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Tag: Instax

  • Week 46.23

    Week 46.23

    Album of the week: Daft Punk released a “drumless” edition of Random Access Memories and the simple act of removing elements adds an unexpected amount of value. The album strikes a delicate balance between novelty and nostalgia. By removing the drum tracks, it reveals intricate instrumental interplays once masked by robust beats, offering new perspective on familiar melodies. Within minutes, you’ll be surprised at how different this feels. I don’t know how many other albums have been rereleased like this, but it’s a great idea — one made less cynical by the streaming model, as Michael observed in a chat. In the old days, this would just look like trying to sell you a CD you already bought.

    Speaking of cynical purchases avoided, I saw and held the Leica Sofort 2 in person this weekend while attending a talk and exhibition at their annual Celebration of Photography event. The glossy front plastic was not as fingerprint prone as I’d feared, and overall build quality felt a touch better than on the Fujifilm Instax mini Evo: the rocker button on the back panel had more click resistance, the “film advance” lever that prints photos was sturdier and more satisfying to activate, and the flimsy USB port cover on the bottom was slightly firmer and seemed to stay in place. For me, those were the top 3 basic problems that needed to be addressed. The software menus were simply reskinned and not redesigned, as expected. All in all, Leica did the minimum they had to do to make the Fujifilm product a little more premium, but without improvements to image quality, it’s still a very odd product to bear a red dot. I did not feel the urge to replace my mini Evo on the spot.

    Shot on iPhone, edited with looks by ✨PixelGenius

    With Leica’s latest attempt at opening my wallet rejected, my week was free to absorb excesses of a different kind when I met up with Jianjia for a farewell lunch. She decided we would eat Mala at some place called YGF. It turns out that she schedules every meet-up she can there, because she’s addicted to their high sodium spice blend. When I pointed out how salty it was (after she had drunk all her soup, and for the record I couldn’t finish my massive bowl), she was like “huh, maybe that’s why I like it so much. I never had much salt in my food growing up”.

    We are all the products of our childhoods, each messed up in our own special ways, which is something I was discussing with a colleague in a work-related conversation one day when I thought, “ooh, I should make a GPT therapist!” Which I called Doctor Talkabout, and tried to bias it towards exploring barriers to happiness that originated in childhood. On the whole, the unlicensed doctor is now quite good at discussing all manner of problems, and I hope it gives better perspectives than vanilla ChatGPT. And just in case psychology and psychoanalysis are a little too… “real” for you? I also made a GPT therapist based on astrology, inspired by Co—Star. I honestly get a kick out of both, and discussing my problems with them has been more effective at managing my feelings than just going in circles on my own.

    The number of GPTs I’ve made this past week is now in the double digits (including one for work and a private one for editing text), and so I’ve had to make a category page to see them all on this site. Please check them out.

    And yes, some shit is afoot at OpenAI, after CEO Sam Altman was ousted early Saturday morning. Too early to say why, but ChatGPT has noticeably struggled to perform quickly of late, and they’ve both turned off new signups for ChatGPT Plus AND reduced the rate for paying members from 50 to 40 messages every three hours. I have a feeling they might renege on their commitment to open a GPT App Store and share revenue with creators. Time will tell. I wasn’t going to quit my day job for this anyway. And as of Sunday afternoon, he’s supposedly been asked to come back and the board of directors will resign? Pure insanity.

    I watched the first episode of Netflix’s acclaimed Blue Eye Samurai Western anime series, and it felt like something an AI wrote. I don’t get the rave reviews just yet; two people described it to me using Kill Bill as a reference point, and you’ll see why in the super derivative first episode. It even uses the same Tomoyasu Hotei song, Battle Without Honor or Humanity, in a cliche sword-forging and training montage sequence. I mean, Kill Bill itself was a pastiche of samurai movie tropes, but this warms them over without any shame. It also has a dash of Afro Samurai to it, however both of these are examples of how to do homage without feeling like copies. Netflix shows are like cloud kitchen-brand versions of fast food items that were inspired by restaurant dishes.

