And here's one of my photographs in print. Taken for Zach Theatre and appearing this morning on Page 2 of the NYT Arts Section.

And here is the original from the show.

The show is "Notes from the Field." Written by Anna Devere Smith, directed by Dave Steakley and produced at Zach Theatre in Austin, Texas.

I like the way the New York Times used my photo, including a nice, big credit. Sweet.

First Live Theater Dress Rehearsal Using the Fujifilm 16-55mm f2.8 Lens in Combination with the XH-1 Bodies and the 50-140mm f2.8 Zoom.

I don't know why I've felt so intimidated by the prospect of photographing the play, "Matilda" for my friends and colleagues at Zach Theatre. I think part of my hesitancy is based on my usual apprehension of shooting any performance where most of the set and background are black. There is also quite a big cast and lots of moving parts to the play. Another contributing factor is that this is the first big splash of the season and I think a lot is riding on making the numbers. I want the images to be as perfect as they can be and that's why I wanted to go and pre-scout the show this last Saturday. 

I saw what I needed to see and I showed up yesterday evening prepared to give it my best. I was shooting from mid-house, in the fancy seats, and I actually used three cameras and three lenses to get everything on everyone's shot lists. Since Zach Theatre designed and constructed the set they'll be renting it out to other theaters that produce "Matilda" so they wanted some super wide shots that encompassed the stage and a bit more.

My two "primary" cameras were XH-1s. One had the 16-55mm f2.8 on it while the other sported a 50-140mm f2.8. I shot with both of these nice lenses stopped down by 1/3rd to 2/3rds from the widest aperture (f3.5?). The third camera was my little XE3 with the (wonderful) 14mm f2.8 lens on the front. I used the XE3 + 14mm combination for lots and lots of handheld stuff. 

The Topfer Theatre at Zach has been completely LED for a while now and each lighting designer opts for a different base color temperature. In Matilda the base white balance seems to be right at 5100 K but there's a lot of gelling in some scenes. When we see Matilda's family there is a distinct warm, yellow hue to the stage lighting. In the classroom shots there is a slight bias to blue and in the shots that showcase the evil Ms. Trumbull the light has a very slight greenish cast overall. 

I try for neutral faces unless there is an obvious lean toward one color palette or another. 

Shooting stage shows is tough under normal lighting conditions where there is some sort of scenic, lit background mostly because of the contrast range of the light and the constant change of light levels. Going with a black stage that supports a mostly black set is tougher because there is only enough light to break the subjects away from the background in scenes that have the actors backlit. And separation is a good thing! There is also no bounce light coming from back walls, side walls, props and other parts of the set to reduce the quick transition to black in most frames. 

It's pretty amazing to realize this but if you want to teach an entry level photographer the difference between what the eye sees and what the cameras sees I would think shooting on a dark stage with an actor in spotlight would be a perfect example. When I look at a scene that's black on black I can see into the shadows enough to discern all of the set but when I correctly expose for the main actor in a spotlight there are many times when the camera can't see additional people just outside the circle of the spot; much less the stage detail in the background. 

When I'm confronted by a high contrast stage set like this I abandon my default Jpeg preference and head quickly into raw territory. I know that when I pull my selected images into Lightroom I'll want to make good use of the shadow and highlight sliders to bring back some detail in the shadows while preserving the good stuff in the highlights. And thus far the Fuji cameras, at or below ISO3200, do a good job controlling noise.

Since I was shooting raw format I could experiment a bit more with wide-ranging global settings. One of the things I played with extensively in Lightroom today was looking at the effects of all the different camera color profiles that Fuji offers on the XH-1 and which, by extension, are available in develop menu in Adobe Raw. Standard (Provia) had richly saturated colors but the shadows fell to black very quickly. I went in the other direction and applied the Eterna profile to the photographs. It was flat but held onto both the highlights and shadows to a much greater degree than any of the other profile settings. I guess that just makes sense considering it was modeled after a very wide latitude color negative film for moviemaking. I liked the look but decided that the files benefitted from an increase (slight) in contrast and about 5 points more saturation. 

