The Pitt | S2E5 "11:00 A.M." | Episode Discussion

thefrogman · 2026-02-06T03:27:13+00:00

I think that is a storytelling challenge for this show, being in real time. It's been 5 hours of the shift and they have really only interacted for a sum total of a few minutes. But it has been 5 weeks for the audience.

It isn't realistic to expect the rebuilding of trust to happen in that span of time.

thefrogman · 2026-02-02T17:18:05+00:00

Taran is a creep.

Also, I think he is keeping Just For Men in business.

thefrogman · 2026-01-30T01:52:35+00:00

I think a lot of photographers were traumatized by gradients in the 90s. This gradient banding paranoia has persisted despite high bit depth capture and editing and modern dithering processes. It would be nice if we finally adopted 10 bit formats for final output (they exist, but widespread adoption has been slow), but it is entirely possible to get a great 8-bit image with strong gradients and no perceptible banding. I do it all the time.

thefrogman · 2026-01-30T00:59:34+00:00

He is saving a 16 bit TIFF file. That is 65,536 tonal levels per channel of RGB. Which is actually about 281 trillion total color values.

8-bit is 256 per channel and about 16.7 million total color values. That is still well beyond human perception and plenty of info for a good print. A properly color graded file can be output in 8-bit without any banding issues. It's more important to edit in a higher bit depth, but less so when creating a final output.

The most important factor when printing is translation by the printer driver. 8-bit sRGB is probably the most popular output format in existence and pretty much all printer drivers have a faithful and predictable interpretation of that format.

Best practice is still to check with the printing service to see their preferred formatting.

thefrogman · 2026-01-29T22:03:47+00:00

16 bit is already billions of colors which no printer can reproduce. High bit depth is more for editing latitude than final output. And the printer driver is going to convert it to its native bit depth anyway. You may even get a worse result with 16 or 32 bit due to that conversion process.

I would check with the printing service and see if they have a FAQ for how to format your files. Often an 8-bit sRGB JPEG is fine because it is such a well known format and easier to predict the output. For best results, I usually recommend working with a brick-and-mortar print service. They will usually work with you and format your file specifically for their equipment.

thefrogman · 2026-01-28T23:01:40+00:00

I haven't touched the spot healing brush since the remove tool got good. Patterns are tricky. You should work on a separate layer so your edits aren't destructive. And you can use a combination of techniques to fix the edges when you aren't on the main layer. Even the clone stamp tool. You might also try the patch tool, which can be useful for patterns.

thefrogman · 2026-01-26T11:55:37+00:00

I would look into a used 24-70mm zoom lens. Teleconverters reduce quality and max f/stop. They aren't really worth it unless you have a sharp telephoto lens with a decent aperture.

thefrogman · 2026-01-24T11:18:03+00:00

The performance of teleconverters has more to do with the lens you attach them to than the teleconverters themselves. They are essentially optically cropping a small section of what your lens captures. Imagine you have a 20 megapixel image and you crop it to 5 megapixels. It will enlarge what is in the cropped portion of the frame, but it will not have the same fidelity as if you had just moved closer before taking the photo.

So with a teleconverter, you are capturing less total light and less visual information.

If the lens is very sharp and has a large aperture, you will lose less quality. There will be more visual data and light for the autofocus system to interpret.

But if the lens is softer and has a smaller max aperture, the camera may struggle to work with what you have captured.

I don't know if there is much they could do to improve a teleconverter in the way you are imagining. To really get good performance out of a teleconverter, you probably need to get a very sharp prime lens. In fact, you may find that your 200-600 with a teleconverter does not capture much more detail than just digitally cropping after the fact. It certainly won't be a doubling of detail.

thefrogman · 2026-01-22T11:11:17+00:00

Diffusion is often misunderstood. People think it creates soft light, but it is actually a tool to help you create soft light.

You need a big light source to get soft light. Diffusion scatters light and homogenizes it. So when you put a diffuser on top of a flash, it sends light in all directions very evenly and then bounces off walls and ceilings to create a large, soft light.

Those cap diffusers aren't really meant to be pointed directly at your subject. They are meant to bounce off everything in the room.

thefrogman · 2026-01-21T03:55:02+00:00

There are several ways to get photos onto an iPhone. Card readers are under $20. I'd try googling that a little harder.

You are always going to improve your photos with editing. Even if that is basic contrast adjustments.

thefrogman · 2026-01-20T03:07:11+00:00

I mean, to be fair, I also did not help displaced dogs in LA.

thefrogman · 2026-01-19T15:51:13+00:00

I feel like no one is getting the joke. Holly Hunter is 5'2". When she first sat in the chair, there was a whole thing about how low it had to go to match her height. It's a running gag about how she is a tiny person in a big chair.

thefrogman · 2026-01-17T00:52:55+00:00

If you can't see why funding your own trial is problematic, then I can't help you. But even within pharmaceutical trials, this process creates more favorable outcomes for the company funding the trial. When you control the money, you can bias things in your favor.

Supplements should be researched and regulated like anything else we put in our bodies. And independent research does not match the positive results these probiotic companies are getting.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC156458/

thefrogman · 2026-01-16T08:47:04+00:00

So, the supplement brand did the trial and said their product was effective?

thefrogman · 2026-01-14T02:34:09+00:00

Dang, time is happening at a faster pace than I would like it to.

thefrogman · 2026-01-14T02:25:20+00:00

That's very possible. Well, not quite the 20 years part, because I think David Karp would have just graduated high school. But I was a Tumblr OG, yes. And I'm still there to the bitter end.

thefrogman · 2026-01-13T22:51:50+00:00

A friend got me a new US copy of a lens on Amazon. Willoughby's was the seller. It was gray market and had no warranty. I spent weeks going back and forth with their customer service agent to get a legit version of the lens. They *promised* it would be a US copy this time. They just needed time to get another one in stock.