    Somehow the show has some talent signed up to it: George Takei, Ming Na-Wen, and Kenneth Branagh provide voices. Its writer and co-creator, Michael Green, was involved in Blade Runner 2049 (but also Branagh’s trilogy of Hercule Poirot films which I do not love). But I’ll give it a second chance anyway; there may be other themes at play here beyond the Othered protagonist seeking revenge. But having seen this, I feel like I have a pretty good idea of what AI-generated mass entertainment would look like, and I’m not down for it anymore. I’d like for AGI to come and take away all the other jobs in the world, leaving us humans free to come up with new and more creative ways to show sword fights.

    So imagine my surprise when I started up Pluto (also on Netflix) after two episodes of Blue Eye Samurai, and found it the total opposite in terms of quality. You don’t know where the story is going even if some ideas, like androids that grapple with unexplained dreams from a past life, are familiar and were explored before in other works. It takes its time with characterizations, and aims for a timeless beauty that goes beyond slow-motion action scenes. Polygon has a nice piece about it, but don’t read anything before you’ve seen the first episode, just trust me on that.

  • Week 41.23

    Week 41.23

    Trying to keep things short again.

    • First, a correction to last week: I believed that the Leica Sofort 2 will offer little functional advantages over the Fujifilm Instax mini Evo camera that it’s based on. But I missed that the Sofort 2’s design favors a landscape orientation; its camera strap connection points and tripod mount are placed with that in mind, whereas the mini Evo seems intended to be used in portrait. This is another point of annoyance because the Fujifilm’s design visually indicates it should be used in landscape. Well, it also visually indicates its a vintage analog camera, but we’ll ignore that.
    • Cameras are for capturing memories anyhow, so on Friday night when we had a team barbecue for the first time in years, I brought my Instax mini Evo out to get some lo-fi, low-res, flash-enabled snaps. A camera never gets as much use as it does in the days just before its replacement is due to arrive — if that isn’t a camera addict’s maxim, it ought to be. But I wonder if Leica is ready for the backlash when the photos from this low-grade 5mp sensor start being associated with their premium brand. It’ll be the worst digital camera they’ve ever made. At least with the fully analog Sofort 1, the results were just little Instax prints. But now some really questionable digital files are gonna come from a Leica camera and start circulating.
    These were the only ones without faces in them
    • Anyway, in a big coincidence, the last time I remember having a work barbecue was when Oya left in 2019 to return home, and I met her this week for the first time since as she passed through town for a day. A bunch of us who were around back then met up for Mexican food, margaritas, and refried memories.
    • I finally got access to ChatGPT’s new features (these couple of weeks felt like forever): image uploads for multimodal chats, a voice-driven mode, and DALL•E 3. I’ve yet to make proper use of the first feature, apart from a few tests. I gave it a photo I took at Toa Payoh Hub (what can you infer about my location from this photo? And it correctly guessed Singapore from some visible shop names); a receipt (split this bill, and would I be an asshole if I asked for this money back as a billionaire?); and a photo of a dying plant at home (how do I nurse this withered thing back to life?).
    • I wish the voice mode could listen out for your interruptions, which would make it much more conversational. Right now you have to tap the screen to stop it talking first. The synthesized voices are really good, and enhance the illusion of talking to a trustworthy intelligence. Using Siri Shortcuts, you can now just start talking to ChatGPT on your phone at any time, but I still hope Apple finds a way to design a more responsible, private version of this with a future Siri.
    • The ability to interface with an image generator with natural language is a big deal — in theory, ChatGPT can break down your detailed, context-laden instructions into the right prompts for DALL•E to work with — and affirms my belief that “prompt engineering” will be designed out of relevance for the majority of users. It can’t do photorealistic images as well as Midjourney, but it may be close for illustrations.

    I made a new playlist on Apple Music, mostly made up of recent releases I’ve been enjoying, with a few oldies thrown in there: BLixTape #2

    iOS 17 introduces crossfading, and I think it works great for mixtapes, making the intentional juxtapositions even clearer and jam-mier. Crossfading is when one song fades out just as the next one fades in. It’s like having a budget DJ. (Edit: AI suggested I explain it for those who might be unfamiliar, but Kim says this is mansplaining. I guess this is an explainer for the explainer.)

    I played with this cover art idea for awhile in Midjourney over the past few weeks, but wasn’t super happy with any of it. I gave the same brief to ChatGPT + DALL•E 3 and decided to use its version. It came up with a more interesting composition than all the other centered, literally middle-of-the-road shots, and it was able to follow my instructions that the headphones should be Beats Studios.

