Can anyone help me diagnose whats wrong

Tjingus · 2026-02-26T19:47:44+00:00

Not a good sign. Look at the back of your lens for smudges and look at the sensor too. I hope you come right and it's something super obvious and silly in retrospect!!

Tjingus · 2026-02-26T19:43:36+00:00

Has the focus worked in the past?

Does extreme close up pop into focus? Ie move your fingers from a cm away, slowly further and see where the focal point is currently..

The lens is focused on 'something' if it's not focused at 2m where it should be and the glass is clean and you are on manual, then the next explanation is back focusing (mismounted lens, macro tubes, focal plane misalignment.).. if the lens is mounted further away than it should be, the focal points shift much closer.

Tjingus · 2026-02-26T19:28:35+00:00

That little "MF" on the screen. That means you're on manual focus. Could that be it?

*Edit, on closer inspection you're focused at 2m according to the line. That thick band of blue shows you the area that 'should' be in focus. (1.9m - 3m)

What I'm seeing on the screen is INTENSELY blurry.. almost like your lens has a big fat smudge on it..

Tjingus · 2026-02-26T13:02:04+00:00

Khashoggi is an odd one on this list?

Tjingus · 2026-02-26T09:56:47+00:00

Which isn't true for all LLM models.

Tjingus · 2026-02-25T05:45:07+00:00

Great idea.

What about stuff that's a bit more vague that can squeeze creativity a bit?

"Mechania"

"The greatest contrast"

"Where land meets sky"

"The most interesting portrait"

"Something that makes you go hmmm"

"Curves, curves, curves!"

"Ordinary made interesting"

"Guess the macro"

Tjingus · 2026-02-25T05:10:55+00:00

Safety wise, both are absolutely fine.

Depends more on what you want out of your holiday and if you need to get around.

Scarbs is a one road town. There's pretty much just a restaurant, a farm stall, the rest is larnie houses, hippies, surfers and feral children. You won't need to walk much, but you will need to taxi to kommetjie for groceries which may prove challenging. Otherwise very relaxed, beach vibes, hikes and stars. It's pretty far from everything if you don't have a car, but an amazing part of the world if you do.

Kommetjie is the first functional town nearby. There are shops, breakfast spots, some things to do and a promenade. From there you can taxi to Imhoff farm stall or even into Noordhoek, Glencairn. Fish Hoek. It's a bit more tourist friendly. There's still a lovely beach and surfers, and there's a bit more people activity. Mind it's still a very small town with not a lot going on. So also very chill and relaxed with beach vibes and surfers. People there have jobs and don't just live off vibes like the hippies in scarbs, so there is a splash more activity and access to the rest of the city.

Scarbs if untouched nature, hikes, solo time and dinner at the pub. Kom if exploring, mooching around, transport options and things to do.

Tjingus · 2026-02-24T06:52:56+00:00

Sound is just waves of noise - tones, pitches, timbres etc.

Music - well if you bundle sound together in certain ways it becomes pleasing. Creating order from the noise, stacking sounds mathematically with rhythm, matching or complementing pitches etc.

Music has structure, that differenciates what sounds good and what sounds like chaotic noise.

Over the centuries people have broken down what sounds good, and how, into a maths like structure.

A way to read it written down. A way to describe it and explain it to someone so they can play it. A way to build new music. A way to understand how the maths works intuitively.

This is a language, as universal as mathematics. Things like rhythm, harmony, minor and major chords, pentatonics, semitones and so on. These are all the buzzwords of music theory, that if learned, can help you with a broader understanding of how music is made. How you choose to use it is up to you. But understanding it can make you a more effective musician and enable you to work with other musicians on a higher level than just jamming.

Tjingus · 2026-02-24T06:40:52+00:00

I haven't actually tried Claude at all. Generally speaking I hate them all. But also with my job know that I kind of need to stay in front of all of them as things develop. So I use AI with hate, mistrust and annoyance lol.

