Episode 116 - Photo Q&A with Will the Watch Clicker

Published on Wed, 13 Jan 2021 22:37:27 -0800

Synopsis

This is a podcast episode where the hosts discuss watch photography and answer questions from listeners. The main guest, Will, provides expert tips and advice on choosing the right camera and lenses, lighting techniques, photo editing workflows, and creative ideas for props and compositions when shooting watches. The discussion covers a wide range of topics related to both technical and artistic aspects of watch photography for different skill levels and equipment.

Links

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• episode MP3 - local mirror

Transcript

Speaker
Andrew	Usually you should turn the volume up. Hello, fellow watch lovers, nerds, enthusiasts, or however you identify. This is 40 in 20, the Watch Clicker podcast with your host, Andrew, my good friend, Everett. Here, we talk about watches, food, drinks, life, and other things we like. Will, how are you?
Will	I'm good. I always like jumping in front of Everett when I come on the show. Will, hi, welcome. How's it going guys?
Everett	It's, it's going really well. Uh, it's going really well. Just wrapping up Sundays. Uh, it's always like a little bittersweet.
Andrew	Not for me.
Everett	It's the best day of the week. This is your Friday morning or Saturday morning, right?
Andrew	Kind of. It's, it's, it's weird switching like, I mean, a perfect 12 hour swap twice a week.
Everett	It's not exactly, yeah, it's not exactly the same.
Andrew	No. So, you know, I guess it is kind of, it doesn't matter. It's weekend for me. Don't work tonight or tomorrow or the next day.
Everett	Yeah. And then do you sleep? Do you sleep Sunday nights? Like normal sleep schedule?
Andrew	Oh yeah. Like today I got up at, I'm told I woke up at 11 to sign an offer on a house we were putting. Uh, so I, I have no memory of it. Um, but I'm, I'm told that I did that and then went back to bed and I got up around two.
Everett	Which one did you offer?
Andrew	House over in Springfield.
Everett	We're both looking for houses right now. So I looked at two houses.
Andrew	I've been outbidding him on some of the houses, which is dangerous because they're not even houses I'm interested in. It's like, we'll give you $2 million cash.
Will	That'd be the ultimate spite thing. A spite house.
Everett	Yes. Right. It's like when you bid on something on eBay that you can't afford, but you're like, I'll never get it for that amount. And then you get it.
Andrew	Gotcha.
Will	Please cancel my bid. Yeah.
Andrew	Jokes. I was hacked. Um, yeah. So, and then I'll sleep normal tonight. I'm exhausted. So I'll go to bed at probably like seven 30 and wake up tomorrow.
Everett	Not bad. No, not bad.
Andrew	Cause early for us, this is an early recording time. It's only five 30.
Everett	Yeah. Yeah. Recording at five 30 is a little different. We're usually much deeper into the evening and I taco bell on my way over. It's delightful. It's not early for Will though.
Will	No.
Everett	Will's recording at our normal recording time. Yeah, 8.30 over here. And so is your household packed up? Your kids or your kiddos in bed?
Will	Oh yeah, she's been in bed for an hour and a half.
Andrew	Damn. Good riddance.
Will	Yeah. She goes down at seven o'clock and we don't see her again until seven o'clock the next morning.
Andrew	That's amazing. We get like two late night visits, usually about 1 a.m. and 3 a.m. Our five-year-old will come in and just like to say hi and then return to his bed.
Will	I'm sure I'll get there eventually, but as of right now, my daughter can't even climb out of the crib yet, so I'm good.
Everett	Yeah, you just gotta like, and then when she can, you get a dog crate.
Will	Yeah, exactly.
Andrew	Or a lid.
Will	A lock on the outside of the door. Yeah.
Everett	If you need something, scream.
Andrew	Or just wait. The sun will come up.
Will	You know. Improvise, adapt, and overcome.
Everett	Exactly.
Andrew	Yeah.
Everett	That's right. Kim and I have started, you know, our kids are the age we started thinking about like leaving them at the house for periods of time.
Andrew	Like alone. You just lock the door from the outside and there's literally nothing that can go wrong.
Everett	Yeah. Well, and they're, they're smart and they're capable, but it's, it's a little like odd to be thinking about, Hey guys, if you need something, give us a call. We're going out.
Andrew	And then you'll come back, and they will be in exactly the same place you left them. That's right. Provided the batteries don't die.
Everett	That's what happens. That's exactly right. No, we just put chargers close and be like, if you need something, the charger's there. Well, good stuff. Hey, Will, thanks for joining us. Absolutely. I'm glad you were able to be here because the topic tonight is something that neither Andrew or I, I think, I think fair to say you as well. No, absolutely. Neither one of us has the chops to approach. So kind of nice to get like a pro in here.
Will	Yeah, I think it's going to be a fun topic. Some of the questions that we have, I think are really good. I'm sure we'll ramble on for a while. I love talking about what we're going to talk about. So it's going to be a good time.
Everett	So we reached out to you, you listening to this show, we reached out to you at home via Instagram and said, what are your photography questions? With some promise to provide an answer, unless we don't like the question. I think that's a fair assessment, right?
Andrew	Incidentally, we didn't like any of the questions, so we had to make up a list.
Everett	Or if we don't like you, that was the other thing. It was two disqualifying factors. We don't like the question or we don't like the person asking the question, right?
Will	Yeah, we we have zero questions.
Andrew	We got some good questions from people we do not like. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They were they would have been cool to answer.
Everett	But this is a reasonable question. But fuck that guy.
Andrew	Not going to happen.
Will	Sorry. Or we could answer it and just give them the wrong answer.
Andrew	I like that one better. I like that one better.
Everett	Well, so, Will, I know we got, I don't know, probably 20 questions, 15, 20 questions. Did you? I assume you got about two and a half times as many questions as we did.
Will	I don't think I got as much as you guys did, actually. I don't know why that is. Maybe people don't trust my opinions on this topic.
Everett	Little did they know that they have to trust you, actually. Or that they're going to hear your answer, whether they trusted you or not. You know, needless to say, we did get too many questions. More questions than we're going to be able to actually get to, although I think we'll touch almost every single question that got asked in one way or another. And some of your questions were silly and we might not answer those ones. But for all the serious questions, I think we'll at least get to them adjacently.
Will	Sounds good. So should we jump into it?
Everett	I think that's right. Why don't you fire up our first question, Will, and just a fair caveat. Andrew and I will probably talk occasionally. Feel free to disregard any of the advice we give in favor of the advice Will gives. Fair, Andrew?
Andrew	Nope. Nope. Yeah, take everything he says with a grain of salt. You can trust us.
Everett	Question one.
Will	All right. So I think I'll start off right before the first question. Just giving a little bit of background on me and why I'm qualified to answer some of these questions, I guess. So I've been using a camera to do photography in an amateur or semi-professional way for about 15, 16 years now. And watches has been probably for three to five years of that. Don't know exactly. Um, but just want to say that, you know, I'm, I'm going to give answers to these questions and there's always with anything else, there's 10 different ways to do, you know, one thing. So if you hear something I say, and you're like, Hey, well, why, why didn't you do it that way? Or maybe there's a better way to do it. Um, you know, by all means, uh, feel free to disagree with me, but, um, definitely going to try and just give a good way to do, or to answer these questions as it relates to watch photography, because there's a million different types of photography. Um, And watch photography is essentially product photography. So going to approach it that way. So, uh, jump right in. The first question that we got was what specs or features should I look for in a camera? And that came from, uh, these are all Instagram users. So this came from watch my time. So I'd say with cam with camera bodies, um, if you're buying something, that's going to have interchangeable lenses, which is probably what you're going to want to go for, is with your camera body, um, you don't necessarily need to buy the best you can afford. I would buy the best you can afford with the lenses, um, because they're going to last longer than your camera body. Uh, so when you're buying a camera, what I would say is, um, figure out a couple of things that are important to you. Do you like to shoot in, you know, lower light, you know, we're in a higher ISO rating and how it handles that might be more important. Um, If you want to do macro photography, you know, you want to get really close up in on your watch dials, looking for something with more megapixels might make sense because then you can crop in more when you're editing the image and you'll have more of those megapixels to bring that down and still have a, you know, a good size photo once you're done with it. So it really depends on kind of what your shooting style is and what you want to do. What I will say is that any modern mirrorless or SLR camera from Nikon, Canon, Sony, Fuji. You can't go wrong with pretty much anything they make. They're all pretty solid.
