
Loading summary
A
Test 1, 2, 1, 2. Jared Polin, Froknow's Photo.com and welcome to Raw Talk, episode number 196. The time is currently 4:31 in the PM and I'm recording this on Monday, May 11th, 2026. There's 30% battery life left on my watch and it's 63 degrees outside. I only say this stuff when Stephen is not on the episode because he's fired. Uh, Steven was not fired. I will get to where Steven has been over the last couple of weeks and where he is going next week, which means why he's not on this week. It's been busy. And if you're in the photo community, you know that on Wednesday the 13th, Canon and Sony dropped both a camera and a lens each. And there might be other companies that have done other releases at the same time. I just don't know that at the time of recording this. I just know about the Canon and the Sony because obviously we've been working on that for the last couple of weeks and that's why we've been super busy. So if other companies went ahead like Leica or Panasonic or I don't know who else might be releasing something, then I will talk about it when it's time to talk about it, which would be on a future episode. So let me jump into this. I wrote some stuff down here to read you guys so I can get it right here. It says, here's what's going on. Over the last two weeks, Sony and Canon both sent us new lenses and a new body. I've been traveling to shoot a show. I've been doing a lot of bowling stuff recently in between shooting shows, I did shoots with the new Sony body and lens. And now I'm not talking about taking it to the park like a lot of other people do. I'm talking about taking it to baseball, soccer, the zoo, flag football. And I also used it to photograph a muralist friend of mine who did a mural on one of my buildings. And I really like it. And if you already saw the real world preview of the Sony A7R6, then you already know what I'm talking about. Oh, I should also preface this right now. I mean, it's already out. So if you haven't seen the videos on the A7 R6 and the 100 to 445 Sony or the Canon, what's the Canon R6V and 20 to 50 that we included in there? And their new lens cap. Let me, let me just, let me, let me Make a note here, new lens cap. I want to explain that later because it is something that is tiny, small, minuscule, but extremely important to talk about, especially if you're a Canon RF shooter. You know exactly what I'm talking about. So if you haven't seen those videos yet, I'm not going to go into. I'm. I'm going to like. I'm using this episode of Just Me on Raw Talk because Steven again is busy. He's still editing at the time of recording this, all of the videos that will be out by the time you see it. He's getting ready to go on vacation. I'll talk more about that also in a minute. But yeah, it's definitely been a lot of work. So if you haven't seen that, go take a look at it. So here's what happened. I go ahead and I shoot those photos after the shoots. I need to edit the photos. I need to organize my thoughts. I need to learn what the camera is all about. What Steve, what Kevin does is he makes notes, which then I go ahead and write on pieces of paper like this. Yeah, I actually make all the notes. If you're watching this and I'm putting the video out, then you see all these notes for those listening at home. It's a white piece of paper folded in half an eight and a half by eleven paper. I write in blue ink. And then I highlight literally every word on the paper, which helps me. People are like, well, why don't you just use an iPad or print it out? And what I've learned is that for me, at least, when I put pen to paper and I physically read Steven's notes, because Steven puts together the notes and specs about all of these cameras into an organized form so that we can follow a method. So when we're filming it, he knows where we're at and what he needs to do, B roll wise. And it just helps keep the flow real and organized. But when I put pen to paper and I physically write it down and then I highlight it. So not only have I read it off of the computer to see what Steven wrote, I then have to translate it into Jared speak just quick words. I don't write the whole entire sentence out. I do trigger words. Oh, can I mention something about trigger words? Were you like this in school? I used trigger words in school on the top of tests and I had teachers accuse me of cheating. Let me explain this. You know how you would always keep like a book out? I don't know how the kids do it. Today. But I would keep the book out on my desk until they're like, okay, everybody close your books and put away your notes. It's time to take the test. And I would, I would be reading up to the last second, just things. And then as soon as I get the piece of paper handed to me and I hand the one back to them because they would give you like a stack of six. Did anybody else sniff the mimeo types or mimeographs or whatever they were? The purple one. I used to sniff the shit out of those purple prints on paper. Oh my God, did that smell good? It smelled like some nice type of chocolate. Yeah, I used to sniff shit stuff. Okay, all right. I was thinking about this earlier today. I'm not into sniffing things. Like, oh, shit, wait, I do sniff tests. I do that stuff. But I don't generally walk around the world sniffing things. I remember as like a seven year old. Okay, don't hold this against me. It's not a thing. It's really not a thing. It's just something a kid did. His curiosity got to the best of him. I went to a teacher's, a piano teacher, right? And I went to the house and I'm like, I wonder what this bench smells like. Shit. That's what the bench smelled like. Lots of shit. Cause lots of asses sat on this bench. Now, it was a floral bench. It was one of those padded benches with those flower prints for some shitty piano. Anyway, that was me as like a 7 year old. Don't ask me, don't. I don't know. I don't know. And I was thinking about this, like, if I had a kid and then like I got caught doing that, what would I tell my kid? And I'd be like, you know, what, were you just curious what it smelled like? And they'd be like, yeah, like, that's okay, that's all right. I sniff things. Just don't get caught. No, I don't know. I don't have kids yet. I'd like to. If anybody is out there that knows a female, I'm into women and they want to send me their information. I am looking actively for a future side note. Anyway, back to mimeo sniffing. I sniffed the mimeo stuff. Maybe that's why I like purple so much. Anyway, so the teachers, we would pass the papers back then I. I would write at the top of the paper right away words or dates, 1974, blah, blah, blah, something else, this or that. And they were meant to be triggers that would instantly allow me to visualize what I read or wrote earlier. I believe I have a partial photographic memory of some kind. Because I can look into my brain and physically see or optically. It's not physically, but whatever. I can see pictures in my mind. Kind of like when I'm taking photographs and I see