Reposting my article from SIX years ago explaining why the camera industry is sucking wind right now...

https://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-graying-of-traditional-photography.html

I've changed the day I go to San Antonio to look after/hang with my dad. The Sunday Downtown walks are back with a vengeance.

In the recent past I spent nearly every Sunday afternoon walking around Austin's vibrant and strange downtown, documenting everything I could find that either changed or stayed the same (hmmmmm). That ambulatory pleasure fell to the wayside when my dad entered memory care about a year and a few months ago, victim of vascular dementia. I spent my Sundays bringing him chocolate and the New York Times, hanging out with him and sharing lunches. 

Now we're into a new phase and Sundays aren't the best days to meet with doctors, nurses, administrators and even lawyers. Mondays seem to work better for everyone involved in my father's care and I've re-oriented the schedule. He no longer is interested in reading the newspaper. He hasn't requested chocolates in a while. Nothing that ties me to "Sundays Only." 

Today was typical of the new scheduling, I headed down this morning to supervise the delivery of a hospital bed for him. Of course some stuff got fucked up and I had to jump in and motivate people to get things done in a timely manner. But that's okay; that's one of my jobs right now. But being there on a Monday returned to me the area pleasure of the Sunday walk.... So that's what I did yesterday.

This time I went wildly minimalist. I took only a Canon G15 and a couple extra batteries in the pocket of my khaki shorts. I never needed the extra batteries because I seem not to shoot with the wild abandon I once did. I'm also getting used to finally accepting "dirty baby diaper hold" and using the rear screen on my camera (since the little tunnel finder is less than optimal). Maybe I am more accepting because I finally got a new prescription for my glasses and, with bifocals, I can actually (mostly) see what's on the screen...

But the little camera is surprisingly good. Really good. Well, if your  final target is images on a (very cool) blog or scattered through Instagram. I like shooting with the lens nearly wide open all the time and I keep being amazed at the really good image stabilization that's built into the system. I try to shoot my G15 mostly at ISO 80 but really had no fear popping up to ISO 200 or even 500 to shoot interior spaces (see library pix below). 

Wow. It's so different to carry something the size of a deck of playing cards instead of a brick around one's neck. And still being able to come home and make nice photographs from the raw files.

The image above, and all the images below, are 

from the new Austin Public Library.

 all handheld and unburdened by deep thoughts.

Many, many years ago I bought this big (16 ounces?) coffee cup at my local Starbucks because I loved the deep red....

...now I take it back to Starbucks when I go there for meetings with friends or clients so I don't have to get a paper cup (lined with plastic) along with a plastic lid. I'm skipping the whole recycle thing and going straight for sustainable. If I bring my own cup I get a discount. No matter which size I order the baristas tend to fill it up as far as they can (commensurate with leaving space for half and half...).  My morning cup of external coffee is now about $2.11. And I like the cup.

I photographed my cup with my latest "love affair" the Canon G15. What awesome color for a used camera that cost me $200. Also enamored of the focal range and the close focusing capability. Nice little cameras!

I'm busy with family stuff but I sure like dropping by to share my opinionated points of view. Hope everyone is doing well.

Are you doing your part to cut down on plastic waste? Are you buying any classic old shooters?

-Kirk

Old Camera. Old Tech. Beautiful Subject.

Mosumi. ©Kirk Tuck.

Camera: Hasselblad
Lens: 180 Sonnar
Film: Agfapan 100

From the studio on San Marcos St.

A deeper immersion into a theater production than usual. A new play by Terrence McNally. A tight incorporation of ballet. The process of testing a Broadway play "out of town."

©2019 Kirk Tuck, for Zach Theatre.

(Sorry, I can't show the full spectrum of shots yet. Embargoed until 

used by the client. Just seems right. Right?)

I'm having fun with a production that Zach Theatre is putting on in Austin. Actually, the theater is more like a host because the play, "Immortal Longings" was written by three time Tony Award winner, Terrence McNally (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrence_McNally) and he and his team (director and choreographer) are using our regional debut to perfect the whole production before it opens, nationally, in NYC. 

As I understand it plays are really works in progress right up until the maiden performance with an audience, and script, blocking and choreography go through many changes before the first night.

This play is a big deal for the Zach Theatre and we're doing more photography than usual. My first engagement with the play was this past Wednesday. The marketing team arranged for a video shoot and asked me to come shadow the production crew and try to make as many good photographs of: the cast, the action, and the behind the scenes process involved in making a broadcast television spot as possible. 