Everett	Olympus, Pentax. I mean, really, there are a lot of companies making these things. I think most people wind up in one of those three categories you named, right? The big three.
Will	Well, Olympus is out now.
Everett	dead is dead but certainly there are still Olympus cameras available yes yes any modern Olympus DSLR is gonna be fantastic and in fact Olympus has quite a few fanboys because they do some things really really well yep you know if I can I think I'd like to just bulk out this question a little bit right because when we talk about cameras there's there's a lot of things going on here right almost everybody has a camera in their pocket And that camera is increasingly good. And if you've bought your cell phone in the last three or four years, and it's not the bargain basement cell phone, you've got a really good camera. And what we mean by a good camera is you've got a good lens, you've got a good processor, and you've got a very, very small, but decent sensor, what we call a sensor. high amounts of megapixels, but what you don't have is a lot of real estate. And so essentially you've got the same amount of space as a very small portion of a DSLR, uh, or, or a mirrorless camera in most instances, even if we're talking about a crop sensor, a DX, you've got a very small sensor. So, uh, you can take great pictures. But you're gonna miss out on some of the features that I think people are looking for when they go to a DSLR. Primarily the ability to manipulate your depth of field, to make a more shallow depth of field is gonna be very difficult to do with a cell phone. So really what we're talking about, we're talking about the person that doesn't wanna use their camera or doesn't wanna use their phone, excuse me, and wants to get a dedicated camera, right?
Will	Yep, yep. Yeah, and I think the caveat with that is the old, I don't remember who said it, The best camera is the one that's with you. So if all you've got is your cell phone and you're like, Hey, I got a really good wrist shot going on here. Uh, you know, your phone's going to do fine. Um, it all comes down to lighting and composition. It's really, really what makes a good photo. It's not necessarily the camera. Um, what I always say with, with gear is that if you know how to use your gear to its full potential, that's when gear matters. Uh, you know, outside of that, you know, it's, it's a lot of fancy buzz marketing words, you know, that most people aren't going to use half the features in a camera anyway.
Andrew	So that's, that's kind of one of the questions that this brings up when you're talking about looking for the specs and features and amenities that are coming with your camera. Where, how are people supposed to go first time camera buyers go and look at all these specs and features? and tie them to where the direction that they think they want to go and then learn how to use them.
Will	That's probably the hardest part. Um, you know, especially now it might be difficult to get into, you know, a Best Buy or something like that to, you know, look at their camera display and actually play with them. Um, what I would recommend is I, I wish that YouTube was as big of a resource when I was starting out as it is now. Um, You know, pick, pick a couple cameras that are in your price range and go watch some YouTube videos on them and see what people who are actually using them have to say. You know, you're going to get the reviewers, like we review watches, right? Um, and you're going to find that after you watch a few videos on one camera, you're probably going to find someone who's doing something that you want to do. Um, you know, if it's taking pictures of watches, this person's taking pictures of stuff on their desk and it's looking really good and They're able to manipulate the camera the way that they want to get the picture. Um, you know, so I would just say, watch a lot of content on something and just make an educated decision based off that, you know, cause like I said in the beginning, I don't really think you're going to go wrong. Um, you're really just trying to figure out what system you want to buy into.
Everett	Yeah. Yeah. And, and I'd like to also, I'd also like to suggest that you're gonna, you're gonna get a lot of information about what you need. Um, and what makes sense in terms of long-term usability, I think that we've got some obsolescence, uh, in the camera industry that's pending, pending obsolescence. Um, I think many, many, many people, probably you included will think that the SLR, the SLR identity for cameras is probably, uh, on a death now. And that seems right to me. Um, so. really the industry is moving towards mirrorless. And we don't need to talk about what the difference is because they do really, really the same thing. With that said, with that said, I think in order to get into a modern, good DSLR with a dedicated prime lens, we'll talk about that later, uh, with a dedicated prime lens that you are looking at a minimum of about 250 to $300. And so That's meant to be aspirational. I think for, for someone, you do not need to spend a thousand. You do not need to spend 2000 or certainly more than that. Although you can, and, and every time you spend money, you get more stuff, you get more features. You're going to get a larger set of, of transferring capabilities. Um, the ability to seamlessly edit and integration with your existing system. So the older and cheaper you go, you're going to find it harder to integrate, harder to transfer files, and sometimes just harder to do the things you want to do with a camera. But the images on a $300 Nikon D3100 or Canon D6 equipped with a 50mm prime lens are going to be very, very good. The image quality is going to be almost identical to a modern camera, especially once you compress and break it down for, for Instagram or, or even just snapshots on your computer.
Will	Yeah. Um, and just to, I think I'll close this topic out with this kind of what I said in the beginning, if, if your budget is limited, what I would recommend doing is buy a cheaper body and an expensive lens. Yeah. Spend money on the lens because that will travel with you throughout your camera bodies because it's going to work with the system at, you know, through time.
Andrew	Right.
Will	All right. Question two. So this one should be pretty quick. How to avoid Instagram compression. This came from the Keyless Connection. So what a lot of people see when they upload a photo to Instagram is, hey, this looked really good on my phone before I uploaded it, and it looks like crap on Instagram. This is because Instagram tries to save space, and they do all kinds of stuff to your picture to knock it down in size.
Andrew	It was also a crappy photo to begin with. Could be.
Will	So what I always do, uh, and this has worked out really well for me, I found it's a good formula is to export your image. Um, the, uh, longest edge of whatever it is. So if it's portrait or, um, landscape, the longest edge is, uh, 1080 pixels. And then usually when you export out of something, it's going to give you a quality setting, um, you know, zero to a hundred, just don't make it a hundred. Usually 85 to 90 is good. You're not going to see that, you know, with your naked eye what the difference is, especially at a 1080 pixel resolution. So if you do that, you should be good. It's not really going to squash your image too much.
Everett	It's still going to squash your image, but it's going to preserve as much of the detail.
Will	You won't notice the drop in detail like you would if you took a 24 megapixel image and threw it on Instagram. It's going to squash that down quite a bit, and it's probably going to look like garbage. 1080 pixels, uh, quality of 90. Um, it's really the size. If you can't do that quality thing, get it down to 1080 and you should be good.
Everett	Yeah. And I, I always, I always adjust my pictures to four by five or a 10 by eight, as it were different editors. Um, and I think you can also go with square squares, tried and true on Instagram. Instagram loves squares, but you don't, you don't have to, you can go 10, 10 by eight or four by five and still get full resolution out of Instagram.
Will	Yep. Um, okay. So this next question is from Ralph man, 5,000. So, uh, Ralph's a good friend, um, tips for folks who shoot with their iPhone. Uh, this is probably going to get lumped into a couple other questions. So I think this is probably a good time to talk about lighting and composition, because this is really what it comes down to, whether you're shooting with, um, you know, a big medium format camera, or you're shooting with, you know, your iPhone seven, you know, the, the same things are going to apply to how you're shooting. So lighting and composition, those are the two most important things because you're going to get a good sharp image out of, like we talked about almost any camera that you're going to get. So sharpness isn't the issue. Composition is finding what's pleasing to the eye. There's a, you can go online and look up the rule of thirds and all that kind of stuff. When it comes to watch photos though, I would just say, Look at some popular Instagrammers in the watch world and see what their composition's like. Where are they placing the watch? How's the watch laying? Is it a flat lay? Is it on the wrist? Is it just kind of laying on a table? And then where is it physically in the picture? Is it in the corner? Is it in the middle? And what's placed around it? There's a lot of things that we do on Instagram with watches. We put props here and there, a bunch of crap we never use, but looks good in the picture. But find that composition, what looks good. What I found with watches is that a watch either looks really good dead center in the image or with the dial off to one of the thirds of the corners, I guess you'll say. So the logo of the watch on the dial would kind of be creeping towards a corner somewhere. And with that, That's just, it's just a pleasing composition no matter what you're shooting. It's going to kind of give that, you know, classic product photography look that looks good. Um, there's also a bunch of things you can read about online about just general composition, you know, kind of learning to see creatively instead of just, I just plop my watch down on the desk and take a photo of it. So just taking that extra minute, um, and taking your, you know, your phone or your camera with your viewfinder and just move the camera up, down, left, right, physically move it around and just kind of see what looks good. You know, you'll probably move it in a position. You're like, Hey, that actually looks really good. I'm going to take my picture here. So composition is the most important thing right next to lighting. So what, what you see a lot with, um, watch photos online, you know, there's a Fleck doe, you know, the, the light reflecting off the crystal, um, and just having an evenly lit photo or dramatic, lighting, which I've been doing a lot more of. And you can do it artificial lighting or natural lighting. There's a bunch of different ways to do it. I use artificial lighting for pretty much everything I do.