the image before it happens. Generally. I know that's weird to say, but that's how I kind of react or feel. But that's just. Okay. So anyway, I used to do that in school. And then the teacher would be like, you're cheating. I'm like, how is it cheating? And me as an 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 year old still doing the same shit. I'd be like, you questioning me? I'm like, how am I cheating? By putting these words at the top of the paper. They're trigger words. You should be applauding me for using this method to do better on my test, Mr. Punk Ass. Mr. Pascal Pasco. I don't remember the teacher's name. I don't. I'm not going to say the next thing that came to mind, but I do have. There was a couple of times some teachers in my high school might have lost their jobs for being inappropriate with girls. Which is like, is it better than being inappropriate with boys? Were they. They weren't old enough? Were they old enough? I hope they were old enough. Maybe it was after the kids graduated. That would be better. In one case it wasn't. I remember there was one case where the humanities teacher was sleeping with a girl who was 17 and almost turning 18. Why couldn't you just wait? Why not? I don't understand how. I mean, I'm not in that. Anyway, I sidetrack. I digress here. Without Stephen to keep me on track. I dig when Steven is trying to keep me on track as well. So back to the written notes, all of these things. I feel that it helps me better accomplish the video quicker. Even though it takes me like an hour to do some of these. It took me like an hour and a half to do the notes for the A7, R6 and the A and the lens. Because there's just. There's so much information to write down. So it takes an absolute long time. But I think the time I spend there helps me spend less time when we're recording the video. And one of the things that Steven and I do is we do a run through, a dry run through, a practice run through, so that we go over some questions I might have about the notes or when it comes to video, he's more Apt. He understands the video more than I do. So if I say something wrong, we correct it. Then I make a quick note, and then we get it right. But Steven's always fascinated by the fact that I can recall certain things. Like, I see it like they're there. I can see the gears moving in my brain, and I can see the picture of like, oh, I want to talk about the new price of the lens. Or not the lens, but the new price of the battery, the SA battery. And I'm like, I can see it right now on the piece of paper. It says 129. Now I'm gonna check on my piece of paper. Where is it? Where does it say the new battery? That's 120. Yeah, it's $122 more than the Z battery. We'll get to that shortly. But it just helps me visualize and go from there. So anyway, I write these notes up. Then we have to film the video here, which means Stephen has to set up the camera because we like to use the new cameras to film the. The video. So if that's the R6V, we film with the R6V. If that's the A7, R6, I'm gonna keep screwing it up because there's so many numbers. Then we're filming with that. So after we're done filming, Steven then goes through the notes and he goes and is like, I need B roll of this, this, this, and this. You mentioned the doors, the ports that he knows what he needs. He records the menu systems. He has to go do all of that work. So there was a lot. That's where he was the last couple of weeks, working on getting this. Cause I think we got the stuff two or three weeks ago. And I've been traveling. And between traveling and coming home, I would do these shoots over multiple days. Then we come in and we film. And then we had to film before I went away again because I was flying out the same day we finished filming the big video so that Steven could focus on editing. It's legitimately a whole thing. So not making excuses here. But that's why Stephen has had his focus on that and not on raw talk in the meantime. And I know it's disappointing when your. Your favorite part there, your favorite person on a show is not there if Steven's your favorite person. I know I don't like listening to other podcasts generally when the. The main person isn't there. But we do more podcasts than most of these other people. Whatever side Note, side note there. So we're talking about the A7R6. So we had to do that for the A7R6. Then with the lens. The same day after lunch, Steven had to set up upstairs on the store set for us to film the review of the lens. Then he has to do B roll of the lens. I have to edit all the photos and give him full res and 4,000 pixels. So we have to prep all of that. And then we had to do the same thing for the R6V and the 20 to 50, which we included in the R6V video. We just felt that the 100 to 400 deserved its own video, which is why we did that separately. And to add to all of this mess, Steven is going away for a week on a family vacation with his family. His whole family. Like his parents. I think his parents are going all. He's got like 17. There's like 17 siblings. I think there's only six. Six. I think Stephen's the sixth or something. But there's so many nieces and nephews. So they're going away. Steven had to finish every. He worked all weekend. Really appreciate that he worked all weekend to get it done before he goes away. He always says this, though. He's like, I take a week off, but I have to do like an extra week of work leading up to that week going off in order to get stuff done. This is a. This is like. This is not like working a corporate gig, guys. And some people need to understand that when you're working for a small business or the world, it's harder to fill in when you have three people that do a job. Well, it's a little easier right now when you have Austin and Dan together to pick up some of the slack when Steven's not here. But. But if Steven's out, it's kind of a little more difficult to do the stuff that we normally do. Which if you're in a company that has 400 people, you can replace that one person, their work. At some point. It's harder to replace a Steven. Much harder, obviously. So we get all the stuff filmed and then this is how it worked. Stephen was taking on editing the A7R6. Dan was taken on. I think Dan was. No, no, no, no, I got it. Dan was doing the 100 to 400 edit the LE review. And Austin was taking on the filming with. Because he did the sample montage footage, which I haven't seen yet at the time of doing this. I will obviously see it by the time it comes out. He's the one we tasked with shooting the video, not the physical video of Stephen and I. Stephen and I did the video of us going over all the specs, but Austin went out to the soccer game. He said he was also going to go to a half marathon. I was at the same soccer game testing out the lens and the body for the Sony, and he was doing the Canons, which is awesome. So that's his video. So Stephen will pass over all of the footage that we filmed. And then Austin was tasked with putting the video together for the first. This is