Oh Dear. And then there's the Kamlan 50mm f1.1. And a folk cure for acid reflux.

Low light, hand held photograph of my nightstand taken with the Kamlan 50mm f1.0 lens. 

There are too many books and pens and film cannisters and stuff on my nightstand. My favorite things there are the packs of Juicy Fruit chewing gum. It's really cool And it's a Kirk-io-pathic cure for acid reflux. Seems your own saliva (which chewing gum does a good job helping create) is one of the best antacids "on the market." Occasionally I'll have something that makes my esophagus complain and rather than reach for a "Tums" or something more malevolent, like Prilosec..." I'll grab a piece or two of Juicy Fruit chewing gum and chew away my discomfort. I keep it handy for those late night occurrences that seem to follow a plate of french fries washed down with tannin rich red wine.... Try it. And when it works go back to your gastroenterologist and scold them for prescribing deadlier stuff first...

(Disclaimer: I am not paid by the makers or distributors of Juicy Fruit in any fashion. Not even free gum. But I'm ready for them to hire me to create a campaign for their medical use of the product. If you work for the chewing gum company then call me, I'd also like a new car....).

But I digress.

How's that Kamlan 50mm f1.1 lens working out for me? I've shot it more and more often lately and it's a lot of fun. Sharper than I thought it would be (in the middle of the frame) at wider apertures but falling apart pretty quickly as you move to the edges of the frame. Nobody will mistake this for a modern macro lens but it's at least as much fun as anything LensBaby ever came out with and more controllable.

I'm doing some fun portraits in studio next week and I'm determined to mix this lens with a liberal dose of constant, LED lighting to really see what I can squeeze out of it. I guarantee it won't be "sharp in the corners."

Fuji-cron 23mm f2.0. Nice lens.

Ben at Thundercloud Subs.

Just another update on my dalliance with the Fujifilm XF camera system here. I previously purchased two of the compact and virtuous f2.0 prime lenses from Fuji; the 50mm and the 35mm. I used them both and found the center sharpness to be wonderful and the overall look to be very pleasing. If there's a downside to the lenses the camera's lens profiling capabilities make it invisible to me. In fact, I liked them so much I decided to pick up their matching sibling, the 23mm f2.0. All three are small and light, have high center of frame sharpness and, by going a couple stops down you can even have sharp corners ---- if you really want them. 

I got the 23mm during a period when I was totally engaged in a long photography project, shooting portraits, and relied exclusively during that period on longer lenses and zooms. You'd think I would have pulled the 23mm out of the bag and used it on some of the locations, just to see how well it worked, but you would be wrong. My recent schedules have been so tight that my choice would have been to screw around with the new lens and miss my next flight or keep the lens in the bag and make the schedule work for my client. 

But over the last weekend and in small chunks of time this week I've been able to bring the lens along (riding on an X-E3 body) and give it a few tries. 

The top photo is handheld (which means there's no image stabilization anywhere - in camera or on tripod) and shot at f2.0. I used the Acros color (B&W) profile and I see what all those Fuji fans mean when they say, "You gotta try it." It's probably the best black and white processing I've seen from a camera since.....wait for it.....Tri-X film in my Leica M6. After shooting a bunch of frames with the Acros B&W setting I'm coming to look at the X-E3, with the trio of compact primes, to be my digital Leica substitute. We'll see how that goes. 

But I'm also interested in how the lenses perform when used on middle ranged and distant subjects and so I took the lens out for a walk on Monday, when we had clear skies, and shot some of my usual subject matter. It's convenient though boring to see the same bridge and buildings show up again and again in the posts but having them in multiple tests and posts means I can switch back and forth between posts to see how different cameras and lenses handle the same basic subject matter. 

These were shot at f4.0 or 5.6 so I expected them to be sharp and they certainly were. If you need flat field lenses with high sharpness across the frame and no vignetting then these are not the lenses you are looking for... but if you understand how lens design and sharpness work and like the character and contrast of a good, all purpose lens then you might enjoy these. I'm beginning to think the mania for "flat field" lenses is a result of declining enrollment in college humanities programs; that failing is making our culture into a society made up solely of linear thinkers who value absolutes and technically measurable specifications above less tangible (and more lovable) qualities. Soon we'll all be programmers and engineers and society will die off from the ensuing sheer boredom. 

At any rate I think Fuiji made (at least) three lenses that have a solid reason for existence in the bags of independent photographers and provide me personally with many reasons to appreciate them. I'll keep them. 

