Why Rian Johnson made a photo app

Film director and camera nerd Rian Johnson sits down with Vergecast guest host and camera nerd David Imel for an unapologetically nerdy conversation about cameras. They chat about cinematography, Rian's viral Chromagraph Camera app, and check out David's vast collection of quirky equipment. (As of recording, Rian is still waiting for his to be delivered.) Further reading: ⁠Rian Johnson explains why he had to build his own iPhone camera app⁠ Subscribe to The Verge for unlimited access to theverge.com, subscriber-exclusive newsletters, and our ad-free podcast feed. We love hearing from you! Email your questions and thoughts to [email protected] or call us at 866-VERGE11. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:13Speaker 00

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• 2:01David Pierce?

  Welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of film, digital, smartphone cameras, real cameras, who knows? I'm David Amel. Today, we've got Rian Johnson on the podcast, notable director of movies like Knives Out, Star Wars Episode 8, lots of other things. I watched Brick the other night because I was trying to get reacquainted with your work. It's been a minute.

• 2:21Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 2:22David Pierce?

  We're just kind of nerding out about cameras today. So, we had coffee before this and we had trouble not using all the good podcast content. But Ryan is notably a big tech nerd, a big Verge nerd, and a big camera nerd. My kind of person. So, we came on the podcast. First, I just want to ask you, what do you think of the iPhone Duo? What's your opinion?

• 2:44Speaker 03

  Well, you were, so I, you know, I set my alarm to do the preorder and in the 35 seconds it took me to set my shipping address, the shipping date had already slipped to late November. So, mine is ordered and I'm waiting for it. And I'm slowly, that's pretty cool.

• 3:01David Pierce?

  It's pretty cool.

• 3:02Speaker 03

  It's pretty cool. A part of the excitement for getting it is just that, you know, I got the iPhone 1 and I've just had iPhones since then. I've had the same form factor phone for however many years. And this is just fun. I'm nervous about the camera because I shoot with my camera a lot. I shoot with the telephoto a lot.

• 3:20David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 3:20Speaker 03

  So, that makes me nervous, but...

• 3:23David Pierce?

  It's my biggest issue with this thing is it doesn't have a telephoto.

• 3:26Speaker 03

  I'm curious. It's cool though, and I like the size. I actually, I actually like this, so.

• 3:30David Pierce?

  Showing images on it is really nice, you know, being able to just like, open the gallery app.

• 3:35Speaker 03

  You were showing me some of your photos and the, yeah, especially your panoramic ones.

• 3:40David Pierce?

  They're good on here, you know.

• 3:42Speaker 03

  You fancy little bastards.

• 3:43David Pierce?

  Fancy little...

• 3:44Speaker 03

  Oh my God, it looks gorgeous, yeah.

• 3:46David Pierce?

  So, what, what kind of cameras do you usually shoot on then? If you're not shooting on your phone?

• 3:49Speaker 03

  So, my main thing that I shoot with, I have a Leica M6 that I bought back when I was making my third movie, this movie called Looper. And I bought it to kind of have a film camera on set. So, I just bought it on eBay. It's like a used M6.

• 4:05David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 4:05Speaker 03

  And that's been just a workhorse. And so, I shoot, I shoot mostly black and white and I'll, anytime I make a movie, I'll have the camera with me for the entire shoot.

• 4:16David Pierce?

  Just shooting around set and everything like that?

• 4:17Speaker 03

  Set, shoot.

• 4:18David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 4:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, I realize you, you, the, I don't know, a shoot goes so fast and you think the memories are going to stick around forever, but having, also, it's great shooting film on set because you can't look at it and everyone doesn't gather around to look. You just have to snap and go.

• 4:34David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 4:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, so, so that's kind of my main shooter. I have a digital M. I have like the most recent, like a digital M.

• 4:42David Pierce?

  M11 or...

• 4:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, which I use sometime. I go through waves of using it, but...

• 4:47David Pierce?

  That's where I'm at. I have like a couple of digital cameras, but I still only shoot on film, really.

• 4:52Speaker 03

  I've messed with, I had a Q at some point and I messed with that and never really got into it.

• 4:57David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 4:59Speaker 03

  But yeah, I mostly, honestly, I mostly shoot with my phone.

• 5:01David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 5:02Speaker 03

  That's, that's kind of the best camera is the one you have on you.

• 5:05David Pierce?

  Well, that, that kind of brings us to the reason we're talking today. You emailed me because I wrote an article about how to take better photos with your smartphone camera.

• 5:12Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 5:13David Pierce?

  And I'm curious, were you not really taking photos with your smartphone camera at all before? And...

• 5:19Speaker 03

  So, what I was doing, I was taking photos just with the iPhone's camera app and then taking them into Snapseed and messing with them.

• 5:28David Pierce?

  Yeah. Classic, good, good move.

• 5:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, and, and was, you know, able to do some cool stuff, but also always felt kind of the ceiling of the limitations. And then, yeah, a couple of months ago, you wrote that great article in theverge.com that talked about kind of some of the third party, talked about raw, taking raw photos. Some of the options had become available. So, I started messing around with that and, and there's great stuff out there, but I started getting a little frustrated because inevitably I was taking photos in one app and then getting them over to either Snapseed. Also, even in Snapseed doing, it's a great app. I found the raw photo manipulation.

• 6:13David Pierce?

  To not be great.

• 6:14Speaker 03

  Well, I'm sure it's great, but if, for some reason, I had a hard time dialing in, I would do a lot of messing with every photo until I got it to a place. And then it was a little bit like I'd wandered through the woods. I wasn't sure exactly how I got there.

• 6:27David Pierce?

  Yeah. So... Do you use Lightroom Mobile at all for editing? Okay, I, I like Snapseed, but I've definitely found that it's more for people who don't know what the settings are in Lightroom or in Photoshop.

• 6:40Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 6:40David Pierce?

  So, they, they call things differently. Like instead of highlights, they'll call it like brightness or something like that.

• 6:45Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 6:46David Pierce?

  So, maybe, maybe you could try that or something else. Or there's like Darkroom is a great iOS app for that.

• 6:50Speaker 03

  Okay, interesting. I guess, I messed with a bunch of different camera apps, but I only, because I knew Snapseed, I would just like pull it down there and like mess with it.

• 6:58David Pierce?

  That makes sense.

• 6:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:59David Pierce?

  So, you made Chromagraph Camera recently.

• 7:02Speaker 03

  So, what I did was, so my cinematographer, Steve Yedlin, who has been, you know, my best friend since we were like 17 years old.

• 7:11David Pierce?

  Oh, wow.

• 7:11Speaker 03

  Met in the dorms.

• 7:12David Pierce?

  Yeah, that's amazing.

• 7:13Speaker 03

  And so, he's also, he's my cinematographer. He shot all of my movies, every single one. And Steve is a big tech head. We, starting with The Last Jedi, was shot basically, I'd say 40% on film and 60% on digital. And that was kind of a transition point for Steve. And since then, starting with Knives Out, we've shot, we've shot digital.

• 7:39David Pierce?

  Yeah. Except for one shot in Knives Out, right?

• 7:41Speaker 03

  Except for one shot.

• 7:42David Pierce?

  Yeah, I read that.

• 7:43Speaker 03

  But you can't, you can't find it.

• 7:44David Pierce?

  Right.

• 7:44Speaker 03

  As, as a birthday present to me, Steve like brought this, you know, a film camera and then Panavision film camera on set and we did one shot in film. And I'll be goddamned if you can tell which one.

• 7:56David Pierce?

  Why didn't he shoot like 60% of The Last Jedi on digital and 40% on film?

• 8:02Speaker 03

  So, it started out being for technical reasons. There were a couple of, like, there was a big throne room scene that was all red and just the way that film handles red is kind of fussy. And also, anything where we knew there was going to be extensive effects work done to it.

• 8:20David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 8:21Speaker 03

  Which, you know, the dirty reality of shooting film, especially the big film with a big effects movie is, any shot, I don't care who it is, what movie it is, what they claim, any shot that has any kind of visual effect in it has been digitized.

• 8:36David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 8:36Speaker 03

  Degraned.

