-Harris: So typically an afternoon game, it's not got full sun.
- 36:48Miles Myerscough-Harris: You'll be able to get some sort of good results out of it, but I always make sure I've got lots of other fresh film and other bits of pieces that I know I'll get results out of as well when I do a shoot.
- 36:55David McClelland: Where do you get all of these cameras from though?
- 36:59David McClelland: And it strikes me, you mentioned modifying a camera there as well.
- 37:03David McClelland: You've got to be pretty handy when it comes to knowing how these cameras work and how to mod them to get modern films to work in them, for example.
- 37:12Miles Myerscough-Harris: Yeah, I mean, I was lucky with that one, uh, that I found.
- 37:16Miles Myerscough-Harris: So basically a lot of the cameras and things I find, uh, mostly online.
- 37:20Miles Myerscough-Harris: So eBay, Facebook marketplace, auction sites, that one, to be fair though, I did find physically in an antique store.
- 37:27Miles Myerscough-Harris: I actually, I say, I found it, but my wife can take credit for it.
- 37:30Miles Myerscough-Harris: Cause we were in.
- 37:31Miles Myerscough-Harris: There together and she spotted it on the shelf and was like miles.
- 37:34Miles Myerscough-Harris: This looks like a bit of you and yeah, and amazingly it still worked with that one.
- 37:38Miles Myerscough-Harris: I got quite lucky actually, because so, um, the film it took originally, I think it was called 104 film.
- 37:43Miles Myerscough-Harris: Um, and if, uh, if you know, film stocks very much, basically, um, 104 film used to be made in the, I guess, late 1800s to early 1900s.
- 37:54Miles Myerscough-Harris: And it was essentially a four by five.
- 37:57Miles Myerscough-Harris: sheet film, but on a roll.
- 37:59Miles Myerscough-Harris: So it would be four by five film with a paper backing and you could get, I think it was six exposures out of this.
- 38:06Miles Myerscough-Harris: So very amazingly nice quality film.
- 38:09Miles Myerscough-Harris: If you think, you know, each frame you're getting was like four by five.
- 38:11Miles Myerscough-Harris: So really nice stuff.
- 38:13Miles Myerscough-Harris: Obviously it doesn't exist anymore, unfortunately.
- 38:15Miles Myerscough-Harris: So, um, there were two options I could go down with this camera, which was literally if I got into a dark room or in a changing bag, I could physically tape one sheet of film.
- 38:24Miles Myerscough-Harris: 4x5 film on the inside of it, which was a bit finickety.
- 38:28Miles Myerscough-Harris: The other op the other option was, I wonder if anybody, you know, designs adapters to use in these cameras.
- 38:33Miles Myerscough-Harris: And incredibly, there's a guy on eBay who 3D prints, uh, adapters for 104 to 120 film.
- 38:41Miles Myerscough-Harris: So I was like, this is meant to be.
- 38:42Miles Myerscough-Harris: So yeah, so I've got these little, they're like orange, orange, like, they're kind of just like spacers that go in either side of a roll of 120 film.
- 38:49Miles Myerscough-Harris: And it means that obviously when I'm using the camera, the film doesn't fill the whole frame that it could do.
- 38:53Miles Myerscough-Harris: So you get kind of a bit of a panoramic type of effect to it.
- 38:56Miles Myerscough-Harris: But it means that then, um, when I'm out shooting whatever, I can change rolls of film really quickly.
- 39:01Miles Myerscough-Harris: I get more, more exposures off a roll.
- 39:03Miles Myerscough-Harris: Uh, and also it means that I can use like, yeah, the 120 rolls of film that are really easily available.
- 39:10Miles Myerscough-Harris: You know, other cameras, I tend to try and find cameras that I know I'll be able to use modern film with.
- 39:17Miles Myerscough-Harris: So 120 film goes back.
- 39:19Miles Myerscough-Harris: I mean, it's been around for, yeah, like it must be a hundred years at least.
- 39:23Miles Myerscough-Harris: I think 120 film goes all the way back.
- 39:25Miles Myerscough-Harris: So a lot of the older cameras from the early 1900s do take 120 film, which is amazing.
- 39:30Miles Myerscough-Harris: I recently got this, um, panoramic.
- 39:33Miles Myerscough-Harris: Uh, medium format camera, uh, it's called, I'm trying to remember the name, number one Kodak Panoram, I think it is.
- 39:39Miles Myerscough-Harris: Um, and, uh, yeah, it's, it's this amazing thing.