    Some unused Midjourney versions
  • Week 40.23

    Week 40.23

    So-forting what?

    Remember the Leica Sofort (German for “instantly”) camera? It came out of nowhere years ago, an unacknowledged collaboration with Fujifilm that took their popular Instax Mini 90 model and rehoused it in a sleeker Leica-designed body (offered at a much higher price, nearly double if I recall right). Reviewers tried to discern a difference in the photos, but they were essentially identical cameras on the inside. For some reason, everyone danced around the similarities and at best said the Sofort was “inspired” by the Mini 90, as if it was a new Instax camera by Leica that somehow came out looking mighty similar, rather than a simple body swap at the same Fuji factory.

    This week, Leica announced the Sofort 2, which is now a redesigned Instax mini Evo (a camera I bought myself for Christmas in 2021). Where the original Sofort was a fully analog Instax camera, the Sofort 2 is one of Fuji’s hybrids: a digital camera fused with one of their Instax printers, so you can take tons of photos and then decide which to print.

    By the way I also mentioned this on Threads. You should follow me there if you’ve quit Twitter.

    In my opinion, the mini Evo is the least ugly Instax camera Fuji has made, which is one of the reasons I was excited to get one when they came out. Oh, I noticed that Jurin from XG uses one, and some of their IG posts look like mini Evo shots. But the Sofort 2 is beautiful, streamlining the body to its essential elements and removing nearly all traces of fake plastic leather and silver-effect plastic.

    Leica’s ability to wrap other companies’ cameras in minimalist industrial designs and sell them for more money is unmatched. I bought their D-Lux 7 precisely because I wanted Panasonic’s LX100M2 but could not get behind its rugged hiking shoe looks.

    Where the mini Evo is a cute plastic facsimile of a Fujifilm X100 camera, and wearing one around on a shoulder strap makes you look like a kid who’s been placated with their very own toy iPhone, the Sofort 2 looks like a camera in its own right (far as I can tell from the images). And as little as I have used my mini Evo over the past two years, it will be very hard to convince myself not to “upgrade” to this version for Christmas. And to be clear, there are ZERO functional improvements from the Fuji version, apart from not looking like a toy.

    Fujifilm makes their Instax cameras kid-friendly. They’re colorful, bulbous, fun, and recall the freewheeling sensibilities of product design before the 2008 financial crisis, when phones could look like tubes of lipstick and translucent plastics were everywhere (they’re coming back). The Leica partnership seemingly exists to provide the market with what the Japanese might innocently call “adult versions”. Why Fujifilm leaves money on the table by not doing this themselves is mind-boggling. Are they really incapable of producing understated designs? I don’t care about the Leica logo; it’s a joke on a product like this, I just want a clean-looking rounded rectangle.

    Generational shifts in photography

    And apropos of all this, I heard that Sean was getting into film photography and about to use an Olympus XA2 I once gave to Cien. Which got me talking to my Pi AI (we’ll come back to this) about old becoming new again in photography. Part of it was trying to convince myself that a Sofort 2 would be worth buying as an adult-friendly retro toy camera — a loving term for cameras with garbage image quality. I’ve owned many of the sort, like the Digital Harinezumi series, and they’re always plastic and cheap, or simply dusted-off vintage digital cameras. But this is a new! luxury! toy camera!

    So Pi sorta made the “observation” that using an analog camera is an attempt to engage with photography more deliberately. Which I already knew? Because of course using a dedicated camera instead of a smartphone today is deliberate; a “slow photography” thing, a “real photographer” flex. Of course instant film is an extension of this.

    But I’d not really appreciated it from the perspective of Gen Z people who grew up without them. Like why ordinary kids not into capital-P Photography would be interested in Instax/film cameras and old digital cameras beyond signaling coolness. Obviously we Xennials and Millennials grew up with photographic scarcity and have fewer photos of our younger days, but these kids grew up in an age of surplus, literally taking photos for granted. Phone cameras everywhere mean cheap and infinite memories. So naturally tools that force moments to be more precious, that force viewers to see events through wonky lenses, would hit different.