• 8:37David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 8:37Speaker 03

  Done all the work to digital grain, put back on it and spat back out. So, you might as well shoot, you know. And so, anyway, it started with that. And then honestly, we started shooting more and more digital over the course of it, partly because we were having more and more issues with the film cameras. Like we were having not just breakdown, but we'd have like strange fluctuations in the, in the, in the film stock that we were using. We just, we're having more and more issues with it. And so, we started leaning more into shooting digital. And also, once I was seeing, you know, the results, once Steve took like his custom, his custom LUT and all,

• 9:19Speaker 03

  he just developed his own, his own grain and all this stuff. Once he put all of that, put it through kind of his, his process and I was seeing the finished product, it was just like...

• 9:30David Pierce?

  Practically looked the same.

• 9:31Speaker 03

  And I'm a film guy and I was like, okay. It's a kind of, you know, this, this gives us a lot more control. The one other thing I'll say is, is I think I had had in my head the notion that with digital also comes a certain degree of fussiness on set where you have like a DIT, where you have a guy like in a tantu is kind of tweaking your, and the way that Steve does it, we don't have any of that. He just has, you basically shoot it as if you're shooting film negative. You just shoot it with the camera and he just sets the exposure right and it's a very specific kind of... You know, curve that he's, he's programmed into it that it's, it's very, very similar to the experience of shooting film.

• 10:13David Pierce?

  So for him, it's mostly just about like saving development time and money and things like that.

• 10:18Speaker 03

  Well, no, it's, it's also, if for him, it's also creative control. I mean, Steve, you know, if he were here, he'd go on at length about it. He, he has a thing that's hard to argue with, I very much respect, which is that digital gives you as an artist, the most control over your image.

• 10:38David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 10:39Speaker 03

  And he kind of pushes back against the notion that your look is defined by the medium that you shoot on.

• 10:46David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 10:46Speaker 03

  Which I fundamentally agree with that. And feeling like I'm shooting on film because I want this certain look. Turns you from an artist into a consumer where you're just picking the product that you want and saying this automatically gives me what I want.

• 11:01David Pierce?

  Off the shelf versus trying to make your own creative decisions.

• 11:03Speaker 03

  And the reality is, as someone who shoots film yourself, it doesn't work that way, even with film. That's just not actually the case.

• 11:09David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 11:09Speaker 03

  But, but it also, I mean, the fact that he is adept at digital and, and can make it look however, I, I give him an example of something that I love and he can figure out a way to.

• 11:23David Pierce?

  Kind of dial it in.

• 11:24Speaker 03

  Dial it in and figure it out.

• 11:25David Pierce?

  Yeah. There is a funny notion that film has a specific look and like there are elements of it, but the scanners you use to scan the film, if you're digitizing at all, that has a look.

• 11:36Speaker 03

  Every self. The thing is, the entire post chain is, is and what you do with it is the look.

• 11:41David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 11:41Speaker 03

  And ultimately Steve, because we fought leading up to knives out because I was still pushing back like, no, I want to keep shooting film. And he was making his case. And also he said the phrase to me, look, it's easier for me to make digital look like film than it is to make film look like film. Given the post chain.

• 12:00David Pierce?

  Yeah. And the consistency and stuff like that.

• 12:02Speaker 03

  Anyway, look, I still, we were talking before, I, I love film. We still love, I still love film and so does Steve, but you know, he's, we've also had fantastic, you know, fantastic results shooting, shooting his process digitally.

• 12:19David Pierce?

  So you guys made this Chromagraph camera app.

• 12:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:21David Pierce?

  What, what is the purpose, would you say for this app?

• 12:24Speaker 03

  Well, I basically, after reading your article, started messing with this stuff and I called Steve up and bullied him into, I was like, because he, he had teased before, how he had given me before ways of taking the image processing that we use for our movies. And he had given me like little applets that he had kind of broken off using his Nuke scripts of how to apply that to scans of my still photographs.

• 12:56David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 12:57Speaker 03

  Or my digital, basically, you know, DNG files.

• 13:00David Pierce?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 13:01Speaker 03

  And so I knew he could do it and I kept saying, can we do it for iPhone photos? Especially, and then after I read your piece and he kept pushing back saying, well, the iPhone sensor, it's, it's so noisy and so real shit. And I was like, come on, man, just, and finally I, I bullied him into.

• 13:18David Pierce?

  Let's do it anyway.

• 13:19Speaker 03

  Yeah. And so basically what I had him create was just a really kind of simple, but still with all the features, kind of elegant little camera that takes, camera app that takes raw photos, but then bypasses kind of the look elements of Apple's processing and applies Steve's look that we, he's developed over the years that we use for our movies.

• 13:44David Pierce?

  Is that the same, you use the same look on every movie?

• 13:47Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, you get into the grade and you tweak it, but we've used, I mean, it's, and it's evolved slightly from movie to movie.

• 13:53David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 13:54Speaker 03

  But the same basic thing, it's, it's the same basic light. We've, we've, we've, we've used some version of it through all the films.

• 14:02David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 14:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 14:03David Pierce?

  Do you feel like when you're just shooting your personal work now, do you feel a little bit of like, why am I still shooting film when I can just do this if I shoot on my M11 versus my M6?

• 14:13Speaker 03

  No, because, because for me, as a hobbyist, as a photography hobbyist.

• 14:18David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 14:18Speaker 03

  It's about the actual process of doing it for me. So, and also I, I don't know, it's fun, which is why I'm excited to see some of the stuff that you're doing.

• 14:27David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 14:28Speaker 03

  It's, it's fun to do something and as opposed to being a professional version where you're like, okay, we're shooting Daniel Craig giving this performance, we want to make sure that it's going to look the way we want.

• 14:40David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 14:40Speaker 03

  To be able to shoot something and say, I have no idea.

• 14:43David Pierce?

  No idea.

• 14:45Speaker 03

  It's like, what is this going to look like when I shoot like Tmax 3200 speed and pull it down to like 200.

• 14:52David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 14:53Speaker 03

  And, which I did accidentally one time and then was love the look of like stuff like that. It's, it's just fun to mess with.

• 14:59David Pierce?

  Yeah. Do you and Steve feel like you're conflicting at all, considering you're such a film guy and he's such a digital guy? Or is it kind of a nice mix of the two?

• 15:07Speaker 03

  No, I mean, you know, like, like best friends, we conflict constantly, but Steve also genuinely loves film and I also am genuinely a, a tech head. And so there's, and the reality is that it's, it's, yeah, I mean, we, we have conflicts now and then, but at the end of the day, it's not like it's a war between us or something. And also a big part of what Steve pushes back on is the whole dichotomy, the whole notion of it's film versus digital.

• 15:36David Pierce?

  Right. Just do whatever you want.

• 15:37Speaker 03

  The idea that somehow we've allowed this tyranny of the format defines the art.

• 15:44David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 15:44Speaker 03

  To take over the conversation.

• 15:48Speaker 03

  And also that, another thing that Steve talks about, and this I, I also fundamentally agree with. I think there's a little bit of mystic mumbo jumbo right now in the conversation in terms of film being film stock, motion picture film stock as it exists now, being this magic thing that captures the significant essence of.

• 16:09David Pierce?

  Right.

• 16:09Speaker 03

  And the reality is, over years and years, the color scientists at Kodak.

• 16:16David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 16:16Speaker 03

  Developed and kept developing this film to, to, to get it, you know, higher speeds and to get the color rendering better and to get it from, you know, three, from three strip into single pack. There was a, it was a science that they kept forwarding.

• 16:32David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 16:32Speaker 03

  As opposed to magic they caught in the bottle and said, oh, that's it. That's, that's the magic look right there. And so the idea of the work that's being done now in digital being a continuation of seeing what we can do with image science.

• 16:47David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 16:47Speaker 03

  I do really get and then, and find really exciting.

• 16:50David Pierce?

  Some of the things they've done on like the Batman where they shoot it digitally and then they project the digital version onto a film strip and then they rescan that. What do you think about that versus just applying like the new glut to it?

• 17:03Speaker 03

  I think whatever process gets you excited about making movies is, is good.

