Yesterday's job was a classic example of where we are right now in assignment photography. An ever increasing mix of video and photos.

At some point it's all about the rubber chicken. 

I'm starting to get more and more selective about the projects I accept. If I get the impression that we're being asked for sheer quantity; a shoot till you drop affair, I won't take the bait. Life is too short. But I'm not above mixing and matching a couple of disciplines if the client is good and the project is comfortable. 

While the advertising agencies I usually work with generally have their hearts in the right place they can't always control their clients and sometimes communication gets frayed. But in most instances it's just a case of clients not understanding how long it might take to do something, or misunderstanding a bid based on usage, not high volume production. That's an important point. 

With portraits taken on location often a client doesn't understand that there is always post production involved and that post production is the part of a job that's like an iceberg; 90% of it is under water and unseen by them during the shoot. 

Here's a case in point from yesterday: Part of our job was, on paper, to photograph 5 or 6 people from the blank company. There was an outside location at their H.Q.  that they'd used in the past which was shaded by a tree and had a shaded, non-ugly background that could easily be put out of focus. I set up my camera, and a flash in a smaller Octa-box, and roughed in my lighting. These were quick portraits and I shot maybe 20 or 25 images per person instead of the 70-100 I might shoot for a classic, studio portrait. 

We finished photographing the first six people but more and more people came out to have their portraits taken. The final tally was 13. This was not something discussed beforehand but I have a twenty+ year relationship with the ad agency and decided not to start a discussion about it with the agency owner in front of the client. It was easy enough and took a short amount of time in the moment.

But...what the client won't see, and the agency might not explain, is that the amount of post production time goes up a lot. I have to do a global correction for each person's files since skin tones, etc. are all different. There's the editing down to a handful of selections and then the creation of individual galleries for each person. Finally, we'll get back the clients' selections over a random time period, piecemeal, which takes any efficiency out of doing a final retouch and delivery process. Adding six people might add only five minutes per person on the front end but might adding an hour on the back end. Or more. Next time we bid for that agency we'll just pop in a per person price up front so they know that each person they add will also increase their final bill. 

Next, we moved into the company's manufacturing area and started a quick discussion of how to handle making some beauty shots of products and also how to include some b-roll video. Previously we would have totally separated those two functions. We would have done all our photography sequentially and then packed up that gear and started in on video.

But the creative director presented the idea of shooting high enough quality video to allow for pulling still frames out of the b-roll video for use on the website, etc. leaving the photography of just a few actual products to the still camera ---- because they might need those images for printed pieces and conference graphics.

I put one camera on a gimbal and set it up to have the best shot at making general content that would also work as a "frame grab" resource. I set another camera up on a tripod so I could make high resolution photographs with lots of depth of field.

The frame grabs might work might work. They might not. The b-roll will work for b-roll. The high resolution stills will work for print. But I think grabbing lots of good stills from video is still a bit of a crap shoot. With that being said, we decided to shoot at 60 fps on a GH5 and set the shutter angle at 180° (1/120th of a second) and shot in the Long-gop format. We weren't doing any fast moves and I tried to put in static shots as well as moving shots so we'd have a better chance of having a good range of frames in which the action was more or less frozen. I'd love to have shot in All-I but that's not available at 60 fps in 4K so we tried a compromise.

While I shot in a Long-gop format in the camera (which allowed for 60 fps, 10 bit, 4:2:2) when I pulled the footage into Final Cut Pro X I transcoded it into ProRes HQ which is an All-I editing format. After a bit of color correction on the footage I output it for the client in ProRes 422 which created a whopping big file of about 80 gigabytes. It gives the web designers the best shot of pulling out good still frames from the video. We also output the same extended clip in H.264 so they could scrub through it very quickly and find what they need.

But the idea of frame grabbing brings up some interesting questions. At least I find then interesting.

When the Red video cameras were introduced about a decade ago one of the marketing messages that followed the launch was the assertion that the Red Code Raw video files were so detailed and good that one could use them as still images instead of limiting usage just to video. That was a big ask at the time but there were some sample shoots done by a New York headshot photographer and also by a fashion photographer/videographer which showed some pretty good results. 

Ten years on and now we have cameras like the S1H that can shoot 6k (18 megapixel) raw files, downsampled from even higher resolution sensors and we've got so much more control over the post production. Sure, you have to go through a lot of frames to find the perfect images, and the storage demands increase dramatically, but think of how nuanced your selection of the "exact" perfect moment(s) could be. 

Camera sensors now have very large dynamic ranges and in-cameras tools like vector scopes and waveforms can help us drill down to perfect color and exposure settings. Being able to shoot a continuous burst of frames might be just the thing for a "twitchy" portrait subject. And it might be easier to put a camera on a tripod and shoot a three second burst of video raw files and blend them in Photoshop for products than to switch out between photographs and video on a fast paced shoot. 

One of the downsides I can think of would be the practical inability to use electronic flash. But that's not an issue for most kinds of subjects and LED lighting has gotten so good that it's a nice substitute for scenes where matching the power of sunlight or dealing with fast moving subjects isn't an issue. 

Another interesting point is the pace at which what used to be photography jobs (only!) are morphing into either combo jobs (video and stills) or have progressed to video replacing photography. While we aren't used to the idea right now don't we suppose there will come a time when we can shoot 24 megapixel cinema DNG raw files that will look as good as the best Jpegs from the same cameras? After all, Jpegs are currently on 8 bits while raw video can be 10 or 12 bits and Jpegs have a more limited color subsampling. 