The 23mm is the same angle of view on APS-C as a 35mm lens on a full frame camera. Not always my preferred focal length but when I feel like going wide it's a perfect starting point. 

These Fuji lenses are currently on sale. I got mine for $50 less than it would have been the week before. It makes a nice stocking stuffer...

Were those ancient digital cameras really unusable? I found this quick photo of Elton John and was pleasantly surprised at the capabilities of the "primitive" camera.

Elton John©Kirk Tuck 2005.

Andy Roddick started a foundation, and what better way to kick off a new foundation than to invite a friend like Elton John to come to Austin, Texas to do a fundraising concert at the Four Season Hotel?
I was asked to come along and take photos of Sir Elton John with Andy, and his friends and family, (not for public display) and also to cover the dinner and concert for the 250 people attending.

The camera I was using at the time was the Olympus E-1 and the lens was an Olympus 14-54mm. So, about 5 megapixels of resolution with an older CCD sensor. Should have been a noise machine; right? But we didn't know any better back then so I persevered. We also read a lot of stuff on the early web about how hard it was to do flash with digital cameras in 2004-2005 but most of us found that using manual settings made short work of good exposures with flash...

Of course, I would love to be able to send back a couple of current cameras in a time machine so my younger and handsomer self could make great use of those ISO "invariant" Sony sensors everyone seems to gush about. But I can't currently afford even a Sears time machine so I'll just have to be happy that the images came out, were well used, and assisted the Foundation with their fundraising goals.

Rick Perry was there too, but that's another story. He sure look groovy in his black turtleneck shirt...

Sometimes you just have to use the camera you have on hand. Waiting for the future is too expensive.

The two times I met and worked with former President George H.W. Bush.

I first met President George HW Bush in Scottsdale, AZ in 1998 or 1999. I was photographing a conference of CEO's and the big event of the week was a dinner at a private airplane museum, out toward the dessert, with a special speaker. The guests would have a cocktail reception and look at the aircraft. At the end of the reception they would line up (about 75 people) and meet the former president. They'd get to say a few words, shake his hand, and then the two would turn toward my camera and I'd take commemorative photograph with Mr. Bush and the V.I.P. guest.

I got to the venue a couple hours ahead of time to get the lighting set up and ready. I put up a canvas background and three lights. I pulled a Hasselblad camera with a Polaroid back out of a bag to test my exposure over and over again with sheets of Polaroid, and a patient stand-in. When I figured I had it nailed down as far as I was going to get it I marked spots on the concrete floor with gaffer tape so the president and the guests would have marks I could keep leading them back to. 

About an hour before we were to start I got a visit from the secret service. It was low key. I was already in the system for the jobs I'd done early in my career with another president. They also figured I'd been pretty thoroughly vetted by my client. And yes, I had been. I also had a ten year history with them by that point. (And I'm still doing work for them in the present....). 

Fifteen or twenty minutes prior to my start time I looked up to see Mr. Bush striding in my direction. He came over and shook my hand, asked me my name and asked me to walk him through my picture taking process. As we were talking he looked at my suit and I looked at his. As it turned out we were wearing the same color and style of suit. We looked at our labels and they were both from the same maker. Mr. Bush laughed and complemented me on my taste in clothes. I did the same to him. 

Soon we started the line up and greeting process and we worked as a good team. It was the film days and I didn't want to leave much to chance. I had pre-loaded three cameras and equipped them with three similar lenses. All three cameras were pre-set for aperture and shutter speed. I had unboxed a few more rolls and had them standing by. At one point I got ahead of myself and finished the third roll of film too soon. I needed to rewind and re-load in order to finish photographing all the people still in line. Mr. Bush had been paying attention. I think he saw my look of impending panic. He smiled, nodded and asked the person in front of him --- the next guest in line --- to tell him about his business. He was giving me time to get the camera ready! I re-loaded and looked up, giving Mr. Bush a quick "thumbs up." He nodded and thanked the gentleman in front of him and got back into the rhythm of moving people through; respectfully but also efficiently. 

After the last person in the reception line shook the former president's hand Mr. Bush walked over to me and stuck out his hand. "Thanks for that," he said, "That was a smooth as it gets." I thanked him for bailing me out by spending a bit more time with that one guest. He just smiled and said something like: "film doesn't load itself."

He walked into the dining area and a few minutes later he was giving a speech. The planners of the event didn't feel like they needed to have a photographer in the dining room. Too much distraction from the speaker everyone had come to see. I understood but I really wish I'd been there to hear him hold that room...