    I noticed afterwards that Leica’s press release for the Sofort 2 sums this up with a simple statement: “Back then, the instantly printed photo symbolized acceleration, whereas, in today’s fast-paced world, it represents a moment of caution and relief.”

    Next day update: I neglected to mention here that the mini Evo and Sofort 2 cameras are actually perfect bridges between these two approaches to photography. They are digital cameras that let you shoot in surplus, and print only the photos worth keeping in scarcity. Also, having two offerings serves buyers across the spectrum from fun/affordable to serious/expensive, which tends to be a generational divide. The hybrid instant camera is a tool that unifies photographers with different values (so long as they’re okay with 5-megapixel shots), and serves as a symbol of ‘making this moment count’.

    The Pi personal AI assistant

    Okay, so what’s Pi? It’s billed as a personal AI, a ChatGPT for your daily life. But isn’t ChatGPT already for daily life, as well as work life, I hear you ask? Yeah I know, which is why I’m giving this a go. The main difference is that instead of multiple chat threads for different topics, with Pi you just have one main chat. It tries to learn more about you and draws on past context to inform its responses. It’s built on a proprietary foundation model, so perhaps they have a way to get around the short-term memory and context collapse that I’ve seen with other generative AI text systems — so far it’s doing quite well after a few days!

    It’s free, and their privacy policy claims they’ll never share or sell your information, but yeah sure what else would they say? I’ve found it quite pleasant, and its responses are tuned to be shorter and less formal than ChatGPT’s defaults. It does feel like talking to a friendly personal assistant.

    So far I’ve had discussions with it about movies (we talked about Interstellar and why some Nolan films don’t work as well as others), python programming, economics, frameworks for building good arguments, as well as its own purpose and unique value proposition.

    I just asked it to brainstorm what a Sofort 3 could bring to the table. It suggested more AI features (lol) and making it more user friendly. I said I’d go the other way and make it more unapologetically professional, with manual controls and higher quality. It was able to say that it sounded almost like an instant film version of a Leica M, and when I asked it to price such a product, it said $800 USD or higher. That’s pretty insightful!

    Something about its simulated personality and the UX of having a single chat thread (where I don’t have to keep introducing my needs and context) makes this very pleasant to use, so much so that I might end up using it over ChatGPT for some queries.

    ===

    Media activity

    • I had Saturday all to myself so it was a movie day. I saw The Equalizer 3, which was much slower and less action-packed than you’d expect. But Denzel is still badass and he gets to have a nice Italian holiday. Just expect a chiller installment going in. I think this is the last one for Robert McCall.
    • Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny was nowhere as bad as I was led to believe. I’d say it’s actually very successful in closing out Harrison Ford’s role and setting up a possible future heir. The last one was roundly panned and tried to introduce the idea that he had a son, played by an awful human being, which failed so badly they wrote him out in the most delicious way possible in this film. I really hope Phoebe Waller-Bridge gets her spinoff out of this, but apparently she’s developing a Tomb Raider TV series for Amazon Prime? What a shame to work on the pretender when the original tomb raiding franchise is right there!
    • I forced myself to finish season 1 of Invasion on Apple TV+, just because season 2 looked good in the trailers and has a higher Rotten Tomatoes score. Season 1 is an awful plodding mess, which given Simon Kinberg’s involvement should not surprise anyone. If you’re interested in S2 and haven’t started on S1, I’d recommend you just go straight to it and try to fill in the blanks.
    • The Below Deck marathon continues. We finished seasons 5 and 6, started over with season 1 — it was disappointing in terms of production quality and crew likeability — and are now on the second.
    • Apple Arcade’s new James Bond game is quite entertaining. Cypher 007 is an isometric stealth-action game from the makers of Space Marshalls, and should scratch the itch for anyone who loves the franchise and/or Metal Gear games.
    • So much new music came out and I haven’t had a chance to hear it all yet. After hearing about how Sufjan Stevens’ Javelin is dedicated to his partner who died this April, I’ve played it through several times. I think it’ll be one I come back to over the years.
    • There’s also a new Drake album, For All The Dogs, which may not have the same longevity.
    • I enjoyed my playthrough of HOW DID WE GET HERE? by a 22-year-old Canadian pop artist named “young friend” while writing this post. Admittedly, I wasn’t listening to the words at all, but it was very pleasant and I’ll have to get back to it.
    • A new Omar Apollo EP, Live For Me, which I’ve heard one song off and am really excited for.
    • Caroline Polachek’s second album, Desire, I Want To Turn Into You, has been getting great reviews too, so I’ll get around to it next week hopefully.
    • Also, a new Jorja Smith! A new Static Selektah!

