Making Progress Means Making Mistakes
This originally appeared as part of my weekly Prime Lenses Newsletter. You can sign up for a weekly update here.
As I write this I’m in the sitting room. The kids are successfully in bed and the smell of fresh bread is wafting in, the loaf will be ready in about 20 minutes. I’ve got a cup of peppermint tea and I’m writing what is effectively an email to a pal. It’s pretty great and in 2024 influencer world that’s the perfect opening to a newsletter. “Golly, life is swell!” Well, it’s pretty neat but I messed up yesterday when publishing the podcast and it has been bothering me.
When I started this project I gave myself 3 months to release the first episode of Prime Lenses. I prototyped a recording setup using OBS with multiple camera and audio inputs and it worked almost straight awat. Alice kept checking with me,
“Are you sure it all works? You’ve not done that many tests.”
“It’s fine.” I replied with a confidence that was entirely unearned.
On the day of recording episode one with Danny I was all over the place. I was about to speak “live” to a person I’d only chatted with in text up until now. I was excited to speak to my friend, nervous about making a podcast, already worrying about what would happen if it sucked and then, boom, I hit a roadblock. The audio recording wasn’t working. I sounded like a robot and Danny wasn’t coming through at all.
After multiple tests, in a mild panic, I started a Google Hangout and set it to record the call. Danny, by the way, was cool as a cucumber and still smashed it as a guest. Thanks fella, I owe you at least a coffee :)
I’d forgotten that experience in the 20 weeks that followed and some of that unearned confidence returned. I was travelling for work last week and contributions for the episode were coming in hot. I’d listened to all of them as they came in but couldn’t remember which ones I’d edited and which ones I hadn’t. As a result, many of you will have heard Vjeran tell me he’s giving me a clap as an edit point 🫣
It was fixed within the first couple of hours but the damage was done and I spent the rest of the day kicking myself that I’d had these issues.
So I wanted to talk about it in the newsletter and on the blog as a reminder to myself that chances are, in the context of making a one person show, I probably won’t bite off more than I can chew as long as I keep taking it seriously and remain methodical. If you got the naff edit, sorry about that.
Analogue things
Future guest James Bareham has written a piece that he referenced during our conversation and I really like it! You can read it here along with his other musings as part of MBH4H.
Olympic Inspiration
The games have kicked off with a bang and some amazing photos are also being captured but the stand out that I’ve seen is this photo of Gabriel Medina captured by Jerome Brouillet. Just when I was thinking I should try to get him on the show I discover that Time have beaten me to it. This piece is worth a couple of minutes of your time as they touch on how the image was made and the factors that went into it.
Getting the image right
Next week my guest is Thorsten Overgaard. He talks on the show about how he hasn’t quite fallen in love with the M11 yet from Leica and this week published an article on his website which he mentioned he was working on when we spoke. He’s dialled in what he thinks are the perfect settings on the 11. Spoilers, you under expose by about 2/3.
FWIW I think he’s spot on and I’d tweak this a little and apply it to all modern digital cameras I’ve used. If you’ve got the ability to highlight meter as the M11 can then I’d use that and if you still think it’s over a bit go down by 1/3. I shoot that way and always find that a modern digital sensor’s ability to recover detail from shadows means you won’t go far wrong provided you’re shooting in DNG or RAW. I used to do the same with the GRIII and it always did a great job of giving me something really versatile to work with once I got the file into Lightroom.
Let me know if this rule works for you too? Film shooters, what do you do? I feel like my Polaroids routinely over expose too but maybe it’s my eyes? :)