A growing appreciation for wide angle zoom lenses. The Tokina is proving to be a fun and different lens for me. Especially when paired with the right camera...

Okay. I'm having a blast shooting this big, bulky lens. It's the Tokina 16-28mm f2.8 ATX Pro lens. It's the cheapest of the big, fast wide angle zooms and while nobody is going to insist that the corner sharpness, wide open, is anything to write home about I am starting to understand why so many people like shooting this wide; you can get a lot in the frame and that makes you work harder at trying to pull good compositions from chaos. 

When I stop this lens down to f8 I become fearless about

OT: Securely cleaning up 38 years of haphazard record keeping and filing.

Ellsworth Kelly Installation on the UT Austin Campus.

One of my earliest memories of my maternal grandmother was a visit to her house in the Ben Avon neighborhood of Pittsburg, PA. I was probably five or six years old and I was fascinated that a house could have three floors and an attic and basement. Even more fascinated that every room was filled with newspapers, furniture, housewares, books, lamps, etc. And when I say, "filled" I mean that each room had small walking pathways through the stacks and clutter that occupied the majority of the square footage in each room.  I remember walking into one room on the third floor that had been my grandfather's home office for nearly 50 years. It was filled with IBM typewriters of nearly every vintage. When a typewriter broke my grandfather would put it on a shelf and pull a new one out of a box and continue typing. He never trusted a machine once it failed him. I'm sure he always meant to have the dozens and dozens of typewriters repaired, or at least donated, but he never got around to it.

Once my grandparents filled one house they eventually bought a bigger one nearby. I remember visiting years later to find that the new house was now so full of stuff that the family was storing a mahogany table that would seat 16 under a tarp on the front porch. I don't know where all the stuff came from but it seems that once it entered the house it was trapped their forever...

But this is not a story about my grandparents, it's about my own parents. They bought a modest house in San Antonio about 38 years ago. I never lived in that house as I was already in college and firmly ensconced in Austin, Texas. I would come down for holidays or dinners and I never really paid attention to my mother's tendency to save everything in the event that a greeting card or jelly jar could be repurposed or in case the IRS wanted to see some detail of a return filed 37 years before. 

Most stuff ended up layered in boxes which were layered in closest and in the garage. When I say, "layered" I mean that a box might have old Christmas cards from friends and family, circa 1982 on one layer and under that might be some series EE savings bonds and under those might be a cache of credit card receipts from 1993 and under those might be some photographs from the end of the 19th century. These seemingly endless boxes of stuff were everywhere but since my parents seemed to be competent to handle their own lives the "archives" never hit my radar. 

That all changed at the end of 2017. My mom, the curator and essential content creator for most of the saved material passed away rather suddenly. Then it became glaringly obvious that my mother and her housekeeper had been keeping my dad's progressive dementia and memory loss from the three of us kids. My dad hadn't signed a check, balanced a checkbook or participated in financial record keeping in the better part of a decade. He had no idea what was in the boxes, or, more importantly, where to find important documents and things like checkbooks or bank statements. 

At the time it seemed a herculean task but we were able to find a very good memory care facility for dad. I thought that would be the toughest task to get done in this tumultuous and emotion laden transition... But it paled in comparison to the enormous process of cleaning out my parents house and finding, and securing all their legal documents and financial instruments. 

Belinda and I took on the task of sorting through everything to find all paper with account numbers and social security numbers on it. Anything that could be used for identity theft or information theft. We would head down to San Antonio once or twice a week, from January through May, to both visit my dad and to also sit for hours opening and sorting through boxes, filing cabinets, desks and cupboards. We looked through every nook and cranny. We had a three bin system. One bin was for all things with identifiers on them but which did not need to be saved for legal or financial purposes. This box was called, "Shred." A second bin was for memorabilia. Anything from family snapshots to class rings, old watches, cards from various grandchildren (my brother seemed incapable of tossing anything his kids had made as presents for our parents....) notes, letters, etc. This bin was called, "Memorabilia" and had a note: "to be sorted by Alison and Ned" my siblings being more attached to the nostalgic residue than I.  The final box that Belinda and I worked to fill was for recent tax returns, property deeds, stock certificates, life insurance policies, financial accounts and medical records. All of this material went into a bin called, "Save and File." 