like his first video. Trying to follow the method that we do for a preview of a new camera. And we'll see how he did. I don't know how he did yet. If he's no longer working for us tomorrow, you'll know that it didn't. Didn't work out. That's not what would happen. I'm sure he's did a plenty good job. But then after Stephen finishes editing the one video, he's now got to go over and polish what Dan did. He's got to take a look at what Austin did and fix anything that might need to be fixed or have them fix it and then manage that and then export it and get it ready to go live for the YouTube. And I will take care of the titles and thumbnails and launching the videos when they go live, which is, I believe, 9:39am Wednesday for Canon and 10am for Sony. So we'll have three videos drop at that point. And I even had to go. I even recorded a photo news fix already because I know what stories are going to be in there that we have. And Dan's going to start editing that. And if this comes out on, I probably won't put this out on. I'll put the audio. I don't know what I'm going to do. Usually you put photo news fix out and we don't put up like this video and photo news fix at the same time. We'll have to figure that out. But that is basically a recap about what's going on for the last few weeks and why Stephen wasn't on the show the last two weeks. I actually missed last week because I was away. I was really focused on filming more bowling. So I'm just out there doing a lot of stuff. And yeah, I mean, I'm not complaining about it. It's just right now the way that it fell is it just was easier to not rush out and do something where I just spit at the camera or Spit at the microphone and just focus on getting those videos done, getting Stephen out on vacation, and then regrouping at the end of May to go into the summer and hopefully start getting to a fro pack five building and a filming and starting to film. The next user guide. Sorry, the next guide, the froknowsphoto Guide to Photography. My method, my rules, the way that I would like to teach people learning today with mirrorless cameras. And it's a tried and true proven method already. I know that it works, and I can get people in a matter of minutes shooting competent images. It also doesn't hurt that the camera gears. Mirrorless cameras are so damn good today, but you can only take people so far. It's what they do after they master that beginning stage, which is literally just fast or slow. Point the camera here, do this, let the autofocus do it. But then they start to get questions, okay, how do I do this? How do I do that? And that's what that video guide will go into. So that is the recap. Now I want to go into all the new gear and share my thoughts about it and go from there, as always. You could text me. The text number is about to come up on my screen because I now know where I can find it. If I can find that screen that is open and I haven't, I just failed at finding that screen. Here we go. It is 3137-1097-2931-3710-9729. That is the best way, the absolute best way to get in touch with us, because we have like 25 or 2600 people that are on there, and it's much easier to text us. And not everybody texts every day. So that is what. Oh, I'm trying to. I'm trying to type something at the same time, and that's what you need to do. Okay. You need to send us texts there. Before I get to the thing, this is the first time I'm gonna promote the next boot camp. This is another boot camp. It's July 30th. It's not July 30th. It is July 30th-18th. Saturday, July 18th, here in Philly. You want more information? The last one sold out. You want to lock up a spot, go to bit ly 7-7-18 fro. J u l, y. 18 fro. Altogether, all lowercase. And you can lock up your spot. I don't need to go into a big plug there. The last one sold out, and I hope that this one does as well. So we can help more people. But this one is in July. So what should we start with? The A7R6. Let's start with the A7R6. I was kind of surprised to sit on a call with Sony and them saying that it legitimately was a 67 megapixel sensor fully stacked at 30 frames per second. Again, if you haven't watched our previews yet, go watch the preview. I'm not going to go into all of the specs word for word. I already did that in that video. I'm going to talk about the characteristics of the camera and my thoughts around using it in the real world. But I was shocked as hell. The first thought that I had was, Is this an A12 killer? And I think that there might be some fear or might have been some fear out there for Sony that this might cannibalize the A12. But there's no way this is cannibalizing it. Once you use it and you realize that the readout speed of the sensor is 17 and a half milliseconds. Which is which, to put this into perspective, is just about the same as what the original Canon R5 was back when that came out six years ago. That produced Boeing of baseball bats and balls usable in many, many situations. 17 and a half milliseconds readout speed is much better than the 99 second millisecond readout speed of the A7 4, A7R 4 and the A7R 5. They were super slow and they were super useless because of the slow shutter speed to use with anything moving. This A7R6 is not useless in almost all situations. You just have to notice that if there's straight lines in the background, they are going to warp. There is going to be some rolling shutter effect when you are panning to track a subject. And I show that with the football player that I was tracking at the flag football game, I was like, why are these poles not straight? I was like, oh, that's why. So this is not a killer for an A12. The A1 A12 is a 4 millisecond readout speed. The R1 is in the 3 second readout speed. Or is it 2 point something? So much for that. So much for that memory. What's it called? What is that? I can't remember what that memory is called. Photographic? Yeah. So much for that. Well, I wrote it down here. Canon R5 II oh, is 6.3 milliseconds in the R5 II. The Nikon Z9 is 3.7 and the R1 is 2.7 or 2.8. They're almost at global shutter speeds without being global shutters. So this being 17 and a half milliseconds is slow. Especially if you compare it to Canon's R5 Mark 2 which is at 6.3 milliseconds. And you don't really get the warping in that fully stacked sensor difference is one's 45 and one is 67 megapixels, which is overkill. I still think 45 is overkill, personally. I do think 67 is overkill. And I ask people what is the reason you need that? And when their answer is, well, I need to crop. And I go, well, that's stupid because cropping shouldn't be the only reason. It just feels so much better when you get it as right as possible in the camera, when you're shooting raw and when you're filling the frame. Let me just not say filling the frame, but composing. And I've tried this experiment to crop tight on some sports photos or any photos just to see what it looks like in lightroom, to see what it does to the composition. And to me it just throws everything off that was not the intended