Photographer Karen Jerzyk and animator Natalie Woytko experience the benefits of Fujifilm’s new integration with Frame.io Camera to Cloud
Collaboration is a huge part of creativity. And the more diverse your creative community is, the stronger the inspiration it brings.
Modern communication has allowed us to connect with others easily, bringing the world together and making it relatively simple to work with fellow artists, no matter where they are based.
Such freedom to collaborate has brought limitless opportunity; but even with modern communication on your side, creating with someone who isn’t in the same room can bring its own set of challenges. Frame.io Camera to Cloud (C2C) changes that.
A new integration between Fujifilm and Frame.io makes it possible to transfer images to the web directly from your FUJIFILM camera using C2C technology. This means your collaborators can view, download, and comment on still images in real time, anywhere in the world.
Not only does C2C offer more effective communication between teams, but it also speeds up workflow and creates an immediate cloud backup. The combined result means faster turnarounds, smaller budgets, and complete peace of mind.
Photo 2023 © Karen Jerzyk | FUJIFILM X-H2 and FUJINON XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR, 1/80 sec at F2.8, ISO 1250
Putting Camera to Cloud to the Test
To try out this exciting technology, we gave fine art photographer Karen Jerzyk a FUJIFILM X-H2 camera paired with FT-XH File Transmitter to use on location at a remote, abandoned blimp hangar in Orange County, USA.
She was collaborating with animator Natalie Woytko who was based in her studio over an hour away in San Diego. They were working together on Karen’s project The Lonely Astronaut, which depicts a solitary spaceman exploring an uninhabitable planet Earth, long deserted by humans.
While The Lonely Astronaut is predominantly a stills project, Karen enlisted Natalie’s animation skills to add a new dimension to this particular set of images – and receiving such immediate feedback through C2C proved invaluable.
“When I collaborate like that it typically takes a lot longer, because I have to go home, put everything onto my laptop, upload it to the cloud, and then edit – it’s a long process,” explains Karen.
“Then, once the images are uploaded, it’s a case of: well, this is what you get, I can’t go back in time and change it!”
“With Natalie, it was really cool. Before I had even finished the first batch of photos, she had already made notations on things like the model’s pose, so I could make the changes she needed while still on set.”
Natalie agrees. She highlights how making these small changes can save a huge amount of time in the long run.
“I could communicate my thoughts directly to Karen, raising flags when I saw things that might hinder me,” says Natalie. “If I were to catch something like that further down the pipeline, we would simply have to work with what we had – it doesn’t make financial sense to call everybody back and recreate the project just to make my job easier.”
Photo 2023 © Karen Jerzyk FUJIFILM X-H2 and FUJINON XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR, 1/125 sec at F2.8, ISO 1250
A More Efficient Workflow
In addition to fast and effective communication, the simplicity of the tools used brings significant benefits to a project’s workflow – there is little that hinders creative flow more than fiddly, overcomplicated processes.
Both Karen and Natalie were delighted by the speed and agility of C2C technology, along with the convenience of the Frame.io software.
“With C2C, I don’t even have to think about it. I’m creating the images, and they’re immediately being sent. By the time I was working on the third batch of photos, Natalie was already animating almost a final piece from the first batch I made,” Karen tells us.
Natalie continues: “It was like bridging production and post without having to wait weeks at a time for assets to get delivered, color correcting to happen, and a decision to be made on visuals.”
Working Smarter, Not Harder
The ability to move away from a step-by-step workflow that requires one process to finish before the next begins means creative teams can utilize valuable hours that would otherwise have been wasted.
It’s a huge benefit for Karen, who regularly finds herself working in remote locations a long way from home.
“I’ll spend six hours driving to a location, make the photos, and spend another six hours driving back,” explains Karen. “By the time I get back, I’m usually tired, but still have to download the pictures from the memory card to a computer, only to make copies and upload them to the cloud.
“With C2C, all of that was happening right away. I didn’t have to worry about it,” Karen smiles. “At the most basic level, I love the peace of mind from knowing my images are being uploaded immediately and securely.”
Photo 2023 © Karen Jerzyk | FUJIFILM X-H2 and FUJINON XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR, 1/25 sec at F4, ISO 200
Natalie echoes Karen’s positive words: “It’s going to avoid a lot of the common hiccups that come into post-production when working remotely,” she asserts.
“I’d be commenting on one photo specifically, then would go back into the main webpage and there would be 12 others for me to look at – it was so quick!
“It also gave me access to takes that may not have been in the running,” Natalie continues. “Plus, I could see how certain things moved within the space as the subject’s position changed between frames.
“C2C is going to speed up the process – and help bring a lot more artists into the field,” she concludes.
“It’s a game changer,” adds Karen. “That instantaneous ability to see the images in the moment and give feedback – it’s invaluable.”
The world’s first native digital stills camera integration for Frame.io Camera to Cloud is now available for FUJIFILM X-H2 and X-H2S via firmware update. Click here to learn more about the integration and sign up for updates.