When do I need more? Why should I shoot with the D800e instead of a D700? Do Megapixels Matter Anymore?

Texas Hwy. 165. Nikon D700. Nikkor 35-70mm f3.5 ai lens.

I got curious about how people are using their cameras these days. Back when the megapixel race in DSLR cameras really took off (2004-2013) a lot of well-heeled photo enthusiasts were coming to the market having learned their skills making photographs of film, and, more importantly, sharing the results almost always on prints. If you remember the early days at the crest of the impending acceleration from 2 megapixels to 4, to 8, to 10, and finally to 12 and 24 megapixels the internet was still mostly molasses slow and there weren't anywhere near the photo sharing sites available, or even accessible, to most. I mean, really; think about it, Instagram didn't launch until late 2010 and back then it was limited to cellphone users. In the early part of this century people were carrying over practicing from shooting film and having prints made.

That's why the early years of this century were the boom years for ink jet printers. People thought they still would be sharing via prints and for the first time they had access to their own wide carriage color printers at affordable prices. We all printed. I printed on printers that I converted to pure black and white inks and I had an unstable genius printer for color in the (never reliable but sometimes brilliant) Epson 4000. That rat bastard of a printer seemed to require a big gulp of pricey ink to clear clogs before almost every printing session.

After spending thousands of dollars on ink and paper and many more thousands of dollars worth of time I suddenly realized that prints were no longer important to commercial photographers. I only wish I'd paid attention to the signs a few years earlier.

But as long as we continued to accept the printed print as the gold standard of photography the stridently defended need to put high resolution down on big paper drove us mercilessly to assume that more detail in a camera sensor was always a better thing.

So, here's the funny thing; as far as I can tell people are printing less and less each quarter. I talked to a couple national labs and their sales have been flat, kept alive by lower and lower per print prices and more product extensions (photo books, coffee cups, refrigerator magnets). It's unusual for me to meet a commercial photographer who is still feeding his ink jet printer for anything more than printing a portfolio and almost every aspect of sharing and utilizing photography has rushed to the web. We can thank iPhones and Android phones for training a whole new generation in a whole new way to enjoy/use/share photographs.

And, of course, with ubiquitous sharing on phones and a general decline in detail intensive final usage the rationale for ever growing megapixel counts is falling apart. It's pretty easy for me to see that while current cameras can beat the crap out of lower resolution, older cameras they seem to have gained resolution by shrinking pixel size and lower color discrimination. Basically, it's harder to do Bayer overlay screens as the sizes drop and it's harder to deliver convincing color too. So we were willing to give up very pleasing color in order to look more closely into pores on people's skin. But now we're sharing on laptops and phones and no one sees the detail with the same rabid compulsion as the small cadre of large screen pixel peepers who seem to be aging out of the market altogether.

Someone had it right once upon a time. It may have even been Ken Rockwell. They posited that with the exception of traditional, large four color printing and giant wall photos the majority of people could buy a six megapixel camera and be happy forever. For aspiring pros and ardent (non landscape) hobbyists I'd realistically put the number at 12 megapixels. For the nervous, and those unsure of their own skills the safety blanket metric might extend to 20-24 megapixels. Anything above that and you go into weird trade-off world. If you think you need more pixels then you might as well also step up your search for the ultimate lenses. You'll need them in order to see any difference at all.

I've been going back and forth between the D800 series cameras and my two D700 series cameras and my color/file/look preference lies with the D700s. The D800s are really good cameras and they resolve more than I usually need, but the D700s generate files that look like what I think photographs should look like.

I know this is pie-in-the-sky wishing but I would love to see Nikon come our with a camera that uses the absolute latest BSI chip technology on a sensor that's only 12-16 megapixels. I'd love to see just how well they could deliver perfect (happy) color in the files. And I'd bet we'll still be able to make good and convincing prints when we need to. You know, to show the hard core.

Looking Backward When It Would Be Smarter To Look At Now and Plan For The Future.

Two Friends at the Studio in Westlake Hills.

It seems that most artists with a growing body of work have a tendency to look backwards at what they've done instead of paying attention to the moment in which they exist now. If we've gotten praise and nice reviews for certain photographs we've done we tend to have a prejudice toward showing those to clients and friends and allowing the positive feedback to keep us closer to the worn path of making the same kind of work; hoping for the same sorts of accolades. But if we are to grow and continue to be relevant in our circles or marketplaces it's vital that we continue to move forward with our visual work.

