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Speaker 1: Hello there, everybody, it's time for tech Stuff. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. My name is Chris Poulett. I'm an editor
Speaker 1: here at how stuff Works dot com, and as usual,
Speaker 1: I have sitting right here next to me, senior writer
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. Hey there, except today you're gonna have to
Speaker 1: picture this in your head because we're talking about pictures again.
Speaker 1: We just did this with the megapixels. I was even
Speaker 1: going to say, can you picture that? And I realized, wait, no,
Speaker 1: I already did that. So someday your prince will come nice.
Speaker 1: I get it. Prince p R I N T. S. C. Pallette.
Speaker 1: There did a puny. Let's listen for him to do
Speaker 1: another one. He's got two down. No, no no, no, no no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm stopping here because we have to get into our
Speaker 1: digital camera tricks and tips. Yes, So when we when
Speaker 1: we did the Megapixel podcast, we actually had several people
Speaker 1: right in and thank us for it. They were people
Speaker 1: who were who were shopping for digital cameras and they
Speaker 1: were happy to hear that. You know, megapixels are not
Speaker 1: necessarily the end all be all when it comes to
Speaker 1: shopping for a camera. I mean, it's an important consideration,
Speaker 1: but not the only one. And uh so we thought
Speaker 1: we'd we'd share some information about ways to use your
Speaker 1: digital camera effectively and get the best out of it.
Speaker 1: And so away we go. You want me to start,
Speaker 1: go right ahead, Okay. So one of the the big
Speaker 1: issues with taking pictures with any kind of camera really,
Speaker 1: but digital cameras in particular, are it's you know, you'll
Speaker 1: you'll see like pictures will come out a little blurry
Speaker 1: or it just doesn't it looks a little off. Um,
Speaker 1: it's because you really need to steady yourself before you
Speaker 1: take a picture. I mean this is just very basic stuff.
Speaker 1: Uh taking a picture with one hand, Um, that's probably
Speaker 1: gonna give you the worst picture possible for that particular snapshot.
Speaker 1: I mean, you might get lucky and be have you know,
Speaker 1: nerves of steel, but really you should use both hands. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you can prop yourself against something to hold yourself steady,
Speaker 1: that might be even better. And of course the best
Speaker 1: choice of all is to use something like a tripod.
Speaker 1: Or have you seen the gorilla pods? The gorilla pods? Yeah,
Speaker 1: gorilla pods. Okay, this is this is something that I
Speaker 1: think is uber cool. Gorilla pods are special tripods. They
Speaker 1: have articulated legs. Each leg is a series of ball joints, really,
Speaker 1: and you can use it to set your camera on
Speaker 1: uneven surfaces to create an even plane when you're taking pictures,
Speaker 1: and you can even wrap them around objects like say
Speaker 1: a lamp post, So you wrap the little legs of
Speaker 1: the tripod around the lamp post and you can hold
Speaker 1: the the camera up higher than you would be able
Speaker 1: to stand. And of course the best part is if
Speaker 1: you use the timer on your camera, you can be
Speaker 1: in your own pictures. So you've got you've effectively turned
Speaker 1: the world into your own photographer. Um, you can use
Speaker 1: this little gorilla pod to hold up your camera wherever
Speaker 1: you like, pretty much as long as there's a surface
Speaker 1: or or verticals structure that you can attach it to
Speaker 1: you can use it. And they have different models for
Speaker 1: different kinds of cameras, everything from your basic little compact
Speaker 1: point and shoot to uh to a full sized professional
Speaker 1: camera uh neat things. Um, so that's a there's a
Speaker 1: tip for you. Make sure you you keep your camera
Speaker 1: nice and steady and if if possible, use whatever is
Speaker 1: at your disposal in the area, and that way you
Speaker 1: can you can get a much sharper picture. Yeah. Speaking
Speaker 1: as a former newspaper reported a small paper, UM, you know,
Speaker 1: we had to we had to do a little of everything. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, writing, editing, uh, paste up, layout, photography. Um,
Speaker 1: I could tell you that. Um, you know, if you
Speaker 1: don't happen have a tripod handy, especially in events where
Speaker 1: people are doing a lot of moving around or you
Speaker 1: need to pick up and move quickly, um, say for
Speaker 1: example sports. Um, you can always use yourself, you know,
Speaker 1: if you can get yourself in a steady position or
