PHOTOGRAPHY TIPS FROM THE TOP FLOOR

PHOTOGRAPHY TIPS FROM THE TOP FLOOR

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PHOTOGRAPHY TIPS FROM THE TOP FLOOR episodes

  • 915 A Cambrian Explosion

    We’re at the verge of a truly fundamental shift in creativity. AI is seeping into a lot of visual fields, including visual medicine. Also Sigma’s good old Foveon sensor is seeing some new life and we’ll have a look back at the birth of a truly remarkable instant camera, the Polaroid SX-70.

    Topics:

    • [NEWS, PHOTO] Foveon Alive and Kicking : Sigma has made some great advances on its new Foveon sensor. Sigma CEO Kazuto Yamaki recently said that they are almost done with the prototype of a new version.
    • [NEWS, AI] Autonomous X-Ray-Analyzing Ai Cleared in the Eu : A fully autonomous system is now allowed to evaluate X-rays for unhealthy changes. Doctors will see only those that the system deems questionable. All others will never be seen by a human.
    • [PHOTO] Eames Polaroid Ad : Chris is a great fan of the engineering, design and aesthetics of the Polaroid SX-70. The revolutionary device defined instant photography for entire generations. Charles and Ray Eames produced this wonderful film introducing the camera, its uses and its technology.
    • [AI, PHOTO] SD Is Bringing a Creative Cambrian Explosion : Within the first week of the release of the open source image generator StableDiffusion, the community has begun creating a cambrian explosion of new creative tools.

      • Support the show on Patreon or with a donation

      Download the MP3 for this episode

      2025 Photo Tours with Chris Marquardt

      ONLY 3 SPOTS
      May 2025:       Eastern European Electric Photo Road Trip, 10 days drive and explore with Chris (Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Transylvania)

      German workshops:
      » HS Mensch
      » HS Licht
      » HS Sehwerkstatt
      » Großformat (analog)
      » Analog Einstieg

      » Discover the Top Floor - Photo Tours and Workshops with Chris Marquardt

      18 min
    • 914 The Willingness to Lie

      Chris is back from the Eastern Europe Photo Road Trip Scouting Tour (EEPRTST ) and if you haven’t watched his vlog about the tour, what are you waiting for?

      Today’s episode includes the re-issue of 1 Hour 1000 Pics – Supercharge your Lightroom Workflow, some deep philosophical (and very meta) questions about deep fakes, a disruptor in the field of AI and a general look at what is now possible in computer vision.

      Topics:

      • [PHOTO] 1 Hour 1000 Pics (free download) : Just a quick heads-up: Chris’ ebook 1 Hour 1000 Pics – Supercharge your Lightroom Workflow (free download) is still around and can still help you organize a lot of photos quickly. Even in times of AI.
      • [NEWS] Mojo Lens – AR Right in Your Eye : An AR contact lens with a display, gyroscope and battery, all right in your eye. A few months ago, this looked like vaporware to me. Now Tested.com had their hands on an actual prototype.
      • [PHOTO] About the Willingness to Lie : Hat off to Randall Munroe, maker of the xkcd comics. In #2650 he not only touches on a deeply philosophical point regarding visual fakes, he also adds in several meta layers and a ton of nerd humor, right down to the Cottingley DeepFakes.
      • [AI] : Just a couple of weeks ago everyone was talking about DALL-E, but now Stable Diffusion has taken its place. Stability.ai have open-sourced their models, which are as good if not better than what DALL-E can produce. And yes, you can run all that on your own GPU at home now.
      • [OTHER, AI] Autonomous Drone Racing Using Cameras Only : The drone in this video repeats a parkour several times at break-neck (or break-propeller) speed. It doesn’t do that on a pre-programmed path though, it does this by using computer vision.

        • Feedback on this episode by Mark Wilson & Rich Hughes

        (leave your own feedback at tfttf.com/hi)

        Support the show on Patreon or with a donation

        Download the MP3 for this episode

        2025 Photo Tours with Chris Marquardt

        ONLY 3 SPOTS
        May 2025:         Eastern European Electric Photo Road Trip, 10 days drive and explore with Chris (Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Transylvania)

        German workshops:
        » HS Mensch
        » HS Licht
        » HS Sehwerkstatt
        » Großformat (analog)
        » Analog Einstieg

        » Discover the Top Floor - Photo Tours and Workshops with Chris Marquardt

        34 min
      • 913 Epic Episcope

        As Chris is on his way to Transylvania (you can follow him on his vlog), he talks about face fixers, an amazing photo and headline combo, re-dubbing movies and if your job as a photographer is safe from our new A.I. overlords.

