917 Are Starlink the Good Ones?

A look at exponential growth (it’s the smartphones), an update about the state of satellite streak mitigation to keep the astro photographers happy, two history lessons (hello Lytro, hello Magnum) and a ground-breaking photo of a planet.

Topics:

  • [PHOTO] Have the Smartphones Won? : Here’s an interesting animation that shows various cameras since the 1950s and how many were sold. We start with sub-million numbers and take it from there. Have the Smartphones won? Oh well…
  • [SPACE, PHOTO, NEWS] Starlink and Astro Photography – an Update : Chris talks to astronomer Meredith Rawls about low-earth-orbit satellite light pollution in astronomy and astro photography. Meredith is involved in the CPS, the Center for the Protection of the Dark and Quiet Sky From Satellite Constellation Interference and has a lot of really interesting insights. Including new information about how Starlink plans to mitigate satellite streaks coming from their constellation.
  • [PHOTO] Video Tip: The History of Lytro : Remember Lytro? Here’s a great video taking a good look at the history of a really interesting technology and how it ended up with Google.
  • [SPACE, PHOTO] JWST Images the First Exoplanet : Back in ep 912 Chris talked about how JWST finds exoplanets. One of those methods is direct imaging (e.g. taking a photo of it) – JWST hast done just that for the first time.
  • [PHOTO, NEWS] Happy Birthday Magnum! : It’s Magnum’s 75th anniversary and Chris takes a minute to talk about some of the key moments in their long life.

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910 Welcome to Dongle Town

Let’s talk about photo road trips, dongles, an exercise in spotting humanity, smartphones closing in on us, astrophotography and big satellite constellations. Plus: Where is TFTTF really located on the spectrum of photography podcasts?

Topics:

  • [OTHER] Welcome to Dongle Town : Chris has figured out an interesting way to vlog from his car with a multi-camera view and excellent sound. All while spending zero money and using exactly one device: his iPhone (plus a cheap lav mic)
  • [HOUSEKEEPING] It’s the Periphery
  • [PHOTO, AI] Exercise: This Image Does Not Exist : Can you tell if an image was generated by a human or a machine? The average score is 18.
  • [PHOTO] Foreground blur in portrait photos : Small but interesting change for the iPhone cameras when iOS 16 is out. Bokeh in front of the subject will now be rendered. One step further into the realm of the bigger sensors.
  • [SPACE] LEO constellations and astro photography : Lower Earth Orbit (LEO) is some 300 to 600 km above the Earth. With thousands of satellites, LEO is also one of the busiest areas outside of our planet. And Astronomers aren’t always happy about it. Chris talks with Meredith Rawls from the Vera C. Rubin observatory about what the new satellite constellations mean for space observation.

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tfttf722 – Slackers


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Chris has watched the space around Slack for quite a while and he’s willing to give it a go as a new hangout place for the TFTTF community. Long-time listeners will fondly remember the old TFTTF forum which was a very interactive and fun place to be. The new TFTTF Slack could act as the new TFTTF water cooler, a place to discuss photographic topics, a place to get involved with Chris’ show planning process and quite a few things more. Give it a go!

Β» the TFTTF Slack

Today’s Q&A:

Jonathan tries to find out how to ensure that his photos maintain maximum sharpness when posting them to photo sharing services. Chris elaborates on how photo sharing sites like Flickr tend to resize photos and apply their own sharpening, making it difficult to guess what level of sharpening is appropriate for an upload. They also often delegate dynamic resizing to the browser, which gives the photographer even less control over the perceived sharpness of a picture. Many moving targets here.

Jeff has a question on which slide film to use for portraits. The answer is again not a simple one, but the first question Chris puts on the table is “why does it have to be slide film?” and his guess is that Jeff wants the ease of scanning that slide film provides. Find out why slide film might be a tough candidate for portraits.

Mike wants advice on posting pictures to Instagram and asks about a rule of quarters to help with a square composition. Chris dives into how he doesn’t really follow rules when it comes to photography and lays out a method to help create compositions that are easy to crop for Instagram.

Edward is planning a fish-eye project and he is very curious to find famous fish-eye photographers. Chris isn’t sure if there are any photographers out there who shoot only fish-eye. He might be completely wrong though. Maybe the community can help?

Show Links:

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