I shot 1200+ shots today with three different Sony cameras, and in three different sensor formats. So, what was I thinking? And how did it all turn out?

Top three images shot with the Sony RX10iii (my current favorite camera).

One of my favorite clients gets a couple hundred volunteers together and does a full day of work for good causes around Austin. I think that's pretty cool. They help paint school libraries, donate money for new books and then come help label and shelve them; rebuild playgrounds, read to kids and even put on a bit of live theatre in elementary schools. The coolest thing is that they are providing the kids they serve with examples of actual community involvement by grown-ups.

They hired me this year to go out with various groups of volunteers and document the work they are doing, and the fun they are having. We started the day at corporate H.Q. where the volunteers prepared materials they would need to bring along for their projects. A number of people headed to the in-house video studio to be recorded reading books for kids who are might be hospitalized or otherwise unable to attend readings in libraries. Fueled with breakfast tacos and fresh coffee the volunteers were launched out into Austin and I followed along like an eager puppy to see what I might be able to photograph. (Can you tell I thought this was a fun project?).

Being in one of my experimental moods I brought along three different cameras. They were various, new Sony models (at least new to me), including: The A7R2 with its 24-70mm f4.0 Zeiss lens, the a6300 with its 18-105mm f4.0 Sony G lens, and the redoubtable Sony RX10iii with its insane 24-600mm (equivalent) permanently attached (I hope) lens. If I could effectively juggle all three cameras I certainly would have a good shot a understanding where the quality differences and handling differences might come into play.

I also brought along a mess of batteries and an inexpensive, USB, battery charging battery (I'm at a loss of what to call these batteries that are made to charge other batteries...). I wanted to shoot everything with the RX10iii because I am partial to that genre of encapsulated cameras but my first location, in a dark conference center, called for an exposure of 1/60th of a second, f4.0 at ISO 6400. I may live in a little fantasy world about the one inch sensor cameras but I'm not delusional enough to think that they are up to delivering amazingly good image quality at those lofty ISOs. I took twenty or so frames and then defaulted to the A7R2 and the a6300; both of which are high ISO champs. My brief spell of good judgement was confirmed a few minutes ago (I am deep into post processing as I write this...) when I looked at the first images from the RX10iii. They look great fitting into the window on Lightroom, on my monitor but a quick boost to 1:1 (100%) tells the story: Mannequin-style-water-color flesh on my main subjects. But sharp mannequin-style-water-color flesh!

The files from the A7R2 are clearly from the other side of the tracks. At 6400 they look about as good as my old Nikon D2Xs looked at ISO200... or maybe even just a bit better. 

I pulled out the RX10iii for all the outdoor shooting I did which was mostly in weak sunlight. We've had cloud cover and haze for the last few days which is icky weather to live in but does wonders for preserving the appearance of tremendous dynamic range in image files...

I pressed the a6300 into service for the times when I wanted a bit more reach than the 24-70mm would give me on the full frame camera. Once I got a taste for the wider focal length range of the APS-C format 18-105mm G lens I couldn't resist trying it out on the A7R2, also in APS-C crop mode. That's very nice handling combination. You get the benefits of the great sensor as well as the flexibility of the wide ranging lens. 

The first big test for the A7R2 was a group shot of 200+ people. The building we started out in has an atrium and a staircase that leads from the bottom floor up one level. I put as many people on the stairs as I could and shot down from the second floor railing. The artificial lighting and light through the frosted ceiling of the four story atrium was very nice and I shot, handheld, without supplemental lighting, with the 24mm end of the Zeiss zoom set at f6.3.  Luck was with me as the angle of the stairs and the distances between everything worked out almost as though I had used a tilt lens or the front tilt of a view camera. Every face was in focus and perfectly delineated. It was the easiest group shot I believe I have ever shot. The focus and exposure, as computed by the camera, were optimal. 

The rest of the day was spent coming in and out of poorly lit schools and using the cameras at what I used to consider to be the limits of camera performance. But in every situation the cameras performed well and my integration with the cameras was also good. 

I've learned a few things. Across all three cameras I need to do a better job programming the custom buttons and the function settings. I've been setting up the function menu to have all the video controls I wanted at the ready only to find that I would prefer a whole different set of function menu and custom button settings for still use. I'll be making a few cards which I will laminate. Each will have a list of the functions I want on the menus, and where to find them on the deeper menu, so I can grab a camera out of the drawer and, in five minutes, have the camera set up for the kind of assignment I anticipate when I head out the door.  I generally always want ISO, WB, Quality, AF mode, DRO and a few other things on the still menu while zebras, peaking, audio levels and picture profiles are must have stuff for the video function menu.

I learned that low battery levels cause me low level anxiety. But my Kmashi 10,000 mAh USB charger unit (that battery powered USB power supply thing I talked about) is a crazy good cure for people who worry excessively about batteries being charged. I noticed the power level drop on my a63000 after a morning of shooting. The level had dropped to 30%. On my journey between locations, with a stop for lunch, I plugged the charger into the camera. By the time I hit my one p.m. the battery was back to 100%. I got into the habit of putting a camera I'd been using on the charger device when I selected a new camera to use. You could probably shoot for days without having to actually find a wall socket.