Everett	So I'll say for natural lighting... Even your photos that look like they're naturally shot, natural light, you've used, you've manipulated artificial lighting.
Will	I'll talk about that in a second because we've got one on editing tips, so I'll definitely talk about that. But with natural lighting, try and shoot on a cloudy day. That's basically the world's biggest softbox, is nice clouds that diffuse the light. You'll find that a lot of folks who shoot natural light photos, they're usually shooting on a cloudy day just because it makes everything look nicer, the light's even, the shadows are softer. So if you get a cloudy day definitely shoot some stuff there if you don't want to spend any money on artificial lighting With artificial lighting it can literally be anything you can take a lamp with a piece of paper in front of it And you've created a softbox You know you can just use what you have around the house You can use the flashlight on your iPhone and you know put a piece of paper in front of that the key is diffusion You don't want harsh artificial light coming in because it's just not going to look good. You'll, you'll know it when you see it. It just doesn't look right. Um, so you want to do anything to diffuse light. Uh, one thing you can do is take an empty milk jug and shine a light into that. And that makes a really nice soft box.
Everett	Um, you know, as long as it's like the tinted white kind of milk jug, you know, there's lots of folks who have sold basically milk jugs with flashes inside of them as a product. Uh, for like 30 bucks, you know, famously a few of these things that you see.
Will	Yeah. Um, and then just, uh, you know, more on lighting, what I would say is even lighting, you know, so if you, let's say you have, um, you know, two or three lights that you're going to be working with, uh, you can place them evenly around your, your watch and you'll get an evenly lit photo. What I found is that doesn't really look great unless you're shooting macros where you need the light to be even to get something close up and show a detail. What I say more is bounce the light in different ways. So try taking your one light or your two lights and put them all on one side of the watch and then just move them around. You know, point one maybe up towards the ceiling and bounce the light off the ceiling. Put a piece of paper on the other side of the light so that way You do get a little bit of even lighting, maybe on the other side of the bracelet, if your watch is laying on its side. So really experiment with your artificial light, if that's what you're using, to move it around and see what looks good. The whole time, just look through your camera and see what is going on. And you'll find things that are going to look good. But the biggest thing is figuring out how to soften light and how to bounce it. So if you can, um, you know, soften it, like I said, just a milk jug and, you know, a piece of paper, you're probably going to have a better photo than 99% of other people who just, you know, put a flash on and take a picture.
Andrew	Do you use any reflective panels or bounce boards or anything when you're, when you're taking your shots?
Will	So, um, I shoot in my basement. Um, so the ceilings are a little bit lower and, uh, I usually always have a light pointing up at the ceiling because it, um, It's the best reflector ever. Um, I get a nice soft, even white on top of the, you know, on top of the dial or the side of the watch, you know, whatever it is. Um, so I always do that. And then, um, I have a couple, uh, just like white, like big white, um, I don't even know what they're called. It's basically just a flat piece of see-through white material that you can use to just bounce light around. And those are good for, um, uh, you know, for wrist shots, if you need to, you know, get it, get some light on one side.
Everett	Um, I went to, I went to Dick Blick and I actually bought a couple of canvases, just, just board canvases. So it's canvas stretched over cardboard and they're, they're cheap. They're like eight bucks. I have two of those and I use those opposite a South facing window with some, with some gods over it. If you know, God's be blind over it, if it's super bright. Um, and yeah, it does everything, everything I need to do in terms of, capturing light and bouncing it back.
Will	Yeah. And even just, uh, you know, go to the arts and crafts store and get a piece of white foam board, you know, and cut it down to size if you need to, if it's too big for where you're working. Um, you know, it's basically anything that is white-ish can bounce light. I use pieces of paper, printer paper all the time. Um, I have some that I fold in half to kind of stand up if I need to, or just move them around the watch and see what looks good. You'll be amazed what a piece of paper can do to change how the light is hitting your watch.
Everett	Yeah, that's right. And look at folks that are doing iPhone pictures. You know, sometimes it's hard to tell when you look at a photo online, but I know Aggressive Timing Habits, our good friend, Beau, Aggressive Timing Habits on Instagram, is using iPhone for 95%, maybe more than that, of his Instagram pictures. Matt Horanek, I believe, used an iPhone for all of the watch pictures in a man and his watch, which is crazy, you know, because they're these really beautiful stoic and there's some heavy editing in there, obviously. But, um, yeah, there are people doing this really well. So look, look at them and ask your friends who's using an iPhone, uh, and, and see what they're doing because it can give you some ideas. You're not going to be able to take. all of the same photos. And it's going to be some photos that people take of watches are going to be harder to do with that small sensor iPhone. I think flat lays do really well with an iPhone, that smaller sensor. Natural light flat lays in particular, really, I think the iPhone can do those as well as anything else, anything else you can shoot with.
Will	Yep. Yeah. And so I think to sum this question up, because this was specifically on how to shoot on an iPhone, Um, if you're just, if you're getting your composition and your lighting, right, doesn't matter what you're shooting with. So, uh, maybe get one of those little tripods for your phone, just so you can, you don't have to hold it. Um, you can stand it up and, you know, move some lights around and keep an eye on the screen and just, you know, see what's looking good. Um, get the composition right on that little tripod and then start moving your light around. So that's, and don't ever use the flash on your phone. Yeah, correct. Uh, yeah, don't, don't use it. It's. It's a hot mess. Um, so I think that'll kind of bring us into the next question, which was, uh, quick tips on editing photos on your phone. And this was from Mr. Three hander. Um, there's a, a ton of, um, apps that, you know, you can edit photos with on your phone. Uh, the most popular one is probably Snapseed, which is a Google product. Um, I've used that multiple times. It works really well. There's a lot of tools in there that you can use. You can, um, add different effects and, you know, I think it has some layering capabilities now.
Everett	It has layering capabilities and a selective edit tool, which selective editing is beyond the scope of what we're going to do today, probably. But, uh, if you know what it is, Snapseed does that and it does it pretty well.
Will	Yeah.
Everett	Um, and then it's got a, it's got a heal tool. You can heal. Yep. Flux, specks of dust.
Will	Dust all, yeah, yeah. So I'd say Snapseed is a really good one. If you're shooting raw images on your phone, that's a file type for people who don't know. There's a number of raw editors that you can get. One that I've used, I think it's just called Raw Power. That one is really good. It's basically a kind of like Lightroom, you know, if anybody's used that to edit raw photos, it's a pretty good version.
Everett	Again, beyond the scope of the episode, but there are some significant advantages to shooting and editing in RAW, even on your phone.
Will	Yes, correct. And then I will say that on, I think it's iOS 13 and up, if you're using an iPhone, the Apple photo editor is actually really good now. If you just need to make some lighting and color adjustments, it It's perfect. I've used it before. Um, cause sometimes when I take a picture off my computer onto my phone, when I'm posted to Instagram, I'll notice that it's, you know, maybe a little bit too dark or one color was off and I'll edit it on my phone. So I know that it looks good on the screen.
Everett	Yeah. I, I find that, um, a combination of editors, even if it sounds cumbersome, you're going to, if you play with different editors, most of them are cheap and or free. Um, but if you, uh, if you play with different editors, you're going to find out what you like doing, uh, with that editor and you're going to be able to, to make decisions about how to move forward. A lot of times with. With photos that I shoot on my DSLR or on my, or on my iPhone, I will go into the photos edit that made the native Apple photos app, do my big corrections. And then I'll go into Snapseed for, for selective edits or for for dust removal or whatever. So, um, and I'm not suggesting that you need to do that, but there are different approaches to this thing. And the more you get comfortable with your software and your tools, uh, the more you'll get comfortable knowing how you want to move, move forward.