frame. Just cropping tight around a ballplayer, catching a ball in the outfield is just. It just loses the depth. It loses something when you crop away everything to nothing. And so I feel like the images that I do are composed in a way that they're done thoughtfully and they are not second guessed and redone after the fact. And I just think it looks better that way. I've tried it. I just don't like the way the stuff looks. So anyway, that's me. But the A7R6 being capable of doing 30 frames per second for like 4 seconds or so roughly, you're not going to outrun it to do pre capture up to one full second and as low as 1 3, 100 of a second. I believe if my photographic memory is serving me correct, is in line with what they've done with all of their other cameras that have pre capture. With one press of a button you can turn it on and turn it off. In terms of pre capture, I love what they did with the illuminated back buttons. They implemented it much better than I think Nikon and Canon have done. One press of a button, it actually lights up three different brightness levels that you could do very good. Sony makes a big deal out of their nine point some million dot evf. I'm like whoop de do. Yeah, it's fine. I still think canon's lower megapixel EVF or lower res EVFs are still better, I just think because Canon has a much larger viewfinder so you can get your eye up in there more and it just seems to be larger and easier to look at. The one thing that Sony gets wrong, and I said this in the video, in the preview video, is if they would get rid of the jagged little edges on the font that they use and just smoothed it out in the optical viewfinder, it would make it feel high resolute, more high res than it is because you're getting rid of jaggedys and when you have jaggedys, the jaggedys make everything look like shit. So the camera feels fine in the hands. Just like an R5. Sorry, not R5. A7 5. So many numbers, guys. This is why it's getting complicated in my brain because there's so many cameras. The R6 Mark III, the R5 Mark II, the A7.5, the A7, R5, the A7, R6. Oh my God. And then there's like I can't even remember. Nevermind. I can't even think of what the other ones are. They did a good job. The body feels the same, the grip is fine, the vertical grip. But the change is they added a new battery. It's called the SA battery, stands for if I had to guess. Not that other SA stuff that people talk about on the Internets, which isn't good stuff. But SA I guess is Sony Alpha. It's a higher milliamp battery. It is more expensive at $120, it's what, $32? Did I say more expensive than the old Z battery? But it charges faster. I think it's a 45% faster and it does a full charge in 85 minutes if I recall correctly. I'm just trying to pull all these numbers out of my head. And let's see, 17% higher capacity offers fast charging, which is 45% faster. Got it. 85 minutes full charge versus 155 minutes with the old one. So yeah, I did see that in my brain. So better batteries, just a little bit more expensive, but definitely worth it. Not reverse compatible, so you can't use them in older cameras. But if we all had to guess and use our brains then, and whatever comes out next for the A13, the A9 III version 2? Or would it be the A9 IV at that point? The A9 IV, could you imagine A9 III version 2? Just makes no sense. Or does it? No, it would just be an A94. I would assume that they're all gonna go with the newest latest battery tech and it's been needed for a while. So that would be nice. I'd also like to see canon upgrade their R1 battery. They've been using the same battery since the 1D. See all these numbers. One DX Mark II had a new battery and it hasn't changed through the one DX Mark III, the R3, or the R1. So it is time that they reformulate it. I don't care. I like the shape of it. I like the size of it. But reformulate it. I wouldn't even care if they change the size of it. To be honest with you. If I was the same size of what Nikon did with their batteries. And they do last a long time. Just, just. Let's give us more. Just give us a little bit more power. More power is better when they're designing lenses and everything. Which we learned when we went to Japan this year. Or was that last year? I think it was last year. When we went to Japan last year, we learned that one of the things that holds back lens development is power consumption. They could go faster focusing. They could do a lot of different things if it had its own battery pack. Funny thing is the new 40 to whatever that massive $80,000 cinema lens is, it can zoom one speed connected to the camera, but if you plug an external battery into the lens, it can go even faster. I love that idea. I like the idea of an external power source put onto big lenses to make them do bigger things. I have no problem with that. I think that is smart. And I think we might see them going in that direction further, but Back to the A7R6. Take a quick look at these notes. It's absolutely not an A12 killer. You still gets the warping at fast moving things. The quality is very nice. The RAW files are roughly 100 megabytes each. We couldn't open them at the time of recording. I still don't think you can open them in Lightroom yet. You can use Sony's Imaging Edge software, but Steven says it's crap and terrible and frustrating and doesn't have the same edit capabilities as Lightroom. So to me it doesn't even count yet. Once Lightroom allows you to do it. That's real to me. Or you could say the. What's that other one? Not aperture. Capture one, I guess. Capture One people still use, but I still am a Lightroom guy for organizing and editing. Yeah. So anyway, 100 megabytes, a JPEG file sorry. 100 megabytes a raw file. 50 megabytes on average for JPEG. Fine. Which is absolutely insane. I know you want the extra data, but it's just useless to have so much. I shoot a 24 megapixel camera. That is the R1. I obviously had a 4 megapixel D2H. I had a 12 megapixel 12.1 crop sensor, D2X and D2XS, and the D3S went full frame. And that was what, 12 megapixels? I don't even remember anymore. Please tell me it was 12 D3s megapixels. I think it was 12.1. Yeah, it was 12.1 megapixels in the D3s. My all time favorite camera, by the way, we filmed a video two years ago that still hasn't come out. That was my favorite camera of all time. And it's still not done. It's been sidetracked. I mean, that can come out at any point. Because my favorite camera of all time is not changing. But that was my favorite camera of all time. One of my favorite cameras these days, or, you know, of the last couple of years is still the Canon R8, I think, for what that camera offered. Oh, my God, was that a fantastic camera. Back to the R6. And by R6, I mean a seven. A seven, R6. Wow. A seven, R6. Really good autofocus. Has a better. I think it has a better focusing system than the A12. And it's definitely better than the A1. And I think it rivals the A9 III. And I really think that the A7 5, not the R, the 33 megapixel one that I took to Kenya has just about better