We worked in one of the smaller rehearsal studios and most of the space was draped in black. There were three ballet dancers from Ballet Austin in the production (I think they are also cast in the show) as well as two of the principal, dramatic actors. The space was sparsely lit and the TV crew used a selection of spotlights to create a hard light look which will match well when they convert the whole video into black and white. But what it meant for the still photographer in the room was that correct exposure was critical and there was no such thing as fill light. 

With this in mind I decided to take advantage of the dynamic range enhancers built into the Fujifilm X-H1 cameras. My first move was to select Jpeg as a file format so I could make use of the 400% DR setting (available only in Jpeg). This feature requires that the ISO setting be at 800 or higher. No problem for this project....  The second thing I did was to set the color profile to Eterna. I know Fuji intends this profile for making videos without having to dip into F-Log but I find it very, very useful in high contrast, stage shooting situations for regular photography. 

I used Jpegs because Fuji's X cameras tend to do a better job than I with noise handling, sharpness and all that stuff. We were basically in a black box and all the lights were traditional tungstens so the need to shoot raw files to have leeway to correct color was totally unnecessary. I'm used to judging exposure on the screen and, in TV production, there is usually ample time to step in with a light meter and get accurate exposure readings. Raw just gums up the works and adds a layer of complexity that I didn't want to deal with in post. 

There was a shooting script for the video but everything was shot without sound. The commercial will run with an announcer track over a music bed, so I didn't need to worry about shutter noise. My biggest worry was trying to stay out of the spotlight beams because crossing in front of a spot would drop the exposure to next to nothing. Which would have made me persona non grata. 

The video crew was working on a tight scheduled which was dictated by Actor's Equity rules. We had time from 4pm till 6:30pm to photograph the scenes with the dancers and then 6:30-8:30pm to shoot the scenes we needed with the actors. The dancers loved watching the video production and they hung out to the end. That was great, we needed them in the foreground to bring more depth to some scenes. 

I brought two cameras, and a bag full of lenses but only used two. My do everything lens was the 16-55mm f2.8, used mostly at f2.8 to f4.0. My favorite lens of the evening was the 90mm f2.0 and honestly, I tried to shoehorn every shot into that focal length, sometimes standing twenty or thirty feet back just to encompass what I wanted in the frame. 

I shot everything at ISOs between 2,000 and 3,200 and it looked great. I fooled around with Lightroom's new, Texture control and balanced it out with the Clarity slider. Usually 3200 was a low as I could go because I knew that any shutter speed under 1/125th of a second would be too risky for shots with the talent moving. The best compromise speed was 1/250th of a second and that's where I tried to stay for all but the darkest shots. I'd rather give up depth of field than have shots ruined by subject movement. 

A lot of the imagery I photographed was dance. I didn't have the option to freeze anything with electronic flash as I was subordinate to the needs of the video crew. That meant I needed to stay around 1/250th but I also needed to accurately judge the peak of the action because in dance that's when the actor hits a momentary stasis and I had the best chance of freezing their motion with shutter speeds only. 

Since it's difficult to time a peak movement exactly I did something that I rarely do; I moved the camera  off the single frame per shutter press and onto the faster frame rates, settling at 8 fps. I radically overshot and then paid for it the next day in having to sift through nearly 3,000 frames and narrow the take down to a manageable 1,000. I tweaked all 1,000 and uploaded full resolution, max quality Jpeg files to Smugmug.com and the sent along the links to the marketing team. 

Our first project is done. The TV spot is headed for editing and the photos will be used in a first P.R. salvo to get the show on everyone's radar. Now I move on to the second part of our campaign...

©2019 Kirk Tuck, for Zach Theatre.

Tips: Dress in show black, you don't want to be the guy who messed up the dramatic lighting by providing your own fill.

Bring a small flash light and cover the lens with a red filter. In a dramatically lit set you probably won't be able to see inside your camera case with the ambient (non-existent) light and the flashlight will help immensely. The red filter is to keep the light level low key and to preserve whatever night vision you might have ...

While the TV crew is messing with lights don't stand around and watch, enlist the talent to help you get the detail shots that will come in handy; both for P.R. and for additional b-roll content. 

Your turn comes after the video team has their take in the can. Just step in and ask the talent for one more quick take without the video camera front and center. 

When the team breaks to re-light don't stand around and chat with them or the actors,  or pat each other on the back, this is your time to hit the craft service table and get a quick walking dinner (usually sandwiches and veg trays) while everyone else comes down from the momentary adrenaline bump. Don't want to starve if the shoot goes into overtime. If you wait too long all that's left on the table are chips and those dreaded roast beef sandwiches.... (although on this shoot the producer did a great and healthy job with the food).