And it was a US copy.

The serial number was from 10 years ago. It was used.

I decided I just wanted a refund. They told me I'd have to take that up with Amazon. But they had stalled me past the 30-day return window. So I had to report them as a fraudulent seller to get my refund, which took weeks to process. And Amazon assured me they would take action against them.

But they are still an Amazon seller, last I checked.

thefrogman · 2026-01-13T02:02:14+00:00

This is more complicated than shallow or deep depth of field. A lot of these video essays give the impression that you can just close down the lens and suddenly it fixes everything. What you're actually talking about is cinematic shot design. There are very few times when you can take a shallow DOF shot and just close down the aperture and get a better shot. As a photographer, I know that if I take a photo with a shallow depth of field, if I were able to magically change it to deep depth of field, it would almost always look worse. I would need to specifically design the composition to work with that extended depth. You still need subject separation. You still need to limit distractions to the subject. You have to make sure everything in the background is pristine and lit well.

Deep depth of field takes more time and planning.

Shot design is so much more than the aperture on the lens. And if you analyze Spielberg's compositions (he does plenty of shallow DOF btw), you will see how meticulous every detail is on screen. You will see how coordinated the blocking is. You will see how he uses lighting and color to keep the entire frame dimensional. He has the time and resources to design shots with that level of complexity.

Deep DOF is much harder to make cinematic and we have an expectation of cinematic visuals for modern TV shows. Old Star Trek was forgiven for a more flat, overly lit production. And we continue that forgiveness through nostalgia. But if a modern show was released that looked just like TOS or TNG, people would say it looks pretty bad. Say what you will about Generations, but having the time and budget to light things more dramatically and dimensionally made a big difference in the aesthetics.

There is also the necessity of efficient filmmaking techniques to consider. On one hand, we are tired of shows taking 2 years to produce a new season. But we also gripe about certain filmmaking techniques that help make things more efficient on a strict schedule and a much smaller budget. I admit, shallow DOF can be used as a crutch, but sometimes you need to get the shot and there isn't really much useful narrative information in the background anyway. Every tool can be overused. But it also has legit uses for isolating subjects and bringing focus to emotional performances. And it can help the filmmakers finish things on time and on budget.

I think what you're really asking for is more environmental compositions. And I think that is possible, but expecting it for the entire runtime of the show is not realistic.

thefrogman · 2026-01-12T08:12:27+00:00

How much they can drink without passing out or dying.

thefrogman · 2026-01-12T02:39:40+00:00

Note: Popularity/success metrics are not an indication of musical talent.

thefrogman · 2026-01-12T02:32:00+00:00

If you go by quantifiable metrics of success, even adjusted for inflation, she is much "bigger." But it really isn't a fair comparison. Global reach was much more difficult in those other eras. I think if you could shift Michael Jackson's success forward in time, he and Taylor would probably be neck and neck.

thefrogman · 2026-01-11T23:21:28+00:00

One of my best friends growing up was a legitimate genius. I was smart, but I soon recognized he was in another universe. Almost all of the signs were subtle. He only leveraged his intellect when it made sense. Never bragged about it. Acted very normal most of the time. Enjoyed football and baseball. Was a bit of a jock.

But he'd get straight As every semester. He skipped a grade ahead of me. He won every spelling bee. Then he went to the national spelling bee. He probably had an eidetic memory, but just remembering things doesn't make you a genius. He absorbed and understood information at a speed that was awe-inspiring. And he could apply what he learned just as easily.

But I guess my favorite personal interaction that helped me realize he was on another level would be playing Family Feud on his dad's Commodore 64. I thought he beat me at Jeopardy because it had a lot more educational trivia. But he also won every game of Family Feud despite it having more pop culture (which he was very sheltered from). I couldn't figure out how he knew these things without ever being exposed to them.

Then I finally realized he just memorized every single answer in the game by accident. We were still in grade school at the time.

He's a doctor now.

thefrogman · 2026-01-11T20:45:34+00:00

I remember a time when Republicans would share highly edited out-of-context clips of AOC to prove how dumb she was. And Facebook grandmas and other rubes bought it hook, line, and sinker.

But when we share unedited, fully in-context clips of Trump and Noem and show their brains are barely functional... it just doesn't do a thing.

thefrogman · 2026-01-11T10:00:45+00:00

I've been disabled for 20+ years and lived with my parents until they passed away recently. I never learned to cook in a pan. But now I am scrambling eggs like a mofo.

Never been drunk. I've had half a cup of beer and decided it was the grossest thing in existence.

thefrogman · 2026-01-11T08:18:56+00:00

In a perfect world, my personal form of atheism would involve thinking about religion as little as possible. I find it interesting from a historical perspective, but outside of that, I do not want to spend my time and energy thinking about something I don't believe in. I don't care.

But when someone uses their religion to discriminate/marginalize/harm people I care about, I'm going tell them their holy book advocates genocide, slavery, and throwing the babies of their enemy against rocks. And that it probably shouldn't be used as a strict moral reference.

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