I can see a time when we might show up, arrange a scene the way we like it and then "direct" the subject of a portrait sitting through a range of expressions while running a video/hybid camera shooting 6K raw video. With a little practice I think we would become proficient in knowing when we got good stuff and not running the camera for too long. Bore down to the ranges of frames you want to consider and erase the rest.

It's pretty instructive to watch what camera makers are launching into the market right now. The Sigma fp is much more about raw video than it is about being a still camera. Same with the Lumix S1H; although ti is a much, much better still camera while being more facile than the fp with video. The Canon C70 is a much talked about product in video circles and still imaging is almost an afterthought with that camera. The Sony A7Siii is resolutely a riposte to Panasonic's S series cameras. 

Everything coming out has moved the hybrid imaging game up a lot. The files are much beefier and more detailed. The raw capabilities add so much more control for us over image quality and our ability to set a wider and wider range of codecs and profiles is liberating. 

I get that most of us taught ourselves the pleasure of shooting one frame at a time and that this would be a huge earthquake change for us to get used to but in many ways we're already doing it with our iPhones. The same folks who might say, "I never want to shoot video." might not be aware that some of what makes iPhone photos work at squeezing great images from tiny sensors is the fact that the camera in the phone is blazing away, shooting endless video frames until you press the "shutter button" and is then almost instantly stacking large numbers of those frames, dropping out anomalies and noise while integrating all of the color and detail from multiple samples. It's basically shooting video even when it's not shooting video, it's just that the processing is taking place under the hood. And it's blisteringly fast.

And the video is set up the same way! We're already shooting the way I'm talking about with our phones and I think it's only a matter of time till it comes to our cameras. Under the hood at first but then fully customizable. 

Seems more and more like the future is raining down on us and we can either get soaked or roll with it. 

From a hobbyist point of view no one is calling on you to take any action. Keep on shooting exactly as you like. But if you are one of my readers who is trying to make a living shooting some kind of visual content it behooves you to learn and experiment all the time. It's inevitable that your photography clients will ask for moving pictures at some point in the future just as it's inevitable that all you video guys are going to increasingly be asked to pull great frames out of the video content you just shot and re-purpose them as still graphics. 

A lot to chew on for a Friday evening. 

Currently packing up to do a one person, music video with my friend, Kenny Williams, tomorrow afternoon. A couple of James Bond theme covers.... Nice.

 

The role of social media influencers in the camera market.

I spent eight years working in an advertising agency that specialized in "retail marketing". Now we'd probably call that B-to-C; business-to-consumer advertising. When I was working directly in the industry, as opposed to my current indirect role, we didn't have anything resembling social media and the closest we had to social media "influencers" were the hoary celebrity endorsers. Usually well known sports figures or television personalities who would pitch products and services on TV and in print ads. The idea that someone whose only accomplishment was being alive and documenting their homogeneous existence on a free video channel on the internet would have been mostly unthinkable. But here we are. 

We now have a family of women who are famous they shop, apply make-up and workout, and they are becoming social media billionaires (the Kardashians). We have a desperately under-qualified, sociopathic, social media expert as the president of the wealthiest country on the planet (though seemingly, not for long), and we have a bunch of people in their twenties making seven figure incomes because they are good at telling their personal stories on YouTube; and also getting all gushy and drool-y about products that are sent to them to "review." There is even an elementary school boy who  pulls down millions each year reviewing toys for other children. 

But I have to think hard to understand whether or not social media influencers in the camera and photography space have done more harm than good for the industry; and for their audiences. 

Advertising strategies for camera companies were relatively easy before the web rolled around. There was a handful of national and international magazines devoted to photography and nearly every ardent photographer subscribed to one or more monthly publications (or read them on the newsstands). They ranged from a magazine that started out as a local trade publication for professionals in NYC (Photo District News -- raise you hand if you remember when they used to be tabloid sized and printed on newsprint!) to wide ranging, glossy, general interest publications like Modern Photography and Popular Photography. All more or less relegated to oblivion now by the ever-encroaching web.

If there is an apt analogy to the print age then Digital Photography Review's website is the working combination of Modern Photography and Popular Photography with a little bit of Darkroom Photography thrown in for good measure. The critical focus across each of these media is the reviewing of product, the advertising of the same product, and a conduit with which to link buyer and seller. Now it's the ubiquitous "link" while in the days of old it was the endless advertisements in the back pages of every issue. 

In the magazine age there were few alternatives for advertisers beyond printed ads in targeted publications with a flourish of trade show excitement thrown in for good measure. I suppose the influencers at the time were the top tier photographers of the age. Mostly the editorial ones whose credit lines graced widely published photo stories in large scale, prestigious magazines. But it was a different era and many photographers worked across two or three different camera systems at a time. Every assignment might be different. The tools changed with the job and the publication. This made it more difficult for anyone to commit to a single brand. Photographers as influencers were much more gear promiscuous. 

Now we have people who are called influencers, ambassadors, explorers of the light, and other silly titles. 

