Totally off topic: Healthcare. Not a discussion about the Affordable Care Act !!!

I know many of my readers worked for the government or big corporations before retiring or may still work within those entities. I don't want this to devolve into a political discussion about the ACA. I just want to start a discussion about how freelancers access healthcare and what my strategy is for my healthcare. It's part of being a photographer and it's even more important as one hits middle age (and older).

I've always carried health insurance, rarely had to use it. I researched physicians in Austin about 30 years ago, asked my dentist and friends of mine who were doctors in various specialties, and went out and actively interviewed general practitioners. Most people just throw a dart at the dart board of whoever is offered in their employer paid health plan but I wanted an actual partner in my healthcare and I wanted someone who would go beyond the seven minute evaluation and the quick exit after writing a prescription. I wanted the kind of doctor my grandfather was; a caring and dedicated professional who would follow you through life, understand your history and think before diagnosing.

I found a great general practitioner and over the years I'd go in for a yearly physical, get ear infections treated and get my immunizations done. He never blindly prescribed, we talked through modalities of treatment and he offered options and let me know his preferences.

About two years ago my doctor decided he'd had enough of jumping through hoops and reducing fees for the big insurance companies and he decided to re-start his practice as a "concierge medicine" practice. Clients pay a yearly fee (mine is $1,600) and in return they get a thorough yearly physical exam with lab tests and all the office visits one might need over the course of the year.

I was also happy to get a direct cellphone number (not a medical exchange number) so I could get in touch right away if I needed to. Since insurance is not involved (although I still carry an ACA approved policy with a high deductible) there's no paper work when I go to see my doctor. There are no bills, no copays, no road blocks.

I had a rash on my forearm that popped up a day or two ago and after swim practice yesterday I called my doctor's office to request an appointment. It was 9:15 in the morning. The scheduler at my doctor's office let me know they had appointments available that day. Did I want to see my doctor at 10:15 a.m. ? They could make that happen.

I arrived on time and was ushered straight into an exam room where my doctor's nurse took my temperature, blood pressure and asked me a few pertinent questions. She was out of the room for 30 seconds when there was a knock on the door and my doctor entered. He examined the rash and prescribed something. He burned off an actinic keratosis on the other arm with liquid nitrogen. Then he asked me how life was treating me. We talked about my dad's recent cardiac event and my anxiety over the impending house sale. In all he sat and chatted with me as a friend and advisor for nearly 45 minutes. I left with the assurance that the rash was not some deadly cancer (me: ever the hypochondriac), feeling better about my recent changes in lifestyle (father's administrator and supervisor of his care) and happy to see that my long term "white coat syndrome" has largely resolved and that I can actually have a normal blood pressure of 115/65 while talking about my health.

Jointly my wife and I pay nearly $20,000 a year for health insurance although both of us are very healthy and rarely need more than glancing course correction. That represents nearly 15% of our income. Some of my associates suggest that I not pay for the concierge medicine and only pay for health insurance but I can say that once you've experienced appointments on demand, real continuity of care and the unhurried attention of a professional you trust it would be very difficult to give it up.

I remembered back, as I was writing this, to December 24th which was the day my mother was rushed to the emergency room. Being able to get my personal physician on the phone on Christmas Eve to talk me through the enormity of issues confronting my mother, and, by extension, me as her medical P.O.A. was something I just can't put a price on.

At 62 years old I am cognizant of the inevitable decline all of us will eventually experience. No one gets out of this alive. But there are good ways to get care and frustrating ways to get care. For me the investment in a dedicated professional seems to be a bargain.

If you are a freelancer under 65 years of age what is your strategy? Have you looked into Concierge Medicine providers? What has your experience been?

In a way my physician has become more of a freelancer, like me. He's just working on a fixed retainer. I get the whole idea. I like it. I'm waiting to see what changes in whole insurance world. I'd love to be able to buy a catastrophic policy and have that in reserve instead of having to duplicate some expenditures to get my care the way I want it.

You could buy a lot of cameras for $20,000 a year.......

