Ep. 425 - Tabletop Photography and iPhone Camera Breakdown

If you already have a smart phone, this set up will cost you less than $50.  Learn how to create an inexpensive tabletop photography studio that still provides quality results.  

Rob also discusses the differences in the cameras between the iPhone SE 2nd Generation, the iPhone XR, iPhone 11, and iPhone 11 Pro...and which is the best bang for the buck.  

We also hear about our friend and neighbor Janelle Soja, who is a contestant in the Johnny Appleseed Organic Invitational, an organic growing competition taking place throughout the 2022 gardening season!  

Be sure to see the show notes and the thumbnail for today's episode to vote for her on Instagram and make sure she keeps making progress in the Johnny Appleseed Organic Invitational!  

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Discussion Links:

USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map

Royal Fare Farm - Home | Facebook
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Royal Fare Farm (@royalfarefarm) • Instagram photos and ...
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• **Today is the day to cast your vote again, by liking ❤️ this photo!!**
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Farmstead Meatsmith | Butchery, Education & Membership
Farmstead Meatsmith is the only abattoir, butchery and educational operation of our kind in the country. We have classes out of harvesting events.

Hand Hewn Farm: Home
Together with our children we are turning our lives toward the land. We utilize farming practices that build soil, capture water, store carbon, and harness solar energy in order to produce the highest quality products for our customers while revitalizing the land and the people who live here.

LimoStudio 16" x 16" Table Top Photography Studio

Apple iPhone SE 2nd Generation, US Version, 64GB, Black - Unlocked (Renewed)

MEE audio M6 Sport Wired Earbuds

Anytune: Home
The ultimate music practice app. Musician tools to learn and practice by ear. Slow down, choose the perfect pitch, learn faster with Anytune.

York Meadow Farm: Lacto-Fermented Foods
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Fountain: Value-for-Value Podcast Player
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Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:00

If we stand together, we'll never fall.

unknown 0:08

We can make a difference.

