Favorite camera ever?

A commenter named, Ray, asked me if there were cameras I regretted buying. I responded, honestly, that I never (rarely) regret having bought a camera but I do regret selling a few of them. When I look back at some of the images I was able to take with the Sonya99 I wince just a little about letting it go. 

But rather than focus on regrets I feel like celebrating the cameras I've had that I really liked. I'll keep it to digital otherwise we'd be here all day.

My top ten: 

Kodak DCS760. Nothing above ISO 100 please; and if possible let's keep it at ISO 80...but the colors (see above). 

Nikon D610.

Nikon D700.

Panasonic G9.

Olympus E-1.

Fuji XH-1.

Sony R-1.

Sony RX10-3.

Canon 5Dmk2.

Sony Nex-7.

If you want to play along let me know your favorite digital cameras in the comments. It was actually a fun exercise for me trying to nail down not which cameras were the absolute best from a technical point of view rather, the ones I had the most fun shooting and got the best results from because they were friendly enough and competent.

Thanks!

I don't know why I ever, ever take reviews on the web seriously. And yes, I do get the irony of writing that here. I'd like to address C-AF and the Lumix S1 camera.

Lou. ©Kirk Tuck.

I've read and heard over and over again that the Lumix S1 camera is "flawed" because it just isn't competitive with XXX or YYY camera when it comes to continuous focusing or face detection focusing when used for video. I almost believed it because, as in politics, a lie told over and over again starts to become "true." There is a story in the photo and video marketplace that says Sony rules the continuous autofocus performance race in video. The other prevailing story is how awful the Panasonic Lumix S1 is in the same contest. I've used various Sony cameras for video and experienced foreground and background pulsing as the camera changes focus quickly, over and over again. I've also experienced my share of low light hunting with them. In fairness the last model I used was the A7Rii but it did use PD AF....

Well. Maybe I just got the only good Lumix S1 sold in north America but my experiences yesterday confirm to me that the consensus on the web is unmitigated, mindless, fabrication or out and out laziness. Let me explain...

When I bought the two S1 cameras I shoot with I decided not to care whether or not the camera was a quick and accurate focusing machine for video. Most of the video I've done over the years (about 90% of it) has been done in manual focus for one reason or another. I learned to shoot motion stuff with my own Bolex Rex 5, 16mm film movie camera and its lovely companion, the Angenieux 12-120mm zoom lens. There was absolutely no way to shoot that rig in any other way but manually. And the small and gritty finder one used to attain sharp focus was no great shakes so one really had to be on their game to nail sharp focus. Moving subjects? One did a rehearsal with the subject of the film and marked different "focus marks" at different critical distances on the lens barrel. When the subject moved from one mark to the next the camera operator moved the lens from one focus mark to another. It worked. 100 years of Hollywood film production serve to prove the process works. 

I tried the autofocus on the Lumix for regular photography and found it to be very good for the way I operate. Yes, there's some wobble if you use C-AF and a faster frame rate but the focus itself has always worked fine for me. But until yesterday I never tried using the C-AF or the eye detect AF with video production. And, having read the usual incorrect and overblown crap on various websites (big and small) I thought I'd be giving it a try and quickly retreating to the proven MF methods I've learned. 

First, let me tell you the context. 

I was asked by the folks at our regional theatre, Zach Theatre, to help them promote a very good, one person production of "Every Brilliant Thing." It's a play about a boy who tries to help his depressed mother by creating a list of all the things that make life wonderful and worth living. I'm assuming from the title that the playwright is British... 

The marketing team decided that it would be a fun bit of social media advertising to create a video, or a series of short videos, asking random people around Austin, Texas: What makes them happy? What makes their day special? What small pleasures make life extra good for them? What are their favorite things? 

We'd be moving quickly and carrying all my gear along with us. We'd go from office to office, and from exterior location to exterior location, without any crew. No DP, no grips, no sound guy, no production assistant to fetch coffee and take notes, no make-up person to slow down our process. And no pre-casting; we depended on our charming personalities to enlist total strangers to our cause. And it worked!