"Why does that photographer shoot so many images of each scene???? He must get paid by the frame."

A photograph from the opening night show of "The Beauty and the Beast" at Zach Theatre. With Meredith McCall, John Christopher and Martin Burke. Photographed with a Panasonic GH5 and the very nice Olympus 40-150mm f2.8 Pro series lens. Get one. They're great!!! Sorry no affiliate link for you...

It always comes up. "Why do you shoot so many frames?"

I'll look at the results of a photo shoot; either a portrait session or a dress rehearsal, and I will have shot something like 100+ images for a "simple" (no such thing) portrait or somewhere north of a 1,000+  images for a two hour dress rehearsal of a live theater production. That's a lot of frames!

I've watched other photographers work hard and with much gnashing of teeth shoot ten for a portrait and a couple hundred for a live performance. Am I just stupid or am I a gluten for editing punishment?

I'll give myself the benefit of the doubt and toss out a rationale based on my personal experiences.

In making a portrait rapport with the sitter builds as you spend time together. There's a rhythm to the shooting; a cadence almost, and it takes most sitters some time to accept it and then, ultimately ignore it as they become more and more comfortable with the whole process of being photographed in a studio. In most cases we could probably toss the first dozen or two images and be pretty confident that the best stuff will come around the 2/3rds point in the session.

In addition to the "warm up" frames there is also the question of micro-expressions; little changes in expression that are more telling than one might at first believe. Little things like tension around a subject's mouth or eyes, a smile that's forced. If you see these things shooting more frames gives you time to re-direct conversation or direction and head into a different look. And, as I suggest, sitters get more comfortable over time --- if you engage them genuinely and with good intention.

After we get things happy and calm I might see and expression or gesture+expression that I really like and then we shoot more frames while we fine tune all the details, from the way hair falls to the way a collar sits on someone's neck, all the while working back to that great expression/gesture. It takes frames and a certain amount of trial and review to get things where you probably want them.

Once you have some really good frames the last 20% of the shoot is spent seeing if there is any way to improve the work and get even better frames. It's easy to see how you could get to 100 or more images in twenty minutes or so of working with a portrait sitter.

Yes, if you only took 12 you might get a useable frame but would it be a good frame? Would it be a photograph that both you and the sitter would be proud to share? The numbers are your friend in this case. You can throw away all your mistakes in the editing phase but the big mistake is to not have taken the great image in the first place, constrained by your own overly frugal regards for digital frames....

But what about show photos? Well, you are still looking for the perfect expressions but as in the image above we now have more parts in motion. We have three people, all moving, all expressing all doing their parts. In a world in which I would have absolute and complete control, an endless budget and infinite patience I would photograph each actor individually and with every variation of pose and gesture I could think of and then I would select the best frame of each actor and drop them into a master frame.

But that's not the reality of theater photography. You don't have unlimited access to actors. You don't have infinite budget for retouching and compositing and the theater probably wouldn't want that service if you could provide it. They value authenticity over perfection.

So we overshoot each scene so that we can be reasonably sure that there will be at least one frame in which everyone looks great, has their eyes open, is turned in just the right direction and in which the photographer has nailed composition, focus and exposure. Oh, and good handholding technique. As weird as it may sound your "perfect" selection ratio might be one really good and usable photograph out of a series of 50 or 60 that don't really make it.

With theater you also have to add in the reality that this may be the first time you've seen the productions and have no idea what comes just after the shot you thought was going to be the ultimate keeper. I keep shooting because I don't want to stop only to find the very next second or minute or whatever holds an even better version of the frame I just shot. We can always trash the frames that don't work but we can never get frames we lost by assuming we'd already hit the peak of action only to take our eyes off the prize just as it turned to gold. A little extra shooting and a little extra editing is the price we pay for looking for the potentially great shot in a sea of adequate shots.

And that's why I shoot so many frames.

One last thing. I may be partial to a certain look or gesture or expression but I try to shoot beyond my preferences because clients may have different tastes, points of view, or understandings about what constitutes a great image for their marketing efforts. In a very real way I'm shooting get stuff for me and for them even if the stuff in question is shot in two different ways. At least, if I overshoot, more of us will be happy with the final choices we get to make.