- 39:43Miles Myerscough-Harris: Uh, and it takes panoramic, uh, images.
- 39:45Miles Myerscough-Harris: It's got this lens on the front of it that sits in, in its own sort of bellows thing.
- 39:49Miles Myerscough-Harris: And when you press the shutter, the lens flips around like this, the lens moves and you get this panorama from it.
- 39:55Miles Myerscough-Harris: And again, that, that back in the day, it took a slightly different variation of film but the same size as 120.
- 40:02Miles Myerscough-Harris: So, uh, it means I can just use 120 film in it now.
- 40:04Miles Myerscough-Harris: I mean, you have to like wind the film on a bit more for every shot, because obviously you're filling up more than one frame with this panorama.
- 40:11Miles Myerscough-Harris: Um, but yeah, so when I'm looking for stuff like that, I do tend to try and find cameras that I know, if even if they don't take modern film, I'll be able to adapt them quite easily to be able to take it.
- 40:21Miles Myerscough-Harris: It just makes my life easier, I guess.
- 40:23Miles Myerscough-Harris: , I've done a lot of developing myself at home.
- 40:24Miles Myerscough-Harris: Uh, I'm in my little home setup here and I've got a film scanning station just over to my right hand side here.
- 40:30Miles Myerscough-Harris: Um, and actually I don't know if you can see, there's some fresh negatives hanging in my cabinet behind me there.
- 40:34Miles Myerscough-Harris: That's a black and white roll of 120 film that I developed.
- 40:36Miles Myerscough-Harris: Recently.
- 40:37Miles Myerscough-Harris: So yes, I do do some of it myself.
- 40:38Miles Myerscough-Harris: Unfortunately, now I shoot so much that it just isn't realistic for me to do it all at home myself.
- 40:44Miles Myerscough-Harris: So I use a fabulous lab called analog Wonderland who do all my stuff for me now, uh, when I do my professional shoots, but yeah, sometimes if I've shot like a, a very weird roll of film or with a weird camera, and I'm like, I don't know if I'm going to get anything out of this, I'll develop it at home first and see if I can get, you know, usable results out of it.
- 41:01Miles Myerscough-Harris: And then if, if it's all working well, then I'll maybe take that on and then send them off.
- 41:04Miles Myerscough-Harris: But yeah, so I do do a lot of it at home myself.
- 41:07Miles Myerscough-Harris: Uh, less these days though, because I just, you know, if I come back from a football game, I've shot 25 rolls of film.
- 41:11Miles Myerscough-Harris: It's going to take me days to go through it all myself.
- 41:14Miles Myerscough-Harris: So, uh, so I use the professionals for that.
- 41:17David McClelland: How has your experience with analogue over the last few years, how has that changed your view of photography, how you photograph and do you think it's actually made you a better photographer or is it, you know, has it modified your approach to it when you do go back to shooting digital?
- 41:34Miles Myerscough-Harris: I think it absolutely has made me a better photographer.
- 41:36Miles Myerscough-Harris: There's no doubt.
- 41:37Miles Myerscough-Harris: I think, um, film photography is fabulous.
- 41:39Miles Myerscough-Harris: And particularly, uh, when you're using these old completely manual cameras.
- 41:43Miles Myerscough-Harris: So the Canon F1, for example, that I use.
- 41:45Miles Myerscough-Harris: Um, it's, it's totally manual.
- 41:47Miles Myerscough-Harris: Everything's manual on it.
- 41:48Miles Myerscough-Harris: The, um, shutter speed, the aperture, the focus, everything's manual.
- 41:51Miles Myerscough-Harris: And obviously when you're shooting a roll of film, you've got 36 photos on that roll of film.
- 41:55Miles Myerscough-Harris: So I'm sure you've heard this many times before, but I do feel like it just makes you a lot more selective about what you shoot and when to fire the shutter.
- 42:05Miles Myerscough-Harris: And then, you know, from, from a totally manual camera, it gives you a bit more intuition about like how to select settings, I think, in other situations.
- 42:13Miles Myerscough-Harris: Okay.
- 42:14Miles Myerscough-Harris: Outside of that.
- 42:14Miles Myerscough-Harris: So I definitely apply that to my digital photography, obviously, you know, with digital, you've got the luxury of just bursting the shutter button and choosing your favorite from the 200 photos you took at that particular moment.
- 42:24Miles Myerscough-Harris: But I do think, yeah, composition wise, I think just, yeah, sort of intuitively picking moments.