We have, just this week, finished our primary filtering of all the boxes, desks and hiding places. Belinda and I brought the ten moving boxes of shredding up to Austin and called a service that will come to your business or home and shred documents in a big truck fitted with a powerful, industrial shredder. They charge by the pound. We handed over to them 420 pounds of material to shred. It was sweaty work for the technician to pull the boxes out and into the hot interior of the truck but we were overjoyed to get our space back in the studio and in Belinda's office. 

My brother and his wife have taken care to mine all of the memorabilia and to sort it for "keep" and "throw." 

All that's left in the house now is the bulk of the furniture (some rescued by my two siblings and their kids) bedding, kitchen ware and old clothes. We thought of having an estate sale but no one was up for spearheading that so we're working with a charity to have then come and take anything of value.  After that we've found a service that will excavate the house of all trash, unwanted items, unclaimed stuff, pile it all into a dumpster and haul it away. 

So, what is the tangential lesson I've received from the universe by doing this process? First, that most of the stuff we're probably hanging on to is worthless to nearly everyone else in the universe. Second, that over time we spend enormous amounts of money accruing crap we don't use up and don't store well. And, finally, that after we die someone else has to take responsibility to put aside sentiment and radically downsize the ever growing piles of things we thought we'd take out and look at sometime in the future which have laid, untouched, in boxes for decades. In fact, I'm pretty sure my parents had no idea what was finally in most boxes and could not have found anything particular thing which they had not used or seen past two years. 

Two things struck me as odd. One was that my mother and father were fond of Bonne Maman jams, jellies and preserves. I like the look of the jars just as much as the next person but when I opened a cabinet in their kitchen I came across several hundred empty jars which had been used, cleaned out, had the labels removed and were stored with their lids on. There was no sign that my mother had ever reused even one but the collection grew right up until near the end of 2017. 

The second odd thing concerned a chunky collection of U.S. Savings Bonds. Series EE. My mother seemed to collect these as well. She worked for a large insurance company for many years and, in addition to the generous pension that was part of her compensation she also seemed to love the month ly purchase of these government bonds. Since I had been designated as the administrator and executor for both of my parents my mother brought out a thick 9x12 inch envelope on day in 2016 and asked me what she should do with these bonds. It was the first time I knew of them. I told her she should take them to her bank, cash them and put the proceeds into one of her accounts. We never spoke of them again but I called the bank after her passing to see if she'd ever completed the transaction. No. Now the search was on for the envelope. 

We looked in every nook and cranny. Every strong box. Every moving box. Nothing. Finally, I was gathering up clothing and accessories to take to Goodwill or their church's thrift shop as donations. One old canvas bag that hung with some of mom's well used leather purses seemed a bit heavy and bulky so, of course, I looked inside and there was the envelope we'd spent months looking for. 

I can't wait to sell the house. I never liked it. And I'm tired of writing checks for taxes, utilities and maintenance for a house that no one lives in. I'm meeting with a realtor who my elder law attorney has recommended. I hope the sale can be handled with as little intervention on my part as possible. 

I hate projects that go on forever.  I'm stacking up my banker's boxes with old tax returns in a corner of the studio. When I pull out all the old paper from the filing cabinets I'll call the shredding service again. It's cathartic. And it's something you should try not to pass on to your children. Not when they'd rather be walking around testing a new lens....

An interesting solution for interior architecture. Use smaller format cameras....

I liked Abraham's (ODL Design) suggestion that I source an inexpensive Olympus EM-5.2 and use the hi-res mode in conjunction with the 8-18mm Panasonic/Leica lens to make very high resolution shots for my upcoming architectural photography projects. I have one modification that I'd make to his suggestion and that is to try the process with the Panasonic G9 as I like the finder better and it can generate equally large (or bigger) raw files.

The detail that remains to be see is whether or not the 8-18mm lens will actually resolve 45+ megapixels of resolution on the camera's very dense sensor.

I'm working on getting a test camera to see just that. Stay tuned and we'll see if we can't do a head to head comparison. Either that or I can just bag the whole idea of shooting architecture and keep making portraits. Might be a better use of my time.....

Portrait of Jill Blackwood as "Dot" in the Stephen Sondheim play, "Sundays in the Park with George." From the production at Zach Theatre in Austin, Texas.

We were doing marketing photographs for the new play and we were warming up with with some individual portraits. Jill was my first subject of the day and she stood patiently as I fine-tuned the camera and lighting settings.  I've photographed Jill many times over the years and really admire her acting talent. And her tolerance of photographers who fiddle with their cameras too much.