• 17:08David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 17:09Speaker 03

  And.

• 17:09David Pierce?

  Cool.

• 17:09Speaker 03

  And similarly with, I love going to see film prints and I think anything that gets people excited about going to the cinema is, is, is great, you know? So, and I've never tried that process, so I don't know exactly what the deal is with it, but I, but it's a little bit like what we're talking about with our own photography. Like, let's try this and see what it looks like.

• 17:28David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 17:28Speaker 03

  So it's, it's cool.

• 17:29David Pierce?

  It is funny that there's so much overlap between like tech nerds and film people. Cause it's like.

• 17:35Speaker 03

  Why do you think that is?

• 17:36David Pierce?

  I think, I think it's like a, it's a fundamentals thing.

• 17:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:40David Pierce?

  Like people that read The Verge, people that like film photography, we just like understanding how things work and how they work together.

• 17:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:47David Pierce?

  And there's something about like being able to control every little aspect of it and mess around and kind of like build things that, that appeals to both ends.

• 17:58Speaker 03

  I think that's true. There's also, I mean, I don't know, having made the case against the, the putting kind of like a magic mystique on it, there is something genuinely magic every time you, I would almost say it's similar in terms of like using, using a new piece of tech gear and seeing what it can do. And opening your can after the final rinse and taking out the film and seeing an image on there. There is something just kind of magic about, about process that works.

• 18:25David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 18:25Speaker 03

  And that you could feel like you could dial in.

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• 21:57David Pierce?

  I want to show you a couple of things.

• 21:58Speaker 03

  Tell me what you got. Let's see.

• 21:59David Pierce?

  We have a bunch of interview questions that I'm skipping over temporarily.

• 22:02Speaker 03

  Let's see, let's see the toys.

• 22:04David Pierce?

  So.

• 22:06David Pierce?

  Got in my magic backpack here.

• 22:08Speaker 03

  My God, this is a multi-case backpack. Holy moly. Oh my God, look at this.

• 22:16David Pierce?

  This camera is 3D printed.

• 22:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:19David Pierce?

  And I don't know if you've seen like a camera like that before.

• 22:22Speaker 03

  So I think.

• 22:25Speaker 03

  I'm trying to remember it because my buddy Noah Seagan, who's a big photo head along with me, is always sending me like Instagram posts about stuff like this that's being made. I can't remember if.

• 22:36David Pierce?

  There's a giant, like a huge 6x17 3D printed camera wave happening right now.

• 22:41Speaker 03

  Oh my God.

• 22:42David Pierce?

  But this is just a 4x5 lens.

• 22:44Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 22:44David Pierce?

  And then it literally just projects into this box back here, which I apparently have film in.

• 22:50Speaker 03

  You had film in.

• 22:51David Pierce?

  And I didn't, I had film in and I didn't realize.

• 22:54Speaker 03

  But, but this again is not the, I don't use the camera as.

• 22:57David Pierce?

  And then you use the iPhone as the viewfinder.

• 22:59Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 23:00David Pierce?

  Which is really cool.

• 23:01Speaker 03

  Which is fine. My buddy Alex Fendler developed an app that was like an iPhone viewfinder thing.

• 23:05David Pierce?

  Oh, really?

• 23:05Speaker 03

  Like, how, what would you even use that for? This is the first time I'm seeing like, oh, cool. Oh, this is what you use it for.

• 23:10David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 23:11Speaker 03

  So, but this is just.

• 23:13David Pierce?

  This is, yeah, just straight 6x17. This is like what I scan on my Flex Titan and everything like that.

• 23:19Speaker 03

  The stuff you're showing, is this like the main thing that you shoot with these days?

• 23:22David Pierce?

  That's my most used camera.

• 23:24Speaker 03

  That's insane.

• 23:25David Pierce?

  Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty cool though.

• 23:28Speaker 03

  And you shoot with, because you do a lot of landscape stuff. You shoot low speed, you shoot like 50.

• 23:33David Pierce?

  Yeah, 160, 50.

• 23:35Speaker 03

  Also, you're getting notifications.

• 23:37David Pierce?

  That's fine. I don't really, I don't care. Yeah, so this is fully 3D printed.

• 23:43Speaker 03

  That's amazing.

• 23:44David Pierce?

  Uh, another thing you might, you might find interesting.

• 23:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:47David Pierce?

  This is a digital camera.

• 23:49Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 23:49David Pierce?

  But it's just a camera and the screen is your iPhone.

• 23:54Speaker 03

  Oh, I've seen, so I've seen.

• 23:57David Pierce?

  There's multiple different versions of this.

• 23:59Speaker 03

  That's a trip.

• 24:00David Pierce?

  It's really weird. I think this is called the Kyra camera.

• 24:03Speaker 03

  That's, that's interesting. What, what's, what's the upside? What's the, what's the, why do you like that?

• 24:09David Pierce?

  So the main thing about this is that it has a, I think, a PSC sensor inside. And you can just carry this around without a screen. And when you connect it to your phone, it uses Wi-Fi direct. And then it transfers the images directly from the image sensor to your phone.

• 24:25Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 24:26David Pierce?

  So you can use Micro 43's lenses. It's a lot sharper.

• 24:29Speaker 03

  Got it.

• 24:30David Pierce?

  It's just a lot more compact.

• 24:31Speaker 03

  Gotcha.

• 24:32David Pierce?

  I'm still mixed on this, but I just think it's like an interesting concept.

• 24:34Speaker 03

  It's kind of fish, it's very interesting. It's a little, it's heavy.

• 24:38David Pierce?

  It's a little bulky.

• 24:39Speaker 03

  It's a little.

• 24:41David Pierce?

  But you can use more compact lenses on it too.

• 24:43Speaker 03

  It's also, it's just really cool. It's very like.

• 24:45David Pierce?

  It is cool.

• 24:46Speaker 03

  Feels like a good piece of kit.

• 24:48David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 24:48Speaker 03

  But that's fascinating, huh?

• 24:50David Pierce?

  Yeah. So, you know, if you.

• 24:51Speaker 03

  Do you shoot with this a lot?

• 24:53David Pierce?

  Not a lot, not a lot. I mean, again, I'm usually shooting like film or things like that.

• 24:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:57David Pierce?

  So that's another option.

• 24:58Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 24:59David Pierce?

  This, you might find interesting.

• 25:02David Pierce?

  My friend developed this and I think that this is just like, all these things in my opinion goes to show that we're just like in a camera renaissance right now where everyone's building different things.

• 25:11Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 25:12David Pierce?

  This is the first ever anamorphic Leica M lens that my friend made.

• 25:18Speaker 03

  God.

• 25:19David Pierce?

  Yeah, so.

• 25:20Speaker 03

  Oh my God.

• 25:21David Pierce?

  You can turn it on and you can see what it looks like. It's squeezed. It doesn't de-squeeze in camera, obviously. But he put a diaphragm on top and it's a little stiff, but um, it's a 50mm anamorphic.

• 25:33Speaker 03

  Fascinating.

• 25:33David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 25:34Speaker 03

  Oh yeah, squeezed. So there's no way, obviously, to get.

• 25:36David Pierce?

  You'd have to do it in post, but it allows you to, and it's rangefinder coupled, which is cool.

• 25:42Speaker 03

  Okay. Wow, that's wild.

• 25:45David Pierce?

  So that's really cool.

• 25:46Speaker 03

  Yeah. And this is just, who, listen, just a dude who just developed this.

• 25:50David Pierce?

  He's a lens designer, but you know, he's like an amateur lens designer. Well, I wouldn't say amateur. He's like really good at it.

• 25:57Speaker 03

  Have you tried, have you messed with like, do you get kind of like the flares?

• 26:00David Pierce?

  You get lens flare, it's blue.

• 26:02Speaker 03

  You get the JJ flare, yeah.

• 26:03David Pierce?

  It has some weird, it gets soft on the edges, which I have heard is harder to do with a lot of anamorphic lenses.

• 26:10Speaker 03

  Yeah. Which is so funny how that's like, like I love that.

• 26:14David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 26:15Speaker 03

  That's, it's just a flaw in the lens.

• 26:17David Pierce?