autofocus than the A12 or just. Just it's comparable. The autofocus is not even a question anymore, except for when you shoot with Nikon or other systems. But it's like reviews continue to evolve. We saw Gerald undone, basically say cameras are as good as, you know, the cameras are great. What do I need to do anymore? And I've been saying that stuff for years to Steven. We talk about it. We're like, steven, I don't care that it has X amount of stops at dynamic range. I really don't care in mentioning it. And the reason is because when I add contrast, you're losing dynamic range. That is not the arbiter of what makes a good image or a good quality camera. Usually the R1s and the R3s were like 14 stops of dynamic range compared to 16 of some other camera. But I'm doing better things with this because of what this camera allows me to do. That shit is almost meaningless at the end of the day. What's also becoming more and more meaningless is native ISO. Oh, the native ISO is 100 to 40,000 or 52,400 or whatever it is. That stuff's insane. So it's another. These are just things that we don't need to talk about as much because they're just givens. We don't need to go over so much detail about some of these things because it's just the norm. And I also just want to. I still try to stress, yes, I do all these gear reviews for people because they want to know things. But I still, at the end of the day, try to stress a good picture is a good picture is a good picture, no matter what you take it with. That's all that matters is did you get a good shot. And yes, certain gear is going to help you do a. Do a better job. But if you don't know what to do with that camera, then it doesn't matter. I could hand you an A93. I could hand you this brand new A7R6, which I don't have because I had to send it back. Excuse me, Black Lung Cole. Hand you that camera with the best lens in the world. And you could hand me the A6000 back in the day with a shitty lens. And I'm still going to outshoot you. I'm just going to do it because I know what I'm doing. And that's true in any profession, really. I mean, almost is whoring considered. Could you whore better than me? Could you be a better man whore, like. Or would I be a good man whore? I think I'd be a good man whore. Sleeping only with women, though. Unless the men are paying a lot. No, even. Even then I wouldn't. There is a number, though. I mean, anybody that says they wouldn't take like $10 million to S A D is nuts. It's $10 million, dude. Just close your eyes. Who fucking cares? Take the money. Take the money. No one cares. No one cares. 10 million bucks, tax free. Yeah, sure. Why not? 10 million bucks. It doesn't make you gay. It may make you buy a Subaru. I'd buy a Subaru with some of that. $10 million. Who cares? Seriously? Really? I'm still taking applications for wives or girlfriends, though, so she'd be okay, right? Like, if you have a significant other, an essay. Is that no Wait, that's an. So if you have a significant other, and they're. And you're like, hey, significant other, I was offered $10 million to S A D. Should I take it? And they'd be like, yeah. And if they said, no, that's cheating. You'd be like, it's not. It's a business transaction. I'm a man whore. And then you'd be like, all right, do you want to watch? Cause, like, is that your thing? Like, I don't know. Is it at a glory hole? Like, is. It felt like, what is it? It's $10 million, guys. And if you're still listening, I'm sure I offended somebody, but really deep down inside, think about it yourself. $10 million. Would you do it for 10, though? $10? No. No, not for $10. 10 million. I think that's justifiable. Okay, can we get back on track? Stephen, I can't believe you let me go off track on that topic. Stephen, man, that just reminds me of the old raw talk days. If we had Todd here and we had us, and we were going off on this. I do think back to those raw talk days, and I'm the one who killed the older raw talk for numerous reasons. One of the reasons was we weren't able to get certain things done, and it did take time. I've talked about the reasons. Like, I didn't like how I acted on the show. It made me seem whatever. I mean, even though I do act that way sometimes, I turned it up a notch there to match Todd's intensity. But we know people loved it. We had good viewers. It. Yeah, maybe it would have continued on and gotten bigger and bigger, and I don't know. It was really good. It's really good. But things change. I mean, we did that for five, six years. We did that for a long time. A long amount of time. So I don't know who James Bell is, but I'm getting probably a spam phone call right now. I don't Even know what 804 area code is. I don't know. Anyway, now that we've sidetracked from essing the D, let's get back to the Sony A7R6. It's fast. The autofocus is great. The feel in the hands is great. The files are. I can't tell you about the raw files, but we know they're gonna be fine. I mean, that's why these things at this point, it's like, we know they're gonna be good. There's no really Questioning this stuff at this point, we know it's gonna work out and be perfectly fine. Cause those cameras are just so damn good at this point. Price point. What's it? 4,500 bucks. So they never tell us the official price until like we're done filming. So we have to film a bunch of different price because we get a range. Sometimes they just don't know the price because it's too early. And then they tell us a price. But we've had to already go make the video where I've said different numbers. This so happens to be $4,500. So that is a lot more than 3,899, which is Canon's R6 Mark III. And by R6 Mark III it's the R6 Mark. R5 Mark 2, sorry, R5 II. And right. R52. Yeah. The R52 in my opinion is a more well rounded camera from a video standpoint and from a still standpoint. But they're both super competent, but more so video over the video of the Sony. The Canon video is better than the Sony video for what Sony put into this camera. But look, it's a solid camera. If someone was thinking about getting the A7R6 for wildlife, great. Gonna do a great job. You're gonna be able to shoot with your mechanical shutter if you want, or your electronic shutter. I still think that a lot of people that this is overkill and that the A7.5, if you're a Canon shooter, if you're a Sony shooter, is great. The A7 5 was an unbelievable camera to use. It was a joy to use. When I was in. Where was I? Kenya. It did a great job. It's 33 megapixels, great autofocus, fast shooting, pre capture, very good. So there's really no bad cameras on the market today. So that's that. I had a good time shooting with it. I got some nice results. Can't wait to open the RAW files. The lens. Let's talk about the Sony 100 to 400. The 100 to 400 is a 4.5, not an F4. Some of the pros I talked to were really hoping for a 100 to 400 f4 because then they could use like one lens while they're shooting baseball or soccer or football. I personally think that I want 2.8 or better. So give me the F2s, give me the one fours, give me the one twos. I rather not have the one four. So. But for versatility sake, people would love a 100 to 400. I personally think there's definitely a look to a 2.8 or better that an F4 just doesn't have. And I can see that with the 200 to 400, the 180 to 400 from other from Nikon and Canon. They just didn't have the Zhush. And I see it when other people post images with it. Maybe they just don't do a good job editing like we do where we edit the RAW files. They're just blatantly putting out shitty pictures. And you're like, there's no contrast here. This doesn't look good. And you're just like, this isn't good. Maybe it's partly that, but there is a look to the other stuff. 