- 42:29Miles Myerscough-Harris: I think it does make you a better photographer because I think it, you kind of have to be when you shoot film because particularly there's, there have been occasions, you know, if I'm on the touchline at a football game or you have to with film, it's so easy.
- 42:43Miles Myerscough-Harris: to want to take photos all the time.
- 42:45Miles Myerscough-Harris: But with film, what I don't want to do is for there to be a really important moment that happens in front of me.
- 42:50Miles Myerscough-Harris: So there's a goal that goes in, in front of me and there's a celebration and I'm clicking the shutter and suddenly I get to the end of the roll and then I can't capture what's going on in front of me.
- 42:58Miles Myerscough-Harris: So that, that's a really difficult discipline to learn because particularly at the start, you know, I'd be sitting in this incredible football stadium and I'd like, I just want to take photos of everything.
- 43:07Miles Myerscough-Harris: But then if I miss the moment, the really important moment, because I've just been snapping away so much.
- 43:12Miles Myerscough-Harris: Yeah, it's an interesting conundrum to have with film, but again, I think that really makes you then in digital photography I find that that makes me a lot more selective and it means that I Can't kind of only try to take photos of stuff that I know Hopefully will like make the cut or whatever rather just having and also it takes so much time afterwards with digital if you've taken Thousands of photos to go through all of them And to choose all the ones that are in focus or best framed and stuff like that.
- 43:40Miles Myerscough-Harris: So, yeah, I do think, definitely, he's maybe a better photographer, I would say, for sure.
- 43:44David McClelland: Sounds to me like everybody should be
- 43:46Miles Myerscough-Harris: ha
- 43:47David McClelland: to shoot on film for 12 months.
- 43:49David McClelland: The first
- 43:50Miles Myerscough-Harris: ha, maybe.
- 43:51Miles Myerscough-Harris: I, I, yeah, yeah, I saw a good YouTube video.
- 43:54Miles Myerscough-Harris: There's a really good YouTuber, uh, photographer, YouTuber called James Popsis.
- 43:57Miles Myerscough-Harris: And he obviously shoots digital and, uh, he did a really interesting video recently where he imposed upon himself, the idea of he was, shooting a roll of film using a digital camera, if that made any sense.
- 44:07Miles Myerscough-Harris: So he went out on a, on a walk to take some photos and he was like, I'm only going to take 36 photos on this.
- 44:12Miles Myerscough-Harris: And, and, and to, to, to teach, to sort of teach that discipline and see what it's like to, to know that you have to be so much more selective about it.
- 44:19Miles Myerscough-Harris: It was a really interesting watch, I thought.
- 44:21David McClelland: You've mentioned some of the cameras that you regularly shoot with.
- 44:24David McClelland: You mentioned that 1897 camera as well.
- 44:27David McClelland: Are there any cameras that, or lenses, I guess, because that that's part of the story here, that are on your wishlist?
- 44:34David McClelland: Are there any holy grails in, uh, film photography folklore that you'd like to get your hands on for a
- 44:41Miles Myerscough-Harris: Yes, I think so.
- 44:42Miles Myerscough-Harris: Uh, I've always wanted to try an X Pan, a Hasselblad X Pan.
- 44:45Miles Myerscough-Harris: Uh, so that's a panoramic 35mm camera.
- 44:48Miles Myerscough-Harris: Um, a lot of the time with, so there are quite a few panoramic film, 35mm film cameras on the market.
- 44:55Miles Myerscough-Harris: But really what, all they do is they just take the frame and just put like this sort of shutters at the top and bottom.
- 45:02Miles Myerscough-Harris: So, so it's actually, it's not, it's making the, you're actually getting less.
- 45:06Miles Myerscough-Harris: Value for money essentially, but there are a few panoramic cameras that actually do spread the panorama out over several frames and the Hasselblad X Pan is one of those I'd love to, I'd love to give that a try.
- 45:18Miles Myerscough-Harris: I've never used one of those and I think maybe possibly, you know, doing some stuff at a football ground where I'm up in the stands and getting a big panorama of the stadium might be quite cool with one of them.
- 45:26Miles Myerscough-Harris: Um, otherwise it's interesting with what I, like to use because I, I tend to just, I kind of just go on a journey and I just, I like, a lot of the time I'll see somebody using a really interesting camera online possibly, or if I'm just browsing as I do sometimes through like eBay or whatever, and just, you know, seeing what's available and I'll come across a camera and think, oh, you know, so this with that, the, the Kodak Panoram that I've just started using that one.