Speaker 1: lean against something and steady your arm. Um, just having
Speaker 1: a poll or something to to kind of lean up
Speaker 1: against and and take some of the uh you know,
Speaker 1: humanity out of it. Yeah, exactly that that'll go a
Speaker 1: long way. And uh, you know another thing that I
Speaker 1: was thinking about, you know, just that you you know,
Speaker 1: suggest about blurry pictures. Um, light has a lot to
Speaker 1: do with it. Yes, you're gonna have to keep in
Speaker 1: mind if you're using especially you know, using a digital camera,
Speaker 1: that the less light you have, the more likely, uh
Speaker 1: it's going to have a problem focusing. So, um, it's
Speaker 1: gonna try and compensate for the light, the lack of
Speaker 1: light in the room. And when it does that, it's
Speaker 1: gonna leave the shutter open a little bit longer. And
Speaker 1: if you're moving, you're gonna blur the picture, so try
Speaker 1: to That's gonna be especially important to try to keep
Speaker 1: steady when you're in a low light situation because of
Speaker 1: that of that problem. Yeah, you can actually adjust the
Speaker 1: shutter speed on many cameras, so you could theoretically make
Speaker 1: the shutter move faster, but in a low light environment
Speaker 1: that may mean the camera cannot get enough light for
Speaker 1: that picture to come out very well. But uh, there
Speaker 1: are ways to fix that in post, as we like
Speaker 1: to say. So, uh So, really when it comes to
Speaker 1: lighting and and if if you've become familiar with some
Speaker 1: photo editing software, you might be able to compensate for
Speaker 1: dim lighting a little better than you could for say,
Speaker 1: a blurry picture. So if you have to choose between
Speaker 1: the two, I would go with UH making the shutter
Speaker 1: speed a little faster UH and dealing with the dim
Speaker 1: condition rather than UM than having to try and compensate
Speaker 1: for a blurry picture. But here's the nice thing about
Speaker 1: digital cameras. You can see what the picture looks like
Speaker 1: immediately after you take it, and it's in a digital format.
Speaker 1: You don't have to keep it. You can delete it
Speaker 1: right then and there, and you can keep on taking pictures.
Speaker 1: So here's another tip for you. Try out your cameras settings.
Speaker 1: Now I'm really guilty of this. I tend to use
Speaker 1: three or four settings a lot because I happen to
Speaker 1: know they worked pretty well, but I don't necessarily try
Speaker 1: all of them. And I remember I was using my
Speaker 1: digital camera UM at an event and I had accidentally
Speaker 1: changed the settings because it used a little wheel to
Speaker 1: set the settings, you know, and I accidentally thumbed when
Speaker 1: I opened it up, I thumbed the wheel to a
Speaker 1: different position, and my pictures came out very very well,
Speaker 1: and I was like, wow, I'm I've gotten a lot
Speaker 1: better at taking photos and I was like, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: this isn't on the setting. I oh, and I realized
Speaker 1: that the setting I was using was not necessarily the
Speaker 1: most effective one for the situation I was in. So
Speaker 1: my suggestion is test out your different settings and doing
Speaker 1: in a different and several different environments, so you know,
Speaker 1: just just play with it. Find out which settings seem
Speaker 1: to work in the best situations. So for things that
Speaker 1: where you're doing a lot of fast action and bright lights,
Speaker 1: you could clearly you could make the shutter speed much
Speaker 1: shorter than um. And if it's in a damn situation,
Speaker 1: find out if it's better to keep a longer shutter
Speaker 1: speed or if it's better to just try and deal
Speaker 1: with the dim images in a photo editing program later
Speaker 1: on down the line. Yep, yep, that's true. Um. And
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's funny that that you would say
Speaker 1: that talking about different settings on your camera. I mean, um,
Speaker 1: that little book that they give you in the box
Speaker 1: with the camera, they will actually tell you what all
Speaker 1: those buttons and gizmos do. You are kidding me. But
Speaker 1: and this isn't really a tipper trick, but this is
Speaker 1: just sort of a thing to think about. And I
Speaker 1: don't think a lot of us think about. I think
Speaker 1: we you know, haul our camera off to shoot something
Speaker 1: in our kids soccer game, or you know, to some
Speaker 1: some other event, family event, and we shoot pictures and
Speaker 1: then we just don't think about it. You know. That's
Speaker 1: one of those cool things about a digital camera. You
Speaker 1: can shoot as much as you want. So why not
Speaker 1: take your camera out when there's nothing riding on it?