Instead of shooting for big magazines and then using the awesome quality of their real work as leverage for their camera company clients the new horde of influencers rarely shoot anything for real world clients and are proudly pursuing careers in.....testing and touting cameras. And lenses. And gadgets. And presets. And t-shirts. And baseball caps with logos. Tony and Chelsea strive to be the Kardashian family of photography. All of them got into their influencer niche not because they loved being out photographing but because, for a long while, it was easy money. 

Wouldn't it be super cool if every "influencer" in the camera space was judged by his or her actual work first? Imagine going to a YouTube channel and having the first thing you see be a giant gallery of the influencer's work. Imagine that the work turned out to be was soulless and vapid and not particularly well done. Would you still "highly value" their recommendation of the 25th or 26th camera they have reviewed this year? 

Imagine a reviewer whose whole life revolves around reviewing. Certainly they should be able to sharpen their reviewing stick and really nail well produced and entertaining reviews but... would the value be there for you as the viewer? As a dedicated camera user? Is it enough for you that they talk a good game? Can you trust someone to really judge the handling of a camera if all the handling is done at a sponsor's junket? Would you rather hear from someone who buys the camera with their own funds and uses it daily for months or years until its operation becomes second nature before they write about it or discuss it? Is it enough for their audiences to listen to a regurgitation of the press release and the owner's manual?

Certainly it's the frothiness and the studied earnestness of the influencers that helps us come to think of our recently bought photo gear as quickly becoming obsolete, antiquated and less than capable. Surely it's their smug appreciation of that new menu item or seventh function button that drives us to want to buy and use a new camera just to have access to a control feature we never needed in any of our past photo adventures. 

In one sense the camera market, under constant pressure from the influencers, is becoming tribal and divided as never before. Even though camera sales are dropping like a bag of lead feathers every time a new model launches the appended comments on every vlog and website are strictly demarcated between ardent fans and hate filled detractors. One camp certain that this or that new camera will bring them closer to photo heaven while people in other camera tribes protest with loud conviction that the same camera is a tool of Satan and riddled with booby traps and  crippling failures that will bring nothing but sadness and rent cloth to the bewitched adopters. 

Why am I writing this now; today? Because I just saw a flurry of reviews for a Hasselblad product across nearly twenty YouTube channels by "reviewers" who rarely stray from talking about Canon/Nikon/Sony and who've never, as far as I can see, used or even flirted with medium format digital cameras before this bunched up flurry of reviews.  And I'm baffled. Or cynical.

It's enough to make me grudgingly believe that an old school review site like DPR has merit. Not enough depth but a lot more value than some dingus fussing around with brand after brand after brand, week after week. 

I understand that a unified marketing platform no longer exists on which a camera maker can place a year long buy of ad space and have any chance of hitting 50 or 60 % of all targeted buyers. But I wonder just how influential the social influencers are in moving brands that won't move at all by themselves. 

Or said another way, where are the Pentax influencers? Have the influencers saved Profoto? Do we need the shallow and transient information the vloggers are sharing or do we just visit their channels because we're bored. It's kind of sad.

Hold that thought. 

Circling back, let's have a zoom workshop. right....

Above somewhere in the post I wondered if the influencers do more harm than good for the industry. Think about this for a minute, in the stock market there used to be people who encouraged investors to buy and sell frequently. Jump on a hot tip. Sell in a moment of anxiety. In each sale or purchase the agent or broker made a bit of money. A monetization of their suspect advice. This was called "churn." Some brokers would work their audience (fans?) hard and in the end the investor would lose a good part of their net worth and either change their overall investment strategy or run out of money. 

A good Sony Vlogger works for Sony by churning Sony users (same with Nikon, Panasonic, Canon, etc.) and manipulates them to become dissatisfied with the very camera the influencers themselves recommended only a few months before. The audience capitulates to the sales pitch couched as informational/editorial content, sells their old camera at a loss and pays a premium for a new camera that may or may not be even fractionally better than the one it's replacing. Eventually the buyers catch on and stop buying altogether. Or they realize they've been "marks" who are systematically beggared by a relentless wringing of their financial sponges. And they remember that this is just a hobby and that everything they liked about the hobby seemed much more fun before the gear churn set in. They might decide that their phone is good enough and exit the hobby altogether. Sony (or other manufacturers) in concert with their influencers could have churned away what might have been a long term source of well paced income; if only the product cycles and the churn weren't so relentless. 

We're trained, I think, to regard those YouTube channels in the same way we do television channels. We know where the commercials begin and end on TV but we fail to understand that most photo/video blogs are one big commercial all the way through. And we trust our influencers because we mistake them for educational experts instead of understanding that they are just salespeople priming the overflowing pumps for the camera makers. It's an odd construct and one that leaves me cold.

A New Portrait. We did this one right before the initial pandemic shutdown. I just recently got the client's selections.

Vera.

Vera owns an advertising agency in Austin. I do work for them from time to time. She contacted me just before the holidays last year and asked if I could do a portrait in my favorite style of black and white photography. 

I set up the studio and we spent a quiet hour making portraits. I used the Lumix S1R and set the camera to shoot in a 1:1 (square) crop. The original files are in color and I did most of my post processing in Photoshop and then switched to Luminar 4.x to do the conversion to black and white. 

The lens was the Sigma 85mm Art lens for the L-mount. 

I'd love to hear your responses to the work. Thanks. 

Gearing up for an interesting series of video assignments. I know what I'll be doing every Saturday evening from Oct. 17th through Nov. 7th.