  Right, it's just a flaw, yeah.

• 26:18Speaker 03

  Yeah. That is one thing that Steve and I will debate about. Like, I love the imperfections of.

• 26:23David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 26:24Speaker 03

  Anamorphic lenses. I love the, I love the feel of them.

• 26:27David Pierce?

  And then the last thing is not really as crazy.

• 26:30Speaker 03

  That's so wild.

• 26:31David Pierce?

  I have a Pentax 67 105mm 2.4, which is like the legendary Pentax 7 lens. But I put a focal reducer on it.

• 26:41Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 26:41David Pierce?

  So you can use it with like a modern GFX.

• 26:45Speaker 03

  Oh my God.

• 26:46David Pierce?

  Fujifilm GFX lens.

• 26:47Speaker 03

  Oh, wow.

• 26:48David Pierce?

  So you kind of just get the, the actual look. Cause that camera, the, the Pentax 67 was basically sold like for that lens.

• 26:58Speaker 03

  Okay, got it.

• 27:00David Pierce?

  So it's just kind of cool to be able to have it with the focal reducer. And it's pretty much the same focal length and aspect ratio and stuff.

• 27:06Speaker 03

  That's amazing.

• 27:07David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 27:09Speaker 03

  Ah, that's beautiful.

• 27:10David Pierce?

  So there's just like all these different elements of cameras right now that I just find very interesting.

• 27:17Speaker 03

  That is absolutely gorgeous.

• 27:19David Pierce?

  I could have brought even more stuff, but I wouldn't have had room in my backpack.

• 27:23Speaker 03

  So is this your, this is a medium format digital?

• 27:26David Pierce?

  Yeah, that's a medium format digital, Fuji GFX 100 Mark II.

• 27:29Speaker 03

  Got it.

• 27:30David Pierce?

  It's like my main digital camera that I use for work sometimes.

• 27:33Speaker 03

  Okay, got it.

• 27:34David Pierce?

  But mostly I'm shooting on film cameras.

• 27:37Speaker 03

  Okay, got it.

• 27:38David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 27:39Speaker 03

  And do you shoot with, in terms of medium format with film, what do you use?

• 27:42David Pierce?

  So.

• 27:43Speaker 03

  This is so cool.

• 27:43David Pierce?

  Mamiya 7.2 is my most shot.

• 27:46Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 27:46David Pierce?

  Film camera ever. Have you used one of those before?

• 27:48Speaker 03

  I think I've, I've held one. I haven't really shot with one though.

• 27:50David Pierce?

  Their lenses on those are like the sharpest. I have to like reduce, my, my friend, um, he puts a lens net on the back that he, he cuts out some pantyhose and then he creates these little lens nets that he puts on the back of the element to diffuse it a little bit because it's a little too sharp.

• 28:06Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 28:07David Pierce?

  So it's just, yeah, the crazy, crazy camera.

• 28:09Speaker 03

  Also, I love this grip.

• 28:10David Pierce?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 28:11Speaker 03

  It's a cool grip. It's cool.

• 28:13David Pierce?

  Do you, um, do you shoot medium format at all?

• 28:15Speaker 03

  You know, so I have a, um, uh, I have a Hasselblad. I don't use it that much.

• 28:20David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 28:21Speaker 03

  Generally, yeah, I don't know. It's fun to play with, but generally if I'm shooting film, I'll just shoot 35. And I just use my M6. Also, I've just used the M6 so much. I'm just, I'm so used to it.

• 28:32David Pierce?

  Totally.

• 28:33Speaker 03

  And, um, I have an 8x10 camera that I kind of, um, put together over, over the pandemic.

• 28:42David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 28:42Speaker 03

  Uh, and I do shoot, uh, like portraits of friends with that and I shoot. I've also started messing with, there's this, the, um, this dude who, under the company, uh, Zebra Plates, has started manufacturing, uh, um, coated glass plates that he ships from. He's in, he's in Eastern Europe somewhere, I think.

• 29:03David Pierce?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 29:04Speaker 03

  And, and the shipping is, is great. And so you'll get like a pack of like 10 glass plates that are pre-coated. And I've been messing, and they're like two ASA and I've been messing around with doing those, which has been very, very trial and error.

• 29:16David Pierce?

  Really long exposures for that.

• 29:17Speaker 03

  And also in the darkroom, I've, I've, I've, I haven't done it for a while, but usually I have nicks and cuts all over them. Cause they're glass. They're like, they're like a windowpane, basically.

• 29:26David Pierce?

  And then you're putting chemicals right in your fingers too.

• 29:28Speaker 03

  So it's, yeah, it's, it's all the good stuff.

• 29:30David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 29:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 29:31David Pierce?

  So, so how did you get into technology and photography? And where do you think that the mix of that is for you?

• 29:37Speaker 03

  Uh, well, I was, um, I mean, like in junior high, I got a Super 8 camera. And in film school, we were like the last class at USC to actually cut on film and shoot everything on film. Um, mostly 16mm, um, all 16mm. But we, uh, but then, starting in high school, I was, it was, I was just making movies with my friends constantly. And it was right when the first kind of miniaturizing Handycam step had happened with home video. And so, um, as opposed to a big VHS camera, we had something called a Hi-8, which, um, was about the size of an old cassette tape, uh, like an audio cassette tape.

• 30:20David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 30:21Speaker 03

  And.

• 30:22David Pierce?

  I don't think I've even heard of that format.

• 30:24Speaker 03

  It was, it was the thing. It was basically this step between VHS and DV cam. Which DV cam were the tiny little cameras. And by the time I got to college, there were DV cams. You could have tiny little, you know, smaller. Format, but um, but Hy8 was kind of like a step in between and um, and so uh, that's was really what first started pulling me into just being aware of all the different cameras that were coming out and kind of uh, and uh, you know, we were just trying to edit in camera as much as we possibly can.

• 30:57David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 30:58Speaker 03

  Because it's still required hooking it up to a VHS deck and like play pausing.

• 31:02David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 31:03Speaker 03

  We're driving 45 minutes to this uh, video class uh, that I was taking independently outside of school that had, you know, the, the old school machines to three quarter.

• 31:13David Pierce?

  Oh, yeah.

• 31:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, with the wheels and you could set the, and that was very fancy.

• 31:17David Pierce?

  Would you say that those things are like what got you into gadgets and technology in general?

• 31:22Speaker 03

  Well, no, I um, I think, because my dad got an Apple IIe like when it first came out, when I was like, God, I was still in grade school. Um, and I kind of just appropriated that and that became like my computer.

• 31:35David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 31:36Speaker 03

  And so I got into um, I was very into this game company Infocom and um, we did text adventures. And uh, I actually like learned basic in order to program my own text adventure, very crude. So uh, so that was like my entry point into um, you know, into computers in general. And but then, yeah, cameras, I think, were my, were my real gadget.

• 32:02David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 32:03Speaker 03

  Intro and uh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a disease.

• 32:07David Pierce?

  What do you think is the, the most exciting part of current technology? Like, is there anything that's like driving you in or do you feel, do you feel negatively or positively? I don't want to say just exciting, but do you feel negatively or positively about the current state of technology?

• 32:21Speaker 03

  I don't know if it's where I'm at in my life or where it's where tech is at.

• 32:25David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 32:25Speaker 03

  But I, I do feel less kind of what are they going to come up with next in terms of tech? I find myself getting more excited going back and messing with uh, you know, messing with the old, messing with film and messing with, you know, um, but I don't know if that's because tech has hit this point where it's kind of doing the same thing, but just doing it slightly better each generation, which is exciting.

• 32:52David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 32:53Speaker 03

  Um, I feel like a lot of the um, I don't know, and, and uh, AI, which is a whole other conversation, but just the, the infection of all of our personal devices with this.

• 33:04David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 33:05Speaker 03

  With, with garbage AI shit that nobody really wants is just, is actually actively making it all worse now. And so uh, but in terms of tech, I don't know, but this though, the fact that essentially, even though this is so old school, the, the fact that new tech and the, and the idea of uh,

• 33:23David Pierce?

  you know, 3D printing.

• 33:24Speaker 03

  And being able to share those models and everything, the fact that that facilitated that, that's, that's very exciting to me.