  • Week 15.23

    • As the last AI-written post mentioned, the post-vacation photo deluge is real. Looking through them again to make a shortlist for showing family and maybe printing out on Instax, I’ve rediscovered some good shots I could share… but do I want to? And where? And why? Our current task is just to build a shared album with some of the better ones between the two of us. That, and remembering that this is the fun and meaningful part of taking photographs; the journey, not the neat photo library.
    • The price of Instax Mini film has risen since my last purchase (inflation?) going from maybe 75 cents a shot to 91 cents, and that’s if you buy a hundred at a time. It makes the price of Instax Wide (larger prints) seem reasonable at about $1.40 a shot, and I’m trying to tell myself not to buy an Instax Wide printer or camera.
    • It was a busy work week, and I had to make an overnight trip to Malaysia for a meeting — my first time back in the country in nearly two decades, if I’m remembering correctly. This is something that shocks other Singaporeans, like when I say I’ve never been to Bangkok. But dudes, if I’m going on a holiday, I’m getting away from this oppressive heat and humidity! What isn’t shocking is how Malaysians will take every opportunity to make fun of Singapore’s food.
    • The trip involved flying 1.5 hours in a propeller plane operated by Firefly, out of the two alternative airports: Seletar and Subang. The planes are small, with just 4 seats across each row, and the propellers are louder than jet engines. Definitely take your AirPods Pro. But small airports mean less hassle — you can arrive an hour or less before your flight — and more convenient access to parts of Kuala Lumpur than if you fly into KL International.
    • In a case of wishful thinking, I brought my Switch along anticipating an evening alone in the hotel room to get some gaming in. In reality, it was late by the time I checked in and needed dinner, and maybe I played Lumines for 15 minutes the next morning.
    • We had a small dinner over the weekend for a couple of us with April birthdays, and James mentioned playing a new game out on Switch that I’d somehow missed: Dredge. It looks like a delightful Lovecraftian fishing/adventure game, and one I will definitely get when I’m ready. At the moment I’ve just started on Super Mario 3D World and am loving its compact little puzzle worlds. If the rumors are true and a follow up to the Switch is coming this Christmas, I have limited time to clear my games backlog. Maybe another sabbatical is in order?
    • I finally finished watching the Cyberpunk: Edgerunners anime on Netflix and while I enjoyed aspects of the clearly expensive production, like some of the character designs, I can’t recommend it. Mostly because it’s a cynical, derivative dystopian downer with lots of gory body modification (personal turn-off) to make it gritty?
    • We finally started watching Beef on Netflix which has been getting a ton of praise for tackling, like, every issue? Asian-American identity, class divides, mental health, imposter syndrome, work-life balance, and so on. It’s good! Wild, but good.
    • Ryan Adams put out yet another cover album, as in a cover of an entire album, this time for Oasis’s What’s The Story Morning Glory? and while it should be a home run given how well he pulled off that cover of Wonderwall years ago, the whole thing is a bit disappointing. Changing key melodies for worse ones for no good reason, inconsistent production from song to song, and kinda turning a fun album into a drag.
    • I’ve decided, like several people I follow, that I will probably not be paying for a Hipstamatic subscription after my free trial ends. The social network suffers from technical and UX issues, from as small as how slow the gratuitous card flipping animation makes it to browse your feed, to the broken friend-finding functionality — to say nothing of how low quality many of the photos being shared are, for which some blame must be laid at the feet of the garish filters which were supposed to be the whole point. I fear there isn’t really a revival of interest in many of these early era looks, just a desire on Hipstamatic’s part that one happens. That said, I love some of the classic ones, like the “Model 100” (the original John S + Ina’s 1969 lens + film combo from Hipstamatic circa 2009), but too many of them make good photos worse. And you can actually use some of the best ones with the free plan — which is what I’ll continue to do.