Michael Johnston's blog made me stop and re-consider why I have spent most of my life as a working, commercial photographer. It's got to be more than just permission to play with cameras....

I may be doing the whole career thing incorrectly. At least according to the smart people on the web. The two opposite descriptions I hear (or distill from what I read) are that one is either rushing all the time, working 12 grueling hours a day, and still struggling to make as much money as a fast food worker or, that the very few people at the top are so talented and so sought after that their lives are a non-stop swirl of photographing super-models for the tiny handful of posh, fashion magazines, interspersed with jaunts to Nepal where they hang with the Dalai Lama and sport climb Everest with celebrities (with whom they are very, very close friends...). Please don't write and pedantically correct me; I know the Dalai Lama actually lives in exile in India. Richard Gere told me while we were on a "hang-gliding with the condors" getaway, up in the Andes.

To further break down the mythology as it seems to be understood by the non-working hobbyists, the top photographers rarely have to do much beyond point their cameras and click as they are served by an ever growing entourage of helpers, assistants, agents and personal chefs who deflect the rigors of the working life details so that our "hero savants" can channel up enough energy to "visualize" the reality we all want to see so badly.

On the flip side, the rest of us are holding up heavy cameras and long lenses (which we really can't afford; will never be able to afford...) for hours and hours a day, day after day, for weeks at a time and we're still so poor that we sleep in our cars. Or

Spent the day doing what I really like. Taking photographs and getting paid.

Ben. A test photograph from a shoot for the Texas State University System.

This past August, here in Austin, Texas. 

It's fun when your job and your hobby are pretty much the same thing. I got up this morning, walked the dog, read the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times and then headed out to the studio to get packed for the first half day of a two-half-day shoot. 

I'll explain. I was hired to go on location to one of the high rise buildings in downtown Austin, to make portraits of the 16 people who are the staff and partners of a development company. Since everyone has crazy schedules; especially this close to the holidays, I suggested that instead of one full day in one shot we might want to break up the day into two half days. If I came in around noon today to set up I could shoot from 1-5 pm and get all the "afternoon" people. I'd leave the gear set up overnight and then come back in at 9 am the next morning to finish up with all of the "morning" people. This would give everyone the opportunity to select a day that would be most convenient or a time that would be most convenient; depending on their nature. I like doing this because a full day gets boring and I think Studio Dog misses me when I am gone for that long.

We've pretty much given up shooting portraits against seamless for these kinds of shoot and are transitioning to a style that uses a mix of available light and supplemental light while shooting close to wide open on longer lenses. The optimum location is one where there is a lot of space behind the subject which I can progressively drop out of focus.

I packed up the car and headed downtown, arriving at the offices at noon and setting up by 1 pm. I found a long corridor with glass fronted offices along one side and windows to the outside on the other. I brought along three 100 watt LED open face fixtures to light with and two big 5-in-1 reflectors to modify the existing lights. 

I started out by putting up a 40 inch black flag between the spot where my subjects would stand and the bad fluorescent ceiling fixture. This effectively kills the color mismatch that would have occurred on the subject between the warm, green fluorescent and the more neutral LED. I keyed the LED from one side and then brought a fill reflector in on the opposite side. The fill reflector also serves to kill side spill coming from other light fixtures on the location. 

I used one 100 watt LED in a large soft box as my main light. I have my subjects standing and my technical goal with my main light is to place the bottom of the soft box at least an inch or two above the subject's chin level. This drops a flattering shadow under their chin which can help to obscure "turkey neck" and double chins. Fortunately, everyone in this office was in great shape and probably no more than five to ten pounds over their optimum BMI. Nice for me!

A second light, used in an 8 inch reflector, with barn doors, was used in the middle distance pointed away from the subject and towards the far wall. This would mix in the same temperature light as the key light and cut down on the rougher transition between the main light source and the prevailing office lighting. 

The final light was used as a back light from as far back as I could get it and with the barn doors almost completely closed in order to control spill. 

I used a 70-200mm f4.0 lens at f5.0 which gave me relatively good sharpness from nose to ears but dropped the middle and are distance objects out of focus quite quickly. 

The pace was mellow and we were able to get eight people photographed today  with no stress or strain. In fact, I even had time to walk down the street to Medici Caffe and grab a great cappuccino and a walnut scone somewhere in the middle of the afternoon. We wrapped up today's shoot around 4:00 and by 4:30 I was home wandering around the neighborhood with Studio Dog.