Will	Yeah, exactly. Um, this'll dovetail nicely into the next question, which was editing tips and prop ideas. And this came from macro watchman. So, uh, since we're already on the topic of editing, um, I'll address this question along with another one that I had, which was, what was your editing workflow from Hacking Seconds? So I'll just lump these two together. So I use Capture One on my computer to edit all my photos. Everything gets done in there. Very rarely do I export out to Photoshop. The only time I do that is if I need to you know, move a crown back in for like a loom shot, or there was a really huge piece of dust or something that I couldn't get rid of. Um, so that's what I use Lightroom. I've used before. I prefer Capture One now. I've used both. Uh, it's just personal preference. Um, either one.
Everett	You can still buy Capture One as a standalone program, right?
Will	Yes. You don't have to buy it as a subscription like Adobe does with Lightroom. Um, they offer both a perpetual license and a subscription. Um, you know, so I think it's, I think it's like 150, 200 bucks, something like that. And I mean, if you want to buy it, not cheap. Yeah, no, it's definitely not cheap. Um, they do subsidize for certain camera brands. I think it's Fuji and Sony. Like I have the Sony version, so I can only edit photos that come from Sony cameras, but it's cheaper because of that. Um, so it's something to look into, but anyway, onto editing, um, really what I'm doing and you know, this kind of goes for photography as a whole. Get it as good as you can in camera so you don't have to do a lot of editing after the fact. Most of the editing that I do is creative. It's not necessarily fixing a lot of lighting issues or color problems, that sort of thing. If you see a lot of my recent shots where there's, you know, some bright light coming in from the side, yes that is done through artificial lighting and there was a light there, but I'm usually enhancing it and making it Stand out a little bit more. Um, so that, that's kind of creative editing that I'll, I'll be doing. Um, but as far as it just, you know, the, the, the basic kind of editing that you're going to do on any photo, uh, you're going to want to usually adjust your exposure and contrast, which there's multiple tools in every editing application to do that. Um, and then make some color adjustments if you need to, like if your white balances off, you know, the, the steel on your watch looks orange. Um, just cool down the image a little bit until it, you know, starts to look a little bit more blue and natural. Um, and I'd say that that's, that's really, you know, the base of what you need to do to edit a photo.
Everett	What will, what, uh, sliders are you moving every time in when, when you do your edits? Cause I have a few sliders that I move almost every time. Yep. Um, and I assume the same is true for you.
Will	Yeah. So I'm always, uh, touching the exposure, contrast, and brightness sliders, and then always touching highlights and shadows, and then the clarity and or texture sliders. They're called different things, but it's basically just localized contrast to punch up an image. Those are the ones that I'm always touching, usually in very small increments. I'm not taking a slider and bumping it way out, because that means I didn't get my exposure right.
Everett	And and it will wind up ruining your I mean your photograph. Yeah, eventually a lot There's a lot of over adjusted photos on on Instagram, which is fine. There's a look there.
Will	It's artistic perhaps It's creative, you know that that's what I mean by creative editing. You know, you can you can take something and You know really make it look unnatural, but it doesn't mean that it's bad. It's creative and it looks cool sometimes Sure, sure
Andrew	I want to ask one. So since we're on the editing topic, I think it'd be worthwhile to pull a picture from the WatchClick or Instagram feed. And it's a recent one. So it's the Hydus chronograph.
Will	Let me pull it up.
Andrew	What was your editing workflow for this picture?
Everett	What is, I mean... Yeah, maybe talk us through, maybe talk us through lighting the shot, because this is a great, it's a great picture. Maybe talk us through lighting. How'd you get the light? How'd you get the Flecto? And then what'd you do after the fact? Sure. I've got some, I've got some ideas.
Will	I want to pull it up on my computer so I can see what I actually did. Okay.
Andrew	Or you can pull up your most recent picture, but this is, this was one that I liked, so I pulled it up.
Will	Yeah. So, um, The lighting on this was pretty simple. It was one light off to the left, which you can see in the bezel. It's lit up pretty good there. It was probably about perpendicular to the watch. It was shining directly onto the left because you can see behind the watch, under that piece of wood, the shadows are pretty harsh there. What I did to edit this photo is there's a couple of small adjustments, like I said, made to exposure contrast, that sort of thing, just to kind of get it a little punchier looking. Now in Capture One, you can add layers of different types of adjustments, and usually the layers that I'm adding are... What do you call them? Like a graduated mask, essentially, that's gonna fade in and out.
Everett	Um, it's, it's a mask that's going to edit one part of the photo more than others. And there's, there's a transition area to the, to the less edited part versus higher strength in your, in your graduation.
Will	Yep. Um, so going through this, there's, uh, a radial mask, uh, placed directly on the dial. What I found a lot of times is, uh, if you do that and then you essentially just darken it a little bit. using either contrast or levels or curves, if you have them in whatever tool you're using. It brings down the dial color a little bit without affecting, you know, like the bright parts, like the hands or the indices or anything like that. And it just makes it look a little more natural because sometimes... Black point.
Everett	Black point's another common one that can be useful there.
Will	Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because sometimes when you add artificial light to a photo, it can, it can drown out the dial a little bit. So I do that to a lot of them and that was done on this one. The next thing I added is if I were to turn it off and republish this photo, that watch case that's on the bottom left side of the photo would be very dark. So I enhanced the light that was coming in from the left side and I brightened up that corner of the image to just kind of make it look like the light was shining more directly overhead. Now I could have done that by moving my light But it probably would have affected where the light was hitting the dial and the bezel. And that's something I didn't want to do. So it's, you know, it's a trade-off, you know, can I, can I make it look better in post-processing later? Um, and then the last thing I did is I added another radial mask that was, um, essentially creating a vignette. Um, there's vignette tools to actually just create one, but I like doing them through masks because, uh, I can place it better, you know, where I want it. Because I usually want it centered on the dial and if my watch isn't perfectly centered, you know, it's going to be a little bit off. And then usually what I do when I do that too is I take the clarity or sharpness in that mask and just slide it all the way down so it softens the edges of the image. So when you do that, what you're doing is you're bringing more attention to the parts of the image that are in focus. And it's going to make those in focus parts look sharper than they actually are. That's why when you see a lot of people who take, um, you know, like a wrist shot, for example, with a really large aperture, um, which is, you know, that's a topic for another day, but the plane of focus is very small and it's really just like the dial that's in focus. And it looked, you're like, wow, it looks really sharp. It's no sharper than any other picture. It's just that it looks sharper because everything around it is blurry.
Everett	Sure. That's actually a really next-level tip, because we should take a minute to talk about it, right? Yeah. You know, people use a lot of tools to add artificial bokeh. Almost all of the major cell phone makers now have software that implements artificial bokeh, right? Yep. And that's valuable in certain contexts. I find in watches it's less valuable than in portraits, because the software has a harder time detecting. But you don't have to add artificial bokeh. Adding softness with a radial mask, reducing your sharpness, can do a very similar thing. And there's something else here that I want to point out that you've done. You have created layers, not in your editing, but in the actual composition of the shot, right? So the watch is higher than the platform. And then there's things both above and below the plane of the watch. You shot at a relatively big aperture here. You're not going to get, you can certainly shoot in an iPhone at quote unquote 6.3, but it's not going to look the same as this. You've got a very big sensor and you've got a long lens. And so you're getting more bokeh. uh, more out of focus, your depth of field is shallower than you would, than you're going to get on a, certainly on a phone, but even, even on a, even on a DX or a crop sensor. With that said, you can do these same things, you know, that, that boot lace or that shoelace, I'm not sure what it is on the bottom left of this photo. You can't see it, but, but please feel free to go look at Will's photo of, uh, the Hydus chronograph. You'll see what we're talking about. By having things both above and below the watch, you create some real interest.
Andrew	Mm-hmm. And the texture of the platform that you used to rest it on. That's right. It created... There's just a lot of depth that somehow all points back to that watch.