Speaker 1: You know, there's no there's nothing big going on, there's
Speaker 1: nothing to ruin if you go out and play around
Speaker 1: with your camera settings. And it's not like you have
Speaker 1: to go spend a lot of money on film developing.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a digital camera. You can delete everything
Speaker 1: if you want. You could buy an extra smart card
Speaker 1: for a fairly low amount, curatively speaking. And then you
Speaker 1: even have a couple of smart cards that you can
Speaker 1: swap out and you know, fill up one and you're like, well,
Speaker 1: let's try it on. Let's try taking those same photos
Speaker 1: but on a different resolution setting. That's another good tip
Speaker 1: is if you are finding that that your camera capacity
Speaker 1: fills up far too quickly, it might be that you
Speaker 1: might have set the quality standards a little too high.
Speaker 1: It turns out like that. This goes back to the
Speaker 1: megapixels discussion we had earlier. Uh, if you said it
Speaker 1: to the to the highest settings and start taking pictures,
Speaker 1: those individual pictures are going to be very large files. Uh,
Speaker 1: and won't necessarily make your picture look better either, unless
Speaker 1: you're taking something like a very wide photo and you
Speaker 1: want the ability to zoom in afterward to a specific
Speaker 1: point and you don't want the resolution to suffer because
Speaker 1: of that. If you're or if you want to print
Speaker 1: a really large print. In either of those cases, than yeah,
Speaker 1: you probably want to use the highest resolution possible. But
Speaker 1: otherwise you probably don't need the highest resolution and you'll
Speaker 1: be able to take far more pictures that way because
Speaker 1: the file sizes will be much smaller. That's true. And
Speaker 1: you know, I was thinking, and I was actually reading
Speaker 1: on a post by Rick Mishleski of MacLife. I hope
Speaker 1: I got his name right. Um, he did at an
Speaker 1: essay on maclif dot com about sports photography because he
Speaker 1: was shooting pictures of his daughter's rugby game. Apparently she
Speaker 1: played for Stanford, and um, he was talking about shooting
Speaker 1: practice photos. But um, what he said was you need
Speaker 1: to uh, and this is this is again sort of
Speaker 1: not a camera trick, but it kind of is. Um,
Speaker 1: he said. One thing that to do is, if you're
Speaker 1: gonna shoot something like sports photography, watch the people, like
Speaker 1: find out who the players to watch are. If you
Speaker 1: know number fourteen is the playmaker. Will get yourself in
Speaker 1: a situation where you're gonna be able to get a
Speaker 1: clear shot at this particular person and um kind of
Speaker 1: watch for a few minutes to see what he or
Speaker 1: she's gonna do. Because um, if you get an idea
Speaker 1: from body language that something bigs about to happen, that
Speaker 1: they're going to make a break for the ball or
Speaker 1: something like that, you can set yourself up to get
Speaker 1: a great shot. And the better you can focus on
Speaker 1: their face even more so than the action involved. You
Speaker 1: might get a really fantastic sports photo that you might
Speaker 1: not have gotten. But um. On the other hand, it
Speaker 1: also helps to have the right equipment because some cameras
Speaker 1: aren't set up to do sports photography. You need, you know,
Speaker 1: the the ability to um to shoot a lot of
Speaker 1: photos quickly. UM, sort of like the cannon or no,
Speaker 1: not cannon, the Cassio camera that we saw at CS
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight. That shoots uh sixty frames per second.