Everyone gets in tomorrow around 8 am but I'll be there at 9. I rationalized it like this: I don't want to rush people. They need a chance to get into the office, get their coffee and respond to important calls and e-mails. An hour gives them time to get well settled. Another reason for my late arrival is my realization that with the later start I could make it to swim practice from 7-8:15 am, take my suit and tie along with me and make it downtown in ample time. Besides, the lighting is already set....

Which reminds me, I need to take a Siggi's 4% vanilla yogurt along with me for a quick, after swim snack. 

One thing I've learned that I find to be really valuable for on location portraits (portraits in general?) is not to have your subjects sit in a chair but to have them stand behind a chair. A good chair back anchors them to the spot where your lighting is optimal and gives them something comfortable to do with their hands. Since we are shooting "head and shoulders" we don't see the chair or their hands. All we do see is a natural stance and a person more at ease than someone standing in the middle of open space wondering what to do with their hands. 

So, I'll head back and we'll shoot the rest of the folks from 9-12 and then I'll break down the lights and cameras and head back to the office to offload the images, make my edits and begin the process of color correcting the edited files in order to make web galleries for each person. 

And that is how I do location portraits at a more leisurely pace. It's fun. More like this...

Putting my little camera in a cage. Caged 4K? Cagey?

Most readers yawn when I start talking about stuff related to video but it's getting to be a bigger and bigger slice of my business so I'm forging onward. Today's blog is about a product I recently acquired that makes handling my a6300 more fun. The a6300 (Sony, APS-C) has great guts and a mediocre external camera/human interface. The body is too small, too short and lacks much space for adding the kinds of stuff that makes video easier. I wanted to make use of the fabulous 4K files from the camera but I favor a "snapshot" aesthetic for some work and that seems to be at odds with the small camera design. For instance, if you put a shotgun microphone in the hotshoe of the camera it pokes you in the middle of your forehead when you use the EVF. 

I also find a handle, centered over the lens axis, to be a big plus when holding the camera below waist level. Something I find myself doing more and more when making videos for a client who manufactures legs prosthetics and joints. I just wanted a small "cage" that would add surface areas of cheese plate onto which I could hand accessories, without interfering with the overall operation of the camera. 

Enter a company called, "SmallRig," which makes cages for various popular cameras. The base price of this (well made) rig is under $50. The handle adds about $25. My primary want was for a place to hang a microphone without interfering with the EVF. My second desire was for a nice handle. For about $75 I had both of those covered. I've also purchased an additional accessory shoe to I can attach a bigger, external monitor; if the spirit moves me. 

The whole rig still keeps the basic profile of the system nice and small. All the controls as well as the battery/memory card compartment are fully usable without having to remove the cage from the camera. A bonus is that even in regular still photography shooting the extra "bulk" makes the camera easier for me to hold.

If the a6300 only had a headphone jack I would be more or less euphoric to use it, and the 18-105mm G lens, as an all around, run-and-gun system. But even without the headphone jack the camera is endlessly useful for anything that doesn't require sound. I am currently building a little rig to use it on a moving dolly for some "walking" shots for the above mentioned client. Shooting in 4K and editing on a 1080p timeline makes for pretty much perfect video files for this kind of work. 

For interview work I am current considering one of two Sony dedicated video cameras: the PXW-x70 or the PXW-x150. If you have experiences with either of them I'd love to hear about it in the comments. If you already shoot video you are well aware of the convenience of on-board XLR connections, built-in ND filters and the (possibly) superior 10 bit, 4:2:2 codec. I'd love to hear your thoughts. 

You can buy a Smallrig cage for your a6300-6000-6500 here: http://amzn.to/2gU1iNi

clean access to the EVF.

Lots of surface area for additional mounts.

High coolness factor.

Access to all ports.

Access to battery and card.

Some notes on a Tuesday afternoon. Along with some frames that are mostly about color...

Everyone is hell bent on doing their lists of the "top ten cameras" and "amazing accessories to buy now for photographic success!!!" and every mention of every product has a fat link that connects it to Amazon or B&H. I thought I'd resist the temptation to go into hyper-sales mode just a bit longer and give you some alternative reading here instead. Maybe a few articles about "What NOT to Buy!!!!!" 

I'm all stream-of-consciousness today so bear with me. Or is it "bare" with me? I can never remember. 