He was so gracious in his dealings with me. At that moment my admiration for him transcended any sort of political dogma. Now I am nostalgic for the time in American politics when he was at the helm. I guess it's true. What the old blues singers sang: You don't miss your water till your well runs dry....

I didn't think I would ever see Mr. Bush again but I was wrong. It was Fall of 2004 when the folks at Dell, Inc. invited Mr. Bush to speak at one of their conferences that was held at the Barton Creek Conference Center, just West of Austin, Texas proper. The conference was like most others; various speakers came with their PowerPoint presentations and every once in a while we'd break for coffee and snacks.

Near the end of the afternoon Mr. Bush took the stage and gave a wonderful 30 minute speech. My brief called for me to photograph him while he spoke and while he shook a few people's hands in the main conference room. Then he and his security folks (just two) would get into a waiting elevator and head to the penthouse for a meet and greet with a small handful of Dell executives. I rode up in another elevator and entered the penthouse after the president's entourage. We would be waiting 15 minutes for our host, Michael Dell, and his team, to give the final wrap up speech downstairs and then they would come up for a very casual question and answer session with Mr. Bush.

I walked into the penthouse suite and realized that the only people in attendance (at the moment) were me, the bartender, one secret service guy (the other one was positioned outside the door of the suite) and the former president of the United States (and at that moment the father of the current president!). I was a bit intimidated. But Mr. Bush came right over, shook my hand and asked/said, "You look familiar, have we met before?"

I reminded him of the show in Scottsdale and he smiled and said, "Ah, that's right. We were wearing identical suits!" I smiled and got it that he really remembered. I was amazed.

Mr. Bush was having a glass of white wine while he waited for his hosts. It was a very, very nice Sauvignon Blanc. He took a sip and then turned to me and asked, "Would you like a glass of wine? This is really good!" I was quite touched but I explained to him that if the Dell people walked in and saw me with a glass of wine in my hand, chatting up their guest, it might ------ limit my future freelance activities with the company. He said he understood but he also rubbed it in a little. He said, "You don't know what you're missing...."

The rest of the afternoon I tried to be a fly on the wall and not to disturb the flow of the intimate meeting. I waited until Mr. Bush exited the room before I started packing up to go home. On the way home I thought about my afternoon. Mr. Bush was not just the usual politician we saw in fast glimpses on the news. He was brilliant, a great conversationalist, a fairly fluent French speaker and an appreciator of good wine. I was happy to be able to spend more time in his orbit. And I was thankful that my work with Dell, Inc. put me in the position to have that experience. I was struck by how much emotion I felt when I heard of his passing this week. I think he will eventually be regarded as one of the great American presidents of the 20th century. He was a man of my father's generation. Not distracted by glitz and excess but a man who served us with honor and dignity.

And he was the only president who has ever offered me a glass of wine. That's so cool.

Unbelievably, the camera I was using that day was a Nikon D2h. Two lenses. An 80-200mm f2.8 and a 16-85mm. No I.S. and only 4 megapixels......

Funny moments...

It's always funny when a new client queries you about a style, and a look, and they send you a reference photo (link) to review. And the photo they've selected and sent along is something you shot four or five years earlier. Makes it easy to say, "Yeah. I think I can do that style."

Taking care of the "back office" stuff is just as important as taking the photos.

Where e-mails with "noreply" in the address sometimes end up....

Okay. You've taken the photos, you edited down the number to something reasonable, you've done your post processing and made them look incredible and then you put them in a folder and sent them off to your expectant client with your favorite transfer app. For me that application is WeTransfer.com. We use the service all the time. You can upload up to 2GB of files for free or you can upgrade to their Plus service for $120 a year. That gives you unlimited storage and 20 GB uploads instead of the 2GB limitation.

All good and well. You access the service and upload your stuff. Then you get an e-mail that makes you feel like you've done everything right and you're on your way to HappyClientVille. The e-mail confirms that you uploaded everything correctly and that the service has sent along notification to your client with a link that will allow them to download your treasures. You're home free....

You move on to your next project.

But then you hit the seven day mark and you realize that, if you are using the free version of the upload software and your client has not yet downloaded those beautiful files, then they have been deleted and you are back at square one. Yikes. That means your client; the one who has been expecting to hear from you for over a week, is probably wondering if you've forgotten them or just fallen off the face of the earth.