We were doing a shoot within a shoot on that rainy Friday. I was photographing the principal actors while a photographer from the local newspaper was photographing me photographing the models  and a video crew was also filming the actors, me and any other other B-roll they thought they might need in order to complete their production.

Since we had a three camera video crew in tow I decided to light the stage and the set with continuous lighting to make the motion shooting easier. If I had used flash on the dark stage there's no way my skimpy modeling lights would have provided the right illumination for noise free video, and the video is a big part of ourmarketing push.

I set up a bunch of Aputure LightStorm LS-1 and LS-1/2  LED panel lights, some shooting through a six by six diffusion scrim on Jill's right and several more bouncing off multiple 48 inch reflectors on Jill's left side. There is also a "wink" light on the top of the camera just to add a little catchlight to her eyes.  Just a small and inexpensive LED panel...

The video crew did their jobs well and we are closing in on 20,000 views of their opus: Zach Sundays in the Park. Here is more information from Zach about their production: http://zachtheatre.org/shows/main-stage/sunday-park-george/

This is not one of the frames the marketing team chose. I use it here because it's one of the quiet moments in a shoot that is a photo of the transition to the next moment. It's just a quiet moment.

I used a Nikon D800 and the 24-120mm f4.0 VR lens to take the series of images and I used an Gitzo tripod for system support.

A good deal popped up on a Tokina 16-28mm ATX Pro zoom lens for my Nikons. I bought it with the proviso that I could test and return, if necessary. Still mulling...

20mm. f5.6

I did a P.R. job for an architectural firm. We were there to do a ribbon cutting and to make photos of VIPs making speeches. I got to the location about an hour and a half early, no one was there yet, so to stave off boredom I pulled out a tripod and a 24mm lens and made a series of images of interior spaces and exterior glamor shots of the building. I'm not exactly a neophyte at shooting architecture and have a couple dozen magazine covers to my credit from 4x5 view camera work of buildings and historic homes from back in the late 1980's and early 1990's. You know, back when you had to know a bit more, technically, than how to set the HDR function on your DSLR...

I sent along the building images with the photographs they'd requested and didn't give it much thought until I got a very laudatory e-mail telling me how much they loved the work. We exchanged a few e-mails and the next thing I know I'm bidding on a full day of shooting; and the almost promise of future work. 

The speed bump for me was the immediate realization that I'd need something wider than the ancient 24mm f2.8 AF Nikon lens I used that afternoon. I'd already bumped into limitations in that first, informal shoot and knew I needed a lens that would allow me to get a wider frame. More so because I knew I'd want to go a bit wider and then use the lens tools in PhotoShop to correct geometry and keystoning, after the fact. (When you make fixes in post you inevitably surrender a bit of the frame in the process. Starting wider and allowing for a post production crop is the smart way to proceed.  Especially if you are using 36-45 megapixel cameras. You can afford a bit of slop space...

Since this all came up I've been tormenting myself with a bit of recreational lens research. I have the very good Panasonic/Leica 8-18mm lens but I'd like to take advantage of the higher megapixel count for work like this, just as a hedge against my own missteps, and use the 36 megapixel, Nikon D800e.  It would be an added safety factor for the extra cropping I anticipate.

No. I'm not going to invest in Tilt-Shift/PC lenses so don't bother lecturing me on their mandatory use....

I narrowed down my search to a small selection of lenses which included: The Sigma Art 20mm f1.4. I like the idea of one prime but....there's that whole "give me wider so I can crop" argument. For similar reasons I also rejected the Nikon 20mm f1.8. I looked hard at the Sigma Art series 14-24mm f2.8 and, to be truthful, it's still on my radar. Every test I've read gushes about it and the idea of a zoom in that range with high sharpness and minimal distortion is tempting; even at a price of $1299. 

I rejected the Nikon 14-24mm out of hand because it's getting long in the tooth and the value proposition just isn't there. It would be the most expensive of the lenses I'm considering...

A strong contender at a (somewhat) reasonable price was/is the Tamron 15-30mm and I may yet test it. 

In the middle of all this someone suggested that I look at the Tokina 16-28mm f2.8 ATX Pro lens. Apparently lots of people think it goes toe-to-toe with the Nikon 14-24 but at nearly 1/4 of the price. I added it to the reading list and eventually tracked down a bunch of conflicting reviews. "Sharp in the middle but not in the corners...." "Wild and crazy flare!!!" "A great lens at 1/3 the price of...." "bad QC." "Great results." I priced a new one at Precision Camera and at Amazon and found I'd spend about $629 to get one brand new. I filed the information in some unused part of my brain and went back to my "research." 

