Mythology versus the Real World. A Painted Background.

The mythology of our business is so darling. Reams of pie-in-the-sky magazine articles from decades past would have every one believe that photographers can quickly get anything they want from a bevy of ready and waiting suppliers and that clients are standing by with their checkbooks open, just ready to satisfy our aesthetic procurement wishes. I wish that it was so. And I'm sure the stories evolved from some diamond studded studio in Manhattan where a kingly photographer was surrounded by anxious-to-please staff just waiting on the kingly photographer's barest utterance before they flung themselves into action and created props, backgrounds, sets and even models to his exacting parameters. I'm equally sure that, in this far off world, jovial (pre-bubble, pre-recession) clients stood ready to toss gold talents into whatever embellishments to the enterprise the kingly photographer might suggest. Happens in someone's world just not mine or any of the worlds of the scores of professional photographers I know.

Let me walk you through my latest project. We haven't done the photography yet but I've already gotten a lot done.

Since I live in the middle of Texas it was inevitable that I'd eventually be asked to shoot a bunch of cowboy boots for a cowboy boot maker's website and catalog. These aren't nasty, cheap boots that are glued together in a factory in some third world country. No sir. These are hand made custom boots done in an august Texas tradition. Fifteen hundred dollars a pair and up. Booked up for the next year already.  I bid the job based on the parameters given and my bid was accepted. That's when the "extra credit" work generally comes to the fore.

The comps for the campaign have a nice, non-descript, warm background and I was pretty sure we could find that in our own selection of backgrounds or from a rental house. But nothing I could find was exactly what we (the art director) wanted. I looked and looked but the fates refused to comply. As the shoot date drew nearer my art director understandably started to grow nervous. He'd no doubt sold the client on the look and feel of a computer created background and now it was kind of imperative that we deliver. No....the budget and delivery deadline didn't include clipping paths and dropping backgrounds into 80+ images of boots...

What does a commercial photographer do? We get ourselves over to the art supply house and get the stuff we need to make our own custom backgrounds. Like a nine foot long piece of beautiful oatmeal raw canvas that's 54 inches wide, along with some tubes of acrylic paint and a handful of wide brushes. I soaked the canvas so it would accept the very dilute paint into the fabric and then I laid it out on the floor of my studio, soaking wet. And then I started painting. And painting and painting. 

I used a high dilution of water to acrylic paint and the background, which appeared very saturated at first, is now drying to a much more subtle color palette. But that's just the first step. Once the acrylic wash is dried in I'll go back and hit the whole thing again with a spritzer filled with strong tea. I am hopeful that the tea will shift the overall color into a more sepia range and give me a look of something like a weathered parchment. Once the entire piece is exactly the color and pattern I want I'll go back and iron the fabric flat and then roll it around a core to transport it to San Antonio. 

Why go to the extra effort? Well, mostly because I am sure that the AD and I are on the same page and this is what we both wanted to see when we started looking at the comps and talking about the overall feel of the shoot. Would I have loved to pick up the phone and called a set maker in LA, spent some time giving him my vision, having him do some comps and send them back to me before meticulously hand painting a final background? Well, I guess so but I would worry that the background may not work and that by the time we receive his work it might be too late to punt.

As I'm writing this I'm watching the first application of paint dry and I'm loving what I'm seeing. Of course I don't have a studio entourage here to "ooh" and "ahhh" with me. No one to get me a plate of fancy Twinkies and an espresso... No one to fire up the hot tube. And clearly, no one to do the "behind the scenes" video.

I guess I really do suffer for my art... :-)  at least by the standards of the media/internet/photographer's mythology....

A few more hours of dry time and then we'll be ready for the tea....

My Albert Watson Phase.

I've been talking about my favorite lenses lately and I thought I would be remiss not to mention my all time favorite portrait lens, on that I may re-buy and have adapted to the Sony a99, if possible.  That lens is the 90 mm Summicron for the Leica R cameras. Sharp and yet flattering, it is a chameleon of a lens. I used it almost exclusively when I (rarely) shot 35mm film portraits back in the 1990s.

The initial images were wonderfully detailed on film but the overall look of the file was of lower contrast that some of the other system lenses, like the 80 Summilux. The images from that lens (especially portraits) came into their own when printed on slightly contrasty papers. Now, in the age of scans and digital optimization I find the lens's rendition the perfect starting point for portraits. The slightly lower contrast does a great job retaining both highlight and shadow detail and, as you build constrast it reveals a strong set of bones under the surface. You can go a fair distance in raising contrast without blowing out highlights or blocking up details.