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Well, hi there and welcome back to another episode of the All Around Growth Podcast. My name is Rob Kaiser and I am your host. Today is Tuesday, September 20th, 2022. This is episode number 425 of a show where we co-create life together on our farm with our families, whether they're out of state or out of the country, or right next door. A show where you join me with my family here on our small farm at Homestead, coming to you from Northeast Ohio, Medina County, USDA Plant Hardiness Zone 6. A? 6B? I don't know. Anyways, links to the show notes to USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Maps for your region are available if you're into that. And I'll tell you one person who's been into that lately is my friend Janelle Soja from Royal Fair Farm. And Janelle is a contestant in the Johnny Appleseed Organic Invitational, an organic growing competition taking place throughout the 2022 gardening season. And since we are in mid-September, coming up on late September, guys, tomorrow is the last day of summer, and Thursday is the first day of fall. So, you know, we are in the thick of things right now. So you can learn more about what this contest is all about by checking out the link in the show notes. And I think it's I think it's pretty cool. I I knew that she was doing this. I didn't know exactly where she stood. Um but when I looked into this this morning, you know, she's she's really crushing it. Uh, you know, she lives just a few miles away from us. She's a friend of the family. We've helped them host events here at our place when our barn was just built and there was really nothing else. Well, no, the cabin was there too because we were doing some cooking inside. But it was that was pretty cool in the past. Um, they were doing a home butchering of one of the Dexters that they raised. They raised some cool heritage breed Dexter cattle, and uh they brought in Brandon Sheard, the Farmstead Meatsmith, and we hosted this event over here for a couple of days. Um and uh long before we had anything, anything constructed, but uh, you know, in the way it is now, but that was cool. And then a year or two later, there was another butchering workshop where Andy and uh Andy Lane and Doug Wharton from Hand Hewn Farm came up and we did another cow. So it's really cool that we've gotten to know them as well as we have, and you know, we get the quality beef that we do from them, and you know Janelle has taken her gardening to an entirely different level. So check out the show notes, learn why our local community is so awesome because people like her make it that way. I love that I'm surrounded by so many awesome people in life, both personally and online, people like you. So dig into the show notes, see what's up with Janelle, and show her some love in the 2022 Johnny Appleseed Organic Invitational. Be sure to like her reel on Instagram, I will link to that in the show notes. But at this point, she's got over 2,000 likes already. Let's keep it going and make sure that she wins this contest, alright? So let's get right into the topic of today's show, which is my tabletop photography setup. Alright, we are going to cover how to create a tabletop photography studio, and we want to do it as inexpensively as possible, but still deliver quality results. Okay, so provided you already have a smartphone, this setup that I'm about to describe to you is going to cost you less than 50 bucks. At least as of the date of this recording, September 20th, 2022. Okay, so I'll link to this in the in the show notes as well. But what I used is the Limo Studio 16 by 16 inch tabletop photography studio. Alright, I bought it on Amazon. I bought this, uh looks like I bought this in 2016. The original idea was to use it for items to list on eBay, and I never really got too into that. Um I got some use out of it, and then I got some use out of it when we originally tried to launch an online store, but I was still working full time and didn't really put in the time, effort, and energy like I am putting in now into making that happen. So, nevertheless, I've been sitting on this thing and I pulled it out again yesterday to take all the photos that I took for the online store, which is launching Thursday. And what's awesome about this is inside this little convenient carry bag, which is you know compact and slim, there is a folding box. Well, on the outside, there's three pockets, and in those three pockets uh contain two 600 lumen LED bulbs, little each which have a like retractable tripod, which make them really compact. So you've got two of those, one eight-inch tripod for your phone, a little phone clip holder for that. There's also the the the carry case itself turns into the folding box. There are several blue and yellow color filters if you're into that, and there are four different like velvety backgrounds that allow that that that attach to the photo box itself and drape forward where you set up your camera, and and it's really a nice, convenient. Now, the lights aren't that high quality, none of this is really that high quality, but look, we're talking for something that's less than 50 bucks, so you get what you pay for. But for basic photos that look professional, that have that professional lighting, that at it it adds that extra touch, and I think it works great. I I simply used my current smartphone, which is an Apple iPhone. To be specific, it is an Apple iPhone SE, the second generation, okay. And this uh this phone is probably two years old at this point. Um, I think I I don't know, at least two years old, but here's the deal, okay? They're available renewed on Amazon for 170 bucks. Okay, they've got a 12 megapixel main camera and a single lens. And while I got this in 2020, and while it's not the newest and fanciest smartphone on the market, um, you know, it's it's what I have, and I'm actually quite pleased with it. And the fact that they're available for only 170 bucks is like is kind of weird to me because it's it's crazy cheap to me. So let me explain why I think that's a banger deal. And if you don't really have a good smartphone or you're looking for one as a backup, this is maybe one that you want to consider. So I'll talk more on that in a bit. So the the reason why I think this is a good deal is it has the same camera as the iPhone XR. Okay, now the iPhone XR you can also get renewed on Amazon for an additional $70. You know, you're looking at $240 for an iPhone XR, which has the same camera as the Apple iPhone SE, the second generation. Now there's really no substantial camera upgrade with the iPhone 11 as well. Uh but you do have the dual ends, and that gives you the wide angle photos. There's no real change with the camera until you level up to the iPhone Pro, which gives you the telephoto lens. And you can find iPhone 11 Pros renewed on Amazon anywhere from $449 upwards to a thousand bucks, depending on you know the size of the storage and all that jazz. So again, it's still 12 megapixels, but for more than double the money, all you're really getting is telephoto, uh a telephoto lens. And and and you know, that's fine. If you've you know, if you can swing that, that's great. I right now I'm in a position in life where I you know that extra feature in terms of the photography capabilities is not that important to me. So $170 for an Apple iPhone SE second generation as a backup phone or a secondary phone, that's kind of where it's at for me. So um I think that's the best bang for your buck, and I think it may be worth adding it to your wish list or even picking one up when you can. So, why would you want to have multiple smartphones? Okay. Um I'm going to explain to you my current smartphone situation and why I decided to go this route. Okay, for quite some time, like I bought this uh my current smartphone in um oh I don't know, it was 2019. No, I guess it was 2020. Maybe this phone dates back to earlier, I don't remember. I feel like it was 2019, maybe it was 2020 when I decided to get a personal phone in addition to my work phone. I wanted to create some degree of separation between my personal life and my career, and I felt that that was one way to do it. And um turns out that was the right thing to do to get to get to get out of the curve, because I'm as of you know