Speaker 1: It's usually called burst photography exactly. Um something that will
Speaker 1: shoot that and and it will even um shoot photos
Speaker 1: before you if you hold down the you know, sort
Speaker 1: of half pressed the shutter button, it will actually start
Speaker 1: shooting photos before. So it's sort of like a TVO.
Speaker 1: You can sort of back up and look at some
Speaker 1: of the photos before. So if you happen to be
Speaker 1: just a fraction of a second off and go, oh,
Speaker 1: I messed a shot, you can back up and look
Speaker 1: a seat, maybe you actually did get it scares me.
Speaker 1: It's a camera that knows you want to take a picture. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But the thing about that is is that's not you.
Speaker 1: That's really the camera itself. It's not a trick that
Speaker 1: you can learn to do. That trick is getting the
Speaker 1: right spending the money for it. And that was a
Speaker 1: at the time of release. And I think they've come
Speaker 1: out with a camera that supplants that even it was
Speaker 1: a thousand dollars worth of camera and a lot of
Speaker 1: us can't afford that. Yeah, there's a six hundred dollar
Speaker 1: Cassio now that takes I think forty a second, so
Speaker 1: it's a little slower, but it's also significantly cheaper. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah. The wonderful thing about that is, of
Speaker 1: course you can flip through all those different photos and
Speaker 1: and you know there you might think, wow, did I
Speaker 1: catch that one moment? And there's a good chance you did.
Speaker 1: If it's taking that many a second infect you may
Speaker 1: find like five or six pictures that you really have
Speaker 1: trouble deciding on between the group of them. Um. I've
Speaker 1: got a similar, very very basic tip she kind of
Speaker 1: touched on there, which is that if you are preparing
Speaker 1: to take a photo and you know that something is
Speaker 1: about to happen, and you know, this happened to me
Speaker 1: a lot before I realized there was a very simple
Speaker 1: solution where I would take a photo of something, but
Speaker 1: I would get the moment me lee after the moment
Speaker 1: I wanted to catch, hold down the button halfway. That
Speaker 1: will prepare your camera. It'll lock focus, so it'll find
Speaker 1: the It'll essentially it it focuses on the central figure
Speaker 1: that's in the frame. Um, it'll lock the focus and
Speaker 1: prepare for a photo. So when that moment happens, all
Speaker 1: you have to do is press it down the rest
Speaker 1: of the way and it'll take the picture. Um, this
Speaker 1: will save you the heartache of Wow, I got the
Speaker 1: back of my daughter's leg in the frame while she
Speaker 1: ran by because I was preparing a second too late. Uh.
Speaker 1: And in a similar vein, let's say that you want
Speaker 1: to take a picture and you don't want to do
Speaker 1: the normal like let's have the person standing in the
Speaker 1: middle of the frame of the photo. You want something
Speaker 1: a little cooler. You want them to be off to
Speaker 1: the side of the frame, and you want to have
Speaker 1: a little bit of the background in there. But every
Speaker 1: time you try and take the photo, you're getting the
Speaker 1: background in focus, not the not the person, not the
Speaker 1: person you want to capture. Uh. My suggestion then is
Speaker 1: first frame the picture as if that person is in
Speaker 1: the center half and press that button halfway down. That'll
Speaker 1: lock the focus. Then you can adjust your position so
Speaker 1: that you are pointing in the You've got the picture
Speaker 1: frame the way you really want it, and the focus
Speaker 1: will stay the same. You can press the button the
Speaker 1: rest of the way down. You got your picture. There
Speaker 1: you go. I actually have a two that sort of
Speaker 1: relate to, uh, to the things that you touched on
Speaker 1: just then. Um. One was I was reading some of
Speaker 1: David Pogue of the New York Times. He had a
Speaker 1: post where he talked about some different things that you
Speaker 1: can do to improve your photography. And I have a
Speaker 1: a C S two thousand eight. Again, I had my
Speaker 1: little Olympus two point one megapixel, which shoots pretty good
Speaker 1: photos really, but um, there's a problem. You know, it's
Speaker 1: a it's an older point and shoot, and I kept
Speaker 1: having trouble getting the moment like I would. I would
Speaker 1: set up and I got where I wanted to go,
Speaker 1: and I pushed the button and nothing would happen. That's
Speaker 1: called shutter lag. And pressing half pressing the button down
Speaker 1: and and having the camera focus also produces the shutter
Speaker 1: lag time because the camera is ready to take a picture.