And for me the 90 on a full frame is just heaven. Perhaps it is having used a 90mm focal length that keeps me from warming up to the 85s as portrait lenses. That may be why I like the old 60mm so well on the Nex cameras.  I think that by the time we are photographers we've developed an unconscious predilection for certain focal lengths and our allegiances forever lie there. In situations where commerce and profit are removed I have no desire whatsoever to shoot with a 35mm or 28mm lens. Wider is less appealing still.

While I come back again and again to the 50mm lens for situations that reward context the focal lengths between there and 90 are like "no man's land" for me. Vague and fruit-less.  Ah, but 90 to 135 is so sweet. I often fantasize about a future time in which I'll retire and walk the earth with a camera and a small back of lenses. From 85 to 135mm. Nothing wider, nothing longer. Because, that's the way the world looks best to me.

A psychiatrist and I discussed this very issue over coffee one day. He suggested that wide shooters were unable to commit. Commit to a framing. Commit to essential elements and to commit to a disciplined use of space. Longer shooters, he suggested, were decisive and loved cutting down a frame to the essentials. Whether he said this to ease my fevered brain, knowing my choices, or whether it was an epiphany of his years of practice, I take it to heart and now harbor yet another photographic prejudice.

Doesn't matter. No one is keeping score. Just thought I'd trot out my favorite...

Soft Core Lens Porn. The Thing Olympus Gets So Well.

Olympus 75mm 1.8.

Okay. I've been shooting with Sony stuff for almost a year now and I'm pretty happy with it but.....every time I have coffee with my friend, Frank, he (unintentionally?) brings along some little Olympus jewel, the allure of which is absolutely undeniable. Yesterday it was the absolutely, drop dead gorgeous, Olympus 75mm 1.8 lens, If you shot in the 1970's or the early 1980's one of the lenses that everyone had and used frequently was the 135mm focal length on a regular 35mm camera. That focal length, coupled with a fast aperture, does some really nice stuff. It compresses compositions so you can "stack" stuff in the frame in a very pleasing way. If you are focusing on subjects in the 6 to 10 foot range and using apertures faster than f4 you get a deliciously sharp subject and a background that is wonderfully soft and devoid of distracting detail.

This lens is about 10% longer, relatively, than the 135s on 35mm but it's certainly in the ballpark.

I've owned the Pen 70mm f2 for years and used it on my Pens and now on my Sony Nex cameras. It's a very useful focal length and an antidote for all the endless wide angle crap that seems to be today's over riding style.

From all reports the new lens resides in a whole different world than the older optic. Sharp wide open and sharp right down. Silent and speedy focus on a Pen OMD. And since it's sharp at f1.8 you get the same basic look that we used to get with our big, heavy 135mm 2.8's but without all the dimensional sturm und drang.

If you are a Micro Four Thirds user you might want to read what DXO says about this lens. Spoiler alert: It beats the Leica 25mm in their tests!

http://www.dxomark.com/index.php/Publications/DxOMark-Reviews/Olympus-M.ZUIKO-DIGITAL-ED-75mm-f-1.8-Is-this-the-best-Micro-Four-Thirds-lens-available

If only Sony made lenses like this available. The Nex system would be an incredible value proposition. As it stands now the bodies are really great but the lens selection? Not so much. This lens, along with the 12mm, the 25 Leica, and the 45mm 1.8, goes a long way to cement Olympus's ascendant position in the new world order of cameras. Every other camera maker should take note.

Time for a photography refresher blog. The most popular one I wrote in 2011.

http://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2011/10/lonely-hunter-better-hunt.html

The last wooden metro steps in Paris. 

http://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2011/10/lonely-hunter-better-hunt.html

33 Variations. Beethoven, Theater, Photography. Always learning new things about Music and my Sony a99.

The place: A new Theatre on the banks of the Colorado River. The play: 33 Variations. My purpose: Get great images from the play for use in public relations and advertising. My primary tools: Quick reflexes and the Sony a99+70-200mm f2.8 G lens.