Once you've got a really big project under your belt all the restraints come off and the work flows in. At least that's the way it feels today. 

We've got a couple of photographic assignments to take care of this month but I'm spending more time figuring out and telling ad agencies how we're going to do stuff safely than I am at figuring out the nuts and bolts of the jobs. A group contacted me last week to see about shooting some products on location, and a bit of b-roll of their client's offices, and I was okay with that. But after I agreed and we were in the scheduling phase they came back and casually dropped an unwelcome wrinkle into the mix. They added a request to do "headshots" of five or six individuals, possibly in the office.

My immediate response was, "No." Followed by, "If this is a requirement of the job then I'll have to pass on this one." Now we're in the, "What if we photography them outdoors?" stage of the negotiation. I'm sure we'll work out something but I can guarantee that it won't include me setting up a temporary studio in a small, interior conference room and interfacing with five or six unmasked people about whom I know absolutely nothing. The subject seems especially poignant given the current situation with the president. The agency is generally very rationale and straight-shooting so I imagine we'll figure out something that works well for both all parties. 

Added note: All good here. The client's intention was always to do exterior portraits, it just wasn't conveyed in the bid process. The actual labs and manufacturing that we're shooting are huge and lightly populated by strictly masked workers. I saw footage of the facility just after lunch and there's ample space and high ceilings. Not what I originally feared! I guess I'm just being jumpy after all the recent news. 

I have several other photography projects booked for October but all of the others are planned for exterior locations so it should be smooth sailing. Two are with groups of physicians so I'm guessing they'll be especially careful when it comes to personal safety. 

But what I really want to write about here today is the upcoming series of videos I mentioned in the title. 

Following up on the success of Zach Theatre's fundraising livestream (Sept. 26) we're embarking on a series of outdoor concerts which will take place in the plaza, just in front of the theater building. Each week will feature a different theme and different performers. One week will be "Motown Goove" another will be "On Broadway" the following week will be "70's Female Rockstars" and the final week will feature "Superstar Chanel" (who sang the Tina Turner songs on the livestream video I posted last week). Each genre will run from Thursday through Sunday starting on the 17th of October. Each show will feature one or two singers and a small group of musicians.

The series is being called, "Songs Under the Stars." 

The Theater has ample outside space on their plaza to host a little over one hundred socially distanced people (in various pods) and since it's all outdoors it should be a safe experience. The concerts will start each night at 7:30 and run for approximately one hour. Our collective goal, beyond making the revenue from the live performances, and keeping peoples' interest in live productions, will be to record the Saturday concert for each genre in the series with an eye to streaming the video of the concerts behind a paywall on Vimeo. 

And that's where I come in. 

I'll be at each Saturday performance with three cameras. I'll need to stay stationary during the show so I won't be able to do any fancy gimbal work of the performers (although I would love to...) but I'll be working with two "show" cameras to get a static wide shot with one camera and then do "follow" work with the second camera. By follow work I mean using a much longer lens and getting medium and close up shots of the performers. 

I'm planning to use the S1H as the main/follow camera; coupled with the 70-200mm S-Pro lens. I hope to be close enough to the stage to use the S1H in its full frame configuration but I'm not at all hesitant to switch the camera to the APS-C/Super35 mode in order to get 50% more magnification, if I have to. 

The second camera will likely be the GH5 fitted with the 12mm Meike cinema lens for the wide, stage shots. That camera will be stationary and we'll depend on deep depth of field to maintain sharp focus throughout the show. 

We'll be shooting 4K in both cameras with an eye to being able to crop in for tighter shots where it's needed. Since we'll be editing on a 1080p timeline we shouldn't lose any sharpness with the crop. 

I'll set up the GH5 with no microphone and the built-in mic/audio set to ALC. We need only to get a "scratch track" out of that camera and we'll leave the heavy-lifting for audio to the S1H. The scratch track from the wide will only be used to sync up the audio we record in the S1H to the video streams from both cameras. It's so easy now to sync audio to video in either Adobe Premiere or Final Cut Pro. 

Each camera will be on a tripod equipped with a fluid video head. It's critical for the primary/close up camera since I'll need to follow action, albeit in a limited range. It's better to do it smoothly. It makes the captured video much more watchable. 

I'm putting external monitors on each camera rig and the running cables from the output of the monitors to a monitor for the show director. With the two monitors in front of him he'll be able to call out directions like: "Can you zoom in closer to Bob?" or "Can you catch more of Chanel and less of the band?" Etc. 

If we had more budget it would be great to put wireless transmitters on both of the camera monitor HDMI outputs and then run the received signals into a single workstation so we don't have to run cable or come up with four total monitors. At the current time I own three of the Atomos monitor/recorders and I may just borrow a fourth from one of my fellow, local videographers. Either that or forgo the director monitor dedicated to the wide camera...

Since we're putting a monitor into the director's hands it just makes sense that we'll both be wearing communications gear. A headset for each with an attached microphone and wireless transmitters and receivers. This way we can be socially distanced and still be on the same directoral page. 

The stage area will be well lit with theatrical spots which is a good thing since the show's start time of 7:30 will be post-sunset by the show dates. With good lighting on the stage I don't think we'll need to go over ISO 800 for either camera. A cakewalk for the S1H and well within the range of "good" for the GH5. Added to the mix is the fact that all the footage will be downsampled in the final rendering to 1080p which should minimize any noise that does show up.