But, that brings me to the reason I tried out the continuous AF in the video mode for this project. I had the camera on a Benro monopod, with an S6 video head. I was using the Lumix S1 camera along with the DMW-XX audio interface so I could use physical knobs to control audio levels. We used a reporter microphone which our marketing director wielded and I had a very small, Aputure LED light in the cold show of the audio interface unit. I was trying to juggle maintaining good composition and good audio in fairly close-up shots and I thought that if I could outsource the task of focusing to the camera it would be a lot easier for me to get everything else right too.

Our first shot was done outside on a very overcast day that came complete with flurries of rain and bits of wind. I put the camera in face detect AF mode and composed my shot. I used the touch screen to touch the face of the person on the screen so the AF would know where I wanted to start. The little yellow boxes leaped into action, found my subject's eyes and locked in like a dog with stolen bacon.

The first interviewee moved forward and backward and from side to side. The background was lighter than the subject. The camera wasn't rock steady (intentional) but the take away from this first test was that the camera never lost focus, never hunted and never pulsed between foreground and background. There was no focus jitter and no sense that the camera was compulsively refocusing in any unwanted way. In fact, it was focusing exactly the same way an experienced focus puller would have performed the same task only the camera was smoother. Emboldened by our first success I kept using the video AF for the next two hours. We interviewed 38 people and did something like 55 clips. I've examined each clip in Final Cut Pro X, on an iMac Pro 5K screen, and in each clip the eyelashes of my subjects are crisp and perfectly defined. 

At first I thought that the good performance of the C-AF in video was just because we started outside and the light was bright enough to be using ISO 200 with a 180 degree shutter (1/60th) at 30fps with a f4.0 aperture. I thought, given all the horrendous misinformation on the web, that when we headed into the darker offices of the next interviewees we'd selected the much lower light would cause the autofocus to hunt and peck like a starving chicken. 

One of the locations we shot video in was an office with minimal lighting and closed window blinds. To maintain the same video exposure triangle I outlined above I had to raise the ISO to 6400 (which is actually not a big deal with the S1 as it's a pretty clean ISO for video...).  The camera and lens showed the same smooth tenacity in focusing as they had in ISO 200 quality lighting. 

When we headed to the pedestrian bridge to downtown to recruit new subjects I looked a bit comical as I trailed along behind the marketing director and the social media expert with my rig nestled on top of a stout monopod. I had headphones around my neck as we walked over to the next location and I kept the reporter style microphone in my back pocket. I didn't want to disconnect stuff since we had a bit of mist to contend with from time to time but I also didn't want the marketing director to carry the mic in case she got distracted and inadvertently tested the length of the XLR cable. And the structural integrity of the cable to audio interface connection.

So now I'm curious where the other reviewers of this gear get their results. Do they actually put a lens on the camera and point it at something or do they just parrot what the guy before them said in his basement vlog? I think it's embarrassing for the industry and ruins the overall credibility of camera reviews. 

In addition to rock solid interview autofocus I have to say that the footage directly out of camera, with no color grading and no processing, is wonderful. We shot 1080p since the final use of the content will be on social media and will, overwhelmingly, be enjoyed on much smaller screens that the ones we're editing on. With the paid video upgrade for the S1 I was able to make video at 1080p that was both 10 bit and 4:2:2 color space. It's a bit rate of 100 mbps. I think it looks beautiful. Just beautiful. 

Here's a short clip:

Zach Interviews from Kirk Tuck on Vimeo.

If I could change anything in our very impromptu interview it would have been to add more front light so I could bring down the sky exposure. With that said my waveform tells me we're not burning out highlight detail. I guess I could reduce the highlights and increase the shadows but that might mess with the overall skin tone. It's always a compromise; either shadows and highlights or access versus production time. At least I know I chose the right camera for the job.

Packing for a "Person in the street" video assignment.

I'm going out today to do some impromptu video snippets to support a new play at Zach Theatre; "Every Brilliant Thing."  We're a crew of three; the marketing director, who will ask random people on the street questions about joyous things in life, her in-house social media manager (and aspiring videographer) and myself. I'm bringing the gear and running the camera.