The premise of the play: Musical publisher, Diabelli, comes up with the idea of composing a small piece of music (four different note to begin with?) and then having the best music composers of the day create variations on the theme. Then publish the variations in a book of music. The other thread of the play revolves around a musicologist who is dying from Lou Gehrig's disease and has been studying Beethoven's Diabelli Variations, in the present. The play is funny and warm and dramatic all at once. And woven throughout are renditions of various segments and pieces of Beethoven's 33 Variations played by world renowned concert pianist, Anton Nel.  So here we go.....

There was a "family and friends" audience in the house for this first, post dress rehearsal, performance. I guess the restaurant business would call this a "soft opening." I wanted to be in the orchestra area, center, about five rows from the front of the stage. This would get me close enough to capture some intimate groupings while giving me enough leeway to go wide enough when I needed to. As the house last night was "open admission" I asked the house manager to reserve me five seats across the middle of the row and to block the two seats directly in front of me. I did this so no one would be disquieted by the noise of the camera shutters, or my movements, as they tried to enjoy the show. The added benefit of not having the two people directly in front of me, combined with the rake of the seats, was not having heads in the wider shots.

I got to the Mort Topfer Theatre about forty five minutes early, checked the seats and dropped off my camera bag on the middle seat. I went to the first floor bar and acquired a very nice cabernet sauvignon in a plastic cup, with a lid and a straw, and then went back into the theater to go through my camera pre-flight.

I don't know about you but I make it a point to zero out the things that routinely change in menus on my cameras and then re-enter them. I never want to take settings for granted only to discover that I've been shooting small, normal jpegs at 3 megapixels when I really need something else. Ditto with focus settings, ISOs, etc. I start at the left side of the Sony menu and work my way to the right.

I set the camera for super fine jpegs @ 24 megapixels. I turned on steady shot. I presumed it was already engaged but as soon as I entered my pre-flight routine I remembered that my last use of the camera had been on a tripod and the SS had been turned off. My camera will (with the help of an eyepiece sensor) toggle between the back screen and the EVF if you bring the camera up to your eye or bring it down from your eye. Since I could read all the menu items in the finder and never like to push bright light into a theater setting I turned off the auto select and manually selected the EVF. I usually keep the review on and set it to 2 seconds but it slows down the process when shooting theater so I turned it off entirely, knowing I could rely on pre-chimping just as well.

Here's an interesting thing I learned about the a99: The camera is capable of making 14 bit raw files. In fact some experts say that the camera has one of the truly great raw files on the consumer camera market. But here's the rub. It is only available in the single frame mode! If you set your camera to single frame shutter release you get 14 bits of wonderful color and detail. Set it to 3 or 6 frames per second and you get 12 fps. What did I care? I was shooting Jpegs. But it is interesting to know how you can operate your gear for best effect, when necessary.

I'd worked on some video for this show in a dress rehearsal on Sunday and knew that the prevailing stage light was neither daylight balance nor tungsten (3200K) so I looked back in my little camera bag Moleskin notebook at my color settings from before. The optimum for most scenes was 3900K with just a nudge of magenta correction. I set that manually. The final menu setting adjustment was to set the high ISO noise reduction to "low." 

At this point I formatted the 16 gigabyte SD card in the primary shooting camera and then turned my attention to my back-up/wide angle camera and duplicated the settings on that menu as well. That meant I could pick up either camera and shoot with the need only to change exposure settings or, in limited situations, ride the color balance a bit.

Next I turned my attention to the function menu. All the parameters get set here. I used ISO 1600 all night long. That generally got me 1/200th @ f3.4 or f4. Just the way I like it. I used the "standard" creative setting but I dropped the contrast down one click. Stage light is contrasty. Honest. I set the focusing to AF-S and used (creature of habit) the center AF sensor.

Since I was pre-chimping I never considered bracketing. And really, in fast moving situations and when doing portraits I don't think you ever should because Murphy's Law will bite you on the rear. The expression you love most will be in the lightest or darkest of your brackets. But because of Moore's Law than blown out frame will at least have gobs and gobs of resolution.....

When I go to the theater to shoot I take along a few little things to make my life easier. I take chewing gum because it's actually a goud cough suppressant. I talk laundered, cloth handkerchiefs, because a gentleman should always have a clean one to offer to a beautiful woman.....(day dream sequence), to blow his nose with and.....because a freshly laundered hanky can be pressed into service to clean a lens. I also take a tiny flashlight with a deep red gel taped over the front. It puts out just enough light to help you find that dropped memory card on the dark floor without ruining your night vision or annoying everyone around you. Finally, I bring a lead lined bag in which to drop my cellphone after I turn it off......just to be certain that I am never that person! (goes with the tin foil hat...).