Speaker 1: So when you completely press the button down the rest
Speaker 1: of the way, it should go ahead and take the
Speaker 1: picture without that that extra shutter lag because there the
Speaker 1: camera is not trying to figure out what's going on.
Speaker 1: But um, I read a National geographic and uh, you
Speaker 1: know they're reasonably decent with therefore talking. They know a
Speaker 1: thing or two about taking pictures, maybe even three. Um,
Speaker 1: they were suggesting that when you're composing your picture, you
Speaker 1: should imagine that the screen is divided up into nine
Speaker 1: segments basically like a tic tac toe board, and um,
Speaker 1: you want to center your subject at the intersection of
Speaker 1: the lines. Basically it's called the rule of thirds, and
Speaker 1: you're trying to get them in that position, uh, to
Speaker 1: basically help you compose the picture better and get more
Speaker 1: of a better composition. Um, you know, and hopefully you
Speaker 1: won't cut off the top of their head or something. Well,
Speaker 1: that's that's actually really important because uh, you know, all
Speaker 1: the tips and tricks are not going to help you
Speaker 1: if you don't. If you don't you develop your own
Speaker 1: skill as a photographer. Um, you might get some practice, right,
Speaker 1: you might get some nice pictures, but you're not you know,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna maximize your your use of that camera
Speaker 1: without a little work on your part. Um, I've got
Speaker 1: another basic tip that I learned about while researching this
Speaker 1: I had. It's something I did not know. If you
Speaker 1: want to take a portrait photo of someone, and the
Speaker 1: thing I read was that the best the best way
Speaker 1: to take a portrait photo is let's say you have
Speaker 1: a camera that has three to five times zooming capability.
Speaker 1: The suggestion was to zoom all the way in like
Speaker 1: as as tight as possible and then hold the camera
Speaker 1: vertically so you get the vertical portrait picture and then
Speaker 1: move towards your subject until your subject fills the frame
Speaker 1: the way you want, and then take the photo that way,
Speaker 1: so to actually zoom in all the way. Now, if
Speaker 1: you have a camera has a more powerful zoom, like
Speaker 1: an eight to ten times, you would only zoom in
Speaker 1: about halfway for that. But that this will help you
Speaker 1: get a better photo of your subject. And I didn't
Speaker 1: know that, um. Another good one that I didn't know
Speaker 1: is that if you're taking a picture outside, you may
Speaker 1: want to still turn your flash on. It can help
Speaker 1: the flash from your camera and the the ambient light
Speaker 1: your camera can can take all of that into consideration.
Speaker 1: It's called fill in flash, UM, And this will help
Speaker 1: you if you want to take a picture of a
Speaker 1: subject that perhaps the lighting sources to the side or
Speaker 1: maybe slightly behind that person or object, the flash can
Speaker 1: help fill that in. However, you have to keep in
Speaker 1: mind camera flash has a very limited range. Uh, anything
Speaker 1: beyond about ten feet is not going to be effective,
Speaker 1: so you want to keep that fairly close. So you mean,
Speaker 1: if you if you took your little point and shoot
Speaker 1: with the little any bity flash and you go to say, oh,
Speaker 1: I don't know, be Alympics and you're in the nosebleed
Speaker 1: section and you have the flash turned on. You're trying
Speaker 1: to get something that's going on down in the field.