Earlier today a friend called me to let me know he'd been up to Precision Camera, scrounging around, and had seen a used 16-28mm Tokina in mint shape languishing on the Nikon used shelf. I called and asked the salespeople to put a "hold" tag on it and made the hot journey north to check it out. The sales person reflexively dropped the price for me and I walked out with the lens having spent less than $400. 

Even though we hit the century mark this afternoon for the high temperature I was anxious to check out the lens and see for myself just how good or bad it would be for the work I want to do. I shot it either at f5.6 or f8.0 for everything today because that's where it's sharpest and there's no reason for me to try shooting wide open if I'm always going to be on a tripod. By the same token there's no reason to stop down past f11 because any sharpness I might gain from depth of field I'll probably lose to diffraction. 

The center of the image in the focal lengths I am interested in (16-21mm) is nicely sharp and very, very presentable. The corners are a bit soft at 5.6 but get better at f8.0. Of course it takes pixel peeping at 100% on the 36 megapixel files for me to really see this. At normal sizes it's all fine. 

There is also a conundrum involved in shooting super wide with bigger and bigger formats. The corners are much further from the exact point of focus than the centers of the frame and, even with the extensive depth of field provided by the focal length, there is always going to be a discrepancy between the furthest point in the frame and the focus at the center. 

I need a point of comparison so I'll borrow the Sigma Art 14-24mm and shoot them side by side to see what I'm missing. If the results from the Sigma don't beat me over the head I'll be keeping the Tokina. It's fun. And it seems sharp enough for the kind of work I'm imagining for it. Even in those pesky corners. 

You could say the corners are not as sharp in the photo just above but the bottom corners are so much closer to the camera than the point of focus on the middle walkway that you can't discount a certain differential in focus coverage. 

Sharp? yes. 

So. Here's the flare test. Direct Texas sun in the frame. Minimal ghosting flare overall. But look in the bottom right hand corner and see the "prismatic" flare presenting itself as curved rainbows. Kind of fun but not what most architects are looking for. Perhaps a good reason not to shoot directly into the sun.............

The hoary and dated "brick wall test."

And what camera/lens test would be complete without the obligatory self portrait in reflective window? 

Your thoughts on wide angle zooms?

Am I missing something vital?

Should I just buy a bag full of Zeiss primes?

What if I decide I really do hate photographing buildings?

Then what?

So. What Picture do you have Hanging on the Wall in front of your Desk?

 I start every morning looking at this one. It reminds me of why I do commercial work. It reminds me of a wonderful life (still, happily, in progress). It reminds me of why I like 50mm lenses on 35mm camera bodies. It reminds me of a family favorite hamburger joint that is no longer in business. It reminds me of how great french fries in puddles of ketchup are. It reminds me of why I was happy to pay for someone to go to college. And it reminds me of the value of taking a good camera with me nearly everywhere.

So what's hanging up in your daily environment? How does it serve you?

Thirty Happy Minutes Looking for My Own Art. A Midday Adventure with a Panasonic GH5 and an 8-18mm Lens.

Woman and child head to the Ellsworth Kelly Installation at the Blanton Museum.

As administrator for my father I do all kinds of things I'd rather not do; like talk on the telephone to probate attorneys and doctors, pay his bills, generate spreadsheets, keep tabs on his general welfare, buy him new shoes with Memory Foam(tm) soles... etc. All this stuff takes practice and patience. 

Another thing that's not high on my list is consulting with small businesses about advertising and marketing. My endless refrain: "It's not enough to have a great, kick-ass website with scrolling graphics--- you also have to have a strategy to get them TO the website!" Sometimes we get stuck because someone wants to pick the colors for the logos before we even select a graphic designer...

I'm jinxed because I did advertising in what was a small town (Austin) for nearly a decade before hitting photography mostly full time...the town has a long memory.

Then there was the copy for ad that was due today before noon to a specialty medical practice. I can write ad copy in my sleep but sometimes the ink leaks out the pen onto my pillow and makes a mess. I decided to do that today too (no, not leak ink; write the ad...). It seems that no matter how hard I try to be "just a photographer" someone is pulling me in one direction or another.