While I shoot a ton of images I don't do any of them in bursts. I try to see and time every image I take. It's a good exercise because it helps you create your own luck instead of trying to get lucky. Besides, not much changes during 6 or 8 or 10 frames per second. It really doesn't.

The a99 tossed off about a thousand frames last night and did so with one battery. The battery had about 39% power left on the meter when I wrapped up the cameras and tossed them into the old, weathered, black canvas Domke bag. What would I do differently next time? Not a damn thing.

It all worked fine. The files look good to me and the client was thrilled to get them this morning since live theater has a definite marketing shelf life. The images you see here are my quick and quirky selections, I am sure the people at Zachary Scott Theatre's marketing department will make a different set of choices.

If you are in Austin you should definitely go and see this production. The music is wonderful. It's the first totally acoustic show in the new theater (no sound amplification) and the venue has a sweet sound. The lighting is wonderful and more than enough to keep a photographer engaged. If you love piano music you'll probably already have your tickets in order to see Anton Nel in such a  different styled performance. If you love a good musicology story the play is also for you.

Go here to see more: http://zachtheatre.org/

Finally: Could we have done this with an Olympus OMD system? A Nikon D6oo? A Canon 6D? or some other kind of camera? You bet. We have for years. But the pre-chimping is especially nice for stage lighting and the 24 meg chip yields some good files for those (frequent) times when the theatre gets into its "banner" thing and starts printing really large. The camera that yields the best results will be the one you enjoy having in your hands. 

What's up tomorrow? No new blog tomorrow. I'm spending the day making portraits for a healthcare company and I'll be using LED lights. I'm wrapping this up now so I can go back into the studio and cut fresh gels and then pack. Hope everyone is doing well. And doing good. -Kirk

A really good day at work.

Pres. Bill Clinton and Kirk Tuck.

I did an assignment that makes me remember why I love being a photographer. The critical part of the assignment was to photograph former president, Bill Clinton, with about 60 VIPs, individually. I set up a small studio at the location and made images of Mr. Clinton with each of the guests. At the end of the session Mr. Clinton was heading toward the door and he stopped and  turned around. He called over to me and asked me if I wanted to do a photograph as well. I quickly said, "Yes! Thank you."

I was impressed that he took the time to include me. I'm used to always being on the other side of the camera. I wish I did not look like a deer in the headlights. Don't care what side of the political spectrum you subscribe to, the man had big time charisma.

Sony Camera. Elinchrom Light. Startled subject/photographer.

A Video Test using the Sony a99 Camera.

Anton Nel. An interview done with the Sony a99. A snippet. from Kirk Tuck & Will van Overbeek on Vimeo.

I'd read a lot of stuff on the web about the Sony a99 being "soft." The contention is that the new camera doesn't render details and sharpness well. Here we come to the nasty part of the web. Everything gets compressed and re-sized when it hits the web in a way that lends itself to mass distribution. That means the images I saw from the full resolution HD files (1080p @ 24 fps, lowest compression) had to be sized to 720 HD for uploading into Vimeo, which I use as sharing source.  Then Vimeo does some file processing as well. And God only knows what's really happening when our ISPs rush all this stuff down the pipes.

All of that to say that the embedded video is only 500 pixels wide but if you click on the "HD" symbol in the bottom right corner of the video frame you'll be presented with the option of seeing the 720HD version at Vimeo. Just click on the link.

I'll never be able to settle everyone's concerns about video sharpness. Not without inviting them over to the studio to watch the footage before we transcode the ACVHD files into Final Cut Pro X. But if you want a verbal take here is is: It looks a bit better than my files did from my Canon 5D mk2. It has lots of detail for the application I was using it for. While I don't like the ACVHD files and wished there were more options I do know how to convert the files to formats that are easier to edit. It just takes time.

Where the camera really excels is in the ease of sound recording (and live monitoring) and the quality of the sounds recorded.  It's the first DSLR video camera I've used that has a headphone jack and it's the right way to monitor the audio. Yes, I heard the door slams and the cars outside during some of the sample takes.

This is not a finished video product and has not been "graded" (video cinema lingo for "post production").  It is presented here and on Vimeo as a controlled, real world sample. That's all.

Hope it's helpful.  Kirk

Free Speed.