Here is a link for this device, it's too cheap not have: Kmashi Battery Pack/USB Charger.

While the files from the a6300 are really, really good my favorite camera to shoot with was the RX10iii. I like it better than the a6300 because the body has enough space for my hands and it's wonderful to shoot with a system in which the zoom lens goes on forever and ever and is at its sharpest when used wide open.

My second favorite was the A7R2 because it's a rock solid body and however I use the camera; whether in M. Jpeg or full on RAW the files look great. The a6300 should be the Goldilocks camera but it's too small to be comfortable handling. Surprisingly, I'm not getting along as well with the placement of the viewfinder window as I thought I would and, you're stuck with files that could have been a little bit technically better with the bigger camera or stuck with handling that's not as good as the smaller sensor camera. Really a compromise. The one thing it does very well though is to focus like a crazy laser. That, and great evaluative metering.

My favorite lens for the day was the Zeiss 24-70mm. Whatever the reviews might say, the reality is that the lens is very sharp, even wide open, on the A7R2.

After 1,200+ files running across my systems today I can speak to one thing: The only way to really understand the strengths and weaknesses of a system is to use it for eight hours a day and process the files for a couple hours a day, and do this for weeks at a time. When you end up a couple of months down the road you will really know a camera system in a way that no camera reviewer who has a camera on loan for two weeks ever will. Just like dating it takes time to get to know something so intertwined with your eye, your hands and your thought processes. 

Here we go. Packing up for another shoot. It's the day-to-day stuff that keeps most photographers in the black...

Amy sporting a DCS760C from years ago. On yet another "portraits on location" escapade. 

I was packing up today for a shoot tomorrow morning when I started thinking about how often I do what seem to me now to be simple jobs; and how many times I've packed up like this and headed out from the studio on a morning to make the same kinds of photographs.

Tomorrow I will take headshots of six to ten insurance executives at their offices in north Austin. Even though my clients who are in technology sectors have moved on from seamless paper backgrounds to environmental portraits with out of focus backgrounds the clients in some of the more traditional fields are still using the "studio grey" seamless paper as backgrounds. In a few cases they are just attempting to match what I shot for them five years, or even ten years ago. It's simpler sometimes to keep a style that's still working for the client, if there are a number of executives whose portraits are already posted on their company website. I guess their choice boils down to: "Do we re-shoot the thirty guys we've already got photographs for or do we just keep the style we've had for these next ten?" Finance companies in particular always opt for a continuation because, after all, they are good at calculating the anticipated ROI from any particular investment...

I'll conservatively estimate that I've done a location project like this one at least five hundred times in the last twenty years. And probably a good number more that I've pushed out of my memory to make room for something else.

I tend to always pack the night before. It's a good time to check the equipment, make sure we've got memory cards loaded in the cameras and that the batteries are charged. I still have a check list on hand because no matter how often you've loaded your car the photographer, unaided by visual cues, will hew to Murphy's Law and forget that one vital piece. Usually a sync cord or the crossbar for the background stand set.

Tomorrow I'll be shooting with the Sony A7R2. I'm not excited about shooting 42 megapixel raw files and even less excited about the prospect of processing them so I'm setting the camera up to shoot in APS-C format which, I think, yields an 18 megapixel file instead. Since my mind is already wrapped around the aesthetics of shooting in the "crop" mode I feel comfortable backing up my primary camera with an a6300. I'll use the long end of the Zeiss 24-70mm f4.0 as my "A" lens (the effective FF focal range with the crop becomes about a 105mm, which is my favorite angle of view for portraits) but I'm bringing along the 18-105mm f4.0G lens as a back-up. It will work on either camera if I keep the A7R2 in the crop mode...

I've packed a couple of monolights; one is for the big soft box that is the main light and the other is for the small soft box that will light up the background. I'm also packing a battery powered, hotshoe flash in case I want to add a bit of back lighting for people with darker hair. A radio slave set for the moonlights, and extra batteries for the small flash, have also been tossed into the lighting case. My last two additions were: more hard sync cords (just in case) and a flash meter (in case I want to be fussy).

The rest of the gear is pretty straightforward; light stands, a tripod, a flexible collapsible reflector and an extension cord. There is one new addition to the mix. Don't get excited about it; it's not a new Leica SL. I always grapple with one aspect of posing and that's whether I'll have the subjects sit or stand. I've come to prefer standing poses because peoples' clothes hang better and look neater that way. Tomorrow I'll have my subjects sitting because it matches what we did for the same client a few years ago.  But the sitting pose, on location, is always fraught with other necessary choices.

Do I get to the location and hope I'll find an appropriate chair or stool at the client's place? Do I bring the big posing stool from the studio? The one with the huge, stable base and pneumatic center post? It's ungainly and hard to pack. Even with bungee cords it keeps falling off the cart as I steer it through the parking lot on my way into the location.

