Shooting a series of portraits in the studio with Speed Lights.

"Those whom the gods would destroy they first make bored."

It's finally happened. I am officially bored by cameras. By cameras and all the lore and ritual surrounding their selection, their use and their supposed intrinsic power. I wanted to so love the Fuji X-Pro-2 but even though Fuji's website said all the right stuff the magic was nowhere in sight. I wanted to want to rush out and impoverish myself with their GFX 50S but when I held it in my hands there was no spark; no instant rationalization about how this camera was going to the one that would finally unleash my photographic super powers. I can't even glance at the Nikon website without thinking, "been there, done that so many times before..." And don't get me started on Canon. Not even the prospect of something new from Sony was enough to spark some neurons of anticipation. 

It's an odd realization and, like intestinal gas, this boredom with cameras may be a passing thing. But whether it's transient or permanent it doesn't mean that I've lost my enthusiasm for the actual process of photography. Far from it. What this new boredom has done is focus my attention on a different aspect of picture taking; away from the cameras and lenses and back to

The photo gear downsizing continues. The video gear upsizing is temporarily paused.

Two Photogenic Powerlight 1250 DR's with one umbrella reflector and two speed rings.

I bought my first real studio strobe (electronic flash unit) back in 1979. It was a Novatron 120, pack and head system with one flash head and a box that generated about as much power as a brawny battery powered light that you'd put on top of your camera today. The box, with two connectors for flash heads, was gray metal and the flash head, with its 20 foot cord had a black plastic case and a polished reflector. Of course there was a flash tube and a 60 watt light bulb that served as a modeling light. 

For the first twenty years of my photographic career in the studio I used only power pack and head systems. After the Novatron I bought an 800 watt second Norman flash and two nice, metal heads that had built-in fans. I liked those so when I started to get busy I added more stuff from the Norman system. I eventually ended up with two of their PD2000, two thousand watt second packs and a collection of eight heavy metal flash heads. The PD800 also stuck around. At that point in my career we were shooting advertising projects nearly every day and sometimes for ten or twelve hours at a whack. Flashes had to be robust because when we were shooting still life with 8x10 cameras at f64 we might need to pop the flashes (in a dark room) a couple dozen times at full power to get enough cumulative light on the film. There was this thing called

Kinda O.T. All the cool camera features in the world don't mean much if you arrive ten minutes too late...

Rip Esselstyn. The Austin Swim Club Pool. 

A couple of weeks ago a very nice radiologist e-mailed me and asked me to make a portrait of him. He was joining a large, Austin practice and they needed to have a headshot of him to use in the offices and on the company website. I was delighted and, after discussing our schedules, we decided the weekend would work well and that Saturday at 2pm would be perfect. I put the appointment on my calendar and went about my business.

A week and a few days later I started hearing rumblings about a masters swim meet coming up. I went to the website and looked at the info. The meet was scheduled of the same Saturday as my portrait shoot. I thought about entering the meet because it's at a new outdoor facility that features a 50 meter, long course pool. It's been years since I raced long course but I thought it might be

CAUTION!!!! BANDING!!!! OMG. OMG.

A shot on stage with LED stage lights at Zach Theatre. Sony A7Rii. 70-200mm f4.0. 1/400th shutter. While banding was not apparent to human eyes watching the play it was horrifically obvious to the electronic shutter in my Sony A7Rii.

You really don't have to go far to find banding in just about any camera that uses an electronic shutter. The camera shutters scan from top to bottom. If the light source creating the image is not a constant source there is a probability that you'll see some banding at one point or another. It's part of every alternating current light source. The only light sources that are truly constant are direct current powered light sources. In days of yore even entry level photographers knew that shooting under (badly ballasted) fluorescent lights would cause banding unless you used a shutter speed long enough to allow the band to travel all the way down each frame before the shutter closed. 1/60th was possible but 1/30th was safe. Going into shutter speeds above 1/125th of second could almost guarantee banding and I have countless examples of this fluorescent light banding in conjunction with Nikon D700's, Nikon D750's and any number of Canons. All cameras without electronic shutters. 

For the last two days the folks at DPReview have been running a "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" faux scientific article trying to explain why Sony's new a9 camera showed banding when shooting LED driven screens at a sports event. It is in response to