100 to 300, 2.8 Canon RF is a beautiful lens. This 100 to 404.5 is solid. first I was of the mindset that this is a great lens for a parent who wants to photograph their kids in any type of sport on, on grass, on any field sport, any soccer, soccer, football, baseball, field hockey, lacrosse. It is a killer, killer range. And being four or five all the way through is great. But for the everyday mom and pop, I would think that a 100 to 400, even though it's variable aperture, 4, 5 to 5, 6, that's nine years old. I wouldn't buy that lens today. It's too heavy. That's the lens that I took to Kenya. It's too heavy and it's too old. At this point I got to think that they're going to come out with a version 2 of the 100 to 400 variable aperture. And the reason I believe that is that that is a better choice for most people. It's also going to be less expensive. The lens comes in at $4,400. I actually don't have those notes here. They're upstairs. I think it's a $4,400 lens lens. For the people that are going to use it and need it, it's well worth it. It's the size of the 200 to 600. It is much larger than the 100 to 400 though. It's very similar in weight. It's like 4.1 pound versus 3 point something pounds of the other one of the older lens. But at first I thought it was going to be like a really good seller. I still think it's going to sell really well though. I think it's a little short for those birders. That's why they have a 400 to 800. The 200 to 600, I think is a great choice. That's old also and long in the tooth. They need a new one of those. Once a new one of those comes out, excuse me, that's going to be a solid option. But the 100 to 400, you can put a TC on it. I don't recommend that because I'm not a teleconverter guy. And you know, that's like punching you in the nuts, I think, or kicking yourself in the nuts because you're taking away quality. Whatever. If you do decide to get a teleconverter on a lens like that, make sure that you only shoot it at 400 millimeters. If you end up at 100 millimeters with a teleconverter on it, that's where you're kicking yourself in the nuts. Because you went from a 4.5 to a 6.3 or whatever. The one stop up from that is maybe it's a little over 5.6. Maybe it's like F6. I didn't even look. I don't have a tele. Actually, I don't have a teleconverter to look at what it would exactly be. But. But what I mean by this is if you're on the range where you would have it optically at 4.5, but you then move the zoom wider and you're now covering a range that already would have existed, but now you have a teleconverter on it, you're just dumbing it down. Say the same thing about people using the 100 to 302.8. If you're going to use a 100 to 302.8, then you better be at like 288 or more or whatever, right? Because if you're at like 200 and you have a 1.4 on there, you're at like 300. You just shot yourself in the foot. So that's my reasoning there. It's a really solid lens. I think they will do really well with it. It's balanced extremely well. It is super fast focusing with 4 XD linear motors. There's a bunch of them working the focus something, them working this and other things working that. The zoom throw is incredible. Sony wins on zoom throw. Their 7200 zoom throw. Incredible. What I mean by zoom throw, a zoom throw means how long does it take or how quick is it to go from 100 to 470 to 200? And you can do it with the Sonys with your thumb really without a Lot of pressure. You don't have to crank it with the 100, the old 70 to 200 RF from Canon or the 100 to 500. You gotta crank and then over crank to get it all the way out to the end. So their zoom is super smooth. They have a smooth and tight option. I would always leave it on smooth. Tight just makes it harder to zoom. If you need to do it subtly, I guess maybe that's fine. But it is done really well. So very nice job and kudos go to Sony for producing that lens. Moving on to Canon. Canon has the R6V. Let's talk about it. It is literally an R6 Mark III innards inside a different body. The body they went with is interesting. It's more of a boxy style, cinema style body. They did a really good job with it though. The R6 III feels better in the hands grip wise when you are taking photos or video because it's just molded to your hand better. It's ergonomically better. But the R6V being boxy is so they could have the fan in there. It has active cooling. With a fan you're never gonna really overheat that camera. It does the same stuff as the R6 Mark III. It can do the open gate, which you know, I don't really give a shit about. You shouldn't shoot open gate all the time. It's not the best overall quality and you shouldn't be shooting to crop later mostly. But if you know, you need. If you're going to lock it off on something and you're like, yeah, I don't know how I'm going to do this for later then fine or you're using a fisheye lens then yeah, then open gate's going to be fine for that. Sony doesn't have open gate in anything that I know of. And on top of that they don't have a fisheye lens. I know that for a fact. They don't have their own native fisheye lens on the Sony, which is so weird after like 12 plus years of maybe it's close to 15 years of Sony mirrorless. They don't have a fish. They couldn't have produced one. E mount fisheye lens. I mean just put it out, just get a fisheye lens out. I just don't understand it. So the R6V is going to shoot exactly like the R6 III. They did a nice job. They added image stabilization. The battery life is going to be the same. It doesn't have a shutter, doesn't have an evf, it only does electronic shutter. And so when I was talking to people or telling people, My suggestion is if you are someone who's a hybrid shooter, you shoot photos, you shoot video. Say you shoot more video than photos, but you do occasionally use it to shoot photos, then I would get an R63. Personally. I'm getting a call again. It's my dad. Dad, I'm on a podcast here. Hold on. Dad, I'm recording a podcast at the moment with myself because Steven is. Is busy. Ah, does that. Does that mean he's in Disney or he's just busy? No, he didn't go on vacation yet, and I didn't tell people where he's going. So you just did. Oh, boy, That's a bummer. That's all right. Now they know. Now they know. But I can't. Not my fault. Can I. Can I call you back? You certainly may do so. Okay. Talk