If I were shooting still life stuff to a tight comp we could probably get the shot in three frames....and two of those would just be safeties...

On a different topic (kinda): I wish Olympus made lenses for other camera makers. I love my m4:3 cameras partly because the two Olympus Pro lenses I use are so darn good. But I'd love to have them make a 25-125mm f4.0 lens for full frame Nikons and Sonys because I'm almost certain they'd blow the doors off what the big boys put on the market. And I know their image stabilization would also rock. Ever thought about what would happen if every photography player just played to their strengths? The lens I described just above with Nikon or Canon color science and Sony mirrorless tech? We couldn't even use a system like that. It would be too good for most uses. We'd end up crying over the lost potential........

Maybe it's just the heat talking...

A production photo of Brianna Brooks at "Belle" the Zach Theatre's Production of "Beauty and the Beast." Now, if I can only remember which camera and lens I used to get this one.....

Belle at the Castle of the Beast.

I made it sound like I was on pins and needles this week when shooting the photos for "Beauty and the Beast at Zach Theatre. Yeah, I did two different shoots and also attended a non-photographic run through as an exercise in scouting; but the truth is that I enjoyed every minute of it. I've been shooting marketing images at show rehearsals for decades and I guess I've done it well enough so that each new marketing director doesn't come in and try to "manage" me, or give me shot lists, or tell me how to shoot the photographs. Instead they tell me when the curtain will be going up on a rehearsal and they tell me when they'd like to get the final images. With an open ended mission and a bag full of cameras and lenses to play with --- what's not to love?

I shot at the play for as many days as it took to get the shots that I wanted to see. That's how it works.

Camera and lens? Not the Nikon. It was the GH5 and the Olympus 40-150mm f2.8 Pro zoom. 1/80th of a second, lens wide open. ISO 1600.

Just re-read something I wrote in 2016 for the blog and it was like someone tossed a bucket of cold water on my head. Again. Here, read it:

https://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2016/02/changing-gears-is-sometimes-about.html

Here's a pretty photo to look at instead. Just in case you've exceeded your reading quota for the day.

A PhotoShoot That Took a Long, Long Time. Two Cameras Systems and Three Rehearsals Later....

Zach Theatre is producing "Beauty and the Beast" and it's been a rugged slog for me this week. Not that it's particularly hard to be a theater photographer but it's hard to know sometimes when to stop.

Let me explain.

This production required some large and complex set pieces; a big castle that would sit on the turntable at the Topfer Theatre meant that it needed to be finished out in 360 degrees. There was a large, live band. There were fog machines and amazingly complex lighting and effects. The costumes were amazing and intricate. And the cast was numerous.

I decided at some point, probably while walking around aimlessly in the heat, that I'd really like to shoot the marketing photographs at the dress rehearsal and tech rehearsal with my two Nikon D800 cameras. On reflection I remembered that we generally had an audience at our invited dress rehearsals and that the Nikons are far from silent. I decided to finally order an accessory I've gone back and forth about for well over a year; a Camera Muzzle. I found the link on Amazon and ordered one. It's a soft-sided semi-blimp that reduces the sound of shutter clicks by enclosing the camera in a very well padded (and roomy) case. There's even

How small a camera do YOU really want? Is there a smaller size limit that makes a camera unusable for you?

The photographer in this image has average sized hands. 

Love the web. It has an iron clad memory and no memory at all. You can go back and find just about everything ever written in the web but it requires you to actually go back and look. It has no memory at all in that people arrive daily to certain specialty sites and their understanding of say, photography, starts on the day of their arrival. To them, there is no history.

I wrote something over the weekend about Nikon's upcoming mirrorless announcement and was trashed as someone who is "a dinosaur" "permanently welded to ancient DSLR technology" "unable to understand the advantages of EVFs" and so much more. Apparently I have no standing to predict or suggest future camera designs because I (supposedly) have no experience or understanding of the whole magical miracle of mirrorless cameras. Really?