- 45:52Miles Myerscough-Harris: Yeah, there was a guy on Instagram who was using a camera similar to that.
- 45:54Miles Myerscough-Harris: And I was like, oh, that looks really cool.
- 45:57Miles Myerscough-Harris: And so I delved into that.
- 45:58Miles Myerscough-Harris: So I kind of get inspired to try new stuff all the time.
- 46:01Miles Myerscough-Harris: And I wouldn't say there's like necessarily a specific camera.
- 46:04Miles Myerscough-Harris: I'd be like, I'd love to, I'd love to give that a go.
- 46:07Miles Myerscough-Harris: Cause I think I've managed, I've been very lucky.
- 46:08Miles Myerscough-Harris: I've managed to use a lot of the cameras that I, I really enjoy.
- 46:11Miles Myerscough-Harris: Uh, Pentax six, seven, I love using as a medium format camera.
- 46:14Miles Myerscough-Harris: I actually.
- 46:15Miles Myerscough-Harris: don't use it as much these days because a football game as well.
- 46:19Miles Myerscough-Harris: Um, it's just, it's so massive and heavy and like, um, yeah, uh, and also I think the shutter speeds only go up to 500th of a second, which is okay for sports, but you really want to get like, obviously when the movement's fast.
- 46:32Miles Myerscough-Harris: Um, so I love that.
- 46:34Miles Myerscough-Harris: That was always, I'm very lucky.
- 46:37Miles Myerscough-Harris: My dream cameras were always, I can't, I don't know why I've always loved the Canon F1.
- 46:41Miles Myerscough-Harris: And it's just, it's just something about it.
- 46:42Miles Myerscough-Harris: I've always just really, really loved it.
- 46:43Miles Myerscough-Harris: The modularity of it.
- 46:44Miles Myerscough-Harris: Cause you can interchange the viewfinder comes off, uh, and you can attach different things to it.
- 46:49Miles Myerscough-Harris: And I just, I really love it.
- 46:51Miles Myerscough-Harris: Um, so that and the Pentax six, seven was my two, like these would be like my dream cameras.
- 46:57Miles Myerscough-Harris: I'm very lucky to have them both now, um, which
- 47:00David McClelland: F1 certainly has a big fan club still, and I guess, you know, there's still a fair degree of availability for it as well, which helps.
- 47:08David McClelland: I seen you shoot with an action man before?
- 47:12Miles Myerscough-Harris: have.
- 47:13Miles Myerscough-Harris: Yep.
- 47:14Miles Myerscough-Harris: Um, in fact, I think I've got my hammer behind me.
- 47:16David McClelland: seen that, try and describe what this Action
- 47:19Miles Myerscough-Harris: So, it literally is an Action Man doll, um, but it's, it's, it's, it's adapted so that he's in his back.
- 47:27Miles Myerscough-Harris: You can take the back off and you can insert a cartridge of 110 film.
- 47:31Miles Myerscough-Harris: I actually have it here.
- 47:31Miles Myerscough-Harris: Do you want me to get it?
- 47:32Miles Myerscough-Harris: It's behind me.
- 47:33David McClelland: Yes, yes, please
- 47:34Miles Myerscough-Harris: on.
- 47:34Miles Myerscough-Harris: There might have to be some pixelation on this because I've actually lost his trousers, so Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry about that.
- 47:41Miles Myerscough-Harris: Anyway, here he is.
- 47:42Miles Myerscough-Harris: So you can see in the back, that's where the cartridge of film goes and then in the front that that's the lens there so you
- 47:51David McClelland: Oh, I
- 47:51Miles Myerscough-Harris: so and then to take a photo you hold up like this
- 47:53David McClelland: so for anyone who's listening but not watching, this is your, this is your, Commodore Garden action man, but he's got what looks like a back to the future camcorder on his shoulder uh and filming but the actual lens for the camera that you're shooting with is
- 48:09Miles Myerscough-Harris: in his chest that's right yeah
- 48:12David McClelland: Top cam but that that looks like really
- 48:13Miles Myerscough-Harris: It's great.
- 48:14David McClelland: What were the images
- 48:15Miles Myerscough-Harris: Oh, awful, but that's part of the, that's part of the beauty.
- 48:18Miles Myerscough-Harris: I mean, I did look a bit like a bit weird wandering around my local town taking photos with an action man as I was getting a coffee, but there we are.
- 48:26Miles Myerscough-Harris: Yeah, but I love stuff like that.
- 48:27Miles Myerscough-Harris: I love yeah, all the weird and wonderful cameras.