What's the fastest and most relaxing part of your swim? Where do you get free speed? That's easy. It's on your push off from the wall. But amazingly, this is where so many people lose time and increase the difficulty of their swims.

You only need to work on three parts. First, you need to plant your feet stably on the wall, have 90 degree bend to your knees, and then push off with strength and intention. The second, and most critical cog of the whole equation, is all about technique. You must streamline your body position so that you present the smallest amount of resistance to the water and the longest body configuration you can to the water.

To do a good streamline you have to really reach with your arms. Unlike the swimmer in the (artistic) representation above you'll need to bring both arms in so close that they smash right against your ears. And both arms need to connect at the hands to present the water with a point instead of two points.

Another way to enhance your streamline is to be sure and point your toes toward the wall you just pushed off. If you don't point your toes the whole tops of your feet become water breaks and they'll quickly slow down and stop your forward motion. You should also pull in your stomach (if needed) so the water flows over straight lines.

Many of us feel as though we're standing straight and, by extension, our streamline is as straight as an arrow but.....I would invite you to stand against a convenient walls and press your whole self against it with your hands in the streamline position, pressed against the ears with hands locked high above. Can you feel how much of your body is NOT in contact with the wall?

Work with the wall and your spine until you can feel a nearly continuous contact with the wall, then you'll know you're getting closer to your optimum body position.

The third part of a good push off the wall is patience. Most people are either to anxious to get swimming or they fear running out of breathe. The optimum push off technique is to hold your glide until you decelerate to your normal swimming speed. If you were racing you'd give up some of the free rest that you get from the push off by starting an underwater dolphin kick, which continues to drive forward speed, at this point but we're just talking about fun swimming here.....

Hold that glide until you start to match your swim pace and then re-start your stroke. For maximum efficiency try to take the first stroke or two off the wall without breathing and without "picking up" your head to look around. The longer you stay in the streamline position the faster your stroke will be.

In swimming we think of the walls as free speed.  In photography we think of tripods as free speed.  With good application of good technique you'll go faster, go further and expend less energy. Seems like a good idea.

Feet planted. Strong, fast push off into a very streamlined position. The patience to take advantage of a long log curve of free speed. Hold your breath and relax. Same as with art.

Holy Cra-Apple. Video formats make raw look sane.

So, I have this new Sony camera and it's supposed to be really, really good at making video files. If you're hard core you can skip your in camera memory card and the pedestrian 4:2:0 file structure, and the highly compressed files your camera wants to make so your computer doesn't have a file thrombosis, and you can spool uncompressed 4:2:2 files straight out of the HDMI plug and into an external reader/hard disk. The cheap, decent HDMI recorders start around $1,200.  This is great for the people who are playing in the big, big leagues but most of us want to shoot compressed because we don't have a server room back at the studio dedicated to transcoding video and editing big, 10 bit video files.

Most photographer/multi-media folks I know want to be able to shoot on a good video camera or DSLR camera, get enough material on some 16 gig memory cards to make it worth our whiles and have some sort of compromise between compression and quality that works for our clients. We're shooting for local theaters, restaurants, and the usual business interview kind of stuff. We try to toss in a little art from time to time.  The finished work needs to be good and high definition but we're not ready (and our clients haven't saved up enough) for ultra high def (4K)  and all the storage, editing and nonsense that comes with it.

I figured that the big Sony a99, shot at 1080p @24 fps with the lowest compression setting should look pretty good on the old 40 inch TV in the living room. I'll be damned if we'll ever know.... (just kidding....kinda).

Thing is that the camera shoots a format called AVCHD. The people at Apple seem to regard it with the same curiosity travelers regard tapeworms and encephalitis, they don't want to get near it.
But the problem for me is that every computer within a 100 yards of my reach is an Apple product. When I insert a recently shot SD card from the big Sony the Apple kind of rolls its eyes and creates some wacky file folders called, "Private." I can click on them but I never get to see the individual .MTS files I need to get to....very frustrating. Many tricks and much ancient lore must be used to see what I want....the control key being critical.

I can look at the files on a friend's PC and they open right up and play. But on my machine I can only really get a good look at them if I import them into Final Cut Pro X and wait for seven coffee breaks for the buggy-ass program to transcode all the files. It converts them to Apple ProRes, which works fine, but by then the magic is gone, my attention span has gone down faster than the stack of new Boeing Dreamliner orders and I am, for all intents and purposes, grounded. And not in a good, electrical way. At this point I'd even watch European football rather than wait for the magic transcode elves to do their mediocre magic.