It also helped the overall look to put in about 12  plus points of clarity slider to balance out the flatness of the files. 

In keeping with the title of this blog post I want to discuss my use of the 16-55mm lens. In a word = excellent. In conjunction with the XH-1's image stabilization, in the vast majority of my 1300 selected files (about 50% of which were shot with the 16-55mm) there are few that aren't perfect and those are a result of my hubris in thinking I can freeze moving subjects on stage at speeds of 1/125th of second and slower. When setting shutter speeds you have to take into consideration, if you want all parts to be free of subject movement, just how fast people are moving across the stage, shaking their heads, wiggling their hands and kicking up their legs. For most shots of people in normal motion on stage 1/250th is a good, safe shutter speed but if there is dancing, running or frenetic gesturing you'll need to head up to 1/500th of a second, and beyond. 

When I did properly nail the right speed, the right exposure and the right focus the finished photos were in line with all the glowing material I've read about the lens from other photographers, and from my own tests. 

The lens and camera combination is not nearly as heavy as I thought it would be after a couple of hours of handholding, and the handling characteristics of the lens, the way it feels in the hand and the quality of the aperture ring, make it a delight to use as a tool. I was happy to see that all three of my Fujifilm "red badge" lenses take the same filter size and even happier that my 77mm variable neutral density filter arrived in the mail box today. 

After having used the 100-400mm for a while the 16-55mm seems delightfully small and fun to handle. 

It's also perfect when zooming in on small groups and then zooming out to put the groups into context with the stage sets. The 24-84mm range (ff equiv) is just right for a normal range, premium zoom lens. I've never been able to make a good adaptation when using the more limited 24-70mm permutations because I'm always begging for that last ten to fifteen millimeters of reach. 

I'm wracking my brain trying to think of some negative aspect of the lens so as to provide some illusion of balanced neutrality in discussing the 16-55mm but I have to admit I'm struggling to find anything wrong with it. I guess (age appropriate analogy) it's like trying to find something wrong with Audrey Hepburn's performance in the movie, "Funny Face." You just can't reasonably do it. 

Leaving the 16-55mm for a moment I'd like to discuss my one caveat about the 50-140mm f2.8. I wish it was about 10% longer. I want the speed, the size and the weight to stay the same. I just want it to reach out a bit more. Many times last night I was wishing I could comp some two person scenes just a little closer. I guess I got a taste of real reach when I tested my 100-400mm....

I am married to a graphic designer though, so when I showed her my photos and expressed my wish for a bit more focal length she asked the right questions: 

Is the image sharp?  Did you photograph it with a high resolution camera? Did you get the tonality correct? Do you remember that there is this secret technique called: CROPPING?  Do you think you can find a cropping tool in Lightroom or Photoshop? End of spousal correction/conversation. 

But I kinda have to listen to her since she is, from time to time, one of my favorite clients....

All in All, the combination of the two premium zooms is an almost perfect set of lenses for the kinds of theater work that I do. I wish I had more time to photograph each play. I'd probably do three days of shooting for each. One for general stuff and ensembles, one concentrating on all the production aspects that are new and different, and then one day with the long zoom just picking out actor's faces at particularly appropriate (and awesome) times. Might be fun. But clients, of course, are more interested in condensing time rather than extending or diluting it.....

So, how did I enjoy the play? It's by Roald Dahl and it may be one of the best stage shows with kids I've ever seen in the 500+ live theater performances I've watched. It's that good. I'm heading back tomorrow to photograph the final dress rehearsal and then heading back again for a business networking event and show on Wednesday. (I am a guest at the networking event so I'm sure to show up for cocktails and food but less sure I really need to see "Matilda" for a 4th time this week.....). 

A random scene from the bar district on Sixth Street on a Saturday afternoon.

I love composing in the square format. Everything seems to fall in place for me. One thing I like about the cameras I've been using lately is the ease of using the 1:1 frame for my work. It just seems natural to me.

After testing lenses last week I was happy to walk around with a simple, 50mm (35mm equiv.) format lens on a square frame in black and white. It reduces the amount I have to think about to a minimum where technical settings are concerned and allows me to drop into the nice zone of just looking for stuff I'm interested in looking at once they become photographs.