Speaker 1: The flash might not illuminate that. Yeah, I was actually
Speaker 1: thinking of WrestleMania. If you're at WrestleMania and you are
Speaker 1: in the nosebleed section and you want to get a
Speaker 1: picture of the Undertaker as he delivers a tombstone pile
Speaker 1: driver to John Cena thug Life, then it's that flash
Speaker 1: is probably not gonna help. Despite the fact that every
Speaker 1: time I watch WrestleMania, I'll I see our flashes in
Speaker 1: the background, people cut it out. Actually it's kind of
Speaker 1: cool looking for those of us watching at home, but
Speaker 1: for those of us who actually have attended the event,
Speaker 1: it's just really annoying. Okay, all right, you seem to
Speaker 1: have a personal investment in this and really happened to
Speaker 1: enjoy the art of the squared circle. All right, okay, okay, um,
Speaker 1: so oh I had another one about an outdoor shot. Okay,
Speaker 1: polarizing filters. Oh yeah, So let's say that you want
Speaker 1: to take a shot of a a scene that's really
Speaker 1: really bright, there's maybe some glare, uh like I was.
Speaker 1: I took a cruise up in Alaska several years ago
Speaker 1: and there was this gorgeous glacier. I wanted to take
Speaker 1: a picture, but it was a cloudless day, and the
Speaker 1: problem was that the ocean, water, the glacier, and the
Speaker 1: sky were almost all the same color. It was this very,
Speaker 1: very very whitish bluish color, and it was really hard
Speaker 1: to tell where the ocean ended, the sky began, and
Speaker 1: where the glacier was at all um A polarizing filter
Speaker 1: can help take that down a little bit, so you
Speaker 1: get a little better definition. But let's say that you
Speaker 1: have a regular little point and shoot camera. You know
Speaker 1: you don't have the polarizing filter. What do you do then, Well,
Speaker 1: if you happen to have a nice pair of sunglasses,
Speaker 1: this can actually work. You can hold the sunglasses in
Speaker 1: front of the lens of your camera and take a
Speaker 1: photo there and it will act as a polarizing lens.
Speaker 1: You do want to make sure that you don't have
Speaker 1: any of the edges of the sunglasses in the frame
Speaker 1: when you take the picture, but it does work. It's
Speaker 1: not as good as a professional filter, not by a
Speaker 1: long shot, but it can work in a pinch. You know,
Speaker 1: professional filters aren't really all that expensive. And that's something
Speaker 1: else that you can do to uh, you know, fool
Speaker 1: around with and and start seeing how what kind of
Speaker 1: effects you can have with your photos. Um. Another nice
Speaker 1: effect that a polarizing filter has that has nothing to
Speaker 1: do with any of that is if you happen to
Speaker 1: keep one on your camera and something scratches the filter,
Speaker 1: you can replace the filter, but you may not be
Speaker 1: able to replace the lens. Or if you if you
Speaker 1: have a camera where you can replace the lens, it's
Speaker 1: gonna cost you more than a filter would. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's um, you know, it's just something to consider. Um.
Speaker 1: I have a lot more tips. We're sort of running
Speaker 1: out of time. I have a couple of weird ones
Speaker 1: that I wanted to touch on. All right, let's hit
Speaker 1: the weird ones. Okay. One of the other things that
Speaker 1: David Poke said, and I find this a little strange,
Speaker 1: he said that a lampshade socket could make a good
Speaker 1: tripod mount Uh. He said, it happens to be the
Speaker 1: exact size of a of the section that you wouldn't
Speaker 1: I guess attached to the top of the tripod um,
Speaker 1: which I'm admittedly having a little bit of difficulty visualizing.
Speaker 1: I also think it might be a good idea to
Speaker 1: unplug the light. I was just about to say that, Um,
Speaker 1: but I don't, you know, I kind of don't deny it.
Speaker 1: I mean, if your camera's not heavy enough and it fits,
Speaker 1: and it's unplugged and you don't electrocute yourself or anyone
Speaker 1: else or destroy your camera, it seems like it might,
Speaker 1: you know, do in a pinch. I wouldn't write I
Speaker 1: don't know. I'd have trouble recommending that, but I did
Speaker 1: read it, and you know, David Poke suggested it, so um,
Speaker 1: you should know a thing or two, the other the
Speaker 1: other weird thing, and um, you know, I don't. I
Speaker 1: read a lot of tech blogs, but I read a
Speaker 1: lot of other blogs, and one of the others the
Speaker 1: Candy Dish blog, because I'd like checking out the new
Speaker 1: sugary stuff. Oddly, Carl from the Candy Dish blog had
Speaker 1: a link today on the day that I were recording this,
Speaker 1: to a flicker set where somebody had actually used gunny bears.