I started out the month determined to mine through all the good work I have done in the past 30 years with the goal of making a printed portfolio that would showcase it well. My logic was that the pieces I was choosing were "proven" winners, and they would ensure successful portfolio shows. But, of course, I ran this idea past my in-house "focus group" and the "new hire" suggested that I made my choices not because they would necessarily appeal to a current audience but because I was predisposed to keep the photos in the portfolio because I had adopted an affection for the work and I was "rooting" for its continued popularity so strongly that I had lost my objectivity about the work's relevance to an ever changing audience. And audience that decidedly doesn't share my long history, my understanding of the arc of photography or even how difficult it was to do technical work at a high standard back in the shrouding mists of time.

My young mentor suggested that a portfolio that would be most effective today would reflect the age, tastes and milieu of the present, not represent milestones of one's personal career from the past. "That" he said with a certain degree of astringent kindness, "Is what museums are for...."

I realized that he was right. Right on the money. I look at the image above and I see it through goggles of sentiment. The woman on the right was my long time (brilliant and supremely capable) assistant and the woman on the left was one of our friends and favorite models. I am always predisposed to enjoy looking at their faces. The image was shot on black and white film and souped by me, by hand, in our darkroom; which I also remember too fondly. The final print represented lots and lots of time spent in that darkroom, bathed by the red glow of the safe light (actually the orange/yellow glow of the sodium vapor safe light....), listening to old Joni Mitchell C.D.s and breathing in the acidic bouquet of fresh stop bath (glacial acetic acid).  A lot of work went into the image but no one besides me sees or intuits the hours spent making the image come alive. 

I looked through the other prints I'd selected for the portfolios and had the bittersweet epiphany that my insightful guide in this process had clearly identified my overwhelming marketing problem: I was stuck in the past. My goal, as he explained it, should be to start working more, as I did when he was growing up in the house, and watching the parade of projects and people flow through the studio. By doing more work I would, he suggested, create a much needed and ever growing inventory of more modern images. Images that could be more technically polished by a blend of the thousands more hours of experience I'd accrued since doing the older work coupled with the ability to more completely polish each image via higher quality camera output and the ultimate flexibility and control of PhotoShop. 

But most importantly I would be creating images that will be accessible to the buyers and users of commercial photography, in the moment. 

It's good to have people who are willing to help you make honest and effective assessments. It sure can't hurt.

A Silly Lighting Solution Done Mostly Just to Do it.

Shower heads. 

I was photographing at a Spa out near Lake Travis when I came across this shower room, just off the massage area. I wanted to shoot a close up with the water running and I wanted the light to come from below and really accent the water stream. I thought about it for a few minutes and then it dawned on me that with little LED panels I could put the lights anywhere I wanted them. 

I stuck them on the floor, directly under the water streams, but first I stuck both of the LED panels into plastic bags. With my camera on a tripod I could select any shutter speed and aperture combination I wanted so I tried to find one that isolated the shower heads from the background without completely obliterating the background. This is the image straight out of camera and I'm sure we prettied it up a bit in the post production but it was a lot of fun watching my assistant's face when she realized I was going to subject my lights to "water torture." 

It's not the first time we've stuck lights in odd and wet places. A few years back we were photographing a zero edge swimming pool at sunset for an architecture magazine and we sealed portable flashes, equipped with radio triggers, into several layers of Ziploc(tm) plastic bags and tossed them into the pool for more illumination. It all worked out well. I did have to jump in and retrieve the lights at the end of the session but I never seem to mind getting in and out of swimming pools....

Here's what our BHS lighting looked like in the shower...

And here's the pool shot:

OT: Life is all about making choices.

Les Miserable. Zach Theatre.

It seems fashionable these days for bloggers to share their weaknesses, addictions, foibles and idiosyncrasies. I think I'm generally transparent enough for most of my readers to discern that I'm indecisive; long term, and too decisive; short term, when it comes to buying cameras and lenses. What seems like a brilliant strategy in the moment seems like a blunder when I look at the long game. I think you can also tell that I can ignore logic, in the service of immediate gratification, better than most. Otherwise I'd still be shooting with the two Canon 5Dmk2 cameras I bought nearly ten years ago, along with the selection of lenses which, in hindsight, I did not appreciate enough. Those cameras would have  served me just as well as the never ending conveyor belt of new camera models and brands I've dallied with over the years.

