Street corner mannequin #132. A different look.

 Leica SL + Sigma 65mm f2.0. Late afternoon. 

Ah. The darling raccoons. The arduous Tuesday swim. Devolving the Leica allure and so much more...

 The portrait above is not really related to anything in the written content of the blog. It's here as a visual anchor for the post... just wanted you to know. (Not a raccoon). 

So, it's Tuesday morning and I thought I should give a quick report on Operation Raccoons in the Chimney. Yesterday I did some research and melded it together with the stories and suggestions shared here. One person with some raccoon experience suggested that I take the cap back off the chimney to allow the mom raccoon to get in and relocate her loved ones. It sounded like a good idea. It was seconded by a person from the critter removal service we have used in the past. But, even though hope springs eternal I did make an appointment to meet here at the house with the same animal removal service in case our "voluntary relocation opportunity" failed. We meet in the next hour or so...

I dutifully took the cap off yesterday but it was already partially dislodged so I know at least one of the parents is still around. I also devised a bizarre ladder with the idea that transporting baby raccoons up a sheer face might be too daunting. I need to go take a picture of my ladder creation but I didn't have any thick rope around so I took two 50 foot extension cords and used the stoutest one as a straight "rope" and then used the second one to make load bearing loops at 12 inch intervals --- something for a raccoon to grab onto or use as a foot hold. I know, it's silly... but I'm trying to encourage an undramatic exit for them. 

Since I had replaced the cap at the start of the weekend I was now worried the babies would die of starvation or dehydration. To ward off that avenue of guilt I went to Trader Joes and bought a couple organic, honey crisp apples, sliced them, bundled them loosely in a paper towel and dropped them down the chimney. I hope they enjoyed them. 

As night fell we turned off most of the outside lights in order to make the adult raccoon potentially more comfortable during its incursion. I didn't hear any noises coming from the roof but I guess I could have slept through them. 

When I got up this morning to get ready for swim practice I tiptoed into the living room and paused to listen at the fireplace. There was no movement and everything was quiet. I made a cup of hot tea and read the various news feeds and was just about ready to pat myself on the back when the racket of young raccoons restarted. Crestfallen, I headed off to swim practice. More to follow a brief run down of swim practice. 

Swimming for fun and good health. Any bleak and sallow day is made much better with a morning swim workout at the Rollingwood Swimming Pool. 

I've incorporated my Apple Watch into my swimming because I was miffed when I swam long workouts with a dive watch and later in the day my Apple device would subtly chide me for not being active enough. It's pretty cool to have your watch count actual laps for you and also use its GPS to calculate distance swum. There is some attempt calculate how many calories one burns but I think it's a bit suspect. My watch is telling me that I burned 530 calories during the swim. It's a bit amazing but it also breaks down the percentage of each stroke swum. Since we had a demanding freestyle set most of the yardage was freestyle but there is also a running tally of backstroke and breast stroke and I'm presuming its classification of "mixed stroke" means butterfly. 

My lane mates and I knocked down 3200 yards in 55 minutes so I think we did pretty well. I can also look at the chart of heart rate measurements and see that my resting heart rate before workout was around 51 bpm but during workout it peaked at around 154 bpm. I'm surprised that my heart rate peaks so high but I'm sure the 100 yards of butterfly was a contributing factor in that. So, I'm guessing I'm working right near the upper edge of safe cardiovascular performance. It's also interesting to see how quickly a high bpm drops back down in the 70s and 80s. 

Lately our coach has been enamored of a laddered set of 100 yard freestyle repeats with an ever descending interval. We started out with five 100s on a 1:35 minute interval, dropped to four 100s on a 1:30 interval, then dropped to three 100s on a 1:25 interval, two 100s on 1:20 and then one 100 at a full sprint. We did other stuff but that was the main set. The swims on 1:20 were right at the ragged edge of my capabilities so I either need to train more or get younger. Or, I could accept aging and give myself a bigger interval. 

We ended the workout with one of my lane mate's favorites. A series of 25 yard swims, all underwater. I'm convinced that everyone can hold their breath for the 20 or 25 seconds it takes to swim underwater from one end of the pool to the other but there is a psychological impediment for most people after the second or third lap (with short breaks in between) that comes into play. Conquer the fear and underwater laps aren't nearly as daunting. Or....keep the fear and pop up to grab nervous breaths long before you need them, physically. 

We were out of the water by 9 am and on to coffee and breakfast. My watch tells me I've completed my required exercise and activity for the day but I scoff at its presumption and am still planning a nice, long walk this afternoon. Just after I hear about how we're going to handle the raccoons.