So, around noon today I shut down the computer machinery, reached over and smacked the iPhone with a large, iron mallet, grabbed a camera and lens and escaped from my office. I was dressed in artist/photo attire. A loosely hanging white, button down dress shirt (complete with wrinkles for that "This artist must sleep in his car" look), an ancient and weathered pair of khakis, with holes in the pockets, a cheap pair of fake leather sandals from Costco that I bought for $19,  and some sort of silly "Just in from hiking the prairies" straw hat. It was the perfect defensive haberdashery for a day with blast furnace breezes and enough moisture in the air to keep cigarettes from lighting. 

In hopes of saving the black vinyl dashboard of my car I've taken to tossing a white towel onto it when I leave the car parked in the sun. It also helps me ensure I've always got a towel, in some shape or another, for those early morning migrations to swim practice. 

Cut off from connected civilization and robo calls (the best cell phone is the one you NEVER take with you) and looking reliably scruffy I headed over to the Blanton Museum to see what was new and to take advantage of the free admission that's a Thursday perk. I parked long N. Congress Ave. at one of the metered parking spaces. I feel like I've been living in Vegas lately because I am purposefully playing the odds with parking. I conjecture that the meter readers can't be everywhere and would rather be positioned in the heart of downtown where parking infringement is more common than coffee. It's like shooting fat fish  in a skinny barrel with a big shot gun for them; lots of closely packed parked targets to prey upon. I might fly under the radar as I have on my last 6 visits to metered zones (nearly everywhere in Austin outside of my neighborhood). I mean, really, who wants to pay two bucks an hour for a metered space? 

Well, I truly messed up on my museum visitation schedule. The museum was open but the first floor gallery is currently closed for the installation of a big show of Modern Aboriginal Art from Australia. I am mostly convinced that they created the show just for the alliterative potential. 

That's okay with me. I have no issue cruising through the upstairs renaissance painting galleries, alternately looking up at the paintings and looking down on the boorish oafs chattering away on bulky cellphones as they waddle from gallery to gallery, making everyone around them miserable. "Let me tell you the details of my messy goiter surgery, Ethel."

But in those moments when I can subdue my piggish elitism I have a great time looking for shapes and colors that I think will look good in photographs. Like this stunning read sitting swash. I happily hit the galleries for a while and then headed over to see (again) the Ellsworth Kelly Installation adjacent to the main museum courtyard. Just over there on the UT Austin campus.

After my compulsively honest tirade about the horrible Olympus menus I thought I owed it to the m4.3rd's world to take up one of the pygmy sensor cameras I happen to own and to wring out as much fun as I could from it today. Of course I was happy with every shot that came tumbling out of the GH5 when I got back to the studio and resuscitated the computing machine/modern photo viewer.

I always feel like a genius when I use the Panasonic/Leica 8-18mm wide angle zoom. I shoot mostly in Jpeg and always have the lens distortion corrector turned on full blast. That way, when I look at my photos, all the lines are straight and none of them wiggle into mustache designs on the top and bottom edges of the frames. Plus, no matter what I do in terms of camera handling, the files always seem sharp and toasty (which means "perfectly baked and full of crunchy detail). 

I meant to make the visit a short one so I limited myself to 30 minutes of looking at stuff directly; without a camera velcro'd to my face, and then 30 minutes of just looking for images that would play nicely with my camera and lens combination. But once I finished at the museum and reacquired my car (yay!!! no ticket once again!) I felt irresistably drawn to Whole Foods on N. Lamar for a rectangular plate of sushi (defying the weather....) and a glass of Champagne. Wrecking my schedule entirely.

I have one more required task this afternoon. I'm meeting a client at a coffee shop. Not to have coffee but to scout the location for a photoshoot we're scheduled to do tomorrow afternoon. I'd have been happy to meet them after lunch but, hey, they decided that 5:15 p.m., right in the middle of a vicious rush hour, would be a much better logistical solution. Ah, clients. 

If I sound a little flippant today it's probably either the result of too much sustained responsibility or it's the strain of trying to research and then buy a new very wide angle lens for the Nikon system. I've been looking at stuff like the Nikon 14-24, the Sigma Art Series of the same focal lengths, some primes ( the Zeiss 21 and 18mm's) and, odd man out, the Tokina ATX 16-28mm lens which has a surprising number of really complementary reviews and is less than 1/2 the price of the other zooms. Or, in the case of the Nikon zoom, 1/3 the price. 