Maybe worse than others I subconsciously believe

Isn't it time to concentrate a bit more on light and lighting than on cameras? Aren't nearly all cameras good enough by now?

It's funny to me, thinking back to 1980 when I was a teaching assistant for Reagan Bradshaw and Charlie Guerrero's commercial photography classes at the University of Texas at Austin, that no one at all talked about camera brands; all we really talked about was lighting. How to light. What to light with. How to modify light. Why to make the light on our subjects look a certain way. We mostly defined our styles by our approaches to light and lighting. Now we seem to have collectively abandoned our pursuit/understanding/appreciation of light and lighting and lean mostly on trying to capture whatever circumstances have provided us. It's kind of lazy and kind of stupid, if you are trying to earn a living as a photographer (or videographer) and you want to differentiate yourself from the vast hordes of people who are also trying to become photographers.

This is just one small post and I can't teach much about lighting here; other than trying to get across that I think understanding how to manage or create lighting is vastly more important than whether the camera you choose has 12.8 or 12.9 stops of dynamic range. But I can ridicule you for continually spending mega-dollars on soon-to-be-obsolete cameras when the purchase and mastery of a handful of lighting instruments (which, really, are never obsolete) can make you a much, much better image maker.

Once in a while you might be able to wait around for the light to get neat and you'll trigger the shutter just as golden hour becomes platinum hour and the light gets so neat that you think you are going to wet yourself, but if you do this (commercial photography) for money the real trick goes beyond recognizing that "once in a lifetime natural lighting" and heading over into the productive camp of people who can make lighting absolutely fabulous on command. 

My first recommendation would be to read up and understand the logical underpinnings of controlling light. Buy your own copy of "Light, Science and Magic" and get reading. Don't depend on watching endless YouTube videos about how hacks light and they try emulating them; most of the stuff on YouTube about lighting is worthless dreck. Thirty minute of mindless chit chat for about thirty seconds of barely usable lighting tips. Just read the book and start experimenting with real lights by putting into practice what you've learned from the book. 

My second recommendation is that you buy a continuous light (a cheap tungsten work light at Home Depot is fine) and then experiment using it at every conceivable angle in relation to your main subject. See what happens when you move lights up, down, to the side, etc. Then experiment with modifiers. Start with small umbrellas and then get bigger and bigger and bigger. Umbrellas are cheaper than workshops. Buy umbrellas from 32 inches in diameter all the way up to 72 inches in diameter. Put the light into them so the beam fills the entire umbrella and then marvel at how different a small umbrella, used at six feet from a human subject, looks when compared to a 48 inch, 60 inch and 72 inch umbrella. Then see how each umbrella's look changes as you move it closer and further from the subject. 

Lighting is a life long learning exercise and I'm not about to tell you everything I've learned over the last 40 years here on the blog. But if you don't pick up a light or two or three or four and get started you'll never master a look that you love and that you can create almost anywhere. The beauty of lighting instruments is that the basics don't change based on the price you paid for a light, nor on how ancient the light fixture might be. Doesn't matter if it's Chinese or Swedish. Once the photons leave the light source they don't remember where they came from. 

The web is heating up now with discussions about what might be in the new Nikon. There are dozens of videos by self-proclaimed experts who are comparing $3300 cameras to other $3300 cameras. There are a million sites trying to suss out the minor differences between lenses. But the reality is that none of this is meaningful if the lighting you shoot in is ugly and plodding and....boring. 

I may change systems more frequently than you change your Depends(tm) but what doesn't change is my appreciation for lights and lighting. I buy cheap lights and I've owned expensive lights; coming out of a good umbrella they are all perfectly usable. The real things to invest in are knowledge and experience in making the light your bitch. No one gives a shit about your A7Riii or your D850 if you light like moron. No Otus lens will save you if you can't create a great look with a good fixture and well chosen modifiers. It's all excuses and credit card abuse unless you follow through and master the light. And nearly all of the professional digital cameras made since 2008 are more than adequate.....as long as the light is good.

I once met a guy who could light with a bed sheet and a 100 watt lightbulb screwed into a twelve dollar work light fixture. He could shoot with a Canon Rebel and a kit lens and his images would absolutely mesmerize and gob smack legions of hacks who were shooting in poorly made light with the world's best cameras. Don't be part of the legion of hacks when a little bit of brain work and some evenings experimenting can get you closer to the amazing guy spectrum. 