As far as audio goes the S1H is an obvious choice for recording it. The camera has a wide range of input sensitivity and, when using the audio interface accessory I am able to accept long XLR runs from the sound engineer's mixing board and match the camera to the line input. We'll monitor the audio carefully at the sound check and get a good sense for the loudest parts of the show. I don't expect to have to do much with the audio levels once we set a "show" level but I'll have a earphone plugged into one ear and I'll be spot checking the meters all the way through. I can send the signal to both channels and set one of them 6DB lower than the other as a means of having a lower level back-up channel in case we hit some unwanted clipping. I'll call that a safety channel. 

As a final safety we'll have the sound engineer record the feed off the mixing board onto a digital audio recorder. That way, if I totally screw up the sound we can replace it with a clean track. 

While it seems obvious why I would select the S1H as my primary camera you might wonder about my choice of the GH5 for the second, wide camera. 

Colorwise it matches up well with the S1H. It has, by far the longest battery life while running, and using it as the wide/close camera takes advantage of its deeper depth of field. With dual card slots it's able to run well past our one hour run time estimate even in 10 bit 4K, and it's rock solid. 

I also want to bring along a third camera, probably the G9 set up on a gimbal, so I can shoot a bunch of b-roll of the pre-show sound checks, the guest arrivals, some wide, establishing shots of the venue and maybe even some "footage" of people enjoying/applauding the shows. The G9 makes sense because I am comfortable with it as a gimbal superstar. And that would leave an extra S1 or two as back-ups for all the other cameras. 

Since this stuff won't be live-streamed it's a lot less anxiety provoking for me. I'm looking forward to four beautiful nights under the Texas stars, listening to live music and making little movies. 

Lots to look forward to and I'm sure I see many familiar faces in the audience and among the crew. It feels good to work on scheduled productions again. Every day I shoot video I get more practice and get more comfortable with it. I should mention that these concert videos are not pro bono. I will be paid.

The video projects are starting to stack up and that's just what I wanted for this Fall. 

More to come....

OT: A quick reminder that doctors and scientists are finding more and more evidence that exercise (not fad diets, or regimented fasting, or sleeping under pyramids, or wearing crystals) is the real "Fountain of Youth."

I ran with my phone in my hand today. I stopped and took photographs from time to time.

I was scheduled to swim with my masters team this morning but when I woke up I had two thoughts: The first was -- "It's a beautiful, cool day. Maybe I should go for a run instead." And the second was --- "I've already done five swim workouts this week and put in north of 12,000 yards in the pool. Maybe a run on the trail would be good cross training."  

Of course, I always worry about overdoing things so before I laced up my Asics and left the house I grabbed my pulse oximeter and checked my pulse rate and my oxygen uptake. My resting pulse rate was right where it should be at 55 and my oxygen reading was steady at 98. And no, I'm not on supplemental oxygen.

Just for good measure I also grabbed by my blood pressure measuring device and put it on my wrist for a quick reading. I was happy enough with 118 over 65. Again, unassisted by meds.

I headed down to Lady Bird Lake to hit the hike-and-bike trails and was thinking about just knocking out the 3 mile loop. I've been running off and on through the Summer and I'm more or less acclimated to run in temperatures up to about 96 degrees (f) but today, at the start of my run the temperature was still in the lower 60's. (Yes, I run slower when it gets hotter).

I started slow and stiff but quickly worked out the stiffness and found a rhythm and by the time I got to the turn-off for the three mile loop I was feeling so good I just decided to pop for the five mile route instead. I'm here to tell you that five miles with low temperatures and low humidity beats the crap out of three miles with high heat and elevated humidity. It wasn't my fastest run by a long shot but the face mask adds a bit of resistance so I'm using that as an excuse for my slower time. It took me a bit less than an hour to finish my run today. Slow by daily runner standards but not bad for someone who spends too much time in the pool and not nearly enough time with shoes on. 

I noticed several things which may, anecdotally, provide evidence for exercise being a prime determinant of health and longevity. First, there were more women running the trails this morning than men, a ratio of about 3:2. The women ran smoother and a bit faster, on average. Coincidence that women outlive American men by about seven years? Maybe they are just more disciplined about getting exercise...

Second, the larger the person (BMI = body mass index) the more leisurely (slowly) they walked. The thinner the person on the trail generally the faster they were traveling. This makes me think that people aren't necessarily overweight just because of what or how much they eat but maybe even more importantly by the deficit of overall movement and pace in each aspect of their daily existence, as evidence by their casual approach to even walking. A brisk walker might cover a mile in 12-15 minutes but based on my observation the people with the higher BMIs were walking at a leisurely pace that I judged would get them a mile every thirty+ minutes. 

Scientists are finding that people really do need to be up and moving for at least (AT THE LEAST) an hour a day. More is better. A good measure for me is the wear and tear of my running shoes. If' I don't have to replace them at least every six months I know I've gotten lazy. 

My intention is not to be preachy. If you don't want to exercise more that's up to you. But walking briskly is....free. It doesn't cost anything. And if you can feel better and live longer it seems like a good bargain. 