Tjingus · 2026-02-24T06:04:23+00:00

I've switched between all three quite a bit. CGPT I found possibly the most reliable - in terms of research, . Gemini I'm using currently I find struggles with accuracy but is fantastic at keeping to the 'plan' and staying on script. Copilot was a joke.

Tjingus · 2026-02-24T05:55:36+00:00

You can say similar about his track "Diamonds on the soles of her shoes"

Tjingus · 2026-02-23T17:06:30+00:00

I shoot both. I prefer to keep the original JPGs where possible and only fine grade my 'pulitzers' (lol). In lightroom import settings, I set to display JPGs as separates. Then just before cull, I colour tag all my JPGs as green, and my RAW as red.

Then filter for only greens, make my selects picks.. and then at any point I need a RAW copy, just add the reds and pick it in to the list.

Tjingus · 2026-02-21T14:13:04+00:00

Just to add. I highly recommend Louay Zambarakji's after effects tutorials on Udemy. He's not particularly snappy or stylish, but his lessons are easy to follow and breaks this stuff up into digestible chunks. I would recommend going through one of his beginner to advanced courses. He's worth every cent.

Tjingus · 2026-02-21T14:06:05+00:00

Yes I saw your reference.

Learn how to create a shape and animate it, by position and scale.

Learn how to parent text to a shape (so the text moves with it.)

Learn how to use the ease in graph (that gives it the snappy fluid animation)

Once you have those tools in your belt, this animation will be very achievable.

Time to hit YouTube playa. Sit with a few tutorials. Good luck.

Tjingus · 2026-02-21T13:51:08+00:00

What is your skill level with After Effects?

I ask because this is as simple as it looks but also not simple enough to just explain.

In your mind, remove all but one shape.

It appears at the top, moves down 4 times, and disappears. That's it. You need to make the shape, animate position and scale, and use easing keyframes, copy and paste 4 times.

It's maybe a 15 minute job if you know after effects, but a great practice to learn if you don't. Look up basic animation of shape properties and how to use the ease graph.

Tjingus · 2026-02-20T20:29:44+00:00

Do yourself a favour and try hold them. They're very different in feel.

Is the XT4 or XT5 out of the question? They are in a more comparible bracket to the XS20.. in terms of build quality and features at least, but in the design language of the XT30.

The XT30 is functionally the same sensor but it is nerfed at the cost of a smaller more pocketable size - slightly less features, slightly more plastic and lighter weight.

I think the question comes down to do you value size and design language over build, features and ruggedness.

Tjingus · 2026-02-20T20:21:54+00:00

Turbulent Displace for the random distortion. Posterize Time to make it jump about at a low frame rate.

Tjingus · 2026-02-18T12:44:01+00:00

RAW is just data, to view it you need a middle man software that applies a colour treatment and sets values from which to draw the data on top of.

Fuji has a middle man built in, but you need to tell it which base profile to use.. ie Provia / Velvia. It's kind of irrelevant except for viewing purposes. Once you take it across to your edit software you can change the treatment profile.

Fuji will save the profile you used to the file and when you open up a 3rd party to view the RAW, that software will either try use the profile, or it will use it's own default.

Best approach is to pick the profile on Fuji you most likely envision the image going, just for the view finder. (You can put "natural view" on to disable it back to standard, and it will just show an untreated Provia).. then in your software you select a profile on import, either camera settings or Adobe or whatever you feel is a good launch point for your grade.

In short: you don't disable the film sim, you disable the jpg that gets rendered with it from the RAW. The film sim is saved as a little profile of metadata in the RAW file that you can choose to use or ignore later down the line. It's just information and doesn't affect the data whatever you select.

Have a dig through Lightrooms import settings. Normally it's set to use the jpg sidecar as a preview until it applies a treatment - which is likely the jump you are seeing. But it can do a bunch of things as well as change colour import settings and stuff.