I'll be fine when I get the projects in hand wrapped up, stowed away and well billed. Till then I think I'll just go on doing whatever I feel like in the moments between scheduled drudgery. 

Those Damn menus. And what's with all the people who say, "Once you have them set up you never have to use your brain again....."

This is a small rant engendered by a series of comments on one of Michael Johnston's posts today. He was querying his readers about the virtues and detractions of various small sensor cameras with great image stabilization. The Olympus cameras came up repeatedly. The first verse from everyone was: (paraphrasing here): "Oh, they are great cameras except for the horrible, horrible, painful, brain searing menus..." Which would be reflexively followed by: "but once you take the hours, days, weeks, to get the cameras set up exactly the way you will always use them you rarely need to even enter the menu (hell) again!" As though that was a good and proper way of tackling a photographic tool.

What the hell?  I am sure there may be some who can dip into their camera menu and set all the dozens (hundreds?) of variable items, methodically, and then never have to touch the menu button again but I'm absolutely baffled about who those shooters might be and why they feel that it's rationale, sane, practical, etc. to use exactly the same camera settings over and over again.

I've owned several Olympus EM-5s and several EM-5II cameras and I readily admit that they are capable of taking great photographs, stabilize lenses better than anyone in the universe, and, in the case of the EM-5ii, make really, really good video. But I have to ask what professional or advanced amateur shoots exactly the same thing over and over again? And at exactly the same settings? If you shoot different kinds of images, or go back and forth between video and stills, you'll need to be diving into that swamp creature of a menu every day. Deep dives.

Going from theatrical work to video work to portraiture requires changing imaging profiles, metering modes, shadow and highlight distribution, focusing modes and so much more. Even after owning both sets of cameras and using them for months at time a few days off and the need to find a very specific menu driven control could be downright paralytic. Not to mention that some of the symbols Olympus uses for their menu items are not standard camera icons or abbreviations. And NO! I can't load everything I need onto a Super Control Panel.

I hate hearing that nonsense about setting the camera up once and never touching the "hidden" controls again. It's entirely disingenuous. The people who make this statement might be a rare breed of single subject shooters but the rest of us depend on the same system being able to handle all kinds of jobs and projects.

The ability to justify the Olympus menu system is becoming almost cultish. But the reality is that Olympus has some sort of misguided corporate death wish. Why else make using the product so damn hard? So frustrating.

I thought I might have been over reacting until I started shooting with the Panasonic cameras. The GH5 in particular. Its menus are well laid out. Logical. Easy to navigate.

When I picked up a Nikon D800e it took me about ten minutes to get back up to speed with their menus and they are not nearly as coherent as the Panasonic menus. And I had not handled a Nikon for two or three years before picking it back up.

If you like horsing around with complex spreadsheets, sudoku and the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle then I can respect your ..... affectations, but trying to normalize such a faulty disfunction in camera making is over the top.

Just imagine how great those cameras could be. Great color. Great I.S. Lovely finder. Good, multishot high res modes, better and better video....now imagine the camera was also easy to set up, change menu items, re-set parameters and understand. It would be amazing.

Just don't tell me I can preset a tiny handful of parameters and use them for everything I'll ever do with a camera ever again. That's nonsense.

Battle of the formats. Which one handles live theater photography better? Which is more fun to shoot?

Jill Blackwood at "Dot" in "Sundays in the Park with George".

Oh, we've been busy taking photographs again. I was doing a little informal test on Sunday and Tuesday. I photographed two different rehearsals of the Steven Sondheim play, "Sundays in the Park with George" with two different camera systems. On Sunday I shot with the Nikon D800 and several different lenses, last night I shot with the Panasonic GH5 and two different lenses. The results were interesting and the contrast between the working methodologies was even more interesting. 

It was an illuminating comparison because the lighting, costumes, actors and sets were identical and I could go back and compare results in the same scenes; one set shot with a full frame camera, set to raw, and the other shot with a micro four thirds camera set to fine Jpeg. While there are certainly aesthetic differences between the sets of files there were bigger differences in the way I took the photographs and the difference in efficiency between the mirror free camera and the mirror burdened camera....

This is in no way an exacting test of the two cameras because I was using an odd collection of mid-tier Nikon zooms (as well as a bonafide "antique" lens = the 70-210mm af-D) while I was taking advantage of my investment in great glass for the Panasonic cameras (Olympus Pro 40-150mm f2.8 and the amazing 12-100mm f4.0 zoom lenses), but there is more to imaging than format and glass.