Will	Yeah, and that brings up a good point. With watch photos specifically, adding a lot of texture into the photo itself makes the watch look better. If you were to place a watch on a white piece of paper, it's super boring, nothing's gonna look cool. But when you add you know, some old wood or a piece of rope or, you know, something that's got some patina on it, um, which I'll talk about in a second. Um, it just makes the watch look more interesting. Um, and I, that's something I found. It's very specific to watch photography. Um, you know, most other product photography, you think about it, um, is really clean cut. You know, it's, everything is pristine, but even in, um, professional watch photography, like if you, if you take a look at a picture that, you know, I wouldn't say Rolex because they're different. But, you know, like Omega, for example, you know, Amiga, high end watch photography. And some of those are renders, but story for another day. They have things that are not perfect in them, because I think that it makes the watch look more perfect. You know, hey, there's a, you know, an old pair of binoculars over here. That's, you know, they're all chipped up and everything. You know, look at the watch that's next to it and it's perfect. You know, I think it just kind of says, this is something that's tough. And, uh, you know, it, it looks cool. Even if you beat it up a little bit, you know, it's, it's stuff like that. I think that's probably why we like adding things into watch photos that are old or have a lot of texture, um, because it adds that, you know, little extra detail to the watch.
Everett	Yeah. What's next.
Will	Um, so I'll answer the second part of this question, which was about props. Uh, so kind of covered it a little bit there, uh, where you're going to just get a bunch of old stuff that you have lying around the house. You know, if you have a wallet that you've been using for years, throw that in your photo. Um, places like, and I'm sure this is varied a little bit regionally, but like Hobby Lobby, um, or any type of craft store that sells like that farmhouse style. crap. You can usually get something from there that'll look good in a watch photo, like an old piece of wood, you know, or something like that. Just anything that has some texture to it for props, I would say is really good. And then the other thing is watch people seem to really love EDC stuff. So, you know, pocket knives, pens, notebooks, all that kind of stuff. It all looks good in watch photos.
Everett	What I do is... Yeah, and I think it depends on how creative you wanna get, too. Yeah. You can be... Sky's the limit, right? I know people that go to antique stores... Yep. ...and buy trinkets at antique stores. You don't have to do that, but it can certainly provide some interesting fodder.
Andrew	Yeah, and it's a... It'd be a really good way to take your lady out on a date and make her think that it was just a date.
Will	That's right. Well, she'll get excited when you're like, hey, I wanna go to the craft store.
Andrew	Yeah. Win, win, win.
Will	But the antique Store thing isn't a bad idea either because it's cheap. It's a cheap way to get some, some props. So, um, same kind of thing that I've been saying, look at some other people's photos, you know, what, what's in their picture that looks good, um, that you like, you know, and find some things along that same theme.
Everett	Yeah. You know, Alice, uh, Alice, one of the in-house photographers at Dakota, Her name is Alice Curious Horology on Instagram. She's my very favorite Instagram watch photographer. I think she also does miniatures, like Mario Brothers and video games. In Another Life, I think she does that thing. But she does a really good job with all these things we've been talking about, textures, And props, too. So she just has, I think, a small-ish collection of stuff, and she nails it, right? Yeah. The photos she makes are fantastic. But textures, right? She has really good texture in her shots. And even her props, even her antique store props are really rich in texture.
Will	Well, she's really good, too, at just taking, like, a bunch of leaves and sprinkling them around the watch, and it looks awesome. She's very talented. Or rocks. Yeah, I think her new thing is rocks. I think she posted about that a couple days ago But that's a that's a good point, you know, look at some people who are shooting for brands that you know of You know, she's a great example because she does you know their straps and that sort of thing so they're on various watches And just take a look and see what looks good. But yeah, she's curious horology on Instagram. She's fantastic. Very very talented photographer
Everett	Cool. What do we got next?
Will	All right. Uh, next is how do I do my loom shots? So the way I shoot my, the way I shoot my loom shots. That's a hard question, right? Yeah. Well, it, it's a difficult one to answer sometimes because I think people get disappointed in how I do it because, um, the way that I do it is very specific to the equipment that I have because I'm using, um, you know, my camera on a tripod and I'm using my artificial lights as strobes. So I usually have between a two and eight second photo. Uh, so the crown is obviously popped out or the watch isn't running. Um, otherwise I'd have the, you know, the blurry seconds hand from it ticking. Um, and, uh, the, so I always use rear curtain sync with my flashes. So what that means is at the end of the picture, right before the shutter closes, the flash fires as opposed to a normal flash fires at the beginning. So what that allows the watch to do, or the exposure to do, is the lume is exposing throughout that time, which gives it a nice bright glow without adding a lot of light from around it, the ambient light. The flashes firing at the end adds that at the very end without washing out the lume. So it takes a little bit of trial and error sometimes depending on how much light is just around me. I usually try and shoot them as dark as I can. Um, so that's what I mean, where it's probably a little bit disappointing because it's not like, oh, I just, you know, hit it with a UV light and then take a picture. Um, you can certainly do that.
Everett	Although that is effective.
Will	Yeah. Yeah. I was going to say, um, the way I shoot my loom shots, isn't probably the way a lot of other people do them. Uh, the easiest way to do it is to just, um, pop the crown out and, uh, get your room as dark as you can possibly get it and hit it with a UV light and then take your picture. And you know do some trial and error. Do I need the exposure to be longer or shorter? That sort of thing The other thing you can do is if you're in a pitch-black room And you want to get you don't have another light all you have is your your camera and your phone Pull up a white background on your phone And then you know do like a two or three second picture on your camera and just move the screen around the watch a little bit It's called light painting and you'll add some light throughout the photo without really washing everything out. Once again, it takes a little bit of trial and error. That's the way I used to do it when I first started out. Uh, it's, it's effective. It works and it's cheap. Uh, you don't need anything aside from your camera.
Everett	Um, you know, or you can, and if you're, if you go ahead, if you're not, if you're using an iPhone or whatever, too, you're going to have to be in some sort of manual setting, right? Uh, you know, your phone's going to automatically expose you usually on an average, you can set it to expose a certain thing, but either way, if you expose for average or you expose for a point, uh, most of these automatic. Most of these automatic apps on your phone are going to overexpose your image. So play around with some sort of manual setting. I think most of the photography, the native photography apps have manual settings. But also look at good third-party apps too. You know, um, I use two, two, two apps. I use both Halide, I think is, is how you pronounce it and Filca on an iPhone. Uh, and, and they're great. They, they do most of what I need, uh, in terms of manual settings. So if I'm shooting on my phone, uh, it's usually one of those two things.
Will	Yeah, that's a good point. You don't have to use the in-camera or the in-phone camera app. You can use a, you know, a third-party app that'll give you some, SLR like settings that you can adjust, you know, where you can change your aperture or ISO or the shutter speed, that sort of thing. Yeah. So the next question was from watches by Nick. He wanted to know how to get rid of crystal reflections. So this, this is a good, a good dual tip, I guess I'll say. So before, when I said a piece of paper can be your best friend, It can be your best friend for getting rid of crystal reflections. Literally just hold it in front of the watch face and move it around until your reflections are gone. The other thing that that's going to do is if you have like applied markers and polished hands, it's going to light those up white, which is what you want in your watch photos. If you take two pictures and one of the hands is, especially with polished hands and indices, you know, they're dark and they're black because they're not reflecting any light. And then you do another one where they are and they're lit up white. It changes the whole look of the photo. And it's something that's very subtle. And I think if you start paying attention to what, uh, you know, watch photographers who know what they're doing or doing that, you'll start to see it in all their pictures. They're always lit up. Um, so like I said, piece paper is probably the best way to get rid of that. Um, you can use a white piece of paper. Or if you're not worried about the hands and everything getting lit up, like let's say you have a printed dial and DLC hands or something, you can use a black piece of paper too, and that'll accomplish the same thing. But just move it around the front of the watch until the reflections are gone.
Everett	And I think it sort of depends on what you're shooting on. I would say the most valuable tool for me with getting rid of reflections is using a tripod, right? Get your camera to where it needs to be and then move your lights around until you get the reflection you want. Move your light around, move your paper around till you get what you need. But if your camera's moving around, it's going to be harder to demonstrate those things. Even if you're shooting on a phone, get a tripod, get your camera where you want it, and then move the light around until you get a pleasing. I've actually got a setup for macro in my garage where I use a big softbox a smaller softbox. The softboxes are the same size, but the light is bigger and smaller. One's closer, one's further away. And then I've got a black umbrella. I've got a black umbrella that I will literally open up and hold with my hand over the entire setup. Everything's so close together. You know, the camera's right there. The lights are right there. And then I'll take that black umbrella and hold it over the top. It's just a rain umbrella. This is not a piece of photography equipment. I just take a black umbrella and hold it. And that actually helps a lot in not in every, not in every circumstance, but sometimes it's like, Oh, this is what I needed. I needed this umbrella.