Apple likes movie formats that are called .Mov files. There are also beasts called Apple Intermediate Codec, or AIC files. The bling-puters like these too. But you can always buy a stand alone transcoder to convert anything to anything. You just have to spend more time and money and you have to make sure the trade-offs in final image quality don't push you out of the quality/investment paradigm you've been trying to establish from the beginning.

I hate trying to run Final Cut Pro X on even a fast machine while the program transcodes files in the background. It slows down everything. On bigger projects I've been setting up a second work station just to transcode clips from AVCHD to Apple ProRes or AIC while I edit on my primary station. Anything to speed up the flow.

While my primary system is great for day to day Photoshop and batch raw conversions for still images I can see that as video becomes a bigger and bigger part of my workload I'll either need to speed more on computer power and storage or smile and make nice with a skilled editor who has already made that kind of investment.

Realization: I'm pretty good at shooting the stuff. I hate to edit and would love to foist that off on anyone who needs to spend time alone in front of the screens.

So, I finally got everything imported and looked at the files. The stuff looks good. Really good. Better than I hoped. I just wish the whole process was as easy as pulling Jpegs into Lightroom...

Apple needs to spend some of that reserve cash to fine tune a couple things. They need to have some program like Preview that will open and show any kind of video file you even wave next to your machine. Then they need to nicely ask FCP-X not to grab every last shred of RAM with the intention of never sharing it again with any other program until you re-start your machine.

And I think the my monitor needs to be about 2 inches wider. And I think their should be an emulation mode in FCP-X so you can see, approximately, how your work will appear on a TV screen.

Finally, does NTSC really stand for "Never Twice the Same Color?"

Yeah. A video rant. Yawn.

Buy your stuff with our links and we'll make sure the lab continues to.....experiment.

Good Stuff from LL.

I like Michael Reichmann's latest essay. It touched on a some themes I like. To wit: That we've achieved a technical plateau with excellent tools and processes, and now it's time to concentrate on the actual images. Here's what he writes: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/essays/why_what_works.shtml

I was walking last week and I noticed this stack of paper on a table next to a downtown trailer that sells coffee. It was a Sunday New York Times. It brought back to me the memory of buying our copy from Watson's bookstore in Clarksville (an older Austin Neighborhood), getting coffee and pastries from Sweetish Hill Bakery and then sitting out on the lawn in front of the bookstore and having a leisurely read. Belinda and I would swap sections and the magazine and jostle each other to point out interesting stuff. It's been years since I bought a paper copy. I read the NYT on my iPad while I'm waiting for the family to wake up. It all changes.

Sometimes I'll find an article that Ben will like or that my friend, Paul, might need to read and I'll send them links.

The thing I really miss about the paper copy is the Sunday Magazine. It's not the same to me on the iPad or even on my bigger monitor. But life is a process of adapting to change.

on other fronts: I've been battling a common cold for the last week and it's kept me out of the pool and away from the running trail. I am happy to report that I got back into the pool this morning and swam the masters workout with about 30 other hard working swimmers. All before the sunrise.

I'm celebrating by tossing a random swim photo onto the blog:

Backstroke Start. UT Pool.

Prince Rainier Swim Pool. At the Harbor in Monte Carlo. A great place to swim laps....

2010 Masters Indoor Nationals. UT Pool.

2010 Masters Indoor Nationals. UT Pool.

2010 Masters Indoor Nationals. UT Pool.

2010 Masters Indoor Nationals. UT Pool.

2010 Masters Indoor Nationals. UT Pool.

Some camera notes from the weekend: I shot video interviews for Zachary Scott Theatre with the Sony a99 camera on Sunday. The footage looked amazingly good to me. Very sharp and beautiful tones. The camera's front mounted audio level controls worked well and the Sennheiser wireless microphones I used were really good. I hope the editor for the project will have a series of PSAs that we can roll out on the site over the course of the week. 

I also used Sony a57 camera on a shoulder mount and was very happy with its performance as well. More as I settle back into the office.

Finally: My big job this morning is to write thank you notes to the eight team members of a high tech company that helped facilitate my two days of shooting with their CEO, last week. The jobs were fun. It's my reminder to my fellow freelancers out there not to put off thanking their clients. I don't know if it works for everyone but I sure love it and it makes me all warm and tingly when I get a nice thank you note from an assistant or second shooter I've just worked with....