My desire for the new mirrorless Nikon, for whatever new camera hits the market, is that it be large enough to comfortably held and used for long periods of time, and this desire is a result of having owned, nearly eight years ago, a full little Nikon V1 system, complete with pixie sized lenses. It was novel at the time and it was only hampered in image quality by a somewhat noisy one inch, 10 megapixel sensor. 

From a handling point of view the camera was not optimal for heavy use, daylong use, quick use, etc. It was a sweet handbag camera and a perfect travel camera for someone who might take a couple dozen well considered images in a day. For someone shooting hundreds or thousands of images in a day the small size was ironclad insurance that you would have hand cramps by the end of the day. 

I'm hoping Nikon understands the need for a camera to have a certain size in order to work effectively and comfortably.

Please understand that my "request" is not some mean or "bitter" reaction to progress nor a "red flag" of me "aging out" of the industry and being "wedded" to old technology and being unwilling to change. 

A quick look through the 3710 blog entries I've written over the last nine years would inform newcomers that not only have I owned, and extensively used, the Nikon V1 mirrorless system but also the first models of Olympus and Panasonic m4:3rds cameras; including: EP-2, EP-3, EP-5, OMD EM5, OMD EM5ii, G5, G6, GH3, GH4, GH5 (still in current inventory),  and also the Sony Nex-7, Sony 6300, Sony A72, Sony A7R2, and many, many one inch sensor cameras. All purchased with my cash, all used for months and months before moving on. If I say something about the handling of one of these cameras it's not fictional conjecture but the result of lots of time spent with the product. 

Mirrorless rocks. The Panasonic GH5 cameras are my go-to system of the moment. 

The Nikons work for lots of interesting stuff. I hope they survive as a camera company and that their new model is workable and lovable. 

I sense some jealousy from some people who write most virulently about my shortcomings. I'm lucky to be able to afford whatever cameras I want and to trade them whenever I please. That doesn't mean I don't understand the features and benefits of each ---- for me.

Here's my honest question for power users: Do you really want cameras to get smaller and smaller? Is there a bottom limit? Is there a point at which your cameras is too small to easily use? Let me know.

Image for an ad campaign for dermatologists. In studio. Austin.

©kirk tuck.

Change or die. When people ask me about camera brands I think about the second "Thor" movie from Marvell. The scene in which Odin asks an almost defeated Thor, (who is convinced that not having his magic hammer will lead to his defeat), "Are you the God of Hammers?" 

Odin reveals that Thor's hammer is not the source of Thor's power but just a tool to help him channel that power. As photographers we get to use whatever cameras we want to channel our powers, we are not wed to our current cameras for life. Only Loki worships the brands.

Debate at the Vatican.

© kirk tuck.

Actress in Studio.

©kirk tuck.

Making film for the printing press.

©kirk tuck.

Photograph of dancer's feet.

©kirk tuck

Test lenses with your own usages in mind. Not through the eye of a reviewer checking all the boxes...

Ballet practice at Zach Theatre. 

I love reading lens reviews by good writers, and the reviews are usually both accurate and at the same time not always cogent to my photographic needs. Here's a case in point, I wanted a lens for my Nikon cameras that could handle the longer end of the focal length ranges; the 70-300mm area mostly. The Nikons are a second system for me (after the Panasonics) and I didn't want to dig in too deeply as I did the last time I owned a little collection of Nikon stuff. My belief is that many of the less expensive options in lens from Nikon are more than sufficient for most tasks and that the very expensive lenses in each category represent a poor expense, unless you constantly use the high end lenses at their tip of the spear performance range. 

If I were an indoor sport photographer shooting in dimly lit arenas then the faster aperture of the 70-200mm f2.8 lenses would seal the deal for me; but I'm not. I cover different kinds of work and, for the most part, I rarely have to follow fast action in poor light so I am loathe to spend something like $3,000 on a lens unless I know I'll be using it at its peak potential over and over again. 