I've packed a Lumix S1 with its 24-105mm f4.0 lens, the XLR microphone accessory, some XLR cables in various lengths, and a Rode Reporter microphone. Why not lavaliere mics? Why not a shotgun mic?

My choice of camera is easy to explain: it's the best video/hybrid camera I have in stock and the upgraded video performance from the paid unlock gives me a nice 1080p choice with 10 bits and 4:2:2 color. It's an All-I codec so it won't stress the social media manager's computer as he pummels the footage into shape in Adobe Premiere.

The lens choice is straightforward; it's a very nice, sharp lens with a wide range of focal lengths and a very good dose of image stabilization built-in. The lens I.S. also works with the I.S. in the camera body for extra stabilization. The combination of I.S. features makes the camera (almost) like a gimbal with no gimbal. I can use the lens wide open without any fear of unsharpness. And I can handhold for short takes without too much human-inspired jitter.

Just in case I decide to have too much coffee on the way to the gig I'm bringing along a monopod with a fluid head and chicken foot for stability.

So, back to the microphones. Why an old style reporter mic?

Well, there's a reason newscasters out on location still use them. They are extremely rugged and also water resistant but the compelling feature is that an omni-directional microphone like the Rode Reporter is really good at picking up sound that's very close by and then it's ability to pick up other audio falls off very, very rapidly (inverse square law to the rescue) which helps to isolate the sounds you want and reject the background noise that you don't.

A less apparent but no less important consideration is that you don't need to attach the microphone to the person's clothing like you would a lav. This means interviews, and the subsequent separation from the person being interviewed, can be quick and efficient. Unlike a shotgun microphone that has to be well aimed to perform at its best a reporter microphone offers much more latitude in placement. Just get the business end within about 12 inches for the person's mouth and you're golden.

Finally, a reporter microphone can cover both sides of an interview: the interviewer and the interviewee. You need only move the mic back and forth between the two, depending on who is speaking.

A bonus is that a good quality reporter's mic is usually less than $150.

It's raining outside today but the folks I am working with are clever and resourceful. I think we'll have fun.

Industrial Strength Imaging. Hardware.

I was playing around with the Sigma fp today and decided to give the monochrome setting a try. In a sub-menu there are settings for sharpness and contrast that can be set just for that profile. Additionally, there is a "tone" button on the rear of the camera that gives you the opportunity to create custom curves that work on all the profiles. I tried combinations of both setting banks and ended up with some interesting stuff. 

These images were shot with the Sigma fp + 45mm f2.8 lens. I tried a different approach today and instead of working close to wide open I worked closer to stopped down. Most of the shots done today were executed at f8 and f11. It required a bit more camera supervision to make sure I stayed within the realm of hand-hold-ability but that's okay; I wasn't moving too fast. 

I'm happy with the way the stuff turned out...

Walking in the rain with a camera.

©2020 Kirk Tuck

"Zach Theatre; the Topfer Stage."

Sigma fp

45mm.

Evening in Austin. Heading back home with my little Sigma fp in my hands.

I took off the magnifier and the other attachments, left the heavy lenses at home and went for a walk with just the basic Sigma fp body and the 45mm f2.8 Sigma lens. It was fun. The camera is small and discreet. The lens is tactilely magnificent. And the color from the camera generally makes me very happy. 

After four days in a row of fast swimming, including an early workout this morning, a long, slow observational walk was just the thing. I think of long walks after hard swims as being recovery walks. The camera in hand makes for a good excuse to stop and examine every little thing. 

We've got interesting weather here right now. It's warm-ish (70's) and rainy and that's the forecast all the way through Wednesday. Tomorrow we're supposed to do "man in the street" video interviews for the theater but I'm thinking  that's going to turn into "man/woman in coffee shops" interviews instead. 

I'm using a Lumix S1 that's been upgraded with the video firmware unlock. Not because I want to use V-Log but because the unlock also gives me many other good codecs to choose from. Tomorrow it's my plan to use a 1080p, All-I setting since the final results will end up on Facebook, Instagram and Youtube. A really clean and sharp 1080 should be just right. 