First off I had a bout of intense camera handling this week. Not cameras I own but cameras newly for sale out at Precision Camera. I'll start with my most negative recommendation first. If you see a sales person coming toward you with the new Hasselblad X1D 50C mirrorless camera turn around and run or at least toss your credit cards into a nearby shredder. I'll be blunt. What a beautifully designed piece of poop. The camera is very simple and it's got that snotty and minimalist, northern European design ethos all over it but.... Turn it on, wait 25 to 35 seconds for it to "boot up" (shades of the old Samsung Galaxy NX camera) and then you'll be ready to shoot. Of course, whatever inspired you to turn the thing on in the first place will be long gone. Really? 2016 and it takes thirty long seconds for your camera wake up? Just silly. 

But once it's awake it's like, really, really good, right??? Oh hell no. It focuses like the original Canon M camera, if the M camera had a soft focus filter over the front of the lens. Slow, slow, slow. And not always very certain. It tentatively tippy-toes around focus for a while in anything but pure, hot sunlight. But it must feel great when the (ultra-well noise dampened) shutter goes off, right??? I'm not sure, I was so surprised by how much vibration the shutter on a mirrorless camera made. It's beyond noticeable. I have a sneaking suspicion that this will be the newly appointed KING OF SHUTTER SHOCK.  But at least they got the EVF right, huh? Naw. It's not as good as the new Leica SL and just about as well done as the Sony A7rii. With about the same magnification. But, to be fair, you do have your choice of two poorly chosen, slow, NON ZEISS lenses to chose from. Hope you like that old, cheap point and shoot look because the two lenses available for what should have been a natural portrait shooter are more like the semi-wide angle fixed lenses of most older point and shoots. Oh boy. $10,000+ for a mostly useless camera. Gift guides be damned. Save yourself while you still can. 

Let's take a break from photography for a second to talk about getting ready for the holidays in the age of global warming. So, it's the first week of December and my biggest concern, when stringing Christmas lights on the exterior of the VSL world headquarters is not the real possibility that I may fall from the roof and injure myself but that the swarms of mosquitos buzzing around me constantly might be transmitting the Zika virus. Seriously. Mosquitos in December? Nasty. 

Back to photography. I'm pissed at progress and annoyed with my good friend, Frank (not really, Frank, just using you as a foil..). I bought a bunch of cool, LED lights last year and have enjoyed using them. Then Frank shows up with a tiny Pelican-like case with three magic new lights in it. They are sold by a company called Came-TV. They are sleek and beautifully designed LED lights that come complete with front fresnels, focusability, A/C power blocks AND big, Sony camcorder batteries. They'll run off one big battery (each) for something like two full hours of run time and...the color is markedly better than the stuff I own. Grrrrrr. Here's a link to show you what Frank had the audacity to trawl in front of me in my own studio today: http://www.came-tv.com/3-pcs-cametv-boltzen-55w-fresnel-focusable-led-daylight-p-889.html  Did I mention that the color is wonderful? That the lights are super well designed? That they fit into a little case? That they all come with batteries? That I salivated like Pavlov's dog?

I am currently making one of those cardboard signs to hold up at traffic intersections. Mine says, "Will work for focusable LED lights! Bless." I am planning to forgive Frank if he brings them back over this weekend so we can do a video project with the new lights....

But I have not been a total sloth about buying new stuff that I probably don't need. I did buy three more cheap, variable neutral density filters from a company called Zomei. I bought an 82mm from them this last Spring and have used it often with no deleterious effects on color or contrast and I decided to buy one to dedicate to each of my most used "video" cameras. 67mm, 72mm, and 77mm. All ready for sunshine and bright skies just as our first (and probably only) blush with winter comes roaring in. Hold on to your hats and scarves. It may dive into the 30's on Thurs.!!!! Cold-ma-geddon. 

I also bought a "cage" for the a6300 which I really love. But I'll talk more about that in the next post. Back to other stuff that I wouldn't buy even if I were spending your money... I see advertisements all the time for light fixtures that hold one, three, five or seven spiral fluorescent tubes and come with a flimsy softbox. There are so many better products out on the market now that I would not touch one of these unless you never, ever intend to move it out of your studio or transport it anywhere. The lighting world has moved on. There are better options. Honest. 

Since we're on a lighting roll let's talk about another type of product that I currently have no interest in. That would be LED panels. They were pretty much the only accessible LED lights available when I was writing my book on LEDs back in 2010 but they have been effectively superseded by the one inch SMD type of "open face" LED light fixtures that are the modern variation of the tungsten flood light. They are more efficient, easier to travel with, easier to use with modifiers and easier to sculpt light with. 