• 33:30David Pierce?

  Right.

• 33:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:30David Pierce?

  Right.

• 33:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:31David Pierce?

  So just kind of like using new technology to rebuild old things a little bit differently.

• 33:36Speaker 03

  And that is cool. I also like new technology too, though. Like, I think this is super cool.

• 33:39David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 33:40Speaker 03

  Ultimately, I am a gadget freak at heart and so anything shiny and new, like I have the Duo on order. You know, anything shiny and slightly new and kind of, oh, I haven't seen that before.

• 33:50David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 33:50Speaker 03

  How about you though? What, what are you excited about?

• 33:52David Pierce?

  I mean, I feel the same way as you.

• 33:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:55David Pierce?

  I think um, it used to be that everything that we had in our real life was sort of being put into a digital form. And that's actually what got me interested in um, smartphones in general was the app economy. And like seeing like, oh, I can have a flashlight, but in my phone now. Or I can have this app and in my phone now and the share economy and things like Uber and Airbnb. I was like, look at all these resources that.

• 34:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:21David Pierce?

  And then capitalism gets applied to that and then later you're like, oh.

• 34:25Speaker 03

  Enshitification.

• 34:26David Pierce?

  Enshitification of everything. So yeah, it's not, it doesn't feel great. I know some people are very excited about like vibe coding, which is interesting. I assume you guys did some vibe coding for the app?

• 34:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think there was some involved. So basically Steve and uh, Eric Cameron, who works with us, um, who, Eric uh, used to work at PhotoCam, which is one of the big photo labs in Los Angeles. But it's where we do the finishing on all our movies.

• 34:57David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 34:57Speaker 03

  And Steve and, Steve and him got very close and Steve um, uh, after Eric left PhotoCam, Steve, he started working with Steve and they're developing some really exciting things, actually, that are more for the professional arena. They're more for professional cinematographers. But anyway, when I brought them this, it, Eric was the one who did most of the coding with this. And I think, and both of them can code and are very proficient. I think it was a mixture. I think they did use Claude for some stuff.

• 35:26David Pierce?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 35:27Speaker 03

  But I think it was a, it was a mixture that created the app, yeah.

• 35:30David Pierce?

  I think like there's a lot of excitement around the prototyping of things and being able to just come up with ideas and then maybe finish them off later using your skill sets and things like that.

• 35:39Speaker 03

  Do you think that's leading to better stuff or you think those are more interesting stuff?

• 35:42David Pierce?

  Uh, it's hard to say. I think sometimes it's like, well, being able to have an idea and then have a prototype in general is like useful. There's also clearly a lot of like just bad code being shipped, you know, like Google is shipping like very bad vibe coded stuff that isn't really working.

• 36:02Speaker 03

  Interesting.

• 36:02David Pierce?

  Apple's doing that a little bit, like, you know, there's just a lot of stuff showing up in the, in the market right now that doesn't feel finished.

• 36:10Speaker 03

  Right.

• 36:11David Pierce?

  And there's a lot of conversation about like, are we going to just exist in a world with all of this like dead code?

• 36:16Speaker 03

  All this junk.

• 36:17David Pierce?

  Uh, so I don't know. It's a great, it's a good question.

• 36:21Speaker 03

  It was interesting. I mean, this is a different, different topic. But one of the things that was really interesting for me as someone who's, you know, used the iPhone since the first version of it, in going back and forth with Steve and Eric and developing the app and specifically developing the camera portion of it, was realizing, it sounds even dumb to say, but realizing how smart Apple's design is. Even in terms of the camera app, because there are a lot of things where we started with like, oh, let's do it more efficient. And we found ourselves gravitating back towards.

• 36:50David Pierce?

  What Apple decided to do.

• 36:51Speaker 03

  What Apple said, because it's.

• 36:52David Pierce?

  Interesting.

• 36:53Speaker 03

  Really, really good design. It's really, really smart and um, and.

• 36:58David Pierce?

  Can you just explain what some of those things are?

• 37:00Speaker 03

  It is something as simple as how they handle multiple lenses or how they handle, or how they handle the zoom or how they handle the uh.

• 37:08David Pierce?

  Like HDR bracketing.

• 37:09Speaker 03

  HDR bracket. There's a lot of different controls that they've made, very, very intuitive um, in terms of uh,

• 37:17Speaker 03

  stuff that you just kind of take for granted when you open it. And then once you start to build, trying to build it from the ground up, you realize these are big fundamental things that were decided because they make it easier.

• 37:28David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 37:28Speaker 03

  So there's, I mean, terrific design, not in terms of it looking cool, the design in terms of usability, which is the true definition of good design.

• 37:38David Pierce?

  Yeah, right.

• 37:39Speaker 03

  And there's also stuff that, you know, we use in our app, we use uh, you know, burst like image merging, which.

• 37:46David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 37:47Speaker 03

  Because ultimately, even though the, you know, the, the chips or the, the sensors have gotten better and better and, and uh, and they're still tiny sensors and they still have very limited kind of uh.

• 38:01David Pierce?

  Physics and.

• 38:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 38:03David Pierce?

  Like gathering capabilities.

• 38:04Speaker 03

  And so the reality is what Apple does in terms of taking a burst of photos with different range of exposures and then kind of visually merging them.

• 38:11David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 38:12Speaker 03

  Is actually very smart and lets you.

• 38:14David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 38:15Speaker 03

  To the point where Steve and Eric developed it so, because only a certain generations of app, only the pro models do that native with Apple. And Steve and Eric kind of developed their own version of that. So that if you take photos with Chromagraph, uh, even if you don't have a pro phone, it'll do a burst.

• 38:31David Pierce?

  Oh, cool.

• 38:32Speaker 03

  And then merge those together. So you get highlights and depths and all that stuff.

• 38:35David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 38:36Speaker 03

  Anyway, but yeah.

• 38:37David Pierce?

  Where do you, Neelai and I have this conversation all the time because we sort of disagree on this. And I understand that Apple tries to make a smartphone camera where you can walk into any room.

• 38:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:47David Pierce?

  And you can get like a good photo, quote unquote. I, I need you to try like an Oppo phone or like a Xiaomi phone or something because they use the physics that the, the sensor can gather and they actually have shadows and contrast and things like that. Apple loves to do multi-frame HDR for every single thing that it does.

• 39:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:07David Pierce?

  A lot of the time, the tone curve is very flat.

• 39:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:10David Pierce?

  Where do you stand on that end of it?

• 39:12Speaker 03

  I mean, I'd probably similar to you. I understand why they do it because the reality is what 90% of what people use their phones for is, is, you know, whether you're taking pictures of menus or photos, in situations where you just kind of want to see everything. So I, I get it. I don't. They, it's part of what drove, what made me excited about your article and drove me into kind of, okay, how can I actually take photos that look good using this camera?

• 39:37David Pierce?

  Do you feel like you've like taken a lot of photos that you like now with your?

• 39:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. I've really, it's, it's kind of, I've taken a lot more photos. And I've, the, the thing is, it, even with, you know, I, because I used to take photos just with the iPhone app, pull it in the Snapseed and just do what I could with it. And uh, and could do some cool stuff, but you always hit a ceiling.

• 39:58David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 39:59Speaker 03

  And so I always was like, if I want good photos, I have to. You know, bring along like my M or bring along like a point and shoot.

• 40:07David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 40:07Speaker 03

  And honestly, with digital, I don't, I kind of don't feel that way anyway. I feel a little bit like with the tools that I learned through, you know, through your article. And now with, with this thing, I again bullied Steve into creating. I feel confident that I can get like as good a digital photo with this for practical purposes. If I was doing it professionally, you know, that would be a whole different thing. But just for me, sharing it with my friends.

• 40:32Speaker 03

  Yeah. Which is an, is a cool feeling.

• 40:35David Pierce?

  What apps have you found yourself gravitating towards like for both third party camera apps and as, and also like editing?

• 40:40Speaker 03

  Okay. So I, for editing, it was, it was Snapseed and, and, and you, just because I got used to the interface and just use it. But you were telling me about that Lightroom is a really.