Andrew	I I've done that with like outdoor shots. I I'll set up my timer and realize that I need to, I need to use me to adjust the light. So I'll start the timer on, on my camera and go stand where I need to, to affect the light.
Everett	That's right.
Will	Yeah. Yeah. That's right. That brings up a good point for outdoor shots too. If you really want to get outside and take some photos. and it's a bright sunny day, get one of those, you know, large, I think they're like 36 inch kind of opaque white, uh, you know, reflectors and just hold it above your watch and it'll cut the sunlight down and essentially make it a giant soft box. Basically what you want to do with anything you're doing in watch photography is create giant soft boxes. That's right.
Everett	I mean, any kind of photography, right? Uh, you know, unless you're doing really like on a white sheet, Yeah, well, white sheet for sure. Uh, I mean the, the, the gauzy blinds that you have in your window might be the best lighting source that you could come up with, right? Cause you're getting the sun, you're diffusing it. Um, the sun is an infinitely big, well, not infinitely, uh, but the biggest soft box that you can get is a window with a white gauzy blind in front of it and the sun behind it. I mean, there is no substitution for that. And in fact, everybody's trying to replicate that. with artificial lights because of the versatility. So.
Will	All right. Um, probably got time for like one or two more questions, right?
Everett	Yeah. Maybe we, maybe we, we go through these and see if we've got any, uh, like this is a really good one. Uh, this is for you will actually, I think this is specifically for you and not for us, but, uh, humping jalapeno has asked, Do you will rue the day that you got into bed with these two yahoos? I assume he's talking about us and that's kind of, I feel a little offended.
Andrew	I mean, I think he probably rues the day that he didn't get to be the meat in the sandwich.
Will	Yeah, that's probably true.
Andrew	It's just a slice of bread.
Everett	That's not a real question. We can move on.
Will	But no, yeah, I do rue the day. Every day I wake up. All right. So Quest327 asked, good macro lens for a newbie. So this goes back a little bit to what I was talking about. Buy the best lens that you can afford. When it comes to macro lenses, most manufacturers have a couple to choose from. Uh, what I'll say is you want the longest length macro lens you can get. Usually, um, every manufacturer has one that is between 90 and 105 millimeters. Those are the ones you should look at. They're usually they're quote unquote pro level lenses. Um, I use, I used to use the Sony 90 millimeter macro lens, which was fantastic. And it died on me after a few years. Um, and I use a Sigma 105 lens now, which is, fantastic. But you know, Canon makes one that's a 105. Nikon makes one. I don't know. Fuji has a their lenses are a little bit weird. I know they have a macro lens. I don't think it's 105. I forget what it is.
Everett	Well, and Fuji is primarily APS-C, right? So yeah, that's an important distinction. That's an important distinction here. Because I think it's some of this depends I have a Nikon crop sensor, APS-C, which means that the sensor is smaller by a degree of 1.6. The full frame is 1.6 times bigger than my crop sensor on the diagonal. I would say for most people shooting APS-C or crop sensor, that 105 is going to be limiting in certain circumstances, I found that a 60mm macro lens gives you a very similar focal plane as a 90mm zoom or macro, excuse me, on a full frame. So think about that too. If you're using an APS-C of any sort of entry-level crop sensor camera, 105mm is going to be really long. 105mm is going to be like 160mm. Yeah, and so that's just something to factor in there, which is why Fuji has the weird focal length macros.
Will	What you want to look for, too, with a macro lens is get one that has one-to-one magnification, which means that at the closest focusing distance, the image that is produced would be life-size. to put it simply. And the reason that you want that is that there's basically no distortion. So it's going to look exactly like your eyeball sees it. And it's going to allow you to focus a little bit closer. So if you really want to get in and do those tight macro shots, you'll be able to get in a little bit closer.
Andrew	Let's you find all the imperfections in your watch.
Will	Yeah. Don't go looking for those. They're there. You don't need to see them. Um, but so, so I use a macro lens for everything that I shoot. Um, with the rare exception that I use another lens, I would say 98% of my photos are shot with a macro lens. So just because it's called a macro lens doesn't mean that you have to shoot super close up. You can get far away and they make great portrait lenses too. If you know, you, you want to take pictures of your family. Um, they're, they're just a really versatile lens.
Everett	And look, so this is a bit of an aside, but at 105 millimeter focal length on my crop sensor camera, so essentially 165 or something like that, 170, something like that, I have to be way far away from the thing I'm shooting a portrait of. But that does a thing called compression, and just Google it because we're not going to talk about it. But you can get some really phenomenal portraits at a very long focal length, at 150 millimeters, especially if you're doing head and shoulders. Even if you're not doing head and shoulders, you know, if you're somewhere where there's a bunch of crap around you and you don't want to get the crap in the picture, get a very long lens, upwards towards 200. Get far away. Get the person framed. and you're going to reduce the amount of crap in your picture, you're going to increase your depth of field because you're now farther away, or decrease, decrease your depth of field, you're going to have a shallower depth of field relative to the scene. There's something to be said for that. Yep, definitely. I use my 105 for portraits all the time. Also, I would say if you're looking for a dedicated macro lens, especially to shoot watch photography, and you're using a tripod, which you should be, absolutely should be doing, You do not need automatic focus.
Will	No, I don't use autofocus for anything except for shots.
Everett	Yep. Same. I never use autofocus.
Will	Get into manual focus. And that brings up another point. Learn how to use your camera's manual settings also. And you'll be much happier.
Everett	What do we got next? Do we got time for one more question, I think?
Will	Yeah. Let me see what we got here. So this is an interesting one. So tips for shooting with a DSLR after shooting on an iPhone. And this was from main plate and bridge. Um, so you, Oh boy. Yeah. You're going to have some challenges moving from an iPhone to a DSLR because you're going to have so much more control at your fingertips. So what I just said, learn how to use your cameras, manual settings and manual focus at the first thing you should do. Um, You know, figure out how to adjust your aperture, your shutter speed, focus your lens, all that good stuff. Learn how to do that first, and then start digging into the other settings, you know, changing some things around within the camera. But, you know, the same concepts apply. You know, it's down to composition and lighting. But I would just say, learn about your gear the best that you can. The one thing that I was always taught, or told, I guess, is you should be able to use your camera with your eyes closed. Um, so you should be able to adjust dial settings, things that you need to adjust to take a picture, um, with your eyes closed. So get to that point and you'll find that you're going to be a much happier shooter. Uh, you know, you don't need to be looking at the settings to adjust things. You can do it very quickly and, you know, kind of move on. Um, but that's really just coming down to having a very good understanding of your gear.
Andrew	One thing that I found really helped me in understanding that, was taking exactly the same picture off my tripod, same lighting, and adjusting one thing at a time. Run through the entire spectrum of f-stops, run through the entire spectrum of aperture, and see how each of those manipulations affect the picture independently of one another before I started trying to mix and match. That would be my recommendation on transitioning from an iPhone to a DSLR is thousands of the exact same picture with one micro adjustment.
Everett	You know, I think it's interesting. I think we've got three levels of DSLR photographers in the room and don't be offended, but I think arguably I'm sort of an experienced enthusiast. I've done a lot of off-camera strobe work. I think Andrew is an experienced DSLR shooter, but probably the least
Andrew	Oh, absolutely.
Everett	Dedicated. And then Will is a semi-professional or even perhaps a professional photographer in his own life. So maybe we could just each run through sort of how we sort of got to where we're going and what the most important things were as we were making that development and how to use our cameras. Do you want to start, Andrew?
Andrew	I mean, mine was born of necessity. I mean, I had this... It was my wife's camera. I got it because she wanted become a photographer. So we got a camera and we got light kits and we got some lenses and then it sat in the camera bag for years. And when we started this endeavor, we're like, well, we got to start taking pictures. Like we got to have a couple of mediums and, and, and some output. And that was when I dusted everything off and, and sort of relearning how to do all these things. And that was the transition for me. It was just hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of the same shot and just experimenting with experimenting with it. bringing the light kit out and set up the room to be a little photo studio and just see what you can do.