At this point in the game I don't think I would go back to using the panels with 500, 600 or 1000 little LED bulbs on the front. There are just too many better options. Exceptions might be permanent installations in TV newsrooms or for photographers and videographers who will use them day-in-and-day-out with just a piece of diffusion material on the front. I love the light shaping tools you can use with the SMDs; like barn doors, shoots, grid spots and more. I also like being able to put the newer units into soft boxes or bounce them into umbrellas. Look at what's available from Fiilex, RPS, CameTV, Arri, Fotodiox, Smith Victor and many others. 

Finally, in this day and age, I am not sure I would ever buy an electronic flash in the form of an A/C power-only monolight. That train has sailed. I want to replace my hodgepodge of Profoto, Elinchrom and Photogenic monolights with a set of Godox 600 w/s monolights that work in TTL and have lithium ion batteries as a power source, along with the option to use A/C. We're no longer quite so attached to our studios and more likely to be in situations where the nearest wall plug is far, far away. The old stuff was just right in the film days because lithium ion batteries were not yet invented for powerful flashes. Now? Yes. Please. 

I'm pretty sure that electronic flashes that are solely "plug-in-the-wall" will fade the same way strobe "box and head" units have faded from the market. They represent a logic matrix from another age. 

I am waiting for a smaller, camera shoe flash from Godox to be delivered (tomorrow?). It's a dedicated TTL flash for Sony E cameras and it features a lithium ion battery instead of the typical four double A batteries. The battery lasts longer and gives more flashes with quicker recycling. I hope it works the way I imagine. It will be nice to have HSS flash again. 

In other news, while the weather was blustery and cool the water in the pool was constant. Right at 80 degrees. While the sky was glowering and the branches of the live oaks were thrashing around during our time in the pool, the lunch time masters workout was wonderful. Certainly a good temporary antidote for the holiday infused camera buying drama. 

If you are happy with what you have and it works just use it and keep the money in the bank. God knows we might need it if we ever want to change gears...

And now? Some colors....

The 2016 "Most Productive Camera for the Dollars Spent" in my office... No surprises here.

I'm as guilty as any other compulsive camera buyer. I wax on about how one camera feels "just right" in my hands or how another camera gives me "amazing" low noise, high resolution files. I spent enormous amounts of money buying lenses that more or less duplicate most aspects of those I already own but (supposedly) add some sort of quasi-emotional nuance to the final images that I sometimes delude myself into believing I can see on my monitor. When I bought my "serious" Sony work system I made what I thought were very smart purchases. I bought the A7rii, the A7ii (as back-up) the 24-70mm f4.0, the 70-200mm f4.0G and a few specialty lenses. Then I spent most of the year gilding those lilies by adding more and more silly lens purchases; all of which I can easily justify, if pressed by more strategic thinkers. Of course I needed the Rokinon 100mm macro for product work and the 135mm f2.0 for those times when I just had to see what long lenses with enormous apertures would do for my art....

And then there was the flurry of Contax/Zeiss/Yashica lenses that I couldn't live without because

A Decent LED Light, with lots of power, for less than $40? Yes.

Most photographers probably have a fixture like this sitting around the studio. 

It's probably in a corner and the last time you used it was with a photo flood bulb

that turned smokey black on the inside after a couple hours of use. The 

fixture probably burned your hand and you haven't used it since. 

I found a new use for mine. It's called, "LED bulb." 

Yesterday afternoon I was at Precision Camera, looking for a short, coiled XLR, male to female cable. I wanted a one foot, coiled cable that I could use to connect a microphone on top camera to the little mixer box bolted below the camera. Yes. They have one in stock. So I made that purchase and then, since the weather was bad and I'd driven such a long way, I decided to do a quick loop around the store to see what might be new. I played for a while with one of the new, Hasselblad, mirrorless medium format cameras, and I spent some quality time with a dedicated video camera I'm considering buying for an upcoming project. I played (for the fifth time...) with a Fuji X-Pro-2 but just couldn't summon up the right buying impulse. Too much cash to be spending on myself just before the holidays.

But I did come across something very interesting on one of the less visited shelves, hidden in the valley of shelves which is the in-store district of camera bags, soft boxes, pop-up reflectors, Pelican cases and all the other stuff that isn't cameras and lenses. What I found was a bunch of boxes from Pro/master that were labeled "LED Lamp." There were several sizes and, of course, I was interested in the max output. I asked my favorite sales associate his thoughts about the product. 

"It's a high output LED bulb that fits into a standard household socket. It's really bright! But I'm not sure how color correct it is..." He said. He had me at "really bright." I bought one for the princely sum of $39.95. 