Use one camera for each lens. Saves you from having to change lenses in the dark. Set them up identically before you get started. Then they are interchangeable when you need something a bit tighter or wider.... Bring a third, identical, back-up camera in case one of the two primary cameras has a hiccup. 

Be nice to everyone. You never know who is going to grow up and become a stellar client, or partner. 

Send your stuff over quick! The video takes a while to wrangle through the process. You can help your client by getting your photos over while there is downtime before the video edits start. Also, you get to be first in line so your stuff will look all new and fresh. 

That's all for now.

An Informal Test for Excess Flare in my Primary Work Zoom. Test inconclusive but promising....

I have to confess that I do like a certain amount of flare; as long as it's not excessive. I know some quick ways to get as much flare as you'd ever want. You could put an uncoated "protection" filter on the front of your lens, clean the filter with some spit and a wipe on a shirttail and then shooting into the light, or you could inadvertently (or purposefully) get some oily goo on your unprotected front element and ignore it while shooting into the light, or you could just buy a cheap lens. And few lenses do flare like an 18-500mm zoom...

I like to see how well my lenses can handle flare so sometimes, when we're shooting and I've got the actual shot covered, I'll move the camera over to get a light directly in the frame. You know, just to see what happens when a 1K is shining all over my front element. 

Yesterday I was shooting behind the scenes at a TV commercial production and I moved over to put a light in my shot. I'll also confess that I like a well intentioned (and well motivated) backlight; especially if we are photographing people in black in front of mostly black backgrounds....

I was using the Fujifilm 16-55mm f2.8 near wide open and snapped a frame with the light near the center and a different angle with the light near the right hand, extreme edge of my frame. These are the end result. Not too shabby. I can live with that amount of flare in exchange for the visual happiness of having the light inside the "box" and getting such a nice, deep shadow from the dancer closest to the light. 

I was happy to see that there was no blurry flare patch and no repeating flare artifacts spread across the frame. 

Camera: Fuji X-H1

Lens: Fuji 16-55mm f2.8

Lighting, tungsten

Client: Zach Theatre

Earliest adventures with a 135mm lens. Bolted onto the front of a Canon TX. (Shutter speeds to 1/500th; nothing automatic.)

Lightroom is like your neighborhood bar/pub.

You've probably never heard this in real life:

Bar customer: "I'll have a pint of that IPA." 

Bartender: "Coming right up." 

Bartender slides a nice, cold glass of beer to the customer who admires it, picks it up and take a long drink.

Bar customer: "Mmmm. That's great."

Bartender: "That's be $5."

The customer becomes agitated. Rears back from his bar stool, hand on hips, raging with defiance.

Bar Customer: "How dare you charge me again! I was in the bar just last week and paid the full price for my beer. Now I own it and can drink it whenever I want. Charging me AGAIN for the beer is outlandish, scurrilous. You are just a greedy person! This is outrageous! Whoever heard of paying for beer twice?"

Bartender: "Get out of my bar you cheap bastard!" 

The bar customer slams the door on his way out, muttering, "I'll find a place where I can pay for my beer once and then drink forever for free." 

End of story.

So, yes, if you want to use Lightroom from Adobe you'll have to pay for a monthly license. In exchange you'll get state of the art software that is continually upgraded with new features and continually made to work with a wide variety of the latest (and ever changing) raw file formats.

This cost is the equivalent of 2.5 medium sized lattes at Starbucks. For your ten bucks you can use the program as much as you want. You could rack up hundreds of hours of use for $10 in a month.

But there are howls all over the web about the fact that Adobe won't sell the program outright but requires a license. How did we get to this place?

Many, many, many people stole the software and used it for free. Even working pros who made money from their use of the software chose to steal a "pirated" copy rather than pay for it. At one point bit torrent sites were overflowing with "free" copies, used as bait to pull people to their sites.

When Adobe realized just how out of control the situation had become they felt a need to protect their enormous investment of time, money, creativity, expertise and, yes, service.

Don't like paying $10 a month for two of the world's best imaging processing applications (Photoshop and Lightroom)? You are welcome not to. But don't make Adobe out to be some sort of villain. They are protecting their property as surely as any other company would.

Wanna blame someone? Blame all the people who didn't think twice about using pirated software.

Me? I like the constant upgrades. I like a program that works with all my various camera raw files. I especially like that I get new features for no extra cost.

For the approximate cost of two and a half cups of coffee per month. Amazing.