        (Episode artwork: DALL-E 2)

        Topics:

        • [NEWS] Scouting Eastern Europe : As you hear this episode, Chris is on his way to Transylvania, crossing Eastern European borders and exploring Prague, Budapest and places in Central Romania for the upcoming 2023 Eastern Europe Photo Road Trip. Follow along on the Scouting Tour Vlog.
        • [PHOTO, AI] Face Fixers : Generating photorealistic faces in DALL-E can be hit or miss. They generally look really good, but sometimes the eyes are a bit mismatched or misshapen. Face Fixers to the rescue.
        • [PHOTO] Autofokus : What a wonderful example of storytelling using photography. And meta levels involving the headline too. This photo shows a German politician who just had a bit of a scandal regarding his mingling with parts of the German auto industry, specifically the CEO of Porsche. So the German paper ZEIT ran a story about this scandal. So what did the photographer do? Focused on a car behind the politician, with really shallow depth of field. And then they titled the article “Auto-Fokus” – Simply brilliant!
        • [PHOTO, AI] The Champion re-dub : In some countries, movies in a non-native language are subtitled. In some they dub movies to the local language. Germany is one of those and while the majority of Germans seem to be just fine with it, some people (including Chris) find it quite jarring because either lip-sync isn’t perfect, the voice doesn’t fit the actor or the voice performance doesn’t feel right. Here’s a new (and a bit mind-blowing) AI-based method that solves at least the lip-sync issue.
        • [AI] Tipping Points – Ash Jafari : Since DALL-E can now be used commercially, and as it’s improving, you will see more and more businesses wonder if they want to a) pay a graphic designer or photographer for 3 hours of work or b) write a prompt, iterate a couple of times and end up with a good enough result for their purposes. Within minutes and for just a few dollars. Ash Jafari makes the convincing point that we will see those tipping points sooner rather than later.
        • [COOL] Episcope Lens : Back in the 90s, the small-sensor DV cameras had the issue that all small-sensor cameras have: too much depth of field. There were several adapters on the market that allowed 35mm lenses to be used on DV cameras by means of projection. Here’s a DIY project that does the same but on a totally new level.

          • Support the show on Patreon or with a donation

          Download the MP3 for this episode

          2025 Photo Tours with Chris Marquardt

          ONLY 3 SPOTS
          May 2025:           Eastern European Electric Photo Road Trip, 10 days drive and explore with Chris (Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Transylvania)

          German workshops:
          » HS Mensch
          » HS Licht
          » HS Sehwerkstatt
          » Großformat (analog)
          » Analog Einstieg

          » Discover the Top Floor - Photo Tours and Workshops with Chris Marquardt

          26 min
        • 912 The Locksmith’s Paradox

          What do locksmiths have to do with photography? How about expoplanets? Find out on today’s episode.

          (Episode artwork: DALL-E 2)

          Topics:

          • [TOOL] SD Recovery : An amazing look at the technology that is used in data recovery to read a broken SD card.
          • [SPACE, PHOTO] Finding Exo Planets : Finding exoplanets has everything to do with the tech that we have in our cameras. The methods used to find if a star millions or billions of light years away has a habitable planet orbiting around it, use camera sensors to measure differences in brightness, motion and to measure changes in the spectrum of light coming from that star. And it’s fascinating.
          • [PHOTO] The Locksmith’s Paradox : There’s this paradox in which your work gets valued less the more experience you have. You can see that in photography every day.
          • [PHOTO, AI] The Stock Problem : An article headline at a big publication is hardly ever chosen by the person who wrote the article, but by someone (or by an A.I.) who specializes on maximizing clicks. We see the same issue with stock photos that are served in social media posts.

            • Feedback on this episode by Mike Walter & Larry Seftor

            (leave your own feedback at tfttf.com/hi)

            Support the show on Patreon or with a donation

            Download the MP3 for this episode

            2025 Photo Tours with Chris Marquardt

            ONLY 3 SPOTS
            May 2025:             Eastern European Electric Photo Road Trip, 10 days drive and explore with Chris (Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Transylvania)

            German workshops:
            » HS Mensch
            » HS Licht
            » HS Sehwerkstatt
            » Großformat (analog)
            » Analog Einstieg

            » Discover the Top Floor - Photo Tours and Workshops with Chris Marquardt

            25 min
          • 911 All Things Interesting In Photography

            The James Web Telescope is arguably the best camera.. not on the planet though. Chris looks at zoomable content, at being there and how that’s different from the limited senses that we can capture with our photography. Also: another quick look at DALL-E and what it has to do with pizza.