I was restricted to using the Nikons to Sunday evening because of their loud shutter noise. The positive trade off was that since we didn't have an audience in the theatre for the technical rehearsal I could move around anywhere I wanted and get as close to the stage as I wanted. That helped give me a more dynamic set of images and I never had to worry about disturbing "clients." (audience).

That's a huge restriction! If I get serious about shooting theater again with the Nikon cameras I'm certain I'll quickly replace the two D800 variants with at least one D850 just because it has a much, much quieter shutter. I had toyed with buying a product called "The Camera Muzzle" but by the time it came onto my radar I'd missed the shipping window to be able to use it on Tues. Having it Sunday wasn't important (no audience to piss off) but spending $150 on something I may or may not use in the future is irrational, even for me. 

(The Camera Muzzle is a soft camera cover with lots of insulation. It fits over the camera body and lens but has enough room to get your hands inside in order to operate the shutter button and camera controls. Its whole reason for existence is to muffle the noise of mirrored cameras and make them acceptable (acoustically) when you are shooting in certain environments. As I understand, it's not nearly as good a dedicated hard blimp (starting at $1,000) but for $150 does a good job. Your sensitivity and tolerance may vary. Here's a link: CAMERA MUZZLE-FOR PEOPLE WHOSE CAMERAS MAKE TOO MUCH NOISE!!!  It might be perfect for some event spaces where noise can be an issue. But given the bulk, the tendency for your hands to get hot and sweaty, and the not 100% noise abatement, I'm thinking we'd all be better served to use cameras with silent shutters.....

UNLESS---- But "hold that thought." 

From a user point of view (and the owner and purchaser of both systems) I can say that the Nikons operated just as expected and, beyond the noise and the need to constantly chimp exposures, they did a good job making images under fast changing lighting and color temperatures. Had I used the latest and greatest lenses (and a D850) I would have to say that the system has the potential to make superior images for theater work. If I continue to use the big Nikons for live theater shooting I'd certainly want a fast 70-200mm zoom and an equally fast 24-70mm zoom. My current "theater photography wish list" if I want to shoot with the Nikon cameras reads something like this: 2 X Nikon D850's @$3300 each = $6600. 1 X Nikon 70-200mm VR e f2.8 zoom = $2,800. 1 X Nikon 24-70mm VR f2.8 = $2400. The revised system would set me back nearly $11,800. That's a tidy sum. 

And the major downside would be that after spending all that money I would not have an EVF, which I think is an amazing benefit for theater work, or work on any project where exposure and color temperature are constantly changing... Add to that the enormous weight of those fast lenses and even a buff young thing like me cringes at handholding the two cameras and their attendant lenses for hours on end. 

Are you still "holding the thought" I asked you to hold a two paragraphs before? Cool. So let's take a "brand break" and talk in general terms about camera noise. A worst case scenario for me is having to shoot images of a dress rehearsal in a theater just packed with people. Even worse, to have to shoot a performance with a packed house of paying customers in a scheduled show run. Many Fuji, Olympus, Sony and Panasonic mirrorless users will, no doubt, puff their collective chests out and stridently (and usually with a patronizing tone) let me know that THEIR SUPER DELUXE CAMERAS HAVE TOTALLY SILENT ELECTRONIC SHUTTERS as an option. 

Well, good for you. Going forward, in all but the oldest and least well equipped theaters (those still using tungsten lights), you will NOT want to use your "silent shutter" to shoot the action on the stage. Not going to work. Not going to make your client happy. Not going to create problems that can be easily solved in post production. Your silent shutter has just been shut down by LED theatrical fixtures!!! You'll read this, doubt me and then find out the hard and expensive way all on your own...

But here's the deal: While current, high quality LEDs designed for video and still photography use various electrical designs to keep them from flickering during short exposures (1/60th and shorter) the makers of light fixtures for live theater are much more concerned with output power, beam throw and automatic motion control than they are with quelling all the flicker that your cameras might see but which audiences will almost certainly NOT see. More power, more flicker and more cost savings on "un-needed" things like highly regulated power supplies. 

I used to rejoice that my new cameras (almost every mirrorless model and many new DSLRs) had silent shutters but now I ignore them unless I am shooting in a courtroom or need ultra fast (electronic) shutter speeds. The LED lights in Zach Theatre (and in many other venues in which I've worked) create flicker which manifests itself in each frame as a series of light and dark bands which are very, very visible....to everyone. 