I try not to judge anyone who is already out on the trail and moving at any speed. They're way ahead of all those folks still sitting at home on the couch, or the Lazy-Boy recliner, getting ready to spend an afternoon of staying very, very still and watching stuff on TV. 

Tell me again why we have the highest cost for healthcare in the entire world? And with really poor outcomes compared to almost every other civilized country? It's not just the Big Macs and the sodas...

Let's talk about the Panasonic GH5. A blast from the recent past.

Day of the Dead mural on East 5th Street.

Raise your hand if your hybrid camera can shoot 60 frames per second and record 10 bit, 4:2:2 from the full width of your camera's sensor. Now raise your hand if your state-of-the-art camera can record in an ALL-I format. Now raise your hand if your camera provides both a vector scope and a waveform. Now raise your hand if your camera can shoot as long as the battery lasts without ever, ever overheating. Now raise your hand if the combination of your camera and your favorite lens is light enough to use on an affordable gimbal. Raise your hand if your camera has highly competitive image stabilization. How about an audio interface that will give you two phantom powered, XLR inputs. And can it do all this while writing to the two UHS-II internal memory cards?

Exercise complete? Now imagine that this camera is available right now and only costs $1295. Oh, and it also takes really great photographs and works with an enormous range of dedicated and adaptable lenses. 

If you don't own a Panasonic GH5 your hand has probably been down by your side for a while now. 

Random office buildings and blue sky.

So, while everyone seems to have been chasing higher and higher resolution sensors, paying a bundle for nearly unusable 8K video, learned to warm their chilly hands by the glow of their flaming hot cameras, the users of the three year old Panasonic Lumix GH5 have been holding fast and making great video and are still waiting for someone else not to exceed the features and performance of this little camera but just to match them.

If you never shoot video and you love the look of full frame sensors for your photographic work you can probably just click over to something on YouTube and ignore this particular blog but, if you take your video work very seriously, in spite of having a less amazing budget, you might want to acquaint or re-acquaint yourself with the GH5. A camera I consider to be highly competitive today and so affordable that everyone with m4:3 lenses who likes to shoot motion/video should rush out and buy one today. But, of course, with my luck the minute I give out this advice, and you act on it, Panasonic will rush out a GH6 just to taunt me. Think it won't happen? I bought a Lumix S1H for $4,000 the DAY BEFORE Panasonic announced the feature-gorged S5 for a bit less than $2,000. 

Let's look at the GH5 and I'll tell you why I added one back into my inventory this week. Hint: I learned a lot about working on gimbals in the last month...

The GH5 is a monster. It uses the same 20 megapixel sensor as the G9. It uses the same battery as the G9 and with the latest firmware version (2.6, introduced three years after the camera's initial launch) it's got nearly equivalent auto focus capabilities and wonderful color. I thought the G9 was a great replacement for the video-centric GH5 so I "upgraded" a couple of years ago. But what I didn't really understand at the time was just how revolutionary the GH5 was/is for hardcore video production in the hands of a one man crew. 

Mural on East 5th St. 

I say all this after having used both the S1H and the G9 during my various video productions last month.

If I could only have one camera to shoot video with for all kinds of projects I might seriously consider that camera being the GH5, even over the Panasonic video flagship, the S1H. Here's why: 

The sensor in the GH5 is smaller which means it runs cooler and is much easier to control during image stabilization. These two things mean that even though the GH5 battery has less capacity than the one in the S1H it can run the camera for a much longer time. And it also means that there is less heat generated (not that it matters with a fan-cooled camera like the S1H). The sensor, being smaller also has a faster readout time than the majority of 24 megapixel, full frame sensors which means you can actually shoot 4K at 60 fps without having to crop the frame at all. The faster readout also means that rolling shutter is much better controlled than that from bigger, slower readout sensors. Less "Jello-cam" is always a good thing!

The trade-off with the smaller sensor is more noise as the ISO goes up. ISO 1600 on a GH5 looks somewhat similar to well exposed ISO 6400 on an S1 or S1H. But keep in mind that's only two stops and you could use a lens with a two stop faster aperture to compensate. With equivalent angles of view you'd get pretty much the same depth of field...

While the GH5 was well regarded on its launch I think people tried it at the time, put it into a niche and then, when shinier stuff came along they stopped updating their understanding of the camera even though  it was being constantly improved via firmware. For example, in its original form the continuous AF was poor by today's standards. If you shot video with the camera using the C-AF feature you were likely to get a lot of hunting and a retreat to focusing on the background compared to phase detect AF enabled cameras at the time. This limited its use to situations in which manual focus was the best option. Brave people would also use it in C-AF for subjects that filled the frame and had limited movements.

That's just how it was three years ago with firmware version 1.0. Updates to firmware can have enormous impacts. With (current) firmware 2.6 the camera's AF is vastly improved. How do I know? I owned two of the GH5 cameras back in the era when they were first introduced. I used them in manual focusing mode almost all the time for video. When I bought a new copy recently and updated the firmware to the latest build I was amazed at the difference. Night and day. The camera is at least as proficient as the G9 and I was able to use the G9 on a constantly moving gimbal as I wended my way between actors and dealt with inky black backgrounds. It worked 90% of the time.

The biggest fix is probably how quickly the camera locks on to subjects and how gracefully it moves from one subject to another. The second biggest fix is that the camera no longer defaults to just switching focus to the background when it does get confused. 