Why not use the Sigma fp for this? No headphone jack! That's right, it's a high performance video camera that doesn't come with a headphone jack. I guess that's what the Ninja Inferno is for.... We can take a headphone signal right off the external digital audio recorder (as long as we shoot into an Atomos). Not sure how we'll monitor audio when I'm ready to plug in an SSD and try out the Raw video settings....

I'll worry about that when it becomes an issue. For now I'm using up the Sigma fp mostly because I like the way it makes photographs. 

Click on the images to see them bigger.

Playtime. Dusk. The Pedestrian Bridge. The Little Sigma FP and its 45mm.

©2020 Kirk Tuck

I've been playing with the color profiles in the Sigma FP.

I'm still not sure what to think about the little Sigma fp (someone took me to task for using upper case letters for "FP" in my last post about the camera, even though Sigma uses upper case letters in their product descriptions from time to time... Obviously a person with too much time on their hands and limited brain bandwidth...). I'm not sure whether the fp camera is an incredible new product that's basically misunderstood and too often discussed within the bounds of current, popular cameras, or if I'm just a sucker for eccentric designs and implied minimalism. Probably both. A play for elitism based on nearly everyone else's rejection of the product.

There are still things about that camera that reach out and bite me on the ass. Take the electronic image stabilization for still photography. The camera doesn't use motion sensing to determine how to reduce vibration on the fly. No, that would be too user friendly. Instead the camera, when set to provide said "feature," actually takes multiple images in a short amount of time and tries to interpolate a sharp frame by assessing the difference between the multiple frames. Works pretty well if I'm photograph something that is absolutely still but it acts like an HDR feature if the subject of my image making is moving...even slightly. In situations with subject movement there is evidence of multiple exposures in the final frame. Outline repetitions/ghosting. Weird. In my experience the default is to never, ever use the in-built image e-stabilization and, when needed, to use a lens that has its own lens-based image stabilization instead. But only if you are a fan of consistent image quality. 

I should also mention that since the I.S. is a multi-shot mess the camera also stops in it's tracks to process the files together and locks the camera up while a little hour glass icon spins around on the back. That alone should convince a user to immediately disable the electronic I.S. 

I get that this camera was really designed to be an all purpose, very high performance, video brain brick; meant to be supported in its video configurations by lots and lots of wonderful and useful accessories. Still photography in any real sense was just added to help the camera seem useful across modes; enough so to attract videographers looking for an "all purpose" tool that could double as a still photography camera while providing high performance video. Most of the accessories are aimed at motion picture makers who will add cages, rail systems, external digital video recorders, and other mechanisms that constantly emerge as the latest "must haves" for videographers. Where there is the will and a credit card there is a way. 

So it irks me, somewhat, that a camera which depends on accessories to be usable can't, at this time, be mated with a critical Sigma accessory; a loupe for the rear screen. A magnifying hood. Whatever you want to call it but something that shields the rear screen of the camera from stray light while also providing some magnification for the screen image. The camera itself has been available for months and months but the screen is (in North America) nowhere to be found and no delivery date has been declared. 

I bought a Hoodman 3.2 Hood/Loupe/Magnifier for my fp but I hate using the elastic cords to secure(?) it to the camera. After a day of messing with the expensive elastic bands and a loupe that slides all over the place I headed online to find a different (temporary) solution. Any good solution. I am currently trying out a Movo loupe which has a much better connecting feature but a less good optical performance. It's a cheap fix. If I were clever with tools I'd probably try to meld the attaching equipment from the Movo Loupe to the Hoodman but I know I'll never get around to it and, if I did, I'd probably end up inadvertently destroying both products in one sitting. That would both items un-returnable should the Sigma product show up in the next 30 days. 

The final critical/negative "feature" I'll point out today, before moving on to more pleasant topics, is the fact that the contrast detect AF is well nigh worthless in dark environments; especially so with moving subjects. In sunlight it's absolutely fine but two frustrating minutes of trying to autofocus a lens in a theater environment with middling lighting on the stage caused me to switch immediately to manual focusing and spend the rest of the evening painstakingly checking and double-checking my magnified focus settings. Argh. 