to you a little bit or I'll call you back. Okay, great. All right, bye. And that's how we talk to my dad. I answer when he calls because I like putting him on the show. And you guys kind of like that stuff as well. Oh, I didn't even talk about that video, by the way. Let me take a sidetrack here. I put out the video. What did I end up calling it? I'm going onto the YouTube right now. It is called oh, my God, Jared. See, my brain doesn't work for certain things. This is goodbye. So I did the this is goodbye video the other day on YouTube. And you, of course, get the people that are like, this is clickbait. And I again, go, please explain to me the clickbait part of it. Because I was saying goodbye to my childhood home. I mentioned that in the video, which makes it a good title. It is a solid video. It is a walkthrough, basically, of the house when it's empty. My dad's house, he sold it and he moved to a 55 and over community. To have, you know, to just be around people his age and be able to go out and walk and be able to take part in other events that these people do and to be part of a community. Because being a part of a community is. Is the most important thing, I think, to mental health is just having people, I'm not even gonna say just friends, but being around people in general, I believe is better for your mental. Better for my mental health for the most part. Unless they're annoying and drunk and gamblers, then I don't want to be around them because that's not my jam. I'm not into the barstool sports type of person. Never been good with the bros, the drunks, the drinkers, the gamblers and womanizers. Yeah, not a big fan. So anyway, the walkthrough video, if you haven't checked it out, it's a 40 some minute video. Going through it. My brother called me today and he was like, I watched the video. I don't normally watch your videos. I watched that one and he's like, I really didn't know most of the early stuff of how you did Froknow's photo because he wasn't at the house anymore. He was married. He moved out and I took over his room and stuff and turned it into my studio. But he didn't know most of that stuff because he wasn't there for that. So he called me to talk about it. My dad called me the other day, he's like, I watched it, it's very good. Blah, blah, blah, whatever. So he watched it. And if you guys haven't seen it, please give it a watch. It's worthy of watching. I mean, it's a good walkthrough and I like making these videos. One, I like talking, so it's easy for me to talk. Two, we have a lot of B roll to supplement the stuff that I talked about. We have a rule. Say it, show it. If we have it, we show it. There's a reason if we don't have it. If I say something that is worthy of being shown and we don't show it, that's either we don't have it or we don't have time to edit and add as much stuff as we really would want. Because sometimes the enemy of done is good or sometimes the enemy of good is done. I don't know. Sometimes you just need to ship it. That's all I have to say. 80% sometimes is better to get it out than waiting. Anyway, whatever Austin did that video took him to my dad's house, walked around. He filmed on the R6 mark three, by the way, on a gimbal for most of it. Shooting the. Because he was doing it on a gimbal. So if we had an R6V, then he would have been using that. We think that we'll probably have him use an R6V more so than an R63 though when we travel. I don't mind putting an R6 3 in the bag just in case he needs a camera to back up the R6 Mark II. Or I need a camera to pick up extra photos because then I could take his R6II and use it for photos and he can use an R6 III or vice versa, something along those lines. So from a stills standpoint, that's what we would do anyway. Austin did a great job with that video. And that brings me back to the people. Like when you should get an R6 III over an R6V is if you at all are considering shooting photos, then an R63 is the way to go. Sure you're missing out on the, you know, the active cooling, but we haven't run into overheating at all ourselves. And so really there's not much different in the R6V than the R6III. I mean, I have this all. I have all these notes right in front of me, but it really just has the active cooling and that's one of the only additions. But if you're someone who's like Austin and you don't take stills at all, or maybe like I asked him to take a couple of stills of me on location or for some thumbnails, then he could, you know, use the display because it doesn't have an evf or we could put a display on it externally and then he'd be able to take photos that way. Not ideal, but he could get it done. So if you're someone who's primarily going to be doing video, then 100% the R6V is a good choice for a content creator. On the lower side you also have the C50, which is more on the cinema side. There's a couple of differences in that camera than the R6 III and the R6V. So obviously it's more expensive. Also you just have three cameras that have the same exact sensor and I'm really curious if they do replace the R8. My all time, one of my all time favorite cameras of the modern era, like the RP was good, but the R8 took it to a new level. If they're working on a second generation of that, which I hope they do, is that going to end up with an R63 sensor as well? I mean, they might as well. They put it in every other camera at this point. That would be amazing. What if it had something better? I don't think it will, but they still would dumb down certain things like hold it up software wise because it would be a smaller body so it couldn't do certain video features. But man, an R8 with an R6 III sensor, boom. Again, the R8 has an R6 Mark II sensor and was capable of 40 frames per second already. That's why I love that camera. I'll still take an R1 though. I'll still take an R1 to travel. But yeah, if you need us downsize an R8 used. Like, you probably get them used for like 800 bucks. I wonder if. Let's see. Used Canon R8. Let's see what they're going for. Under a thousand bucks. B and H has it for $1,300, but I think you can get it refurbed from Canon. Canon refurbished for even less. Let's see, refurbished, refurbished cameras. We're going to go on Canon's website here real fast. Refurbished R1 61 99. You could add it to the cart right now. R5 mark 2 body, $3,509. Refurbished. Can't go wrong there either. Let me just see if they have an R8. No. R8, R100, R50, R50, R10, R10, R2, D2. Come on, load more. Come on. One of these has R7 body. What's that go for? 1159. Here's an R8 body. Only 1299. All right. That's not great of a savings. It's normally 1484, but if you can get one used under a thousand bucks. What a great, great, great camera. Super solid. All right, back to the. What was I talking about? The R63. I think I was talking about something else and I totally got sidetracked. Anyway, the R6V we put to rest. Oh, they came out with a 20 to 50 F4 RFPZ. The PZ stands for power Zoom. The implementation of this is pretty cool. I mean, it's a 1300. I