It's funny how the reputation of lenses can change over time as well. The first generation of the Nikon 70-200mm f2.8 lenses were heralded by less careful reviewers as a miraculous new optic that changed the paradigm of fast, medium telephoto zooms forever!!! Most people bought that view point  and repeated it. Until it was found that the lens had severe breathing issues. As one focused closer and closer to the minimum focus distance with the lens set at 200mm the actual focal length shifted all the way down to 135mm. Then followed some better testing methodologies and it was found that the Canon equivalent, while at least as sharp, did not change focal lengths with closer focusing. The initial reviewers revised their premature worship for the Nikon lens and Nikon has just now caught up to Canon on their third try...

Consider a lens that I've been playing with for a while. It's the Nikon 70-300mm f4.5-5.6 G VR. It was introduced to much fanfare in 2006 or 2007. It was formulated for full frame at a time when many of the Nikon lenses were designed mostly for DX (APS-C) cameras. It had an ED element. At the time the reviews were pretty uniformly positive. Thom Hogan called it, "Highly Recommended."

It was not an inexpensive lens in its time, priced around $750. It was enormously popular because it handled a good range and did so with very good performance over most of the common metrics. it was much lighter than the "pro" lenses. It had capable VR. But, like many longer zooms, part of its design compromise was a slight decline in overall image quality near the long end of focal length range. During the first few years of its existence this was accepted as being a marginal tick against what was an excellent overall performer. 

Lazy writers grabbed ahold of the idea that the performance was less than perfect at the long end and amplified that idea until it became the one flaw for which the lens became known. The lens, once a great choice for a wide range of photographers, is now relegated to used shelves at the princely asking price of between $200 and $250 for a mint condition copy.

Being a gear contrarian I couldn't help but pick one up. I went to Precision Camera to find one and was amazed that they had four used copies, all priced at $249. I picked the cleanest, most sparkly, and happiest looking one in the bunch and bought it. After reading reviews I expected to be punished by a performance at 300mm that would make the bottom of a Coke bottle look like a better optical option. 

Imagine my surprise when I tested the lens on a Nikon D800e and found it to be, actually, quite satisfactory at 280-300mm and excellent at every focal length between 70 and about 240mm. And I generally use lenses wide open these days so that's were I test them.

Satisfied that the lens would embarrass me less than my own technique shortcomings I started to use it on all kinds of commercial jobs. Anything I shot in full sun, mostly at one stop down from wide open, was great. Focus acquisition was fast and accurate and the VR worked nicely. The big test for my use was in the dark and poorly lit rehearsal studio at Zach Theatre. The space is big and the ceilings about thirty feet high. The lighting all comes from older florescent fixtures affixed to the ceiling. I worked with my usual exposure triangle, first setting a handholdable shutter speed (1/125th), aperture wide open at f5.6 which resulted in the need for an ISO setting of between 3200 and 6400. 

When I examine the image above at its full size (images here are uploaded at 2198 pixels on the long side) from the Nikon D800e I can see perfectly rendered, individual strands of hair on the one young woman who is in sharp (intended) focus. I can see the weave in the fabric of her tank top. In short, the image passes the "use test" for my intended purposes. 

It's also light enough to use all day long. 

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying this twelve year old lens is the end all and be all of 35mm optics, and I'm not saying the extra two stops of aperture wouldn't be critical for sports or other high motion shots. What I'm trying to get to is the idea that fewer shots need the "absolute best" performance one can buy and many, many shooting situations can be well done with lesser than state of the art tools. 

My take is that one should be able to judge a lens (or camera) based on how that person works. What that person's photographic interests are. What level of perfection they are compelled to achieve and how much they can afford to spend on the effort. The 70-300mm did not mutate itself over the its retail life time from a "pristine optic" that was "highly recommended" into a pile of crap that no one in their right mind should consider using. We have more or less just fallen victim to the sales mantra of a new medium = sales guys who leverage the web to convince us that we can not drive unless it's in a Maserati.... Not so, a Honda Accord or Toyota Camry still work fine for daily commuters; and that's who most of us are as photographers.