So, why on earth do I keep this camera instead of walking it back to the seller and demanding a refund? Well, mostly because its image quality (taking into consideration all the caveats above) is very, very good as well as decidedly different from my other cameras. The normal color constructs are very pleasing and the detail available from a well shot file is at the top of the class for 24 megapixels sensors. With that in mind I took it out for another walk on Friday determined to see what I could squeeze out of the little machine. 

I was using the Sigma 35mm f1.4 Art lens on the front and I must say that I like that lens for three reasons, even though I am not a big fan of the focal length (but I don't stop trying to like it...). The first reason is that it's the second smallest and lightest of my L mount series lenses. It's fine on the smaller camera and it's not a burden to carry around. Second reason is that it has an actual focusing scale and it has "medium" hard-ish stops at both ends (you can go past infinity or closest focus but you can feel the end points). It's a lens you can actually use in manual and zone focus! And the third reason is that the lens is quite sharp, has few foibles and creates pretty images; even at f1.4. 

My big experiment of the day was to run through some of the color settings (called variously "profiles" "looks" "color settings" etc. by different makers). The camera has most of the normal settings such as: Standard, Neutral, Vivid, Landscape and Portrait, but it also has a whole set of settings aimed at video users, such as: Teal&Orange, Cine and Sunset Red. In a nod to the camera's Foveon-equipped siblings it also has a series of color settings such as: Fov. G, Fov. B,  and Fov. Y which each accentuate the color related to the initial while leaving the rest of the colors in a scene unchanged. Oh, and there's also: Mono. All of the color settings are accessed directly by a dedicated button on the back of the camera, near the bottom, and all of the settings can be modified for contrast, saturation and sharpness in a sub menu you get to by pressing the AEL button. In Mono instead of saturation you can tone the image with one of the controls. 

I've used the camera predominantly in standard and neutral settings so I wanted to venture into the weirder choices. I tried "cine" which decreased image contrast, desaturated the image by quite a bit and also added a yellowish, green tinge/cast to the overall image. It's an odd effect for stills but I can see how it might a good starting point for some kinds of narrative video storytelling. 

The setting which really appealed to me was the Teal and Orange setting. It sounds less appetizing than it turns out to be. The effect accentuates the orange tones in skin tones while emphasizing a teal hue to colors opposite of orange in order to create more contrast between those tones. In the absence of a subject with orange tones the effect is to shift the color and saturation of skies and other blue "targets". I've included samples below. 

I finally shot some video tests with the camera at the maximum throughput settings that can be captured with a fast, V90 rated, Delkin Black UHS-II SD card. The footage at all file settings (which could be recorded internally) in the .Mov range was very, very detailed and lovely directly out of camera. In order to shoot and test in video raw DNG I will need to buy yet another portable SSD drive. I gave the last one away to a client because we needed to move over about 250 Gigabytes of video and photographic raw files (Oh, the things I do in order to get paid...).  I tried several of the color settings but settled in on the neutral profiles along with some judicious reductions in saturation, sharpness and contrast. This is a camera that seems to do a really good job holding onto highlight detail in people's faces and that's a big plus for me. 

I like playing with the camera and I like the images coming out of it. It's taken the place of my ailing Panasonic S1R camera as a personal Art camera and the friction added by its foibles pushes me a bit harder to actually pay attention and think about what I'm shooting. A plus since I'm eternally distracted.

On more thing. Since the I.S. is largely ineffective I see this as a full-time tripod, monopod or gimbal camera for video. If you want to go handheld you'll want to use the 24-105mm Panasonic S lens for its very competent I.S. and you'll want to go one step further and cobble together a stable shoulder rig to help with keeping the camera jitter free. For regular photography you are basically fine with image stabilized lenses so you can continue with current still photography practices. No stabilized lens? Use that old 1/focal length of the lens (and no coffee) formula we all learned in the film days....

That's all I have for now. Please! Sigma! Deliver that darned loupe. It would make the camera that much more fun. 

this image and the one directly below were shot in the Teal and Orange color setting. 