A few things to know about this product. If you want a bright LED source to shoot stills with and you're buying your coffee at McDonalds because the $1 price special is very, very meaningful to you, then this might be the best product out there to give you a lot of relatively clean light for a cheap price. You'll have to add the fixture but you can always buy a clamp light fixture at a hardware store for less than $10. The LED bulb is a 50 watt unit and it puts out at least as much power at the RPS CooLED 50 watt SMD unit I've been using for the last year. The big, white part behind the bulb itself is the self contained ballast and it IS fan cooled. The fan is louder than the fans in my RPS lights so I wouldn't recommend using it to record video with sound in a small, quiet room. But if your usage is for regular photography then you're set. The bulb sits very forward in most fixtures because of the length of the ballast and fan assembly but the dome on the front does a good job of diffusing the light and spreading it around. For critical containment of light spill I'll just grab some Black Wrap(tm) and fashion my own flexible barn doors for it.

The unit gets warm to the touch on the front of the bulb and hot to touch on the ballast as it operates. Wait a few minutes for it to cool down before removing. 

The business end of the bulb. See the vents for the forced cooling?

Amazon product link....

Here's one angle of the project.

Here's another....

I did a quick color test using the VSL "Camera of the year!!!!!" the Sony RX10iii. I set the camera to the daylight setting on the color presets and shot a raw file of the product box on a white piece of bristol board. You can see that it's about 7 points green, overall. Not a huge green spike but big enough to require correction, if you are interested in neutral color...

Preset WB to Sunny symbol.

Eye dropper light balance in levels in Photoshop CC. 

These LED lamps are pretty interesting. Five years ago we'd have paid a lot more to get a lot less. What am I saying? We did that...  Now were able to get the equivalent of a 250-300 watt tungsten bulb in a form that's much cooler and more energy efficient, comes it at 5400K and is highly color correctable. For the price of a cheap fixture and the lamp. I put mine in the Smith Victor fixture that's lived in my equipment closet for 20 years and now I have another LED light to use around the studio. Right now I'm using it through a 3 x 6 foot, Lastolite aluminum frame with a 1.25 stop diffusion scrim. It looks beautiful. I like it.  I bought mine at Precision-Camera.com but you can also get them from Amazon.com. Budget lighting at its best!

Portrait sessions follow their own pathways. If you are doing it right everyone is happy.

©2016 Kirk Tuck. "Alaina."

Some photographers I know get really, really anxious when they are called upon to do portraits. They fret about the camera gear they might use. They obsess about what lights to use, how to modify them, where to put them and how to make them all work. When actually in session they become weighed down by the hoary traditions of "posing" and the conventions of "head tilt" and hand placement. With all these subroutines rolling around in their brains one wonders where the joy is in doing a session.

I'm sure that no small part of their concern is their perceived need to appear as an expert to the subject. Another large fraction of their worry might be their fear that they won't be able to remember, or juggle correctly, all the technical issues that are part of the process of taking any lit photograph. Exposure, focus, color, framing, etc. But I would say that the biggest impediment to making good portraits is

A portrait from the studio this afternoon. (Revisedx2).

©2016 Kirk Tuck. All Rights Reserved.

My intention all along, as a photographer, was to take more portraits in styles that I like. I've been working on it lately by asking the people I work with, and see in day-to-day life, if they will drop by my studio and collaborate with me on making portraits. Today I had a young, talented actor named Alaina come by. I'd set up the studio to do classic "actor headshot" lighting and we did a number of portraits in the prevailing "headshot" style. Then I set up a 4x6 foot, 1.25 stop diffusion panel to Alaina's left (camera right) and put one LED light on the other side of the diffusion to create a much more (to me) interesting light.

The panel is very close to my subject and runs perpendicular to the camera plane, extending back into the studio but starting about three feet in front of Alaina. I used a very weak, passive fill on the opposite side. 

The image was taken with one of my favorite camera and lens combinations: The Sony A7ii and the 70-200mm f4.0 G lens. The lens was used at f4.0 (wide open) and the shutter of the camera was set to 1/50th of a second. ISO: 800. Of course the camera was held in place with a nice tripod and the focus sensor was set to her right eye. 

We took about 400 images this afternoon but this is the very first one to catch my eye. I could make some fixes but I'm trying not to overproduce or over enhance the stuff I shoot for myself. 

This "one light" set up is one of my very favorites. I'd teach it in my workshops if I had workshops. It's always a nice look.