If you are wiling to test with an open mind you will often find treasures of a slightly earlier time that are more than adequate for the job you have at hand ---- and often for a fraction of the price of the newest and shiniest lens.

I get it. I get it. You are a sports guy shooting in the far north of the U.K. in the dead of winter in a blizzard at dusk and you need every photon you can capture just to see an image at ISO 25,000. I'm a guy in Austin, Texas who has to buy lots of expensive variable ND filters just to be able to shoot at reasonable apertures in the blazing sun. Buy what you need. I won't judge. 

Sunday morning stream of consciousness. Another D700 joins the team.

Ben and the Leaf A7i Digital Camera.

Thursday, last week, was a lot of fun for me. I had nothing pressing to do. The hoopla of Independence Day was past. I had signed up to photograph the kid's programs at long time client, Zach Theatre, and I was ready for a day spent playing with two cameras, three lenses and no shot list, no minute by minute schedules.

I clipped my official, silver colored Zach name badge onto my shirt pocket, picked up a magnetic key card and spent the day walking between the theater's three stages, two rehearsal halls and two temporary classrooms. I was aiming to get a representative sampling of the program's participants; kids from five years old to high school age, and I was looking for a nice mix of activities; from acting to dancing to playful improvisation. 

The theater will use the images to promote their programs and recruit students from across every neighborhood in Austin. 

I started in the biggest rehearsal hall where the kids were learning the basics of ballet and where the theater had set up about forty feet of portable ballet bars against which to practice the various dance positions. Since the kid weren't moving fast here it was a great place to concentrate on tighter compositions of individual kids concentrating on their poses and showing off a bit of innate physical grace. I started off shooting with an 85mm 1.8 lens but I felt like I had to get too close to get the tight compositions I wanted and my proximity seemed to invasive. I then opted for the 70-300mm VR and it allowed me to comp as tightly as I wanted without being right in the mix.

That lens, the 70-300mm afs ED VR has gotten mixed reviews over time. When it was first introduced reviewers like Thom Hogan called it, "Highly recommended." Other reviews claimed it to be very, very sharp at every f-stop up to and past the 300mm mark, giving up only a bit of sharpness as one neared the maximum 300mm.  Over time, as the fashion of "no holds barred" everything must be the best in the universe took over the photo universe a new mythology started to take hold in which the 70-300mm lens was "okay" but "not in the ballpark" with the $3,000 Nikon 70-200mm f2.8 AE-P etc. lens. It seemed as though someone reached in and threw a switch which turned a good lens bad just because much pricier lenses could perform better at the edges of the use envelope.

At first, because of the revisionist reviews, I was reticent to use the lens at its longer settings but as I started shooting I started ignoring all the written metrics and started just enjoying the reach and the scope of the lens in my hands. Ditto with camera noise. Soon I was routinely pegging the lens over to 300mm and shooting it with reckless abandon; handheld. The light in the hall dictated that I abandon fear of image noise and head right into ISO 6400 territory with both my D700 and my D800e cameras. After reading the hysterics on the web I was almost certain that I'd spend hours doctoring files peppered with chroma noise but I was happy this isn't what happened. 

The beauty of a lens you can use at 200, 250 or even 300mm is the ability to compress images in interesting ways and to also pull out individual subjects by rendering them in sharp focus while dropping the objects around them nicely out of focus.

The 85mm was great for closer, tighter spaces. But I never felt the need to go wider than 70mm during my day of photography.

With the Nikon D800e I felt comfortable using the auto WB even though I was shooting medium sized fine Jpegs with that body. I could tell from spot checking the rear panel with a Hoodman loupe that they color was quite usable. The D700 isn't quite as good at nailing auto WB in hard mixed light situations so in those venues, when using the D700, I made custom white balance settings by doing a preset from a Lastolite white balance target. 