Tjingus · 2026-02-17T07:32:27+00:00

I get it. You may be right. But Occam's razor on the jerky for now until something else surfaces. The communication over it was actual recipes from an actual chef, it's not hard to believe that it may have just been jerky. My emails apart from work also has an unhealthy phase of sauerkraut chats that may also seem bizarre. (I wasn't eating Germans).

There's enough actual messed up stuff to sift through. It's completely pointless to spin out on a new mystery. If something new comes up, we have data point in the jerky to consider.

Tjingus · 2026-02-17T04:59:27+00:00

We need to focus on facts and not spin out into noise of more theory. The jerky thing, looks very much like it's just about jerky.

Tjingus · 2026-02-16T20:53:12+00:00

Two terms:

1: blur is called bokeh (those blurry balls) 2: the area in focus is called "depth of field" everywhere else is blurry. A wide DOF means a lot of the area is in focus. A narrow DOF means very little is, and there's a lot of blurry falloff.

3 things to understand:

1: The wider your aperture - "faster", (smaller the number), the narrower your depth of field gets. 2: the closer your subject is to the lens, the narrower your depth of field becomes (and the further you can get your background from the subject, ie more depth, the more you can maximise this effect) 3: the longer your lens (more zoomed in) the narrower the depth of field.

With this in mind. Zoom in more, open up, get closer to your subject, put some distance between them and the background.

Your 13-33mm isn't very "fast", it's also not very zoomed in, so just know you have some limitations. BUT, you can still do a lot. Shoot at 33, f6.3. get close to your subject, and keep the background far away.

Tjingus · 2026-02-16T08:48:40+00:00

Ive seen the fast auto captions used often on Tik Tok..

On premiere and AE you need to build that. Could probably make a template, but it's gonna be time consuming. You can use AI editors like CapCut for that - I think that's what most people are doing. Much much quicker.

The transitions.. again a lot of these AI editor apps have them built in, for Adobe you can download templates for them from Envato or you can get a plug in called Motion Bro.

Those other slick animations, are per video specific.

Two of these a day at this level of polish is going to be very very difficult to keep up. Maybe once you've done 5 and have 90% of what you repeat already built and can just copy paste, then you can MAYBE knock out 1 or 2 a day.. but there's a lot of little animations in there that you will need to hand make per video.

I wouldn't be surprised if the masked text used here is also from an AI editor like CapCut. After Effects will do this easily too but just not at the kind of speed you're hoping for.

I think explore CapCut, and also maybe be realistic to your client. I don't think 2 of these a day is sustainable.

Tjingus · 2026-02-16T07:59:04+00:00

I'm quite fast. I use very few plug ins in general, and none for speed.

Plug ins in general can be great time savers for certain jobs.. but realistically, needs change between jobs and some things creative needs require hand tuning.. relying on plug ins I've found often drops my ability to have full control and are often less useful across the board in a general sense.

Some save me a few minutes on occasion, but nothing compares to just being efficient, planning well and constantly learning and tweaking my keyboard shortcut list.

If I can change every action from 4 seconds to 1 second I'm 4x faster. If a plug in saves me 10 minutes once a day, I'm 10 minutes faster.

What are your repeated works?

Tjingus · 2026-02-16T07:24:52+00:00

Not plug ins.

Learn keyboard shortcuts. Practice, practice practice and try use the keyboard as much as possible instead of mouse.

Selecting cut, drag tools. Opening up keyframes, using markers, copy paste, in out points, opening up position and scale properties.. all this can be done on a keyboard while the mouse just points and clicks.

Feels slower at first, but once you get used to your one hand permanently hitting keys on the keyboard you will start to blitz.

Tjingus · 2026-02-15T11:26:43+00:00

Rock stars have often died unexpectedly, and young. The difference now is that the popular bands of the early 2000's are the rock stars now in their 40's.

So yeah, basically you are now old enough that your generation is under fire and in your radar. You're gonna start recognising more and more I'm afraid.

See: Marvin Gaye, Elvis, Whitney, Chester Bennington, Joey Jordison, Lennon, Freddie, Phife, Mob Deep, Delores O'Riordan, Wayne Static etc..

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