think it's a $1,400 lens. But actually, I actually have those notes right here. I think I have those notes right here on that lens. Just folding this paper. I don't have it on this lens. This page. What did I have more than one page for this? I don't care anymore. I'm getting tired. I'm talking quite a lot. The 20 to 50 is nice because the power zoom is interesting. I don't think it's something that I would personally use, but you can put the lens on power zoom mode or on regular just zoom mode. And it's internal zooming, which means it would be really good on a gimbal because at 20, you're on a gimbal. And then you can make it 50 on the gimbal and you wouldn't have to rebalance it because it's basically the same. It's all internal. You're not changing the balance very much. And you can control the zoom with a remote, with a wireless controller. That would be another way. That would be great on a gimbal, so you don't even have to touch the lens at all. So it's a solid, interesting idea. Is it a little expensive? Yeah, I mean, 1400 bucks. Still expensive for a F4, but it's a 20 to 50. It can get the job done. But the biggest news that Canon had was they released a new back cap. It's not being released on that 20 to 50, but it will be available, I believe, for like $12, which is more expensive than the five or six dollars that it normally was. But it's a back cap that now is much easier to put on your RF lenses. For anybody with an RF lens, you know the struggle. There is one way and one way only, you can line up that notch with the lens to get the back cap on. Now there's gonna be three. They redesigned it, thankfully. Probably went back to the original design. Very similar of the EF lenses to now allow you to do it. That is something that was highly necessary because it is a paid. So now I'm gonna have to go buy more caps or ask them to send them to me for nothing. I can spend the money. I'll probably end up buying a bunch for myself. But they're. Oh, God, they're a pain in the ass. You can't do it with one hand. You can't line it up. You just can't get it on there. And it's been a bitch. So that is a change. That is something that's gonna be added to future lenses that come out with the new cap. So that's it, guys. If you wanna come to the bootcamp, you wanna attend here July 18th, Saturday, go to Bitly. July 18th fro. At the time of recording this, I haven't promoted it yet. I'll probably be putting up the video and do a video ad on Facebook and Instagram again and put it into the next photo news fix, which is a big photo news fix. That's the one where I talk about all these cameras for next week. But yeah, it's a great time here at the studio. Lots of learning. We got foods, we got professional photographers, myself and Greg Carrocccio. He'll be here to help you. We've got real deal models. I think I added an extra model because when they sell out, that means I've maxed out the Profit possibilities. And I generally add more. So what I do is I add an extra model because it's like 100 bucks. I pay 100 bucks an hour to the models. And it's an agency. So the way that it works is the agency takes a cut. But I told the agency, I'm like, I want them to get 200 bucks, period. I want them to get that. And so I'll pay the fee, but don't take the fee away from what they're getting paid. I want them to get 200 bucks, period. So I have to pay a little bit more to get the fee. So the agency can make it. But that's fine. They do the work, but I want them to get paid their stuff. So we got that. Hopefully the Ghostbusters can show up. And it's a good day. So much learning. Doesn't matter what gear you have. Someone messaged me for the last one, for the May 30th one. And they're like, I only have this camera from Nikon and this one 40 millimeter lens. Is that enough? I'm like, well, you could do damage with that. But I have a whole setup of Nikon gear here. You're more than welcome to borrow a lens while you're here. So that's gonna happen. I will have the Z lenses ready for this person. Cause there's usually not a lot of Nikon shooters. It's usually like 90% Nikon. 8%. Sorry. It's usually like 90% Canon or 80. We could say 80 plus percent Canon and then Sony and then Nikon and maybe every once in a while a Fuji. Definitely no Leicas. All right. I talked a lot the time 5:29 in the PM on Monday 11th May. 27% battery life. On my watch it was 30 and it's now 64 degrees outside. I have to call my dad. Big applause to Stephen. I know I should have said this earlier, but big ups to Stephen for getting everything done, for working his ass off before his vacation to make sure everything was good to go. And then I'll take it from there when he goes away to make sure everything gets posted. Even though I'm flying to LA tomorrow evening and I will wake up early in LA to make sure I post these videos at 9am and 10am when they're allowed to go live. I can't set them to go on their own if I need to, but I like to babysit them. Because the last thing you want to have happen is a camera video come out too early. Because some glitch in a system, which has happened to people before. So you just want to be careful when you're doing this stuff. So I appreciate you guys listening. If you got this far, send me a text message and tell me, I got this far in 156, I believe. 196. Just say, I got this far in 196. And then tell me a little bit about the, like, did you like the show or something? You do it to 3137-109729-31710, 9729 I thank you guys very much for listening. Jared Polin froknowsphoto.com See ya.
In this solo episode, Jared Polin (“FroKnowsPhoto”) dives deep into the latest camera and lens releases from Sony and Canon, sharing hands-on impressions, technical breakdowns, workflow insights, and personal anecdotes. Listeners get a behind-the-scenes look at the review process, honest opinions on the new Sony A7R6 and Canon R6V, the reality of team workflows, and candid takes on debates like megapixels-versus-real-world-usage. Jared maintains his trademark direct, humorous, and occasionally offbeat tone throughout.
| Segment | Timestamp | |-------------------------------------------------------------|------------------| | Show Open / Workflow Update | 00:01 – 23:00 | | School stories & memory tricks | 07:00 – 13:30 | | Team behind-the-scenes & review logistics | 13:31 – 23:00 | | Bootcamp plug & transition to gear reviews | 01:00:24 | | Sony A7R6 hands-on (sensor, speed, files, AF, battery) | 37:04 – 01:10:00 | | Sony 100–400mm f/4.5 review & perspectives | 01:16:50 – 01:24:30| | Canon R6V hands-on (video focus, ergonomic notes) | 01:24:30 – 01:41:30| | Canon 20–50mm F4 PZ & RF rear cap news | 01:41:31 – 01:48:00| | Philosophy: megapixels, “no bad cameras,” process advice | Throughout, e.g. 01:07:44, 01:14:08| | Community/Bootcamp/Home video reflection | 01:49:55 – end |
If this episode taught you something (or simply entertained you), Jared always encourages you to text in feedback: “If you got this far in 196, just say, ‘I got this far in 196…’” (last few minutes of episode).