Decent cameras and great lighting beat the crap out of perfect cameras and shitty or indifferent lighting. Every time. 

You can't wear most photographic lighting equipment to a gallery opening or studio party (as you can a new Leica or Sony) but it lasts nearly forever, costs less and is a lot more important in the creative process than "sexy" cameras. 

Retro is Looking Modern When it Comes to Cameras. Just Look at all the People Embracing ancient Nikon D700s....

It's funny to watch progress march on in the field of cameras. Camera makers are learning how to get more and more profit from less and less expensive-to-manufacture cameras while using the lure of "newest" to hook generations raised on the worship of technology. Pull apart a mirrorless camera like the A7Riii and you'll be amazed at just how few parts reside in the actual body. There are very few moving parts, beyond the shutter mechanism, and even the shutters are drop in modules made in bulk by companies like Seiko. Linkages that required mechanical sophistication and precise assemble have been distilled out of the process and replaced by software (not that eliminating parts is at all bad!). Lens design is following along. Lens makers can choose different design compromises than they have ever been able to before because they can use software to fix heavy vignetting or vast amounts of geometric distortion. As megapixel counts climb one of the benefits

Slightly OT: Apple, Inc. amazes the financial world with strong quarterly profit report and record setting market capitalization of over one trillion dollars.

Ben with his first Apple Computer. A Blueberry iBook. At his own desk in my studio.

Ben with his current Apple Computer. A MacBook Pro. At the dining room table.

I was reading the financial news this morning, over coffee, and this was the story that jumped off the screen. Apple hit ultimate financial unicorn territory and hurdled over the one trillion dollar mark for valuation to make market history. I'm thinking that Michael Dell's advice, given in the late 1990's, that they (Apple) just shut the company down and give the shareholders their money back, is one of the few utterances that Mr. Dell has come to regret...

Why am I writing about financial stuff? I'm just a photographer... but I've always followed a good piece of advice I got from a financial heavyweight back in the early 1980's. He told me that the mantra "invest in your own business" was misguided and that one should direct as much of one's independent business profit as possible into investments outside one's own company. 

Over the years we've had many opportunities to invest in photography stuff that would have probably bankrupted the business instead of helping it gain momentum. I'm thinking of the first few generations of digital backs for medium format and large format cameras that hit the market in the 1990's. Or giant, multi-page sourcebook ads.  Giant, fancy vehicles. Esoteric optics that I might actually use only once or twice a year. An army of office managers and assistants that I'd need to pay whether business rose or fell. Or the early, professional Apple

Cruising around with what was, until recently, the world's best camera for image quality .... Also, the right way to take the day off.

The remnants of a good lunch at the Red Bud Cafe in Blanco, Texas.

I remember just a few months after the Nikon D800/800e was introduced to the market reading the review and scores from DXO. They gave the camera an overall score of 96 for image quality; a score that was only bested at the time, if I remember correctly, by a $40,000 medium format Phase One camera (which was subsequently removed and replaced by the Pentax 645Z at 101). After reading all the current gushing over new models and new sensors across the web I went back to DXO last night thinking I would see dozens of newer cameras easily bettering the scores of the 2012 model Nikon. After all, it's been six years since that camera was debuted. 

Interestingly enough there were very few cameras, across all brands, which even came close to equaling the potential image quality of the D800e (or the D800 which sits one point behind its  sibling). The new Nikon D850 is sitting at 100 points along with the Sony A7Riii, the Nikon D810 is a hair behind those two at at 97 points and the Sony A7Rii is two points ahead of the D800e at 98 points. The latest Pentax ties the six year old Nikon and the latest Sony A7iii is also tied with the D800e. So, Sony might have all the magic and has an eight year advantage over the D800e and.....the score is a tie. Nice. 

These cameras are all so good as to be interchangeable when it comes to image quality. The difference between scores of 96, 98 and 100 are small, almost insignificant, and yet to hear the review sites and $$$-bloggers talk about it the current/new cameras are somehow just so much more spectacular.

It's all nonsense. Slow news days. The market obviously hit a wall at the high end of the camera spectrum back in 2012 and everything since then has been a series of tiny and mostly insignificant "improvements." Nice to know that picking up low mileage used 36 megapixel cameras for around $1,000 each can put one in the same image quality league as new models in the $3200+ category. If you didn't much care about resolution you might also be shocked at just how good the Nikon D700 is when compared to the current $2,000 micro four thirds models. Especially when taking into consideration that the D700 is well over a decade older and currently sells used for around $500. It's enough to make you convert over to buying nothing but used cameras for a while ---- which is exactly what we've been doing around here.