• 40:50David Pierce?

  Yeah. Lightroom is good. There's Darktable.

• 40:53Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 40:54David Pierce?

  They have a lot more like if you know what you're doing.

• 40:56Speaker 03

  Well, the first thing Steve developed just, uh, you know, when I, when I pitched him this idea was he developed a thing that he just called like YLab, which is Yedlin, his last name.

• 41:07David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 41:07Speaker 03

  And it was just a little standalone app where I, you could take raw photos. You've taken another camera app into it and it would put his, it would put his image processing into it.

• 41:18David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 41:18Speaker 03

  So that's, that was kind of the first step. I'm trying to remember the name of, it was one of the ones you, you mentioned in your article. I'm trying to remember the name of the camera app that I was using for a while.

• 41:27David Pierce?

  Was it Halide?

• 41:28Speaker 03

  It was Halide.

• 41:29David Pierce?

  Halide, yeah.

• 41:30Speaker 03

  Which is, which is good. It was great.

• 41:31David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 41:31Speaker 03

  You know?

• 41:32David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 41:32Speaker 03

  But, uh, yeah. So I, so I messed with that a bit and, uh, and saw the difference. I remember like I, you know, taken a bunch of raw photos using, using Halide at my, uh, at a family reunion that we had. And there was a sunset and it was, you know, gorgeous, flared out. And I, I took it and then saw, and then, um, pulled it even into Snapseed and was messing with it. I just couldn't get it to Malojanki. And then when Steve sent me his thing, I put it in and instantly it looked like, uh, yeah. It, it, it, it, all of the jankiness that you get with kind of like, uh,

• 42:10David Pierce?

  The processing.

• 42:11Speaker 03

  direct light source. Yeah.

• 42:12David Pierce?

  Oh.

• 42:12Speaker 03

  Fell away. And I was like, oh, okay. So that was kind of like the first aha moment.

• 42:15David Pierce?

  Interesting.

• 42:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:16David Pierce?

  Yeah. Are you gonna be using the app you guys made for like on set to just try to pre-visualize things at all?

• 42:23Speaker 03

  No, I don't think so, because the reality is no, cause, cause, uh, we're visualizing it with the, with the actual, with the Alexa. It's kind of like, you know, where they were there with, with there with the gear. Yeah. I don't know. I don't think there would be a, yeah, I don't know. That's an interesting question. Yeah.

• 42:40David Pierce?

  So what was like the inspiration for you on like wanting to make that?

• 42:43Speaker 03

  Just wanting to be able to take good pictures with my phone. Cause the reality is it's, you know, as much as I love my Leica, as much as I love my other gear, the reality is it's, it's a pain in the butt having a camera on your shoulder, as you know, or having a, having a massive backpack with,

• 42:59David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 42:59Speaker 03

  four cameras in it.

• 43:01David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 43:01Speaker 03

  And I always have my phone with me.

• 43:03David Pierce?

  Uh huh.

• 43:03Speaker 03

  And so, and, and also the enticing notion that these things are capable of.

• 43:08David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 43:09Speaker 03

  Actually taking good pictures right now. Um, and, uh, yeah, just, just give me something that does that.

• 43:17Speaker 00

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• 44:01Speaker 00

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• 44:19Speaker 00

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• 45:04Speaker 00

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• 45:22Speaker 00

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• 46:03Speaker 00

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• 46:35David Pierce?

  Considering you're taking away more photos with your phone now, and obviously you pre-ordered a Duo. So you're gonna be going back about four generations in camera.

• 46:43Speaker 03

  I'm very conflicted about this.

• 46:45David Pierce?

  Are you turning, are you, are you giving that back to Apple or are you keeping it?

• 46:50Speaker 03

  I'm keeping this because.

• 46:52David Pierce?

  You know?

• 46:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 46:53David Pierce?

  What, what would you want to see in the next couple of generations of Pro Model iPhone cameras then? Like what, what do you not feel is good enough now on that?

• 47:03Speaker 03

  I mean, the thing is, it's pretty damn good. I, I feel, and that's the thing. I don't have like a boy, once they develop this, it'll really be there. I feel like everything will keep getting better and that'll be a good thing.

• 47:13David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 47:14Speaker 03

  I mean, like the recent thing with the physical aperture, it's, it's cool. It doesn't really, it doesn't really do much.

• 47:18David Pierce?

  Stars nuts about it.

• 47:19Speaker 03

  Yeah. It's, it doesn't really affect much. I, I feel like just the sensor quality and the, I, I, you know, the, the more that they can get in terms of, uh, um, optical zoom.

• 47:32David Pierce?

  Oh, yeah.

• 47:33Speaker 03

  Which again, it makes no sense. I'm getting the fucking Duo because.

• 47:36David Pierce?

  Telephoto.

• 47:37Speaker 03

  No, I wear this. Cause I use the telephoto constantly.

• 47:41David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 47:42Speaker 03

  And, uh, and that native telephoto that is probably the lens I use most. And if it could go further, I would absolutely use it.

• 47:49David Pierce?

  Yeah. Have you ever used like a Samsung phone that has like a 10x lens or anything like that?

• 47:54Speaker 03

  I never have. Yeah.

• 47:56David Pierce?

  Yeah. I mean, their processing and I don't like their processing, but.

• 47:58Speaker 03

  No, but the lens itself.

• 47:59David Pierce?

  But the lens itself is a 10x optical.

• 48:02Speaker 03

  I've also never used kind of, I know they were developing kind of optical, you know, lenses you could pop on.

• 48:06David Pierce?

  Oh, yeah. That was something else I was gonna ask you about. Have you used any of those like Moment lenses or anything?

• 48:10Speaker 03

  No, I never have. How are they? What's?

• 48:12David Pierce?

  They're good.

• 48:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:13David Pierce?

  Yeah. The, the lens quality has gotten a lot better.

• 48:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:15David Pierce?

  Um, you can just like, they're, they make cases for it and you just screw it on.

• 48:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:19David Pierce?

  And they've got super tele 240 millimeter lenses now. Obviously you've got to carry them with you, but.

• 48:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:25David Pierce?

  Is that something you'd ever consider doing?

• 48:27Speaker 03

  I don't know. Maybe. I feel like I would lose them very quickly is the only problem.

• 48:32David Pierce?

  Super fair.

• 48:32Speaker 03

  I mean, I would try them out and maybe it would blow my mind and I would use them for a bit. Um, I also, the, the thing is, it's not always about the notion of it, of trying to get it to the best possible quality.

• 48:44David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 48:45Speaker 03

  I took a bunch of photos back, I think in the late nineties with, I got like the, this, it was a really shitty phone. It was a Nokia. I forget the model number, but it was like the first one where they advertised the camera. And this is the main feature of it.

• 49:01David Pierce?

  The only thing they advertise now.

• 49:02Speaker 03

  Yeah. And, and it was, it was garbage. The camera was awful, but it took these photos that were grainy and contrasty and funky and beautiful. And I was going back through my photo albums. I was like, these are really, these are not good quality, but these are stunning.

• 49:19David Pierce?

  Right.

• 49:19Speaker 03

  And so I went on eBay and did a nostalgia purchase. I found that phone. And I have it with me now and I need to start taking some photos with it. And like, cause I was like, this is low, low, low quality, but there's something kind of magic about the way it's coming out.

• 49:33David Pierce?

  I mean, everyone is going back in time now, like the Digicams are more popular now because film blew up in 2020, but then everyone realized it was too expensive. So all the, the zoomers and the people in their twenties are buying the Digicams.

• 49:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:47David Pierce?

  And now, uh, Google has added a Digicam mode to the Pixel.

• 49:51Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 49:52David Pierce?

  The new iPhone, I think this is probably, this is also in the Duo, but they have a, they have a grain mode and like a film mode now.

• 50:00Speaker 03

  How are, how are those? How's that, how's that look?

• 50:02David Pierce?

  Um, the film mode is cool because it has a halation emulation, which is actually really good.

• 50:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's cool.

• 50:09David Pierce?

  I had it on by accident and I didn't realize. And I was like, why is there halation in my photo?

• 50:13Speaker 03

  That's awesome.

