PhotoActive

Episode 189: Traveling with a Camera

July 4th, 2025  |  34 mins 50 secs

apple, cameras, iphone, jeff carlson, kirk mcelhearn, lenses, photo editing, photo organization, photography, podcast, travel photography

It’s the night before you leave for vacation and you need to choose which camera gear goes and stays. Do you reach for the 300mm telephoto, knowing it can get great photos but is large and bulky? Or do you take the smallest camera you can carry to ensure you have it with you at all times? And what else needs to come along? In this episode, Jeff and Kirk think about being on vacation, equipment they’ve taken on past trips, and what they would take now.

Episode 188: WWDC 2025

June 13th, 2025  |  30 mins 10 secs

apple, cameras, ios 26, iphone, jeff carlson, kirk mcelhearn, lenses, liquid glass, photo editing, photo organization, photography, podcast, wwdc

Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference is always the first glimpse at what we can look forward to with new Apple software, including a peek at the photo capabilities of the next iPhones. And with iOS 26 and the Liquid Glass interface, things are going to look a lot different in the fall.

Episode 187: Checking In on AI in Photography

May 31st, 2025  |  33 mins 52 secs

apple, cameras, iphone, jeff carlson, kirk mcelhearn, lenses, photo editing, photo organization, photography, podcast

We know, it seems like we just talked about AI in photography, but the field is moving pretty fast. Google announced improvements to their generative AI models, which are both impressive and sloppy at the same time. We also look at new AI-based landscape masking tools in Lightroom, speculate on what WWDC could bring to Apple’s Photo app, and more.

Episode 186: A Surrender: Markus Naarttijärvi and Daniel Agee

May 16th, 2025  |  42 mins 18 secs

a surrender, apple, cameras, daniel agee, iphone, jeff carlson, kirk mcelhearn, lenses, markus naarttijärvi, photo book, photo editing, photo organization, photography, podcast

It’s another photo book! We’re joined by photographer Markus Naarttijärvi and publisher Daniel Agee to talk about Markus’s new book A Surrender. When we last talked to Daniel, he was at photo service Glass, but now he’s struck out on his own to form the publishing company Good Fight, and A Surrender is the first title.

Episode 185: Quintin Lake’s Book The Perimeter

May 2nd, 2025  |  35 mins

apple, cameras, iphone, jeff carlson, kirk mcelhearn, lenses, photo book, photo editing, photo organization, photography, podcast, quintin lake, the perimeter

Quintin Lake traversed the Coast of Britain over several years, photographing and documenting the journey. Now, he’s turned his well-received project into a new photo book called The Perimeter. We welcome Quintin back to PhotoActive not just as a guest, but as an in-person guest with Kirk in his house in the UK.

Episode 184: US Tariffs and Camera Gear

April 11th, 2025  |  29 mins 20 secs

apple, cameras, iphone, jeff carlson, kirk mcelhearn, lenses, photo editing, photo organization, photography, podcast, tariffs

The US government has begun to impose high tariffs on goods brought in from nearly every country in the world. Since most camera gear is made in Japan and China, what does this mean for the industry and, more important, for your own purchasing decisions? Since the policies are changing by the day, we decided to release this episode a week early.

Episode 183: Fujifilm GFX100RF, A Medium Format Walking Around Camera

April 4th, 2025  |  32 mins

apple, cameras, fujifilm, gfx100rf, iphone, jeff carlson, kirk mcelhearn, lenses, medium format, photo editing, photo organization, photography, podcast

With the bonkers success of the Fujifilm X100VI, it seemed only a matter of time before Fuji made a compact camera based around its GFX medium format line. That’s the recently-announced GFX100RF, a new compact-ish, 100 megapixel, fixed-lens, $5,000 camera. We look at the inventions and the tradeoffs incorporated into this high-res entrant into the compact field.

Episode 182: Photoshop on iPhone

March 24th, 2025  |  29 mins 59 secs

apple, cameras, iphone, jeff carlson, kirk mcelhearn, lenses, photo editing, photo organization, photography, photoshop, podcast

Adobe has released Photoshop for iPhone, a bonafide version of real Photoshop, not to be confused with Photoshop Express or other earlier variations. We take a look at this new app with one main question in our minds: Who is this for?

A programming note: Toward the end of the episode we talk about using the Remove tool in Photoshop and Lightroom, but Jeff forgot to take screenshots. When he tried to reproduce the same actions later, he didn’t get the same results as described while we were doing it. So we apologize that we don’t have visuals to accompany what we’re describing.

Episode 181: Leica Lux Grip and App for iPhone

March 7th, 2025  |  41 mins 45 secs

accessory, add-on, apple, cameras, iphone, jeff carlson, kirk mcelhearn, leica, leica lux, lenses, photo editing, photo organization, photography, podcast

Two episodes ago Jeff expressed cynicism about iPhone add-ons that try to make the phone more like a traditional camera. And yet here we are looking at Kirk’s new Leica LUX Grip accessory...and not hating it? Learn about why this could be the camera grip for the iPhone that succeeds where others falter, and how the Leica LUX app does some very smart things in the name of photography.

Episode 180: David Young’s Brief History of Photography

February 22nd, 2025  |  33 mins 25 secs

apple, book, brief history of photography, cameras, david young, iphone, jeff carlson, kirk mcelhearn, lenses, photo editing, photo organization, photography, podcast, rocky nook

On this week’s episode we welcome David Young, photographer and author of the new book A Brief History of Photography: From the Very Beginning to the Age of Digital. It may feel like photography is only a little more than a hundred years old, but the principles of the art, from lens design to chemistry, have been around for centuries. We had a great conversation about things that surprised David while researching the book, the long obsession with ultra-wide apertures, and more.