Everett	Yeah. You know, and certainly I think for me too, it's the same thing. I've, I've read a bunch of, uh, I've read a bunch of online resources over the years. And that's sort of what I do still today with everything I do is I read as much as I can and learn as much as I can. Not everybody has the patience for that, but I think that there's a couple of good, I'll just, I'm going to throw it out there right now. I think strobist one-on-one there's a photography need photographer named David Hobby, and he has a series on off-camera flash. And I learned so much about light, so much about light reading through that. And so I'd recommend that, but also you hear a lot when people are saying, how do I use my DSLR? And they say, put it in manual and figure out how to use all of the settings. Don't, don't let the camera decide anything for you. Uh, and I want to, I want to amend that because I don't think that's the best advice. I think the best advice. for a new DSLR shooter is to put the camera in aperture priority mode. Yeah. If you're this question is specifically how do I learn how to use the functions that my camera can do? Understand what aperture is, and it's the simplest thing you would do in DSLR or manual photography is understanding what aperture is because you can see it really directly. You have a wide aperture, a low f-stop number. You're going to get a shallow depth of field. And as that number gets bigger to infinity, you're going to, you're going to increase that depth of field where everything's going to be on roughly the same focus plane, uh, for, for a very long ways. You know, I have the mountains are in focus, the thing in front of me in focus, as well as the rock right in front of the lens, everything's in focus and you get everything in between there where you have a two inch sheet that's in focus and nothing else is to everything's in focus. So.
Will	Use your aperture priority mode. And then if you really want to confuse people, tell them to learn about hyperfocal distance, where everything is in focus.
Everett	Well, yeah. What about you, Will? So hyperfocal, I mean, you've got a much deeper knowledge base than I think certainly than either one of us does, but probably more than just about anybody listening to the show. So what are the things you've picked up? Assuming you've incorporated some of the things we're talking about right?
Will	Yeah, so when I started With my first DSLR What I did was, you know, like I said, this is really before YouTube was an educational resource like it is now I don't even know if it existed may have I don't know 2006 I think 2006. Yeah Yeah, so it was probably just starting up but I didn't use YouTube, you know for for education I would go down to Barnes and Noble and buy a photography book. I went almost every week to Barnes and Noble to buy a photography book and learn about something different. They still make photography books, obviously, but there's a multitude of topics. I'd buy one on shooting in black and white, then the next one would be editing in Photoshop, then the next one would be shooting portraits. through just reading about different types of photography, you start to, you know, learn all these things and you learn something and you go try it and you're like, Hey, that works. Okay. Let me dig a little bit deeper. And you, you know, it's like anything else you get in a rabbit hole. Um, so that's how I started. And I started not by shooting watches, uh, or products of any sort. I did landscapes and architecture for, you know, over 10 years. Um, and you know, it was, I think I've talked about this before, but it wasn't until, you know, kind of getting cooped up inside a little bit more of the family where I was like, why don't I take pictures of watches? Um, and you know, that was basically like learning it all over again. Um, because it, it was artificial light instead of natural light outside and it was shooting in a studio as opposed to being on a, you know, trail hiking somewhere and taking a picture. Um, so just constant education I think is really important. Um, No one's ever the perfect photographer. No one's ever going to know everything about photography. Um, trying different things and learning about different things, uh, from different resources, I think is extremely important. You know, YouTube is a great resource. Now go on there. The Strobist is great. I also kind of quote unquote grew up on the Strobist. Um, and there's a ton of other websites, you know, just, just check out some of the photography blogs and, you know, check out the resources that they offer.
Everett	There's no quick fix, right? You got to jump into it. You talked about editing and layers. And I think photography, like many things, right? Like piano or reading or writing, um, any skill that is, this is, there's a lot here, right? You are not going to learn how to be a photographer in a weekend or a month or a year. Um, you, you may become proficient at certain things, but there, the amount of shit you can learn is huge. And I feel like very much I've incorporated, uh, uh, editing by layers to my own photography skills, right? I learned something and I play with it. And then I learned something else and I play with it. And all of those experiences add, they, it's just add. And then eventually, you know, you're, you're someone like, well, and you've got all these layers and you're able to pull that information out. You've got to do that with photography. You're not going to learn it all today.
Will	Yep. Absolutely.
Andrew	I just have one last question. When are your books going to open back up for boudoir photography?
Will	For you, they're always open.
Everett	Andrew's been shopping negligees.
Andrew	I have been. So I got some special ones for you.
Will	Bring it on. I'm ready. I'll get the macro lens out.
Andrew	It won't do any good.
Everett	You will need it. You will need it. It won't help. Is 105 the longest you have?
Will	No, I've got a two to one macro lens that can double the life size of anything. So that'll really help.
Andrew	Let's do that. Let's do that. Yeah, that's a good. Let's do that. It'll still be modest, but let's do it.
Everett	Will, is there anything on photography Q&A that you want to add right now?
Will	All I'll say is that I know there are a couple of questions we didn't get to, but if we missed your question, feel free to message me on Instagram and I'll happily answer it.
Everett	Yeah, that's right. Or become a patron and join our Discord server where you can have real-time access to a Q&A channel that Will responds to at least daily.
Andrew	I forgot we had that.
Will	I like hopping in there. It's fun.
Everett	Yeah, it's good. The questions are good too. I mean, meaningful questions and the information has been valuable, I think.
Will	In addition to a multitude of other channels that are lots of fun.
Everett	Andrew? other things. What do you got?
Andrew	I got a new watch.
Everett	What? That's not another thing.
Andrew	No, it's just it's felt like announcement time.
Everett	I agree.
Andrew	I got a new watch. I took delivery of a Manta Atlas on last week. Yeah. No, Wednesday. No, Thursday. Yeah, it was last week.
Everett	It doesn't matter. A week ago, a week ago from the time you're hearing this, Andrew took delivery of a brand new
Andrew	Monta Atlas And although like that, that wave of emotions of like, is it going to be worth, is it worth the money? Am I going to get the enjoyment out of it that I think I'm going to get? What am I doing? I got it. I put it on and they were all relieved. I'm absolutely in love with this watch. Perfectly sized. The only thing I have one complaint, and this is kind of like a, this is a weird complaint to have. This is the far and away the best bracelet I've ever worn. It's so adjustable, though, that I'm having trouble getting it just right.
Everett	Yeah, they really fucked that up. They made it way too nice.
Andrew	So I've been fucking with it since. I mean, I'm adding links, removing links, changing the micro adjustments and usually a bracelet. It's like, OK, I take out, you know, two links on each side, pop a micro adjustment and we're good to go. But I adjust this bracelet every single day.
Will	So have you tried putting both of the half links on the same side? No, try that, because I found that with Manta bracelets, if I put them both on the if you're looking at the bottom of your wrist, the right side, I was able to get a perfect fit. Because they're both of them together, I think are a little bit longer than a full length.
Andrew	Yeah.
Will	Yeah. Try that, because that worked really well for me.
Andrew	I might do that. I also found using the micro adjustment mitigated the length of the clasp. At least it's a long class. It's a it's a yeah, it's a long class. but using some of the micro adjustment, let's part of the links run over the end of the class on the, on that adjusted side. And that mitigated some of the, of the length of the clasp.
Everett	I think it's worth to say, I think it's worthwhile to say, so I'm a speedy owner. I bought a speedy after I got hit by a car and got a giant settlement. Uh, accepting that watch, this is the most expensive watch either one of us has ever bought. We'll you're not included in that cause you've bought some very, uh, Blue watches. Blue watches. You know, when we posted the new watch alert for this, Justin from Manta, who's a good friend of ours, came in and said, finally, kind of winky-winky, saying, you know, because we've been very vocal, we really love these watches. We've had a number of them for review.
Andrew	And within the WatchClear family, I think we've had the whole lineup.
Everett	But I think it's worthwhile to say, For either one of us, this is the most expensive watch we've bought, excepting the Speedmaster. And that's because it's a big purchase, you guys. Look, you do not have to spend $1,900 on a watch to enjoy watches. When you do, it's special. And I want to say, Andrew, you didn't just buy this. You didn't just make a decision one day.
Andrew	No.
Everett	You've been actively saving for this watch. By on a year. For almost a year. Yeah. which means you're not taking money that could be used for sports, or you are taking a little bit, but you're doing it in a way you communicated with your wife. And I think that's sort of how we approach the hobby. This is a huge purchase for you. I mean, for anyone, this is a big purchase. And I think for me, as I sit here, it makes it more special. This is something you knew you wanted. You took a lot of time. You saved money. It wasn't an impulse buy. And I just really love that aspect. I think that's how you collect watches. It's how I collect watches.