Speaker 1: It's stuck gummy bears to their flash and it they shot,
Speaker 1: the flash goes through you know, the the gummy bear
Speaker 1: distorts the light and makes It's sort of like using gels.
Speaker 1: They're different colored, like a green or red gel, and
Speaker 1: just a very odd and low cost yet sticky solution. Yep,
Speaker 1: and one wonders if fruit roll ups would work just
Speaker 1: as well. I I don't know. You know, they can
Speaker 1: be a little harder to manage. I'm guessing depending on
Speaker 1: the size of the flash. I was just thinking, like
Speaker 1: a fruit roll up you could cut to the right side.
Speaker 1: That's true. That's true, you know, will be thinner than
Speaker 1: a gummy bear. We might need to do some research
Speaker 1: and get back to you on if nothing else that
Speaker 1: will help, I know, And I could use one of
Speaker 1: those right now. So so you're you're all tipped out.
Speaker 1: Yeah those are my my weird tips. Yeah, excellent. Well,
Speaker 1: well you hope that you found these tips helpful. Um,
Speaker 1: I guess that just brings us to Listener made serious
Speaker 1: the dude. Okay, so today's listener mail comes from Jose
Speaker 1: and Jose has to say, Chris and Jonathan, I love
Speaker 1: your podcast and have heard all of them. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of myths when it comes to cables, and
Speaker 1: I'm glad that for the most part, you did a
Speaker 1: lot to dispel those myths. The fact that you brought
Speaker 1: up James Randy, which is one of my favorite people,
Speaker 1: was cool too, And I happen to like Randy as well,
Speaker 1: so that was that was a no brainer. But he
Speaker 1: goes on to say, one thing that you need to
Speaker 1: consider about audio and video paraphernalia is that you set
Speaker 1: your setup is only as good as your weakest link.
Speaker 1: Strictly from a sound quality standpoint, it doesn't do you
Speaker 1: any good if to buy a cable aside from the
Speaker 1: one that comes with your stereo, because if you open
Speaker 1: up your shiny new speaker, avoiding the warranty, in most cases,
Speaker 1: you'll notice that the cable between the connection terminal and
Speaker 1: the actual speaker is the same chief cable that came
Speaker 1: with the stereo. Even if you bought a one thousand
Speaker 1: dollar cable, your weakest link is still in the speaker
Speaker 1: and it cancels out any advantage of better cable could
Speaker 1: have offered. Keep up the great work, guys, Jose. Thanks
Speaker 1: a lot, Jose. That's a really good point. Just like
Speaker 1: any system, it's only as strong as its weakest link. Now,
Speaker 1: if it happens to be really well made speakers and
Speaker 1: that link is fine, then sure your cable may end
Speaker 1: up being your weakest link. Or if it's something about
Speaker 1: the connectors themselves, that could be it. But you make
Speaker 1: a very good point. Uh, there's some things that are
Speaker 1: beyond your control. And no matter how expensive a cable
Speaker 1: you buy, it's not gonna make it sound any better.
Speaker 1: That's kind of sorry to think about, you know, trying
Speaker 1: to imagine that you'd spent all this money on fancy
Speaker 1: equipment and the the people who made the fancy equipment
Speaker 1: skimped on the inside. Yes, so I will be handing
Speaker 1: out pitch pitchforks and torches after the show. Excellent, And
Speaker 1: if you have anything you want to say to us,
Speaker 1: any comments or suggestions or questions or or even corrections,
Speaker 1: you can feel free to write us at tech stuff
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com. And remember we have
Speaker 1: a blog up now. It's called tech stuff and you
Speaker 1: can find that right off the homepage of how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. And we will talk to you again
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