May, I'm no longer employed with that employer, and and that that smartphone that I had used for eight years, and that number that I'd used for eight years is no longer in use. So I'm I'm glad I began making that transition. So, anyways, um over the years, I had accumulated these these old phones, and my you know, I I'm not really entirely sure if I was supposed to give these back to my employer or not. There was just there was always a collection of phones, you know, in the office manager's office, and I I had these in my desk, and they ended up here when I cleaned out my desk. So, you know, so this the phone that I use now that I record on is an old iPhone 6s that dates back maybe perhaps I I don't know, it's it's an it's an older phone, and that was just sitting on a shelf, so I decided to get it out. And while it doesn't hold a charge as long as the newer phones, basically I use it for my music needs. I have it loaded up with AnyTune, and I use that for practicing music and learning music, and I basically just have this loaded up with music files. And AnyTune is a cool app, real quick side note. Um, if you are a musician, AnyTune is an app that comes with a complete set of tools to learn and practice by ear. It allows you to slow music down, choose the perfect pitch if you need to adjust that for any reason. I've never found a reason to do so, and you can learn faster because it allows you to create these loops and create these clips with specificity, almost in a way that you'd create a clip like you would on Fountain. So I'll link to Fountain in the show notes as well because Fountain is a pretty cool podcast player that's new, that allows you to earn Bitcoin. And while listening, and if you have a podcast, you can link it to that so people can listen to you through Fountain. And if you are a podcast listener, you know, I would check out Fountain as a new podcast player. Unfortunately, not all podcasts are linked to it. So if you know someone or listen to a podcast that is not up there, reach out to them and see if they can't get it listed on Fountain so they can um even if they don't want to participate in the benefits that Fountain offers, at least they provide that opportunity for members of their audience. So check out Fountain in the show notes. But, anyways, that's how I've got this set up. I use this old iPhone 6s for music, and I like it specifically for that reason because it actually still has a port for headphones or a in this case a microphone. And um I will be getting a different set of headphones. There's actually actually I should link to this in the show notes as well. Um, I'm gonna link to this little set of studio headphones. Um I forget what they're even called, but uh I had this wired set of headphones. It cost like 13 bucks. Um, I bought it way back when I was living in Southern California, and it was like a monitor type uh headphone, and it was wired, had a pretty decent sized wire. I could keep my phone in my pocket, I could keep one of these headphones in, and all day while I was out inspecting uh utility lines and and just out in the field, I would stream podcasts all day long, and that's just what I did. So I'll I'll see if I can link to this because I actually want to buy it again. Um, it was such a good quality, inexpensive. All right, that's the key point here. Inexpensive. Now it's wired, they offer some that are wireless, but also have the ability to be wired if you choose. Okay, and I think that option's like 90 bucks, but I'll just link to the uh cheap one because I think you know, we're talking about doing this inexpensively, and um we're not even talking headphones right now, but this is the old iPhone 6 is great because it's got a headphone, uh, a port, a port for headphones. Alright, let's move on. Now I've got another iPhone, it's an older iPhone that's still in reasonably good condition that I use on the homestead and farm, and that is the uh I think that's an i I don't know what that is. It's an iPhone S. Let's let's see what this one is real quick, guys. Um if I can't find this. This phone is a iPhone 8. Okay. Um that is another older phone that I have, and I'm using that one as a dedicated phone for photos and videos of of everything that we're doing on the Farm and Homestead, primarily in the commercial kitchen now. And uh I have that one set up on a tripod a lot of times and doing time-lapse videos and things like that. And I have all of the social media on there. I also try to take that one to market, and you know, I don't want my personal phone cluttered up with Instagram, cluttered up with, you know, the Facebook Meta app, cluttered up with I don't know, whatever else. Uh, Twitter. Um so I have these social media accounts on this iPhone 8, and I use that specifically for farm use and large in large part social media use as well. I wanted to keep Telegram on that phone as well, but the reality is I do so much, I use Telegram so much with family that I can I kind of need that on my uh my my personal phone, the one that I carry with me on the regular as well, the one that actually receives phone calls. Okay, so I use these other devices almost like iPods. Now I don't know if iPods are a thing anymore, but um I always liked the concept of them, and accordingly, I use my old iPhones like iPods. I can still airdrop photos, files, whatever to want from one phone to another. That makes this particular application uh that much easier, okay. But um yeah, and it and it and it just keeps my personal phone from being bogged down with files and uh or photos and videos and all that all of that data, okay. So it it it it it just makes the the overall management of my devices a little bit easier now that they are kind of compartmentalized by their uh use. So you know, speaking of devices, I'm actually entertaining the idea of switching to an Android device when I'm ready for an upgrade on my account, but but boy, it's it's been over ten years since uh since I've used an Android device, and that's a big change. And uh Yeah, that's that's also another topic for another day, so anyways, guys, that's that's about it for today's show. I hope that that was some useful information for. you and like I said I will link to everything I discussed in the show notes including the photo studio that I'm using the different phones that I discussed specifically the ones that I'm using excluding this old iPhone 6s because it's just not really not really available but um yeah I'll I'll link to the iPhone the one that I think is the best bang for your buck the old trusty Apple iPhone SE second generation um for 170 bucks I just like I said I think that is the best bang for your buck for a secondary phone or for something to use in a manner similar to the way in which I described so check out the show notes everything I talked about will be available there for your reference and while a photo studio and phones and cameras may not be the most interesting of topics it's one that is still pertinent to the show and what we're doing here on the farm and homestead and ultimately as I assembled the show notes for today and my thoughts for the morning it led me to talking about my friend our family friend I guess that is Janelle um because she you know she and her husband Chris like they're my age and their parents Jeff and Sherry are closer to my parents' age and it's like it's it's pretty cool. We're all kind of again going through this life together co-creating life together just like we're doing here together. So okay everyone I hope that you have a great day out there today I look forward to catching up with you tomorrow and that's right tomorrow is the very last day of summer this is Rob Kaiser and thank you.

SPEAKER_01 24:27

The needs are many and answers a few people turn away and I wonder why I can help somebody that I wanna try people that I believe in friendship and love truth is always the best way to the world that makes me hard I'm an odd fellow I'm an odd fellow I'm an odd fellow if we stand together we'll never fall we can make a difference and answer the call the time to waste it every day and we can help somebody along the way people may think that it's hard to I believe in which you know it's always the best way to do the world that's I'm in an art fellow not fellow I'm an artist I'm in our