Andrew	And I'm just... And in the weeks leading up to this purchase, I tried to get you guys to talk me out of it.
Will	I'm never going to talk you out of buying a watch.
Andrew	On multiple occasions, I tried to be talked out of this watch, but there was nothing to push me back onto the ledge. But I love it. It's terrific.
Everett	Congratulations. It's beautiful. I'm really happy for you too.
Andrew	So now for my real other thing. Uh, so we watched, uh, a couple of movies last week, uh, me and my wife and neither of them were very good, but they weren't bad either. And the one I want to talk about is the professor and the madman. And it is, um, a 2000 year was it a 2019 movie starring Sean Penn and Mel Gibson. And it is the story of Sir James Augustus Henry Murray and... I don't remember the other guy's name. It doesn't matter. So this is the story of the Oxford University Press Dictionary of the English Language. And it was, it's the tale of these guys trying to capture the entirety of the English language, the evolution up to that point. And they were, their goal was to take each word, source it through history to the origin of the word. Talk about how it has evolved and how it has gotten to where it is. And they sent, and it's such a vast endeavor that they sent out these leaflets throughout the English speaking world and said, Hey, We need you to help us read books from these centuries and find weird words so that we can create a tale of these words. And I didn't realize, like, I just sort of figured the dictionary just happened. I never really gave thought to the endeavor that a dictionary with those kinds of footnotes and citations would be. And it was a cool story and a largely true story from the movie's perspective. Um, That was the most interesting part of the movie to me was learning about the story and then the subsequent research and learning that I did. The movie itself was, I didn't check my watch.
Will	It sounds like something that someone would do in quarantine.
Andrew	Yeah. Oh, he was. So, so the guy, uh, I'll, I'll look up his name real quick. Uh, cause he's a significant, um, part of the story.
Everett	Um, you know what my favorite words are? My favorite words are diarrhea. That's a good one. Onomatopoeia. Is diarrhea onomatopoeia?
Andrew	I don't think it is. William Chester Minor was the guy who was in a mental hospital. And when you're in a mental hospital in the late 1800s, early 1900s, it's not a great place to be. That's right. Not to say it's good now, but it was not good then. And he found this leaflet. He was suffering from severe schizophrenia and he was just locked away in his room reading books. That's all he did. He just read books and would the they gave him credit for like completing 400 years of Citations like four centuries of citations from his weird library that phenomenal he was responsible for so phenomenal Yeah, cool movie an interesting movie It's it's a good time earner if you're looking for something not really light not really heavy just kind of something It's a good thinker solid.
Everett	I got another thing do me I just finished a book trilogy, which I read and did not listen to. Ursula K. Le Guin, fantastic science fiction writer, probably one of my top five science fiction writers of all time. She published of late in her career, a trilogy called Annals of the Western Shore. And I've just finished up the trilogy, so I've read all three of these. I don't read them back to back to back. But I do sort of try to get through the trilogy. And so good. So this thing is listed as a young adult YA trilogy. And I suppose it is. I think a young person could read this and really enjoy the crap out of it. But these stories are so good. So, so good and thoughtful. You know, she does a really good job of breaking down the human experience in a science fiction world. You know, that feels very foreign, but also very local. Just really wonderful. So I finished this actually last night. I finished the third book. And I didn't cry, but I perhaps got something in my eye for a second. Uh, you know, ties it together. There are three, there are three independent stories, but tied together, um, sort of like Fargo, the series, uh, where it's the same universe and you've got, you know, Oh, well that's that guy from this season. Uh, the same thing happens here. Just really good. Uh, you know, talks about servitude and loyalty and devotion and the decisions we make and the way our brains change with experience and freedom and liberty versus community and corporation. Really, really excellent. And I'd recommend you read it. I won't tell you, I'm not going to tell you a darn thing about any of the books, except that they're fantastic.
Andrew	Wow. Not even a premise.
Everett	The premise is that each of the characters has a power. So it's a superhero book. A little bit. It's X-Men. Very, very similar to X-Men. Okay. Animals of the Western Shore, totally phenomenal. Also, Will, just for your situational awareness, I also started Blood Meridian again.
Will	Excellent.
Everett	Last night.
Will	Got you back on the Cormac McCarthy kick.
Everett	You did. Yeah. Our conversation, I was like, I need to read Blood Meridian.
Will	I need to read No Country for Old Men again.
Everett	Ooh. Yeah. I've read that in the last, I think, three years. So I felt like Blood Meridian, I'm pretty sure I read Blood Meridian in high school. So it'd been long enough that I was like, I don't really remember what happens. It's going to feel fresh.
Will	I think they made a crappy movie based off the book.
Everett	I don't think so. I looked at this. I don't think they ever made a movie. So it's very violent. It's very, very, very violent. They've started, I think, three different times. Most recently, James Franco was developing it, and they had some licensing issues. So it would be a totally wonderful movie. Very violent, but wonderful. So hopefully they do that.
Will	Yeah, it is listed on Wikipedia under attempted film adaptations.
Everett	That's right. That's right. I just read this, which is why I know that.
Will	Other things. Will, what do you have? So I have an Instagram page. It is called VCR World. Now, that sounds incredibly boring. But it's actually pretty interesting. So it's this guy that I assume he's a graphic designer of some sort. But what he does is he creates VCR boxes, like actual boxes, he makes them of modern movies, and then also recreates, you know, movies that were on VHS and how he would want them. I'm looking at the page right now, like he's got a VCR box for La La Land, Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, Django Unchained.
Andrew	And Donnie Darko.
Will	Yeah.
Andrew	Seth Rogen and Ghost.
Will	This is incredible. But what's cool about it is, you know, he makes them, he doesn't just like take, you know, the poster and put it on a VCR cover. He makes his own how he would want it to look. But then he patinas the VCR case. He makes it look like it's been used. So it's not, you know, just a fresh VCR case. Like it's got the corners are all rubbed off and it's got, you know, cracks in it and stuff like this interstellar rental rental box is totally phenomenal. Yeah. They're just, I don't know. They're so good. July 21st. Fantastic. The mid somar one is really good, but he's just the super bad one. He's just incredibly talented. Gosh, this is really good. It's just an interesting passion project, you know, like I'm going to just start creating VCR covers. You know, it's an interesting thing to take up, but I highly recommend checking it out. It's just really cool fan art, you know, putting it in an interesting medium. You know, you're never going to buy a VHS of these movies because they don't exist, but I think you can buy the covers. I think he sells them, you know, if you wanted one from your favorite movie or something.
Everett	The Uncut Gems NES game. Yeah. Dude, this is fantastic.
Will	Yeah, it's just a... Man, I've never heard of this.
Andrew	He even has a membership card.
Will	Yeah, yeah. It's just a good nostalgia kick. You know, he's got some old NES stuff and there's like an Atari thing somewhere. Yeah, it's just really cool.
Everett	Well, Will, thanks for joining us, man. Absolutely. And actually contributing something this time.
Will	I know, it's the first time I've actually provided actual input.
Everett	It's the first time you've not been a drag on the show, I would say. Yeah, definitely. There was also no clicking. Yeah, that's right.
Will	That's right. You want me to get some real quick? I mean, this is the Watch Clicker podcast.
Everett	Yeah, that was Mike's excuse last time. Was it? No. Will, anything you want to add before we shut it down?
Will	No, I'm good. It was fun coming on. You know, I love talking about photography, so this was fun.
Andrew	Andrew, what about you? I'm all out of things.
Everett	You're so, you're so lost.
Andrew	I'm so lost.
Everett	Well, hey, thanks for joining us for this episode of 40 and 20, the WatchClicker podcast. Check us out on Instagram at 40 and 20 at WatchClicker. Also go to the dang website, watchclicker.com. That's where we post all the Will's wonderful reviews. That's where we post all of our columns, uh, things about watches, things you might want to look at. If you want to support the show, you can do so at patreon.com slash 40 and 20. Really you guys, that's where we get all the support for hosting and hardware and software. And it's not an insignificant amount of money at this point. And don't forget to tune back in next Thursday for another hour of watches, food, drinks, life, and other things we like.
Andrew	Bye bye.