• 50:14David Pierce?

  Uh, for people that don't know, halation is like a red glow around highlights where there's a lot of contrast because the light's bouncing off the back of the film. It has a red layer, but it's like a cool, it's a cool red glow.

• 50:24Speaker 03

  It was one that when we, when Steve first really started developing his look is that of making a digital look, look like film. That was one of the first things that he dialed in was the halation. It's a very, very subtle thing that makes a big, big difference in terms of your perception of film versus digital. Yeah.

• 50:42David Pierce?

  The one thing I wish that they would add on the iPhone is like a grain size slider or something.

• 50:49Speaker 03

  Yeah. Which we, which we have on ours, which is nice.

• 50:51David Pierce?

  That's good. That's good. Cause right now it's just a toggle. And the grain is huge.

• 50:56Speaker 03

  Yeah. Oh, that's not good. See, I, I like it. I always pull it all the way down to the smallest size grain. And I like a lot of tiny grain.

• 51:03David Pierce?

  With your TMAX 3200.

• 51:06Speaker 03

  This TMAX 3200. Well, but not if you, but then if you, if you pull it, it does this magic thing where it, yeah, anyway. But like I could, I'm, I'm not gonna try and convert you to my.

• 51:17David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 51:19David Pierce?

  How do you feel about the current state of color and HDR and stuff in filmmaking?

• 51:26Speaker 03

  I mean, HDR, I detest, I hate. I think it's a scourge.

• 51:30David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 51:30Speaker 03

  And I think, and there's so much stuff where it's infecting, like, you know, cinema projection, it's infecting televisions that people watch stuff on. And it's just this cranked out, it essentially, you spend all this time trying to get the movie to look beautiful in a certain way.

• 51:49David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 51:49Speaker 03

  And then your television basically decides, let's crank the highlights up and go down.

• 51:55David Pierce?

  And it's like motion interpolation.

• 51:57Speaker 03

  Oh, it's awful. Yeah, exactly. It's like motion smoothing, except with color is what HDR is to me. And I just, it drives me insane. Yeah, I don't know. And it's, I feel like, you know, Steve does, like, once a year, once every few years, he does a seminar at AFI for cinematography students.

• 52:19David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 52:20Speaker 03

  And he talks about, I think for a while, people just didn't know, people who had grown up using film, just kind of didn't really know how to approach digital. And the truth is, you have to, you do, if you want to have control over it, you have to understand it. And that means learning some tech, that means learning some coding, that means figuring out how to actually get your hands dirty and get in there and understand it, you know? So, but I feel, I feel optimistic that the next generation is doing that. I think there's some beautiful looking stuff out there that's being shot. So, you know, I think the kids are all right.

• 52:56David Pierce?

  A lot of the stuff is like, just because you should does, just because you can doesn't mean you should.

• 53:01Speaker 03

  Exactly. And there's a lot of film emulation going on, which I love the, I love the look of film. I think it's beautiful. I'm also, I don't know, I mean, I am a little bit excited to see what happens once that kind of passes and we start getting into, okay, what other kind of looks can we use digital to generate?

• 53:23David Pierce?

  Something Steve had said that I thought was really interesting was like, right now, halation is red because it's bouncing off the red layer on the back of a film strip.

• 53:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 53:31David Pierce?

  But why not make it, like, if you're shooting digital and you have a halation filter, why not make it white? Why not make it green?

• 53:37Speaker 03

  Well, and this, this gets straight to the thing of, you know, putting the power in your hands of, I sound like a tech commercial, putting the power in your hands. But putting that paintbrush in your hands, as opposed to the notion of, this is the way it looks and it's the correct way for something to look good.

• 53:53David Pierce?

  Yeah. Are you planning to experiment with anything like that in like your next films?

• 53:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I want, and we'll see what happens. But I've, for all three of the Knives Out movies, we've very much done a traditional film look with it. And I love the look of all of them. And this last one in particular, I think Steve did some gorgeous, gorgeous work in it. It just looks like we, you know, shot on film. I'm, I'm very interested in this next thing I'm doing, which is something totally different to, yeah, start fucking around.

• 54:25David Pierce?

  Are you pre-visualizing a lot of this stuff already? Or does Steve kind of handle that?

• 54:29Speaker 03

  Not yet. I'm, I'm, I'm writing right now. That's the first step is to get the story actually working. And that's, nothing means anything if I don't get, get, get the script working. But, but then what, I think this is going to be the first one in a while where we do extensive tests and figure out kind of, you know.

• 54:47David Pierce?

  Mess around so you can get the vibe.

• 54:48Speaker 03

  And the truth is, I don't know. You know, I kind of want to get in there and see, okay, what, I mean, I was in Rochester, New York recently at the, at the Eastman Institute there, they do a festival called the Nitrate Picture Show, where they show, everything they show over the course of a weekend is on nitrate stock. And they end up showing these gorgeous kind of old technicolor prints. And I don't know, just that's just that the way that the color felt in those, which is, and everyone just uses technicolor as a shorthand for a good looking color. The reality is, it's fucking weird. It's so strange, the color rendering of it, but in a way that's so beautiful. And also, it just feels so, anyway, so.

• 55:30David Pierce?

  No, the fact that it's like so old and you're watching a thing that's like that old, actually be projected.

• 55:35Speaker 03

  It's stunning. So, I don't know. I think it's, it'll be fun to get in there and see what we can.

• 55:41David Pierce?

  Does that stuff kind of inspire you to like, mess around with those kind of looks?

• 55:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it looks beautiful like that. And it's, but I think there is also a danger in just starting to put your focus on the toys and starting to put your focus on tech.

• 55:55David Pierce?

  The story.

• 55:55Speaker 03

  Tech, yeah. On tech, yeah. And on, I don't know, the idea of pushing something someplace just to try something new. I think, I think it's all has to be in the interest of making it look, I'd say, be beautiful and A, write for the movie and write for the story. Yeah.

• 56:11David Pierce?

  Right, right. What is the writing process like for you? I just wanted to ask you this because like, it's so torturous for me.

• 56:18Speaker 03

  It's so hard to type words.

• 56:19David Pierce?

  I just make like little mini 30 minute documentaries and it's so hard. So I can't imagine like a full.

• 56:25Speaker 03

  I am right now. Yeah, it's, yeah, there's nothing. There is nothing pretty about it. Yeah. Anyone who, who really writes for a living will tell you, it's, it's not fun. But, and until it is, and it's also sometimes the most wonderful thing in the world, you know? And it's, and I've, I've written my own movies, going back to the first one. And, you know, even when I'm in the thick of it, and I'm just like, oh, maybe I'll just hire a great writer for the movie. There's still something about that wonderful thing when you come out the other end and you have a draft that you feel proud of. It's.

• 57:01David Pierce?

  Yeah, it's almost like the effort is the point.

• 57:03Speaker 03

  I know. I know. I guess so. I suppose. But, but yeah, it's, it's miserable though.

• 57:09David Pierce?

  Great.

• 57:10Speaker 03

  Not compared to things in life that are actually miserable there.

• 57:12David Pierce?

  Sure, sure. But, you know.

• 57:14Speaker 03

  Compared to writing, it's miserable. Yeah.

• 57:16David Pierce?

  Totally. So I know that this is like more of a Steve question, but you're probably like really privy to it. What are like the four things, what are like the things that make the film look that you can recreate on digital?

• 57:30Speaker 03

  Well.

• 57:31David Pierce?

  Cause you said halation.

• 57:33Speaker 03

  Yeah. And I won't answer for Steve, because I'm sure he would have a totally different answer than me. But, I mean, halation, grain, the biggest thing is honestly just the, you know, because, and it's very, it's very, there's, there is a real analogy between shooting digitally and shooting film in terms of process of shooting a raw file with tons of information on it. And then the look is created when, whether it's a camera, because the look of any color film stock is backwards, flat and orange. That's the actual look you're shooting. The look is created when you then print it onto and choose what light to put through it, choose what, you know, process to do. And that is to create the actual positive

• 58:18Speaker 03

  image that looks like a movie frame. And that is exactly the same thing that you're doing with a raw digital file. You're shooting a massive file that has a ton of information at it that you can't look at as an image. It only becomes an image once you choose how to process it.