OMG! Health Issues!!! I woke up on Sunday with the beginnings of an ear infection. An annoying discomfort that kept me from swim practice. I woke up the next morning and it was worse. I called my physician and he saw me within the hour. I've been using antibiotic drops since then and will be administering them to myself for a full seven days. I've been out of the pool since our Saturday morning practice and the withdrawal of endorphins has been......annoying. So annoying that I've been out running the trails just to burn off excess energy. I've given up on naps because....why bother? I'm heading over to the drugstore to find some wax earplugs. No one should have to go a full week without swim practice. 

Why I took today off and when road-tripping to Blanco, Texas with Belinda. So, I did four proposals yesterday and we have two approved and two more heading to clients for final approval. It's going to be a busy August and September. I felt like we've been working and taking care of family stuff non-stop lately and, after the successful ( and labor intensive) sale of my parent's house, I just wanted to step off the hamster wheel for a day and chill. 

I've been driving back and forth to San Antonio a lot and my most frequent trips are on Sundays. When I head home the "back way" I go up Hwy. 281 through Blanco, Texas and then through Dripping Springs, Tx. On Sunday afternoons (after 3 p.m.) my favorite café in Blanco (Red Bud Café) is already closed and so is my favorite bakery/coffee stop in Dripping Springs (Thyme and Dough). I also wanted to visit one of the breweries and one of the distilleries in Blanco as they've been winning awards, generating great press and turning out really good products. But Sundays......

Today, after a long morning walk in downtown Austin I came home and asked Belinda what was on her schedule. Nothing earthshaking. So we left Ben (waiting to hear back about a couple job offers) and Studio Dog (patrolling the perimeter of the VSL compound, and begging for treats from Ben...) and we headed through the Hill Country to Blanco. I took the above mentioned camera (D800e) and the 24-120mm f4 VR along for the ride. 

This is barrel #1 at the Ben Milam Whiskey distillery. I first sampled their 

Whiskey at my local Twin Liquors Store and it was pretty amazing. 

I have a swim coach who is a partner in a competing whiskey business 

so I won't make any claims for ultimate drinking satisfaction.

I'll just say that all good whiskey is subjectively appreciated. 

I appreciate Milam...a lot. 

It was early in the day so we didn't sample. But we did get a quick tour of the facility and heard about their plans for expansion. Double Gold Medals at a international show go a long way toward spurring growth....

Not yet labeled. 

I don't know what this does but it sure looks cool and industrial chic. 

53 Gallon Barrels of Texas Whiskey. 

Our next stop was at the Real Ale Brewing Company just down the highway. (by the way, I'm renaming Hwy. 290 West = Liquor Lane because there are so many start-up distilleries, breweries and wineries along that road. Idea = photo tours from Austin, going from distillery to brewery to winery all day long, with lots of stops for camera work and beverage sampling...). We went through their tap room and out onto the catwalk overlooking their very modern production facility. Amazing how big the giant tanks are. There's a lot of good stuff going on around Blanco which belies its 1800+ population numbers....  Mmmmmm. Fireman's Four. MMMMMM. The Devil's Backbone (two great ales).

Adding something to the mash at Milam. 

Belinda and I had lunch at the Red Bud Café and then headed back to Austin. I couldn't resist two more activities before we got back to our respective offices and re-joined the U.S. workforce. One was to wash my car at the car wash in Dripping Springs (I think my car really likes it...) and the other was to stop at Thyme and Dough bakery for some good coffee and their "Cadillac" cookie = oatmeal, chocolate, walnuts, and pecans. Since we did all of our driving outside the expansive rush hour times in Austin we had smooth sailing in both directions. 

Nice day to just tool around Texas. Glad I brought my (current) favorite camera along for the ride. 

flare test with the 50mm Sigma ART, from this morning's walk.

Finally, I think I've written too much about the Nikon D700 at this point. Two of my favorite readers let me know this week that they've ordered D700s and are looking forward to checking out the magic. I can only think that this new demand will spike pricing on the dwindling stock of D700s out there in the used market, depriving me of future bargains. Ah well. I can't fault my readers for their good taste.