There's no orange object in the frame but it certainly does change the look of the sky.

Teal and Orange.

One of the few images on which the camera's e-I.S. was mostly effective.

I think the "bottomless mimosas" graphic is hilarious.

 Another rare feather in the cap for the in-body I.S. 

The three images above are all shot with the teal and orange color setting in bright, midday Texas sun. 

The sky definitely looked nothing like this...

this shot was done using the Fov. B (Foveon Blue?) setting. It too is wildly inaccurate. 

this image and the one just below were shot using the "Cine" color setting. 

Shades of "not mainstream color science." 

and back to the teal and orange setting.

intermission: How many of you have Orange Theory exercise gyms in your cities?

We have too many. I don't know enough about their exercise concept but I find messaging like this misleading. "Additional" to what? 

cine.

cine.

Teal and Orange. 

Every once in a while I take a photo that seems to have a life of its own. Check out how Texas Monthly Magazine used my "Janis" photograph.

https://www.texasmonthly.com/the-culture/janis-joplin-musical-erykah-badu-san-antonio-zoo/

If you are too busy to click the link here's the original photo:

   Mary Bridget Davies as Janis Joplin in Zach Theatre's production of: "A Night with Janis Joplin."

Photo © Kirk Tuck

and a few more:

All images ©2020 Kirk Tuck.

The camera is off to Panasonic service. It will come back someday. In the meantime Let's talk about "biographical fallacy". (see second section...).

It's always anxiety provoking when there is a ripple in the force. In this case a camera that has become unresponsive and is in need of warranty repair. The camera is now winging its way to Panasonic where I am certain that they'll figure out what ails it and remedy its ills.

The main reason this camera failure bothered me is because I've been making a distinction between the cameras I use for business and the cameras I use for my personal work and the way it falls out around here is that the S1Rs; the high resolution cameras, are the ones I've designated for "me" stuff while the S1 cameras are earmarked for "client" stuff.

I came to this dichotomy somewhat logically as the S1 cameras have more efficient files sizes for work, better high ISO performance, and are much less expensive. Cost matters in some sense because it makes it psychologically easier to replace a camera that's been damaged and destroyed. Buying an additional body at $2400 is nowhere near as painful as shelling out $3600+ for a body which has, as its only advantage, more resolution.

All things considered I've been very happy with the Lumix S1 cameras and I've been pounding "work" exposures through both bodies with reckless abandon. One of the S1 cameras has over 30,000 actuations on it and the other is nosing it at about 25,000. It's a fair amount of shooting when one considered that I've only owned the cameras since September and October.

On the other hand, the S1R cameras each have less than 3,000 exposures on each since they aren't as agile for the kind of paid work I do. They tend to (individually) accompany me on walks, and spend much of their lives set up like mini-(old school) Hasselblads: Cropped to a square format, used with prime lenses, nestled in at ISO 100, and generally used in the raw format. This makes the S1Rs perfect artsy portrait cameras for me and, in that case, the failure of one is a bit of a sting.

So far I love almost everything about the S1Rs except the tendency to not roll off highlights as gracefully as film did. I don't mind the two card slots being set up for different cards. There's nothing about the AF or the operational speed of the camera I don't like. It just seems perfectly suited for me.

I guess I should change my mindset and just consider using the hell out of my cameras until they drop dead in my hands and then, with total unflappability, just grab the next new one from my dealer when the need arises.

I'm hopeful I'll see the sidelined S1R back in a week or so. If it takes longer than that I'll be ready to make someone's life at Panasonic more interesting.

On to a different topic: The biographical fallacy. Apparently, there is a Japanese photographer; a street shooter, who was the subject of a promotional video for Fuji's new LeicaReplicaX100 camera. You can see the video and reaction to the video here: https://www.dpreview.com/news/6165309898/fujifilm-pulls-controversial-x100v-promo-video-due-to-the-featured-photographer-method

He's a youngish, frenetic photographer who seems to be blending the worst of Bruce Glidden and Garry Winogrand's street shooting techniques. He invades people's space, sticks cameras in the faces of people who, at least in the video, are surprised and unhappy with the attention. The video probably explains why he loves the latest Fuji camera but the thing that I came away with was that the majority of the 700+ comments attached to the article were highly critical of the artist because of his on camera behavior and then, by extension, critical of his work.