It's amazing to me how much Panasonic improves their older cameras (for free) over their lifespans. When Panasonic gifted G9 users with 2.0 it took a really good still photography camera and boosted it past the video capability of much more expensive cameras in the market. The new firmware moved the camera from being an 8 bit, all around, nice guy camera with low data rate, m4p files to a 10 bit, 4:2:2, 4K powerhouse (up to 30 fps, in camera) and also gave it the ability to shoot at 60 fps in the full frame (but only with 8 bit 4:2:0 color). With a clean HDMI output the camera is capable of providing the full 60 fps AND the higher quality 10 bit, 4:2:2 color if recording into something like an Atomos Ninja V recorder. Pretty heady stuff for what is now a sub-$1,000 camera. And yes, it offers both a 3.5mm microphone jack and a headphone jack, but no waveform monitor or vector scope. 

With firmware 2.6 in the GH5 the camera has effectively been updated to match or exceed the current state of art for video in hybrid cameras (excepting a few high speed specs in the Sony A7SIII). In addition to everything in the G9 the GH5 also offers the benefit of an All-I codec. While the data files in All-I are 2.6 times bigger than comparable L-Gop files there are benefits in both editing and in greater freedom from motion artifacts in videos of fast moving subjects. 

Many professional applications and production companies require All-I files from shooters on larger projects so the GH5 opens doors to more commercial jobs as well as being an easy to edit and very stable file type. 

Another differentiator between the GH5 and the G9 is the ability of the GH5 to make use of the DMW-XLR audio interface originally designed and produced for the GH5 (but also usable on the S1 series of full frame cameras...). At a stroke one gets the benefit of being able to plug in and use two XLR balanced microphones. The unit provides great physical controls of audio levels as well as phantom power for microphones that require it and does so in a nice and compact package that sits in the hot shoe of the camera. I've used the DMW-XLR on three different Panasonic cmaeras, the S1H, the GH5 and the GH5S and it's a game changer for using professional microphones on hybrid cameras. The pre-amps are low noise and the unit is powered by the battery in the camera. It's quite an elegant solution. 

So, why my renewed interest in GH5 cameras? It started when I did my deep dive into video production back around the first of August this year. I'd done video for years before but it was mostly just workmanlike stuff; talking head interviews and simple moves on a dolly. And the times I undertook video represented a small percentage of my business and my time. Not enough commitment on my part for really jumping in and understanding, in my use cases, the features and benefits of all the different combinations of the physical and file properties of the cameras.

With the steady drumbeat of the web and the millions of videos about new cameras weighing on my good judgement I started to follow the herd into the corral of video fans who salivated at the idea of shooting video with full frame cameras. Like that's the holy grail of making video. I like shallow depth of field as much as anyone else in photography so I presumed it would be equally valuable in video work. By the time Panasonic came out with the S1 series of cameras I'd already experimented with shooting video in the 35mm, full frame format on a Nikon D810 (low data rate but nice looking files), the Sony A7Rii (incredible range of codecs and settings but nothing better than medium data rate 8 bit .Mov files, as XVAC), the amazing Sony RX10iii (with the same limitations as its "big brother"), and a big sampling of the Fuji cameras (nice files but ultra crappy audio interfaces). I threw down hard for the Panasonic FF stuff and it's been good. 

My recent addition of the S1H was even better. It's a powerhouse. But.....It's big and cumbersome for some work and God, it's pricy!!!

In early August I started experimenting using video cameras on gimbals. It's something I'd never done before. I started by working with an S1 and the 24-105mm on a Zhiyun Crane but the camera was slower to focus, harder to balance and not as facile as something like the G9. My left biceps protested the weight. Once I put the G9 on a gimbal it all just felt right. Then I re-discovered a real benefit to a video shooter working on a gimbal out in the real world --- the increased depth of field at equivalent angles of view gave me nearly 2 stops more depth of field. I could use the camera in a manual focus mode in bright sunlight, set f5.6 on a wide lens, then set a hyperfocal distance on the lens and basically never have to worry about the system not being in focus. It was a life saver. 

It's a funny thing that as a still photographer I love the look of a single frame with very shallow depth of field but as a videographer I favor the look of most of my foreground subjects being in sharp focus when the camera is moving. With a still image the selective focus of a fast aperture lens used close-in can be addictive. With a moving frame the ability to see the subject with heightened clarity makes it more impactful. 

If you are a video shooter only I think a lot of choices are easier to make. If you are a Sony fan and you only shoot video the A7Siii is an obvious choice. You stumble more when you want both super high resolution AND great video. The same paradigm exists in Canon-World; if you only want to shoot video the C70 seems like the obvious choice but if you want great video and the highest resolution in one camera body get ready for a sloppy bucket full of compromise. Panasonic makes it very clear that one buys an S1H if they are super serious about video, one buys an S1 if they want really good video and really nice photo files, and one buys an S1R if you only care about making the best high resolution photographic images you can make. Of course, if you are like me and bounce around from one niche to another you might end up buying all three...

In context the GH5 gets a lot of stuff just right. For the price and size the video is exceptional. But even when you use the camera only as a photography camera it performs very, very well. When you want to work with gimbals the lower weight of really good m4:3 lenses, coupled with a body that features current, state of the art video files,  the G9 is a great choice and, with ALL-I files and lots of extra video tools,  the GH5 is an even better choice.