            Topics:

            • [PHOTO, SPACE] IR: Areas of star formation : The James Webb Telescope sees more. This infrared image of spiral galaxy NGC 7496 shows the areas that were previously obscured by gas and dust to be star cradles.
            • [OTHER] Best camera : Ha! xkcd is perfectly right.. the best camera isn’t always the one you have on you. It might be the camera at L2.
            • [SPACE] Zoomable Image: Stephan’s Quintet : An impressive zoomable view of a JWST image of Stephan’s Quintet. Resolution 153 mega pixels.
            • [PHOTO] Being there : I had this txt discussion with my friend Jon Miller. It started with the new Insta360 One X2, meandered over to me planning to vlog the scouting tour next month with the iPhone only and ended up on a deeply philosophical level.
            • [PHOTO, AI] Vox: how dalle2 works and what it means : A great video by VOX talking about how image generators like DALL-E work. For a bonus treat, watch the bonus video mentioned in the video’s description.
            • [PHOTO, AI] PizzaDalle : A Twitter account showcasing DALL-E by generating pizza-related pictures. I like.

              • Feedback on this episode by Hampus Haara & William Hickox & David Marland

              (leave your own feedback at tfttf.com/hi)

              Support the show on Patreon or with a donation

              Download the MP3 for this episode

              2025 Photo Tours with Chris Marquardt

              ONLY 3 SPOTS
              May 2025:               Eastern European Electric Photo Road Trip, 10 days drive and explore with Chris (Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Transylvania)

              German workshops:
              » HS Mensch
              » HS Licht
              » HS Sehwerkstatt
              » Großformat (analog)
              » Analog Einstieg

              » Discover the Top Floor - Photo Tours and Workshops with Chris Marquardt

              22 min
            • 910 Welcome to Dongle Town

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

              Topics:

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

                • Download the MP3 for this episode

                2025 Photo Tours with Chris Marquardt

                ONLY 3 SPOTS
                May 2025:                 Eastern European Electric Photo Road Trip, 10 days drive and explore with Chris (Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Transylvania)

                German workshops:
                » HS Mensch
                » HS Licht
                » HS Sehwerkstatt
                » Großformat (analog)
                » Analog Einstieg

                » Discover the Top Floor - Photo Tours and Workshops with Chris Marquardt

                26 min
              • 909 Generator Chris

                Chris has now received the magical tool to generate photography out of thin air. But OpenAi’s DALL-E 2 is turning out to be quite a learning curve that is very different from actual photography.

                Topics:

                • [PHOTO, AI] I’m a Generator : I finally got access to DALL-E 2, OpenAi’s image generator. And boy is it fun. I’m slowly building new neural pathways trying to come up with good prompts. Making progress. Weird is cool. Regular is hard. Faces are difficult. And sometimes they come out weird. I’ll talk about face fixers another time.
                • [AI, PHOTO] Re-Learning Skills : The way my art brain works makes it surprisingly difficult to come up with prompts that create something good. Seems a new tool isn’t the be-all end-all. Who would’ve though after several decades of photography… oh well. It’s a mix of learning a new tool and changing my brain structure to think differently about photography.
                • [AI] Semantic Segmentation : Scientists are working on algorithms to assign a label to every pixel in the world, without human supervision. How does that affect photography? Guess what. Your smartphone does exactly that.
                • [PHOTO, AI] Cosmopolitan cover : Image Generators are going mainstream. This issue of Cosmopolitan has a DALL-E-2-generated cover.
                • [PHOTO, AI] Behind the Cosmopolitan Cover : Here’s the story of how the Cosmopolitan cover came to be. Turns out tools like DALL-E 2 do require quite some babysitting to produce the desired results.
                • [WORKSHOPS] Road Trip : Chris is thinking about a 10-day Eastern-Europe Photo Road Trip. Berlin, Dresden, Prague, Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest, Transylvania. Small groups (3 max) in a zippy EV. Any takers? Share your feedback!