I wonder, if they had seen the work by itself, in a gallery instead of in a video showing how the work was accomplished, if the same commenters would be raving about how glorious and dynamic the work is. This, to some extent, is the danger of the current penchant for deep dives into the working methods of photographers/artists/musicians via "behind the scenes" videos.

My first question is this: since the artist was being filmed by a video crew who followed him through the streets as he worked through the course of one day, did the presence of the crew subconsciously motivate him to over sell his real street presence? Did he ramp up his risk taking for the sake of the observers with video cameras? Did he exaggerate his methods for promotional value in the moment?

And since video productions tend to be distillations of hours of footage, squeezed down to five or seven minutes of action, did the producers bypass moments where the photography was more consensual, less predatory, calmer, happier and then concentrate on the more provocative moments in order to add some friction, controversy and click-bait-ability to their final video?

My real issue is with all the people who, while living in the land of the free and the home of the (supposed) brave, are so quick to question the photographer's very right to be on the street shooting his work.

Many years ago, in an Art History class, we often discussed what is called "the biographical fallacy" where an audience judges an artist's work not by analyzing and commenting on the work itself (the work in a vacuum, so to speak) and instead blends together judgements about the work based on their knowledge of the artist, including his/her sexuality, religion, political preferences, aberrant personality, body odor and any number of other attributes specific to that artist.

In the contemporary artistic landscape we seem to have too much information. Too much third party observation of our modern artists. They are dissected (and in some situations it's self inflicted) and examined in visceral little snapshots that are inevitably taken out of context. Especially so if the snapshot of time and action is created in the service of selling a product instead of focusing on the photographer's work. If we had video of Robert Frost farting at a podium during a reading would that have to diminish the value of his poems?

It's widely acknowledged that Caravaggio was an incredible painter whose work moved the art of painting forward to a great degree. He is the poster artist for chiaroscuro.  His work hangs in prestigious museums, is the subject of many books and, to this day, influences visual artists across media. We inspect and dissect his work because it's the correct way to understand the art. Removed from the influences which the behavior or identity of the creator might handicap our brains. Might make us like or dislike the work by the connection to aspects of the artist we don't like.

In all accounts I've read Caravaggio was a dick. A wacky and troublesome artist who had to flee from one of his patrons after leaping over a tennis net, in a rage about losing a match to the son of the patron, and stabbing the scion of the patron in the heart with a knife --- killing him right on the court. He ran from the location of the homocide to the docks at the edge of the city and caught the next boat out with only the clothes on his back.

With that new knowledge do we then discount the powerful influence Caravaggio's paintings have had on his peers, and future artists for centuries since? I don't think so.

A tell all biography about Richard Avedon outs him as having been gay. Does this cancel his tremendous and wonderful influence, spanning or that 60 years, on photographers, fashion and art in the 20th century? Many of us now would not construe his sexuality as a negative in any case.

Be careful in judging art work in our times by using as a measure the person's immediate popularity or foibles. Good work is good work. Not everyone can be Mr. Rodgers but that doesn't cancel the good work that they have done, or its influence on us,  our future artists, and culture in general.

It's Friday. A good day for a walk. Everybody have fun!

The Sad And Frustrating Feelings Engendered When a Relatively New Camera Just Stops Working. Looking Forward to See How Panasonic Will Resolve the Failure.

Ouch. Just...ouch! It's been a long time since I've had a digital camera body fail. Maybe all the way back to my Nikon D2x days. It's never a comfortable thing and the resolution; even when the company that makes the product steps up, is time consuming, frustrating  and ultimately erodes the idea of the camera's reliability. Dead cameras suck.