New to swimming? Grab a pull buoy. It's a floatable foam construction you put between your thighs to raise your overall horizontal body position in the water which makes swimming easier. It also reduces your need to kick as quickly or as hard (in fact, you probably don't need to kick at all with a pull buoy in place). You'll develop a better feel for your arm strokes and a the better position in the water will help you streamline more. It's a less painful way to get started swimming longer distances. Eventually, you'll want to give up the pull buoy so you don't become dependent because the officials are not going to let you use one for a race; either in the pool or in open water...

Back to the raccoons. Our person from Critter Control arrived and I took him up onto the roof so we could look down the chimney with a flash light and get oriented. Yep. We've got a mom raccoon and some baby raccoons down there. They are on a platform which includes the flue. They seem nice a comfy but that's not a good thing. Right now the estimator is out in his truck conferring with his regional boss to try to devise a plan of (humane) attack. More to follow....

Leica-Allure. It's easy to dismiss the whole Leica brand as nothing but highly successful marketing and product positioning, and, for the most part in  2021 I'd agree. But with some caveats. First of all I think you need to see the M Leica's (the interchangeable lens, true rangefinder cameras) as a whole separate category. They are unlike all the other interchangable lens cameras in the market and there are benefits to working with a rangefinder camera. Especially if your focal length wheel house is from 28-75mm. 

Coincident rangefinder focusing can be quick and highly accurate in that range. The ability to see "outside" the frame, in the finder, is a big plus because it allows one to anticipate when something is coming into the composition. Some people also find being able to see outside the bright frame lines as an advantage in composition. These things are different from all the other cameras and if you want them you are stuck with Leica. Or you'll happily embrace the Leica. 

So many of the Leica rangefinder users are driven to the brand by nostalgia since Leica was a predominant choice of so many famous magazine journalists in the 1950s and 1960s and the camera type seemed to be a badge or a talisman for most of those famous Magnum photographers all the way up to today. Plus, many in my generation had fathers who were photo hobbyists and we "learned" from a young age that the Leica M was the top of the heap for camera in their generation. I think many of us harbored the aspiration to own one from a young age; regardless of whether it was the "right" camera for our use...

The Leica mirrorless cameras are a different beast. If one understands that new plastics and compounds are as good and capable of precision as metal, and that sensors are pretty uniformly homogeneous across systems then the SL line is, I think, a different market altogether. You essentially have to choose to pay a lot more for two thing beyond "build quality" ( which few of us are really able to gauge... ). One is access to the family of Leica L mount lenses and the second is the totally different presentation of the control interface. 

As far the lenses go you could save about half the cost of an SL2 body by getting a Panasonic S1R body and you'd be able to use the same L-mount lenses. There might be additional firmware resident in the SL2 body that tweaks each lens to a greater degree than the more generic firmware in the lens itself but I can't think this would make a world of difference using either of the cameras. 

At some point, if you want to work with Leica SL lenses you might as well have one of the SL bodies on the presumption that power consumption, firmware tweaks and AF performance would be optimized as a system. 

This all presumes that you buy into the idea that Leica SL lenses noticeably outperform lenses available in other systems. Some will believe this and some won't...

Finally there is the topic of the interface. The back of each SL and SL2 camera is quintessentially minimalist. The number of buttons and dials is reduced to next to nothing. On the SL nothing is labeled while the SL2 uses the same three buttons system found on current M cameras. Each simplifies as much as possible and the whole machine-ness of the camera body recedes from conscious notice and becomes more transparent to the operator. I love the interfaces on both the SL and SL2 cameras, even though they are different. The important point is that they are alike in philosophy and general logic. 

Taken altogether a purchase of a Leica as system camera is probably not very wise for most people. While the lenses seem to hold their value well the resale value of digital Leica bodies doesn't seem to outperform that of Canon, Nikon and Sony's better cameras. Losing half the value of a Canon 5Dmkiii is less painful than losing half the value of a $6500 camera. Even if the percentage of loss is the same. 

If you buy into the Leica stuff to use professionally you'll find big blank spots in the equipment catalog. There are few "inexpensive" Leica lens options for those focal lengths you don't use as often. Right now camera batteries are backordered. There's no current SL macro lens. Etc. Oh, and if you want a vertical grip for your SL2 be prepared to spend north of $1,000 to acquire one. It's a bleak scenario for less affluent photographers who get called upon to do a wide range of projects. 

I guess the reason I wanted a couple of the Leica SL system camera bodies was a blend of all the positive things. I love the heritage of the brand. Most of my favorite photographers used the Leica cameras as their life long tools. One hopes some of their luck with the cameras confers through my own Leica's (irrational at best). The handling is wonderful and the menus grow on me by the day. But most of all the system represents the idea of products that sit at the pinnacle of photographic practice for most knowledgeable photographers and when you shoot with one you have, at least, the impression that you aren't leaving possibilities on the table because you scrimped on investing. 

Now, back to the raccoons. After an hour of exploration and researching around the chimney, coupled with our assertion that we were looking for a humane resolution, our "wildlife consultant" sat down with me in the studio to go over a plan. We're going to ask the mom raccoon to take her babies and relocate. 