- 48:29Miles Myerscough-Harris: I've actually, um, I've got a Game Boy camera, um, that I, Yeah, which I, I love to use again, the quality out of it is atrocious, but, um, it's really good fun to use.
- 48:42Miles Myerscough-Harris: And when I, when I take that out of games, it always, I always get comments from people, you know, saying, Oh, you know, that looks really cool.
- 48:48Miles Myerscough-Harris: It's, um, it's amazing actually, because I think, uh, I'm not proved wrong on this, but I saw something online that it was technically the first ever commercially available digital camera.
- 48:58Miles Myerscough-Harris: Because it was released in like 1998, possibly.
- 49:01Miles Myerscough-Harris: So I might be getting my, my dates wrong, but yeah, um, apparently, so it's like, I think it's the equivalent of 0.
- 49:06Miles Myerscough-Harris: 3 megapixels or something around that, and uh, it's all in grayscale, but yeah, it can be, it can be very fun if, if you can use it.
- 49:14Miles Myerscough-Harris: I actually, I was doing some stuff for the, uh, Honda racing recently at the British Superbike Championship.
- 49:19Miles Myerscough-Harris: I took that with me and did some stuff there and it was, it was a lot of fun.
- 49:23David McClelland: I haven't worked with too many sports photographer, but I know they are a close knit group.
- 49:27David McClelland: So here's you coming in with your expired film and with these cameras.
- 49:31David McClelland: Are they, what is all this about?
- 49:33David McClelland: Or are they actually quite excited by the fact that you are with cameras that maybe some of them were using 20, 30 years ago, uh, taking shots of the same match?
- 49:42David McClelland: How's the reaction been from the, from that professional side of the community?
- 49:46Miles Myerscough-Harris: it's positive, I would say.
- 49:47Miles Myerscough-Harris: It's interesting being at games, like you say, because, yeah, it always draws comments.
- 49:52Miles Myerscough-Harris: And there is definitely a divide between the more seasoned photographers who have been doing it for decades and they'll be looking at me and just like, why the hell are you still shooting film?
- 50:01Miles Myerscough-Harris: We're so glad we don't have to do that anymore.
- 50:02Miles Myerscough-Harris: And then the younger photographers look at it and they're like, Oh my God, this is so cool.
- 50:05Miles Myerscough-Harris: You're shooting film.
- 50:06Miles Myerscough-Harris: It's so interesting.
- 50:07Miles Myerscough-Harris: Um, no, but it's actually, you know, it's what, it's been really lovely and I've made some really good friends in the, in the sports photography world now, which is great.
- 50:13Miles Myerscough-Harris: Cause obviously, you know, I kind of, my, my pathway into it was very unconventional and I circumnavigated a lot of like the grafting that I, you know, I realized so many people do for the years and years.
- 50:25Miles Myerscough-Harris: And I'm very lucky, uh, to have just kind of scooted in.
- 50:28Miles Myerscough-Harris: Um, no, but overwhelmingly it's been really lovely.
- 50:30Miles Myerscough-Harris: I, yeah, like I say, I've made some really nice friends and it's really nice now as well because, you know, the more games you go to and the more sports you do, you bump into familiar faces and you see the same people shooting the games.
- 50:40Miles Myerscough-Harris: And it's nice, there's a, there's a nice camaraderie around it all.
- 50:43Miles Myerscough-Harris: Um, so no, I've, I've been loving it.
- 50:45Miles Myerscough-Harris: I mean, being able to go and shoot these, these sports games and everything.
- 50:50Miles Myerscough-Harris: I mean, it's, um, Yeah, I really am living the dream.
- 50:53Miles Myerscough-Harris: I can't lie.
- 50:54Miles Myerscough-Harris: It's incredible.
- 50:55Miles Myerscough-Harris: Particularly, um, I'm a Man United fan and I've, I've managed to, to work with them, uh, a few times in the, in the past few months.
- 51:03Miles Myerscough-Harris: Particularly, I was there for the FA Cup run this past season.
- 51:07Miles Myerscough-Harris: So I was there for the Liverpool game at Old Trafford, which was honestly one of the best days of my life.
- 51:11Miles Myerscough-Harris: It was incredible.
- 51:12Miles Myerscough-Harris: And then the Coventry semi final, which was such a dramatic game.
- 51:15Miles Myerscough-Harris: And then obviously the City final.