The camera in question is a Panasonic Lumix S1R. I bought it on November 28, 2019 and I've used it sparingly. I bought it as a back-up body for another S1R that I purchased about a month earlier. The camera has never been used in the rain, travels in a Think Tank backpack, has never been on a plane, or even a badly sprung pick-up truck. Of all my Panasonic cameras it's the one with the least mileage on it and since the advertising for the camera touts its robustness and impeccable build quality its untimely surrender of usability just galls me.

So, what happened? I'd set up a portrait session here in my studio with a good friend and had the camera set for a revisitation of my older style of portraiture. I was using it in the 1:1 crop mode and shooting raw files to a tested and almost new CFexpress card. The camera had a fresh battery in it and gave no hints of its impending demise. I was working with the camera on a tripod and lighting the session with LED lights. Room temperature around 68 degrees (f) and just enough humidity in the room to extinguish any static electricity.

I'd shot about 225 frames, reviewed some of them normally, and then stepped away from the camera for a few minutes to adjust lights and chat with my friend. The camera went into sleep mode and when I pushed the shutter button to wake it back up again it stayed dormant. I turned the camera off and turned it back on again. I got the following message: "turn camera off and turn back on again." We tried that a number of times but it was a loop that brought me back to the same message over and over again.

I didn't want to waste my friend's time or truncate the session so I reached into the equipment toolkit and pulled an identical body out of the drawer, put the 85mm lens on that camera and proceeded to finish the shoot (because that's exactly what professionals are supposed to do...).

After the session was over and my friend was off to some other engagement I went through the standard trouble-shooting protocol: I changed batteries. I tried different lenses. I swapped out memory cards. I turned the camera on while holding down various buttons. Nothing would allow me to leave the cycle of: turn on, get message, turn off.

My favorite camera store doesn't close until 7pm on weekdays so I called my trusty sales person and explained the problem. He took down the details and sent a message to the Panasonic technical representative. I'm now waiting for a call back from someone to find out what we do next. My optimistic side wants the resolution to happen like this: I get a secret formula of button presses and reset options from the tech support people. Once we bring the camera back to life we reload the firmware and everything turns out to be just right. 

My second choice is that the store, the rep and the company decide to immediately make everything right by shipping me a new camera body overnight while the local store accepts the old one and takes responsibility for getting it back to Panasonic in trade for my new one.

My pessimistic self tells me an uncomfortable saga wherein fingers are pointed everywhere, the camera is sent in for warranty repair but it takes months to come back and then, two weeks later, the same problem resurfaces. I hope I'm absolutely wrong about this imagined option.

In one regard I've been proven correct about the need for professionals to have back-ups for their important gear. Lots of back-ups. That I was able to reach into a nearby drawer and pull out an identical camera model and finish the shoot the way I intended was a good thing and made me feel like a competent business person. I would never really tolerate having to tell a good client that I couldn't continue the job at hand because my "only" camera failed.

But this does break the feeling of trust in the equipment that I've been enjoying. Now I'll be on guard and nervous every time I take one of the S1R cameras out of my camera bag and start to use it. And that's a sad thing because it diminishes the joy of using gear you thought you could rely upon to work, as long as you kept it fed with batteries and safe from abuse.

I'm waiting (im)patiently for a response from someone today. There's still the second S1R and two S1s here in the office. I am not without workable tools. I'm just frustrated and a bit pissed off.

In other notes: We actually got a dusting of snow last night here in Austin. There was snow on the roof of the house and even across the windshield of my car. Studio Dog was delighted because she seems to love the cold (but I made her wear her sweater for her walk just so I'd be warm....) and now she's delighted because the sun is out and there are still spots of snow in the backyard that she can romp through and then track melted snow through the house. 

It was 30 degrees (f) when I got to the swimming pool this morning. The air was cold, the water was warm and the sun was brilliant. The sky was clean with those nicely saturated blue hues I always like in photographs. 

We did a good, long set and I worked on my freestyle technique with an extra dollop of diligence. I didn't think of my broken camera even once during the workout. I saved that nagging tug of concern for the drive back home. 

Camera Death. So sad. I'll let you guys know how it all turns out. This is Panasonic's opportunity to show off their customer service and make a blogger who just celebrated his 26,000,000th page view this week happy....