The super long lenses can be fun, the super wide lenses make me feel as though I'm having to work too hard to make things fit correctly, but a nice, normal focal length is like a vacation for the eyes. That, and a good B&W profile in your camera.

From time to time, usually after reading a Robert Adams book about photography, I try shooting non-human subjects in black and white. I never know what to do with them when I finish the inevitable post processing....

A random planter at Spring Condominium. Flowers; succulents. 

Once you've decided that you want to show a scene how do you decide between all the permutations you end up shooting? Which one gets the nod?

There's a wall just off Congress Avenue, on Fifth Street, that has a long wall and an ever changing mural. It's always interesting but sometimes it's better than others. I was walking by, across the street from the mural yesterday when it caught my eye. I photographed it from the corner (an angled view) and also straight on as in these two examples. I photographed it with and without people. And I photographed it with and without cars. It sounds like a bunch of permutations but I think I shot the whole collection of 13 or 14 variations in the space of 3 or 4 minutes. 

When I'm out shooting around town I always tend to shoot multiple variation of interesting scenes, when time and the situation allows. But I always struggle in the editing because it's hard for me, sometimes, to declare one image to be better than all the rest. Each has something a bit different which catches my eye, otherwise I would not have continued to take photographs. 

Usually the difference has something to do with the composition but in this situation I think the choice between these two images is more down to gesture more than anything else. I'm curious to know how you make a choice when you have half a dozen or a dozen images from the same basic set up, all of which you find interesting for different reasons.

I was using a camera that I haven't paid enough attention to previously; it's the Fuji XE3. I wanted to walk around as unencumbered as possible and I wanted to carry an extra lens and battery in a Jacket pocket. Turns out the XE3 with it's small size and light weight was just what I wanted. I mostly kept the 35mm f2.0 lens on the front; it's very small, light and sharp (even at f2.0) but I carried the 50mm f2.0 in my left jacket pocket leaving room in the right pocket for a vegan lemon and hazelnut scone from Whole Foods. 

I shoot more than I ever end up using and I've learned to divide the take into: keepers, maybes and instant trash. The percentage varies but usually less than 5% of the photos from a two or three hour walk through the city are keepers. Another 5% are maybes and the rest never get ingested into Lightroom or stored anywhere. They just cease to exist the next time I format the memory card. This is a good discipline for me since I seem to be hesitant to pick favorites. 

If I saved every frame I shot I'd have millions of image cluttering up an endless array of hard drives. If I knew which keeper I wanted to distill down to I could save even more space. Some images you just have to live with before you really know if you want them. The rest are pretty obviously crappy. You do yourself a favor when you flush them out of the system....

The importance of testing gear instead of reading about gear on someone's blog or website.

From: A lens you probably don't need and don't want to carry around...

I like to think that all serious photographers share one thing: a unique vision. And bundled with that unique vision is a particular way of looking at things; at interpreting some fragment of conscious reality in order to share it in a different way than everyone else. After all, if everything is just a faithful copy; without inflection, why should anyone bother to look at it? And I think about this when I hear from my friends who are busy reading everything they can get their hands on when considering a new lens purchase.

When we go to a site and read a review of a lens I think most of us would like to see a short set of objective measures. These would include: How heavy is the lens? How easy is it to use? Is it sharp in a way that's usable? Does it have an annoying color cast we'll have to end up correcting? How much does it cost? Is there something out there that's as good or better which I might want to know about?

For information like this I like a couple of test sites which include a European site called: Lenstip.com (they do subjective evaluations and objective measurements). Another site that used to be called photo zone.de but is re-branded as now: Opticallimits.com. They also use some objective measures and then pepper in their opinions. I never take their opinions about value (price versus quality) too seriously because everyone is somewhere else on the economic spectrum and what is too expensive for one prospective purchaser might seem dirt cheap to a heavy-duty user of the same product.