- 51:18Miles Myerscough-Harris: And I was there and it's um, yeah, I, I, I just, I count my lucky stars every time I, I, I walk into one of these amazing stadiums because, you know, football and photography, but I mean, sport generally, but particularly football and photography are my two real passions and, you know, to be able to combine them is just the most amazing feeling.
- 51:36Miles Myerscough-Harris: I love it.
- 51:38David McClelland: So what's next for you and Expired Film Club then?
- 51:42David McClelland: You've built up this terrific following online across Instagram and TikTok.
- 51:47David McClelland: You are getting invited to these fantastic sporting events.
- 51:51David McClelland: Um, where do you, where do you hope the project will take you next?
- 51:56David McClelland: Or are you just riding the wave and seeing where it goes next?
- 52:00Miles Myerscough-Harris: Yeah, a little bit of that, I think, riding the wave.
- 52:02Miles Myerscough-Harris: I mean, it's, it's great.
- 52:03Miles Myerscough-Harris: Obviously I've got, got goals and I've got dreams.
- 52:06Miles Myerscough-Harris: I mean, I'd love to, you know, one day possibly shoot something like the World Cup final on film and, you know, Um, you know, do a lot of those, those, you know, really massive events like that, I've done motorbike racing, F1, golf, tennis, um, lots of random stuff.
- 52:21Miles Myerscough-Harris: And I, I love the variation of it.
- 52:23Miles Myerscough-Harris: So yeah, I think, I think possibly just, yeah, just riding the wave and, uh, carry on going.
- 52:27Miles Myerscough-Harris: I just want to do as much of this as I possibly can.
- 52:30Miles Myerscough-Harris: Um, and yeah, fingers crossed that we, we keep, we keep going up upwards and we'll see where everything takes us, I guess.
- 52:37David McClelland: Miles, if anyone wants to keep up with you online, see where on earth you are next and what on earth you're shooting with.
- 52:44David McClelland: Where are they best to head to?
- 52:46Miles Myerscough-Harris: Uh, just search Expired Film Club.
- 52:47Miles Myerscough-Harris: Uh, I'm at Expired Film Club across all social media.
- 52:50Miles Myerscough-Harris: So yeah, TikTok, Instagram, X, uh, Facebook, YouTube, all of that.
- 52:54Miles Myerscough-Harris: I've got my own website as well, expiredfilmclub.
- 52:56Miles Myerscough-Harris: com.
- 52:56Miles Myerscough-Harris: Just about to launch a, uh, print store on my website as well.
- 52:59Miles Myerscough-Harris: So you can buy prints of some of my work, uh, very soon.
- 53:03Miles Myerscough-Harris: But yeah, just search up Expired Film Club and hopefully you'll find me.
- 53:06David McClelland: Miles, thank you so much for joining us today.
- 53:08David McClelland: All the best.
- 53:08Miles Myerscough-Harris: Thank you very much.
- 53:09Miles Myerscough-Harris: I've really enjoyed it.
- 53:09Miles Myerscough-Harris: Thank you.
- 53:16David McClelland: And joining us now on the show is editor of The Week Junior, Science and Nature, Dan Green, with news of a competition that might help provide some welcome respite to parents this summer and some exciting prizes for young photographers.
- 53:29David McClelland: Dan, thanks for joining us.
- 53:31David McClelland: What is the Scavenger Hunt Photo contest?
- 53:34Dan Green: Thank you very much.
- 53:35Dan Green: Yeah.
- 53:35Dan Green: And thanks for having me.
- 53:36Dan Green: Um, it's, a welcome respite for parents, as you say, like filling those very long summer holidays can be a bit of a stretch sometimes.
- 53:44Dan Green: So, uh, we've got a bit of guilt free parenting fix here.
- 53:48Dan Green: Uh, this holiday we're challenging our readers to head outside and have some close encounters with nature.
- 53:56David McClelland: Maybe we take a bit of a step back here first of all.
- 53:58David McClelland: The Week, The Week Junior, The Week Junior Science and Nature.
- 54:02David McClelland: What is that and who's it for?
- 54:04Dan Green: So we are part of the, uh, week family of magazines.
- 54:09Dan Green: And, uh, our sister title, The Week Junior is a weekly magazine for children.
- 54:14Dan Green: And we are a monthly title that, um, celebrates nature and the wonders of our world and sort of tries to explain and make sense of the universe for eight to 15 year olds.
- 54:27David McClelland: As far as the competition itself is concerned, it's a scavenger hunt photo contest.
- 54:33David McClelland: So what is it that you are hoping that young people will be able to hunt for and take pictures of?