                  • » Download the MP3 for this episode

                  2025 Photo Tours with Chris Marquardt

                  ONLY 3 SPOTS
                  May 2025:                   Eastern European Electric Photo Road Trip, 10 days drive and explore with Chris (Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Transylvania)

                  German workshops:
                  » HS Mensch
                  » HS Licht
                  » HS Sehwerkstatt
                  » Großformat (analog)
                  » Analog Einstieg

                  » Discover the Top Floor - Photo Tours and Workshops with Chris Marquardt

                  33 min
                • 908 AI in Photography


                  AI is going to enrich our lives and at the same time it’ll pull the rug out from under some people’s legs. Let’s explore things.

                  Feedback? Reach Chris at [email protected], or follow @tfttfphoto on Twitter for show announcements.

                  Topics:

                  • [PHOTO, AI] AI in Photography : What will the AI revolution do to your photography? Will it enrich your way to work or will it put you out of work?
                  • [TOOL] Photopea : A surprisingly well-features browser-based photo editor.
                  • [SPACE] Kineto Tracking Mount : Find out how SpaceX and others track their rockets in flight with 10,000 mm lenses.

                    • » Download the MP3 for this episode

                    2025 Photo Tours with Chris Marquardt

                    ONLY 3 SPOTS
                    May 2025:                     Eastern European Electric Photo Road Trip, 10 days drive and explore with Chris (Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Transylvania)

                    German workshops:
                    » HS Mensch
                    » HS Licht
                    » HS Sehwerkstatt
                    » Großformat (analog)
                    » Analog Einstieg

                    » Discover the Top Floor - Photo Tours and Workshops with Chris Marquardt

                    22 min
                  • 907 Peek-A-Boo

                    Hi, it’s Chris. Remember me? Photography Tips from the Top Floor is back and better than ever. I’ll still talk photography, but the show will also branch out into other topics here and there, where I discuss things from my other podcasts The Future of Photography and Happy Shooting as well as my German production CM MAGAZIN. Of course this goes both ways.

                    As always, I’d love to hear your feedback. You can reach me at [email protected] (send voice recordings!), or follow @tfttfphoto on Twitter for show announcements. Thanks for listening, and I’m glad to be back!

                    Topics:

                    • [OTHER] CM MAGAZIN : Chris started his (German) CM MAGAZIN in January 2020. Going forward, it will be one of the sources for some of the more nerdy TFTTF topics.
                    • [PHOTO] Lensrentals AMA : A fun AMA (ask me anything) by Lensrentals on Reddit. Watch out for the bear attack. Note: TFTTF is not affiliated with Lensrentals.
                    • [NEWS] Leica & Panasonic: L squared : Leica and Panasonic have announced their new brand, “L² Technology.” Unfortunately, there isn’t much information in the press release. This isn’t really a new collaboration though, as together with Sigmar the two companies founded the “L Mount Alliance” in 2018.
                    • [PHOTO] iOS 16 Photo Stuff : iOS 16 will make even more use of the phone’s cameras, including features like insect recognition and automatic subject cutout.

                      • » Download the MP3 for this episode

                      2025 Photo Tours with Chris Marquardt

                      ONLY 3 SPOTS
                      May 2025:                       Eastern European Electric Photo Road Trip, 10 days drive and explore with Chris (Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Transylvania)

                      German workshops:
                      » HS Mensch
                      » HS Licht
                      » HS Sehwerkstatt
                      » Großformat (analog)
                      » Analog Einstieg

                      » Discover the Top Floor - Photo Tours and Workshops with Chris Marquardt

                      24 min
                    • 906 Virtual Production

                      Chris takes worldwide pinhole day as an excuse to talk a bit about the oldest photography technique. The discussion with director, writer and photographer Jeremiah Chechik takes the two into the depths of the latest tech in Hollywood: virtual production.

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                      Links:

                      • Watch this on YouTube
                      • Jeremiah Chechik – Homepage
                      • Worldwide Pinhole Day
                        • Download the MP3 for this episode
                        • Receive TFTTF updates via email
                        • Support the show on Patreon or via SEPA

                          • 2025 Photo Tours with Chris Marquardt

                          ONLY 3 SPOTS
                          May 2025:                           Eastern European Electric Photo Road Trip, 10 days drive and explore with Chris (Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Transylvania)

                          German workshops:
                          » HS Mensch
                          » HS Licht
                          » HS Sehwerkstatt
                          » Großformat (analog)
                          » Analog Einstieg

                          » Discover the Top Floor - Photo Tours and Workshops with Chris Marquardt

                          1 hr 5 min

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                        Get your questions answered and learn to see, no matter if digital or film or if you shoot mirrorless or with a DSLR. You use Nikon, Canon, Sony, Olympus, Pentax, Lightroom? Come in! Exposure,…