I think the secret of working with kids of all ages is to always have a sincere smile on your face, to be calm and relaxed at all times and to not care too much about making every shot work. It's truly a situation in which the mode and affect you convey are more important than worrying the technical stuff too much. A vibe of being overly concerned with nuts and bolts is contagious and it makes the kids feel like like being photographed isn't as much fun as they otherwise thought. Being mellow and ready to move on if something isn't working perfectly is the preferred method. Things fall apart and re-group all day long. If you didn't nail that perfect expression at 10:15 am so other kiddo will give you and even better expression to try and capture five minutes later.

I used to work with a small camera bag but I used my small, Amazon Basics, photo backpack instead. I'm using some heavier, traditional cameras these days and along with the full frame sensor size comes bigger, heavier lenses. The backpack makes for balanced portage as, as the day went on and I used the 70-300mm more and more I found myself dipping into the backpack for stuff less and less often. 

At the end of the day I had captured about 1200 images. I narrowed the take down to 600 and sent them along to the theater. The marketing director was very happy and had an immediate use for three of the photos. The catalog will serve the theater for at least a year or so and give the marketing team a nice folder of images for fast breaking project. 

The business adopts a second D700. 

It's embarrassing but I have to admit that I've loved using the first D700 I bought, on a lark, a few months ago. I owned one years ago when they first hit the market but I guess I wasn't ready for it back then. Now, after having been through so many systems, the old school nature of the D700 has much more appeal to me know. It's so much more a match to the old film based systems I worked on in the early days of my photography. The D700 is heavy but so solid. And while I own two cameras that are 36+ megapixels each I've come to understand that a great looking 12 megapixel file can also be a very good thing.

On Friday I took a walk and made some images with the D700. When I examined them in detail I liked what I saw very much. The huge pixel pitch and the enormous size of the pixels gives a different look than files from cameras with much higher pixel density and smaller pixels. I can't explain it technically but the difference seems apparent to me. The files feel tighter and the edges sharper. 

The interesting thing for me was comparing similar files taken in crappy light on Thurs. While it's obvious on a 27 inch screen that the D800e files have more resolution it's not the astounding difference most would expect when they hear that one camera has THREE TIMES the number of pixel more than another camera. While it's true you can blow up the files from a 36 megapixel camera to larger sizes you really have to look at linear pixels to understand that you're getting slightly less than twice as big a file if you just compute the number of pixels on the long side of the rectangles.

The reality is that a 12 megapixel files makes a perfect 10 by 15 inch print at about 300 dpi. Can you go bigger on a print? Oh heck yes. Even on my older Kodak DCS 760 (Six megapixels) I was able to have prints made as large as 30 by 40 inches that looked great at appropriate viewing distances. But cameras are so much more than just the sum of their resolution. For anything we're looking at on a Retina screen that's 27 inches across, our 6 megapixel cameras were the tipping point of sufficiency and 12 megapixels is generous. Bigger than that and we're constantly in the weeds of interpolated screen images.

However I want to rationalize my choices I really wanted a second D700 body. The one I bought previously has a bit over 100,000 shutter actuation and I wanted something closer to "new." A week or so ago I was in Precision Camera looking over the used inventory when I came across a mint looking D700. We checked the shutter actuation count and found it to be just a hair over 10,000 clicks. Barely used. I was grappling with too many other things at the time, all financial, and just didn't have the bandwidth to do the amount of self-inflicted justification to buy the camera at the time. But yesterday was different. And the camera was still there. A brief hiatus in the ongoing popularity of this particular model...

The price was $600. The camera was put aside on the hold shelf for me and I headed out to pick it up. When I got to the store (God Bless Bricks and Mortar Camera Stores) to pay for and collect the camera the sales associate informed me that it was "Used Equipment Day" at the store and that ALL used equipment was 10% off. I walked out of the store having spent $540 on a nearly new D700 and with a smile plastered across my face. I only wish I had more time to work this year (I've spent about 45 days this year in San Antonio working on legal and estate issues for my parents...) because the store also had a used Hasselblad 205 TCC with prism and a 110mm f2.0 FE series Zeiss Planar lens, all for about $3300. I could have saved some cash if I had picked it up yesterday. 

But....film?... probably not. There are more D700's out there that could use a good home....