I remembered using a collapsible bench, about 18 inches wide, on a location a few years ago. It was made for musicians who play keyboard instruments. Every music store and guitar shop in Austin carries them so I went out and picked one up today. The reason they work well for doing seated portraits on location is that the can be folded flat and don't fall off the cart. They pack down pretty darn well. But the common benefit shared by both posing stools and keyboard benches is that there are no arms or backs which always seem to show up in photographs; and, since the bench is rather small, the subject has to exercise good posture; they can't lean back or they'll fall right over. I know it seems like a weird thing to think about but during the 500+ times I've done this bad chairs have been one of the big stumbling blocks I kept running into over and over again. I guess this latest purchase officially makes me a control freak...

It's nice to reduce the number of variables I have to think about when I'm trying to get work done in a space I've never previously seen.

So, assignments like this are efficient. I charge set fees for the time and an additional fee for each retouched portrait we deliver. The actual photography is straightforward and something I've practiced over and over again. The making of web galleries is almost automatic, and the process of retouching is a fun exercise in problem solving. The clients are stable and payment is prompt.

Stringing together a fair number of these assignments keeps the business humming and gives us the resources to play, experiment and take risks in other areas of my photographic practice. It's not the most creative kind of work in the photographic cosmology but it's certainly not unpleasant.

On another note I've spent some time this afternoon getting really comfortable with the Eye-AF controls the big Sony camera. I practiced so I wouldn't fumble around with the camera tomorrow.

That's all I've got this evening.

The Industry is changing day by day and minute by minute. A thought about staying relevant in 2016 and beyond.

The studio is always in flux.

What will come through the door tomorrow?

I get a lot of grief from fellow photographers when I buy and sell gear. They seem to feel that we should be wedded to camera systems and individual gear choices no matter what changes there are in our markets, and with our clients. The recent switch I made, from Nikon to Sony, is par for the course. I've heard it already. "Sony obviously paid Tuck to switch systems!" No, Nikon helped push the big button for change. And I'll tell you why. I was waiting patiently with my gaggle of Nikon bodies and lenses; waiting to see what Nikon would bring out this year to help photographers shoot 4K video.

If you are not working in the corporate commercial photography space the topic may seem like a tempest in a teacup. After all, who needs 4K? Where are you going to show it? Most people don't even have 4K TVs? Right?

No. Wrong. We're working on a project right now that will be projected at a trade show with state of the art, 4K projectors. Many of our major technology clients here in Austin have had 4K televisions in board rooms and meeting rooms for a good long while. I think what the naysayers meant to say is that there are very few middle class brides and grooms who are demanding 4K wedding videos along with their photographs. It's two profoundly different markets. Insanely different.

So, I was waiting to see what Nikon would introduce this year for photographers whose businesses have changed

Strange combinations at the end of the camera strap today...

It was one of those strange days when everything seemed a little...out of phase. I worked on a consulting project for a while, after swim practice and lunch, and eventually I ran out of productive steam and decided to go for a walk in the lovely Spring weather.

I looked around the office, vacillating about which camera to take when I spied the old Rokinon 14mm f2.8 cine lens which survived the Great Nikon Purge of 2016. I gently placed it on an adapter and then onto the front of the Sony a6300. Why not the A7R2? Because 14mm is way too wide for a narrow minded photographer like me. I generally like my lenses long and my naps longer. The 14mm on the APS-C frame of the a6300 would give me an effective focal length of 21mm; which is fine; I was looking to work outside my generous comfort zone.

Man! Even at 21mm, with the corners and edges cropped off, that lens has some serious distortion. Nothing Lightroom can't handle (with a little too much work) but more than you'd like to think about. Love it for the sharpness and contrast; less fond of it for the need for correction.

With my new found lens snobbishness it seems I'd better look to expand my envelope and buy some better wide angle glass. I have my eye on that Zeiss 18mm f2.8 Batis lens. Does anyone here have experience with it yet? Is it even out on the market now? Inquiring minds want to know (but are too lazy today to look it up). 

Ancient work on film. Former Austin mayor, current Texas state senator, all around smart, nice guy: Kirk Watson.

I photographed Kirk Watson a number of years ago at his law offices on Congress Ave. in downtown Austin, Texas. Those were the days of Profoto Strobes in big soft boxes and lots of Polaroid tests. Once we flash fried the assistant by making her "stand in" for the "hero" and shooting lots and lots of Polaroids, we substituted Mr. Watson and got just what we wanted in the first twelve frames. We used a Hasselblad camera and a 180mm f4.0 Zeiss lens. Shot on transparency film. All very nice and straightforward....

I still prefer to do portraits over any other kind of work I do. 

Magic Hour at the Waste Treatment Plant in Biloxi.

It's interesting to me that we are constantly investigating and researching new cameras and lenses when, at the same time, we can look back over twenty or thirty years and see that we did good, timeless work with whatever tools were at hand. I understand the (marketing) compulsion to make sure that the cameras we use in the service of client projects are perceived to be state-of-the-art but whether or not the underlying reality of the upgrade cycle is true is a whole other subject....