The people whose lens tests I rarely take seriously are people who are not either full time lens testers with the instruments to do tests correctly, or full time working professional photographers with a reputation for doing good work, and an extensive portfolio of examples I can browse. Everyone else falls into the same bucket in my mind = newbies with a passion for having an opinion. In fact, I rarely trust my own lens reviews because they are limited to the way I use the products and they are additionally limited (contextually) by what my actual use is for the images in the moment. Or, in the project at hand. I may want something soft and moody or snappy and saturated, but I might also not really care about edge-to-edge sharpness while you may be completely obsessed with the need for ultra-high resolution at the furthest corners while the lens is at its widest aperture. You and I would need to be reading reviews skewed in different directions for both of us to be happy.

You may have noticed by now but something I mention in every article I write about gear, or in a follow up article, that my results are only as good as you can see them on the screen and that if you are seriously considering a lens you NEED to hold it in your own hands, put it on your own camera and shoot it in the way you know you will want to use the lens for YOUR work. I ask you to never depend on anecdotal reviews when deciding whether you should buy a new miracle lens or just put that money into a treasury fund (and right now my money would nearly always go into a fund....).

My favorite story about this comes from a time when I was shooting for money with the Olympus 4:3 system. We did events and one of the lenses that was critical to my success in photographing conferences in hotel ballrooms, and other interior venues, was the Olympus 35-100mm f2.0. It was the fastest long zoom available for any format at the time and it was very sharp at f2.0. This was all back in the days when photographers were reticent to go beyond ISO 800, even with their full frame cameras. Having this fast lens was the difference between getting a perfectly sharp "presenter" photograph, up on stage or not.

The trade off is that the lens must have weighed at least four pounds! I would come home after three days of handholding that lens (in my left hand, operating the camera with my right hand...) and my left bicep would be sore. But the bottom line for me was that the photographs were sharp and relatively noise free.

So, one of my friends who does photography as a hobby, asked my opinion about which telephoto zoom lens to get for his Olympus camera and I immediately suggested the 35-100mm f2.0. After a bit of research, my friend, who just wanted a nice zoom with which to walk around and snap fun stuff, decided that I was clinically insane and should be on a psychiatrist's couch somewhere looking at inkblots. My suggestion was a wildly inappropriate lens for anyone who didn't need the combination of features that I did need. It also cost $2300!

Much depends on how the lens will actually be used. I use my 50mm (equivalent) lenses for social events, when I use it for work. That means I'm generally using it in conjunction with a hot shoe flash and most often I'm shooting at f5.6 or f8.0. I'm generating social images for use on websites and to help clients continue filling up Facebook, etc.

For these uses any decent $50 normal lens would work fine. I'd conjecture that, at f8.0, handheld in a hotel ballroom, a < $100 nifty 50 would do about as good a job as a Zeiss Otus 50mm f1.4 miracle lens. Maybe it would actually be better because I'd be able to handhold the combination all evening long without stress and strain. But I'm sure some Otus owner out there would look down their nose at my pedestrian choice because, from their point of view, the quality of the lens, when used wide open, trumps everything else.

Relying on someone else's test of a camera is also fraught with peril. In the present all cameras are good enough for most of the subjects for which people use them. Some people are sensitive to noise, some to size and many price. A smaller subset has allergies to confusing menus. You can tell me till you are blue in the face that "once set up you'll rarely need to delve into the Olympus menus on a daily basis!" but that does nothing to assuage my frustration and confusion at their interface.

Buying a camera is partially about buying a lens system so that's the first place most people should start. But after that it's all about what feels good. In your hand. In operation. In your budget. The Leica M10 might just be the best camera ever designed but if I can't afford the lenses I need and the back up body that functions as my security blanket then the camera (and by extension, the system) are unusable for me. I'd love to buy one of the Fujifilm medium format cameras, and a lens (please send me the 110mm f2.0, thanks!) but I can't see pushing my sister to replace her ten year old Canon Rebel with one.....

Jeez. The cool thing about being a consumer in the most fertile consumer market in the universe is that shopping is supposed to be fun. A bit less time reading that bad review and a bit more time figuring out what you'd like might just be the ticket to camera purchase happiness. Do I even have to write, "just sayin'"?