Yes, some cameras have features that promise flicker reduction but it rarely works out perfectly in the flawed, artifact-y, real world. 

Hmmm. Last night I was sitting away about six feet away from the closest audience members. No one was behind me or beside me, it was the row six feet in front of me that I was concerned about. Last night was the dress rehearsal and we had an invited audience (family and friends)  so it wasn't a "life or death" but we still want our fans to have a great time so I wanted to be as audibly discreet as possible...

When it got quiet I switched over to the electronic "silent shutter" and immediately saw banding everywhere. The trade-off wasn't worth it. We needed the photos for marketing. I switched back to the mechanical version.

The GH5 has a fairly quiet and well damped shutter. Much, much quieter than the full frame Nikons. But they still make noise. In a raucous show like The Rocky Horror Picture Show, or Tommy, the Rock Opera, or Priscilla Queen of the Desert the sound of a small camera shutter is well hidden by the music and bombast of the performances. But there are quite a few moments in a more cerebral play, like one about George Seurat, that are very quiet, just dialog with lots of dramatic pauses, and, yes, sometimes you can hear the proverbial pin drop. Or at least the shutter of modern camera. 

For most of the performance I tried to time my shots to the sound design on the stage. In all but the quietest moments the shutter was inaudible to the people in front of me. In truth, I could barely hear it in most parts of the play. If everything is equal and you are trying to decide on a good camera for this kind of work it certainly would behoove you to check out the mechanical shutter noise, and noise profile (sharp and tinny or low and mellow) before you toss down dollars...

So, what's my assessment in the battle of cameras in front of the stage? Here's where the Panasonic GH5 wins: 1. The EVF offers the most elegant way to constantly check color and exposure without missing shots because you had to chimp and then check what you have already shot. Pre-chimping through the finder is much more efficient and fluid. In this situation even the very best optical finder is a burden to fast and effective shooting. That big, clear window isn't going to buy you any better focusing or composition but will add a number of steps to your ability to constantly adapt to changing lighting and scene conditions --- second by second.  2. The Olympus 40-150mm f2.8 lens is bitingly sharp and can be used all day long at its widest aperture with no compromise to optical performance. None. The image stabilization in the lens is perfect for the lens. And the 12-100mm lens is in exactly the same rarified strata of lenses. A big win. Yes, I know that Nikon lenses are great as well but at more than twice the weight (not counting the weight of the cameras) they quickly become a burden for long periods of handheld shooting. Oh, and you lose two stops of depth of field with the bigger lens when used wide open. Not important in one person scenes but this can be critical if you are trying to spread focus deeper into the stage for group shots. 3. The sonic profile of the shutter in the GH5 is much lower and more pleasant than the sound of the older Nikon shutters. I do like the new D850 shutter but I haven't done a side by side comparison yet. The acoustic jury is still out.

When I tested the GH5 files against the Nikon D800e files in lower light situations I found that using the GH5 at ISO 1250 got me into the same noise ballpark as files from the Nikon taken at 3200. The noise in the GH5 files is more uniform and grain like and, at 100%, the Nikon starts to show tiny white specks which are not visible when downsampled to the same size as the Panasonic files. 

The pluses for the Nikon cameras are all about format size. The bigger sensor is better overall with noise at higher ISOs. The bigger sensor does give you a two stop advantage when you want to throw clutter in the backgrounds out of focus. The bigger sensor will give you more detail (if you nail focus and exposure correctly) in your images when you blow them up. 

After shooting about 1500 images in each system on the same set I'll give the nod to the Panasonic jpeg files which handled noise well, were every bit as good as the Nikon files at the sizes we'll use the images, and gave me a good, quiet shooting system that I could handhold for hours longer.

If you are currently shooting with one system or the other there is only one compelling reason to switch to or stay with m4:3 and that would be the utility of the EVF. The Nikon stuff really comes into its own for other kinds of shoots we do for the theatre. The bigger cameras are at their best when we do set up shots with big flashes for marketing and posters, with rehearsed moves and total control. In those situations the superior imaging quality of the sensors can be fully leveraged. 

No winners. No big losers. Just different ways of working in a specific kind of location. 

 Matthew Treviso as the boatman.

Paul Sanchez at Louis the baker. Jill Blackwood at Dot.

Amber Quick as "Nurse",  Brian Coughlin as Randolph and B. Mahstedt as Louise