You re-upload all your work and send it again. But this time you also send a personal e-mail to the client, as well as a text, letting them know to expect the e-mail from WeTransfer.com and to remind them to download within seven days.

And you'll probably almost instantly get a response from the client who lets you know that neither the first volley of e-mails nor today's are anywhere near their mailbox and absolutely not in their spam folder or their junk mail folders. Now you have a conundrum on your hands.

The issue is the "noreply" word in the apps e-mail notifications. It can trigger a number of e-mail systems to prevent those addressed e-mails from even being presented to the mail box. The bigger and more I.T. intensive the company the more likely it is that this will be the cause of your issues.

The short term work around is to copy the download links from the confirmation e-mails that you get when the files are successfully uploaded and sent and then put those into an e-mail from you to your client. And then follow up with a text or a phone call.

The client should be able to use the download links just as they would if the links were coming directly from WeTransfer.com. The files get downloaded and everyone gets to move on with the project.

The larger fix is to put the "noreply@wetransfer.com" into your White List in your e-mail program. But after your client does that they may still not receive their e-mail notifications because the sender, Wetransfer.com will probably have complied with the law and placed the client's address in a "bounce list" which prevents them from continuing to "ping" the client's e-mail server.

If this has happened you need to walk your client through the process of getting off the bounce list as well. Here's what you need to do at Wetransfer.com https://wetransfer.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/208584016-I-don-t-receive-your-confirmation-email-anymore

I was traveling all of last week and didn't do my usual follow up so Murphy's Law was immediately invoked and now I'll spend time unraveling the consequences. But it's good to make sure your client got your stuff ---- otherwise you really aren't finished with the job and are in NO WAY ready to send an invoice. Clients are always happier to pay your invoice AFTER they are sure they got what they asked for....

That's what I've been up to today. No reflection on my client or their e-mail security but a ding on my own personal record for prompt follow ups and client service. Mea Culpa.

And, of course, after using the Fuji X-T3 for a week straight I chose the Panasonic G9's for yesterday's rehearsal shoot of "SantaLand Diaries" at Zach Theatre.

Mr. Jimmy Moore as "David." 

Under the old tungsten stage lights at the smaller, older stage, 

(the original stage at Zach Theatre). Camera: G9

Lens for all: Olympus 40-150mm f2.8

ISO 1600.

(Taken during a running tech rehearsal. Or, how fast can you frame and focus on a production in the round with a fast moving actor and very contrasty lighting?

Shoot fast. Shoot often.

Why do artists do their art? (And, yes, I am including photographers in the mix). A reprint from years ago.

I just saw this older post and I re-read it. I believe every work I wrote even more now, with the passage of time. Please have a read and let me know what you think. Sadly, I also think I was a better writer back then......ah well....

https://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2010/11/passion-is-in-risk.html?fbclid=IwAR3Xv-i9BlzHdBqTbJH8bSfQUBOGXbA6K_00o4p68ZM4YyMXJ8wfVpqXhlA

I always wonder what people mean when they say a lens is "meh." It must mean something different than I thought.

I was given to believe that my life as a sometimes Fuji camera system user would not begin until I jettisoned the "decent" but underwhelming 18-55mm "kit" lens and bought the real Fuji prime lenses. Then I'd be able to realize the potential of their "awesome" sensor...

But I'm a bit of a contrarian so I've been using the "kit" lens nearly non-stop. Yes, at a wide open aperture it does vignette a bit. But what do I care? I didn't buy the lens to shoot flat art documentation, or brick walls. I've also heard that it's very, very sharp in the center but less "convincing" in the corners. And they say that as if it's negative thing. I'm thrilled that it's sharp in the center and I'm happy I don't have to worry about distractions in the corners.

Oh hell. Just try a lens you are interested in and see if it works for what you do. Most reviewers; like the dim bulbs masquerading as technical experts at the big website, have a weird set of parameters for "measuring" the value of lenses, but the stuff they think is important; like dead even exposure across the frame or total lack of field curvature, are part and parcel of some of the best lenses ever made. 

Bottom line. I think you can do great work with this kit lens. You might save yourself from some carpel tunnel syndrome and you might save some cash by passing by the "prestige" lenses and learning how to best use all around "good" lenses to make photographs. 

These two shots are handheld, in low light, and shot with the aperture of the 18-55mm lens wide open. It's pretty much a worst case basket of settings for any lens. But with a centered subject all I see is sharpness and clarity. 

I finally believe it's true; you can "over buy."