- 54:38Dan Green: Well, it's really simple.
- 54:40Dan Green: Joining in the competition couldn't be easier.
- 54:42Dan Green: Basically.
- 54:44Dan Green: We have a scavenger hunt checklist which has 10 natural treasures to go out and search for.
- 54:50Dan Green: So you can, go to the competition website and download your scavenger hunt checklist.
- 54:54Dan Green: Take it out wherever you're going, whether you're going on holiday to the beach or just in a local park, wherever you are this summer holiday, tick off all of the items off the list.
- 55:05Dan Green: And then, as you are doing this, you can take photos either on your own camera equipment or, you know, steal your parents smartphone.
- 55:15Dan Green: We're asking children to look at the beauty of nature and try to find something that captures those adventures that they're having.
- 55:23Dan Green: And then their adults can upload their best ones to the competition website and the best photo wins.
- 55:29David McClelland: Who are the judges and what sort of things do you think they're looking for?
- 55:33Dan Green: Well, we've got, a great judging panel, Team members, from, the Week Junior Science and Nature team, our photo editors and designers, but also we've got a very special member of the judging panel who is wildlife expert photographer, Ellie Rothney, who is also a Canon ambassador.
- 55:50Dan Green: we'll be looking for well composed, colorful, creative images that really show the beauty in nature.
- 55:56Dan Green: And, one of the prizes.
- 55:58Dan Green: In fact, the top prize, and this is the first year we're doing this, is the winning photo is going to go on the front cover of, Science and Nature magazine.
- 56:06Dan Green: So that's a really big one.
- 56:07Dan Green: I mean, imagine seeing your winning photo there on a monthly magazine on the newsstand for everyone to see.
- 56:13David McClelland: That's really exciting and not only do they get that accolade, you mentioned that, that Canon is part of this competition.
- 56:22David McClelland: There's an opportunity to win some Canon kit as well, isn't there?
- 56:25Dan Green: That's right.
- 56:26Dan Green: Canon have been super generous with us.
- 56:28Dan Green: They've given us an immense load of kit.
- 56:31Dan Green: The first prize alongside the front cover is, um, Canon EOS R100 camera.
- 56:38Dan Green: And a lens as well as a selfie CP 1500 compact printer.
- 56:45Dan Green: Uh, second prize is a Zoe mini.
- 56:49Dan Green: S2 Canon camera and that's a kind of, compact camera and printer.
- 56:54Dan Green: And then alongside that in issue 79, which is where we reveal the winners.
- 56:59Dan Green: Uh, we're also going to reveal, our shortlisted winners.
- 57:02Dan Green: set of, winners.
- 57:04Dan Green: Everyone featured will get a book bundle, a nature book bundle of, five different nature books which have been kindly donated to us by various publishers, and also complimentary tickets to The Photography and Video Show next year.
- 57:20Dan Green: And there will be an exhibition at the photography show as well of all of those pictures.
- 57:27Dan Green: So the, I mean, the, the prizes are bigger and better this year.
- 57:30Dan Green: It's excellent.
- 57:31David McClelland: Yes, and that is the big reveal.
- 57:33David McClelland: the shortlisted entries from the Scavenger Hunt competition will have their work displayed in London at the in person photography and video show in March 2025 at the Excel.
- 57:45David McClelland: That's very, very exciting news.
- 57:48David McClelland: How do people go ahead and enter them?
- 57:51David McClelland: What kind of timescales are we working to?
- 57:53Dan Green: Okay.
- 57:54Dan Green: So, our competition website is pens at the ready, science nature dot the week, junior.
- 58:01Dan Green: co.
- 58:01Dan Green: uk forward slash scavenger hyphen hunt, and all the information you need about.
- 58:07Dan Green: how to get involved, get your scavenger hunt checklist, what the judges are looking for, and also how to enter your photos is on that website.
- 58:16Dan Green: the competition is open right now and it runs through until the August Bank holiday, August the 26th.
- 58:24David McClelland: Dan, I'm looking at the shortlisted entries from the 2023 version of this competition on The Week Junior Science and Nature Facebook page, and they're incredible, and I think it's a great place to go to to get an idea as to the, like you say, the kind of colourful, the impactful images that do well in this competition.
- 58:46David McClelland: But I tell you what, if I didn't know that these were taken by young people, There's no way of knowing.
- 58:53David McClelland: They're fantastic, yet each of them is incredibly accessible.
- 58:57David McClelland: You don't need to go to some far flung corner of the world.