• 58:32David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 58:33Speaker 03

  And the essentially kind of like the curve that you choose to kind of put it through, again, Steve is probably losing his mind watching this and describing it poorly, is the biggest thing I think that defines. And that's the thing that I just personally wanted in an app. When I talked to Steve is like, you've spent years working out this kind of very basic fundamental, it's kind of the equivalent of, of how you print something, essentially.

• 59:00David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 59:01Speaker 03

  And that's the biggest kind of defining thing is, is where did the blacks cut off? Where are the highlights clipped? Where does like, how does the curve in between those two things play an effect? But, but that, you know, grain, halation, I'm sure there are other things. And color, you know, color entering is basically.

• 59:18David Pierce?

  Yeah. The one thing I just, I really want Apple to expose to developers is the ability to use the 48 megapixel mode in third-party camera apps.

• 59:25Speaker 03

  Oh, is that not a?

• 59:27David Pierce?

  Right now, you can only do 12 because the sensor, when it's like the super pixels is only 12.

• 59:33Speaker 03

  Interesting.

• 59:33David Pierce?

  So it only exposes that if you're shooting in raw on third-party camera.

• 59:36Speaker 03

  Interesting. Yeah, yeah.

• 59:37David Pierce?

  But hopefully eventually they'll expose that.

• 59:40Speaker 03

  Well, that's all, I mean, you know, our app doesn't do video. And the reason of that is they don't, at least right now, you don't even have access to raw with video, except I think maybe the newest, newest Pro gives you it, lets you do it.

• 59:56David Pierce?

  It lets you ProRes raw.

• 59:58Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 59:59David Pierce?

  Yeah. Which is like semi-compressed version of, you know?

• 1:00:02Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. But, but no, I don't know. It's.

• 1:00:08Speaker 03

  But look, the fact that, also, I just, I wanna play with all of these. I'm fascinated by this.

• 1:00:14David Pierce?

  We got time after.

• 1:00:15Speaker 03

  So, so interesting.

• 1:00:17David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:17Speaker 03

  Also, this is a gorgeous, was this an M11?

• 1:00:20David Pierce?

  It's an M11, 100 year edition, so it's like a black paint.

• 1:00:24Speaker 03

  Fancy pants.

• 1:00:25David Pierce?

  It's a little bit fancy. That was my, definitely my worst, kind of like, random purchase of all time, but.

• 1:00:32Speaker 03

  Or best.

• 1:00:33David Pierce?

  Or best.

• 1:00:33Speaker 03

  Or best.

• 1:00:34David Pierce?

  I only say worst because it was instinctual, but.

• 1:00:37Speaker 03

  Look at that, anamorphic.

• 1:00:38David Pierce?

  But it's cool, yeah, the, I just think it's cool that we can use all this new technology to build all these old things. Like, my friend built the only anamorphic M-Mount native lens.

• 1:00:49Speaker 03

  That is so, like, so, so cool. Also, I am very happy and also very worried that I now have your phone number because this is a rabbit hole, as you know. That's the other problem with this stuff, is it's a rabbit hole.

• 1:01:05David Pierce?

  It's all a rabbit hole.

• 1:01:06Speaker 03

  And I've never messed with a digital medium format. I've never gotten into the, like, this version, the SL.

• 1:01:14David Pierce?

  Yeah. Yeah, well, that's, yeah, I think they're full frame now, but they have a medium format version.

• 1:01:21Speaker 03

  The thing is, though, unless you're shooting for billboards, do you really need this kind of?

• 1:01:25David Pierce?

  No, no, and this is the thing, actually, like, the reason I shoot with my smartphone a lot now.

• 1:01:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:01:31David Pierce?

  Is because, like, yeah, it's 48 megapixel, which is good.

• 1:01:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:01:35David Pierce?

  But like, most of the time when I'm just walking around, I'm just throwing things on Instagram stories, or like, you know, I've seen, I've seen posters that have been shot with phones. And when you have at least like 48 megapixels, like, it looks pretty good.

• 1:01:47Speaker 03

  Right, right, right.

• 1:01:49David Pierce?

  Okay, well, I guess, um, yeah, is there anything else that you're like hyped about right now? Like, what is, what is the one thing you're super hyped about right now?

• 1:01:56Speaker 03

  Uh, besides, uh, besides GTA, uh, that's something that we're all hoping this November is gonna turn, it's gonna turn around. This is a big, uh.

• 1:02:06David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:07Speaker 03

  Uh, what am I psyched about right now? Um, I, actually, no, I should, I should, uh, there is another game, actually, that I've just dove deep into. Do you know Jonathan Blow? Do you know that?

• 1:02:18David Pierce?

  No.

• 1:02:19Speaker 03

  Oh, my God, so he made a game called Braid, which was great.

• 1:02:22David Pierce?

  Oh, yeah, I've heard of that.

• 1:02:23Speaker 03

  The Witness, which is a mist-type puzzle game on an island that, for me, it's become my, uh, like, my stress toy. I have solved it to 100% completion like six times.

• 1:02:35David Pierce?

  Whoa.

• 1:02:36Speaker 03

  Like, I'll just, once a year, I'll just start doing it again. Um, so he has a new puzzle game that I've been playing just on my Steam Deck, and it's brilliant. It's called The Order of the Sinking Star. And it's just a fantastic, uh, expansive puzzle game, one of those things where every single puzzle is a new idea you have to wrap your brain around. He's, he's brilliant, and I'm really digging it.

• 1:02:59David Pierce?

  I'll have to check that out.

• 1:02:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:03:00David Pierce?

  Cool. How do you feel about the Steam Deck? Do you?

• 1:03:02Speaker 03

  I dig it, I like it, yeah, yeah, I love it, yeah.

• 1:03:05David Pierce?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:03:06Speaker 03

  I, uh, I, there, I feel like it's limited in terms of the types of stuff you can play on it.

• 1:03:10David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:11Speaker 03

  Before, like, a puzzle get, like, even, like, you know, um, like Baldur's Gate, like, it's, it's hard for me because of all the little text.

• 1:03:17David Pierce?

  Sure, yeah.

• 1:03:18Speaker 03

  But for like a good, uh, for a good puzzle game, it's great.

• 1:03:21David Pierce?

  Yeah, yeah, cool. I have, used to play a lot of video games. I've kind of now just, um, limited myself to like Dota 2.

• 1:03:30Speaker 03

  It's probably for the best.

• 1:03:31David Pierce?

  It's more of a drug than a video game, to be honest. Have you heard of Dota 2?

• 1:03:36Speaker 03

  No, I was Dota 2.

• 1:03:37David Pierce?

  It's sort of like League of Legends or like a MOBA game.

• 1:03:40Speaker 03

  I'm not gonna even look it up.

• 1:03:41David Pierce?

  I would, it's just, it's, um, I have 5,000 hours in it, so.

• 1:03:46Speaker 03

  I had a game on my trio, which, I loved my trio. I miss, you ever have a trio, the trio with the keyboard and the stylus?

• 1:03:53David Pierce?

  No.

• 1:03:54Speaker 03

  The Palm Trio.

• 1:03:54David Pierce?

  Oh, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:03:56Speaker 03

  There was a game on it, I think it was called Trade Wins, and I jones for the experience of that game. I keep looking if someone's gonna pour it and emulate, do like an emulation.

• 1:04:05David Pierce?

  Oh, it's gonna be emulated, like, very soon.

• 1:04:08Speaker 03

  That would be dangerous.

• 1:04:09David Pierce?

  Yeah, everything's getting reverse engineered right now, so you'll probably have it on your iPhone, do it before the end of the year.

• 1:04:13Speaker 03

  Even us.

• 1:04:14David Pierce?

  Even us, even us. That's it for The Vergecast.

• 1:04:18Speaker 03

  For ad-free podcasts.

• 1:04:20David Pierce?

  Subscribe to The Verge. Send us your questions, [email protected], or call the hotline, 866-VERGE11. The Vergecast is produced by Josh Kahas, Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer, and Travis Larchek. See you next time. Rock and roll.

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