After my experiences handling cameras on two different gimbals I knew that I wanted to expand my video resources to reflect two different uses. The full frame S1 series cameras are perfect for traditional, camera on "sticks" scenarios where you want total control over....everything. With an S1H and an Atomos Ninja V I can shoot long takes in ProRes Raw and have the benefit of incredible dynamic range and exposure latitude along with nearly "unbreakable" files for extensive color grading. I can put on super fast lenses and drop the focus on background and foreground objects to the most luxuriant blur you can imagine. I can run the S1H for hours, or until I fill up all my 1 terrabyte SSD drives on the Atomos. But when it comes to gimbal work, for me, it's time to admit that I want a separate system that's more kindly to my arms, shoulder, back, etc. 

For me that's the G and GH Panasonic cameras. If you don't need ALL-I, a vector scope, a waveform meter, shutter angle settings, and a 400 m/bs data rate you'll be very happy to use the G9. If you want all the video gingerbread and a camera that's nice to hold you might be sold on the GH5. With a handful of great lenses it's the perfect small and light system and it costs a fraction of the price of the S1 series to get into. 

Put either of these cameras on any current, mid-sized or larger gimbal (Zhiyun Crane V2, Ronin-S in my studio) and you'll have a package you can hold (depending on your overall fitness) for long periods of time throughout the working day. I'd use either the G9 or the GH5 in continuous AF in scenarios with good lighting and then depend on depth of field and MF for lower light.

I've put together a nice, small and compact system for shooting video on the micro four thirds cameras: A GH5 and a G9. The 12mm, 25mm, and 100mm Meike cinema lenses. The 12-60mm f2.8 - f4.0 Panasonic Leica lens as a standard zoom, and the Panasonic Leica 25mm f1.4 Summilux and the Sigma 16mm f1.4 lenses when I've got a need for speed. There's also still a nice collection of Pen-F lenses in the drawer for those times when I want to go old school. 

I'd been building the smaller system around the G9 camera while using a GX8 as a back-up but when a very clean, used GH5 came into my favorite store I hopped in the car and went up to the store to check it out. The body looked mostly unused and, buying confidence bolstered by Precision Camera's generous return policy I decided to snag it. I also picked up a lens I'd owned a while back, during the period when I worked extensively with the GH4 cameras. It's the Leica/Panasonic 25mm Summilux. It's fast, sharp and tiny (relatively speaking). 

It's interesting to become aware of the "empty calories" marketing delivers when it inveigles you to shift from cameras that work well to newer cameras by dangling the promise that new features or different sensor configurations will pay off in your work. Sometimes it's true but most of the time the camera companies are offering features or new technology that, when viewed in the rearview mirror of actual experience, really add nothing to the quality of your work or the pleasure of your working experience. 

Am I considering buying an S5? I'm not. I've read all the stuff about the camera and the primary advantage when compared to my existing S1 series cameras is potentially faster and better C-AF. That's all good and well but Panasonic have clearly stated that the same AF capabilities will be added to my existing camera bodies in a soon-to-come firmware upgrade. So, mostly I'd be stepping down to a lesser EVF and having to add a fourth battery type to my Panasonic collection. The GX8, the GH5/G9 and the S1 variants already take three different types of batteries and I'm just not up for adding a fourth.

While the smaller size and lower weight look like a good idea it's really the lenses that are the choke point for the overall mass and weight of the system. I think I'd do better, if travel, etc. was my goal, to buy newer, smaller lenses as they come out instead. 

Is the Sony A7SIII a better choice for video? Honestly, if you need the best AF you can get your hands on in the moment I'd say that's the camera you might need. But if I was going to start fresh and get into a new system just for video I'm afraid the Canon C70 just popped Sony's balloon. I think, from my reading and the feedback I've heard from two people who used a prototype, that Canon's decision to ignore photography with the new camera yields a better overall video solution. But we'll have to wait and see how it turns out in actual practice. I'm pretty sure it's one camera from Canon that's not going to overheat. 

If I knew everything I do today back a couple of years ago would I still have moved away from the GH5 and the smaller system? Probably not, if video was my primary concern. The GH5 is an amazingly powerful and brilliantly thought out product. It just works. All the time. And with the generous firmware updates it's a camera that's as relevant to filmmakers, production companies and wedding videographers now as it was three years ago. I think it's a better video solution for almost any one-man-crew application and the files look great. Couple that with a price drop from nearly $2,000 at introduction to $1295 brand new today and you might as well just buy two bodies and a careful selection of lenses and microphones and be done with it. 

But, since I do a lot of traditional photography and love the big, new evfs and the big sensors for still imaging I think I would have bought into the S1 cameras anyway. They are pretty amazing tools. 

The bottom line is that there's no single perfect camera for everything you might want to do. Most of us can shoehorn a range of cameras into making our work possible but we'll be cutting corners here and there if we try to do everything with one camera model. If you can afford it there is a certain efficiency and effectiveness in matching tools to specific jobs. But these are mostly considerations for people who are trying to do a range of jobs for clients and also trying to make money. 

When I retire I'll sell the whole mess of cameras and buy whatever the current Leica full frame camera is, along with the 50mm Apo Summicron and just be done with it. But we're a few years away from that. 

Just some thoughts about cameras. That's all. 

"Thoughts and Prayers" to the Prez.