- 59:00David McClelland: To get a, an image here of, of a cat and a mouse in the back garden or a ladybird on a flower or, uh, even a crab at the seaside there.
- 59:09David McClelland: These are fantastic images and I think are inspirational in their own right but also for people who are looking to enter this competition.
- 59:16David McClelland: Might also serve as inspiration as to what they might be able to find when they're out on their own scavenger hunts.
- 59:21Dan Green: One thing I would say is to think about how this will look on the front cover.
- 59:26Dan Green: I mean, we obviously want bright, dynamic, interesting images that fill the space, but also, I think composition is really important.
- 59:35Dan Green: How the thing is shown, what's in the background.
- 59:37David McClelland: You know, I think you put it superbly there looking at these images and I'm sure the judges will be doing the same when they look at the images that are submitted this year.
- 59:46David McClelland: Each one of those images is an adventure.
- 59:50David McClelland: There's a whole story behind each one of those, a journey that the photographer has been on to capture that image.
- 59:56David McClelland: So I'm so excited to see what comes out of this year's competition and I look forward to seeing all of those shortlisted finalists in The Photography Show next year in the Excel.
- 1:00:06David McClelland: Thanks again for joining us Dan
- 1:00:08Dan Green: Well, my pleasure.
- 1:00:09Dan Green: Thank you so much for having me on.
- 1:00:15David McClelland: And if you know a young person who'd like to enter that competition, perhaps you are a young person, then a reminder of that website sciencenature.
- 1:00:23David McClelland: theweekjunior.
- 1:00:27David McClelland: co.
- 1:00:27David McClelland: uk forward slash scavenger hyphen hunt.
- 1:00:32David McClelland: And that's where you'll find a full list of prizes, eligibility rules, terms and conditions, and links to see previous year's winning photos.
- 1:00:40David McClelland: We'll pop that link into the show notes too, along with links to Miles's expired film club work and, well, all of the stories that we've been covering today.
- 1:00:51David McClelland: That is almost all for this month though.
- 1:00:53David McClelland: A big thanks to everybody who's been in touch on text message, on social media, and as I said earlier, even in person.
- 1:01:02David McClelland: It does mean a lot, so keep your suggestions on interviews, angles, even accessibility.
- 1:01:07David McClelland: Keep all of that stuff coming.
- 1:01:08David McClelland: coming in and we'll do the best that we can to make all of it happen.
- 1:01:12David McClelland: I mentioned text message there.
- 1:01:13David McClelland: That's right.
- 1:01:13David McClelland: You too can SMS us like it's 19.
- 1:01:16David McClelland: 99 all over again.
- 1:01:18David McClelland: Make sure you have the bill payers permission.
- 1:01:19David McClelland: First, uh, the number is included in a lot of people's call plans though.
- 1:01:24David McClelland: But, uh, just make sure you double check and to, uh, yeah, send that text in the show's show notes.
- 1:01:30David McClelland: Just tap on the link from your mobile and text away, we'd love to hear from you.
- 1:01:35David McClelland: Social media, well that's always free though.
- 1:01:38David McClelland: Or is it?
- 1:01:39David McClelland: Well maybe that's for another day.
- 1:01:40David McClelland: Uh, do get in touch with us though at the Photography Show on Instagram where, well, speaking of expired film and the summer of sport, you'll see details of a genuinely remarkable find.
- 1:01:53David McClelland: At the photography and video show event in March last year, some undeveloped film was found in the Disabled Photographer Society's donation box.
- 1:02:03David McClelland: Well, somebody has kindly scanned the film and the results are incredible.
- 1:02:09David McClelland: None other than wonderful trackside shots from the first post WWII Olympic Games held in London in 1948.
- 1:02:18David McClelland: That's, uh, 76 years ago.
- 1:02:21David McClelland: I think expired film club miles would have been proud of those but the problem is that we don't know who took them or indeed what the story is behind them so do they feature a family member perhaps somebody that's uh well today somebody might recognize have a look on the instagram and also on our facebook page as well and well hopefully we can watch that mystery develop A reminder that the next in person photography and video show takes place in March in London.
- 1:02:50David McClelland: That's right, next year the show is taking a trip to the capital, 8th to the 11th of March 2025 at the Excel in London.
- 1:02:59David McClelland: More on that soon.
- 1:03:01David McClelland: We'll be back on the first Thursday of next month with more news, more chat.
- 1:03:05David McClelland: But for now, have a great August.
- 1:03:07David McClelland: Bye bye.