We'll leave the cap off the chimney. We'll drop down a bigger and better rope. One with knots in it for resting spots and stability while climbing. The service will drop down a cotton ball dipped in some amazingly expensive witch's brew of male raccoon hormones, coyote sweat, something else equally bad, like that aftershave your friend thinks is a real chick magnet, and hope that they smell convinces Rita Raccoon to de-camp. We'll be ready to put up with additional occupancy for several days as she makes up her mind, looks for better accommodations and goes through the process of moving the brood. Then, once we're certain that they've vacated, the service will return to create a better barrier to accessing the chimney. They'll also go around the entire house and studio to make sure they are no other fun entry points for other pests and they'll seal those.  

In a week or ten days we hope to have total resolution. And we'll move on to the next project which, I think, entails the replacement of 25 year old skylights on the back porch. Followed by the installation of a new hardwood floor for the living room followed by...........(fill in the blank). 

But for now I'll be happy just to say "goodbye" to the raccoons.

Economy springing back to life. Now I get to use some of those new cameras and lenses! Hooray.

 All of a sudden we're getting booked for assignments. It started out slowly; a big project in March followed by a growing number of corporate portrait bookings. Some here in the studio but more out on locations. The early wave is mostly comprised of bankers and lawyers and we're even starting to hear rumblings of corporate events being scheduled in late Summer and Fall. 

I'm ready to get back to work. We'll keep wearing our masks and taking all the precautions we've learned throughout the pandemic but with everyone I work with having been vaccinated it's starting to feel less risky. 

Even though I've always been an extrovert I'm finding that it takes some practice and effort to get back into a more authentic give and take with photography clients. I guess I've "talked" more here on the blog over the last year than I have in the real world. I have to re-learn how to talk "out loud" again and also how to patiently listen.

I did five portraits last week and the most fun were two that were shot in the studio but composited into out of focus backgrounds I'd shot earlier in the week. With the backgrounds already shot it was easier to make portraits that "fit" the look and feel of the whole assemblage. Getting a good selection with good feathering at the edges helps a lot. I use the "select and refine" menus and tools in PhotoShop to separate the subjects from the studio background and to create a file with an image layer that is, except for the actual subject, transparent. That makes it a simple matter to open a background image file in the same window and just pull the person over into the scene. 

You'll have to a do a few adjustments and maybe blur the edges of your person a bit to match better with the background. I also find it helps, once the compositing and adjusting is complete, to add "noise" or grain to the overall image as it reinforces the appearance of the photo being homogenous instead of leaving tell tale signs that it's a fake collage. Keep it subtle but pay attention to some of the subliminal cues that happen when joining different images together. 

And now for the exciting news. It seems a mother raccoon has made my home's chimney into a nursery. She has somehow dislodged the cap on the chimney and, while she was not in the chimney yesterday the young raccoons were down at the bottom; just above the flue. Isn't that special?

We have experts coming tomorrow but I realized that the mom might not have been able to get in for the last few days since I reattached the cap. I'm torn but my reverence for all life and my ignorance of what might be best for the little raccoons. The expert and I talked and I think I'll head back up to the roof and take the cap off the chimney for tonight and also dangle down a thick, thick rope to help with an exit. If we play talk radio in the fireplace and occasionally bang on the bottom of the flue there is the thought that the mom raccoon will evacuate her brood and move on. But for now maybe I should drop in some apple slices for the young ones so they get some moisture and sustenance. 

Anybody here a raccoon specialist? And, yes, I know they are primary disease vectors and can be vicious to boot. But I'm willing to take both animal behavior advice and ethical treatment advice. Please- no gun talk. I'd like them to exit alive.

On a happier note. Elon Musk is coming to save Austin! (sarcasm alert!!!). 

90mm R-Elmarit Leica lens + Leica SL camera. Small lessons.

 

Yes. I think the 90mm Elmarit is pretty sharp. I mostly shoot with it at f4.0 or f5.6 but even wide open it's more than prickly enough to make nice portraits. Between f5.6 and f8.0 it's as sharp as I would want in a lens. The adapter that fits it onto the camera is "dumb" but the camera has a bunch of lens profiles for the M and the R series lenses. When you stick a lens on the camera and select a lens profile the act of programming in the exact model of lens tells the camera a lot. There's also an external exposure sensor  on the camera that adds information to the mix and "guesses" the aperture at which the lens is being used.  Nice. The 90mm Elmarit is dense and a simpler lens formulation than current lenses but that also keeps it relatively small; even with the adapter attached. 

After a year of relatively severe isolation, and many lone walks on empty streets, I'm finding that it takes some practice to feel comfortable photographing strangers again. As more and more people come out and walk around it feels increasingly natural to carry and use a camera on the street. Earlier in the year there were so few people in the downtown area that a "camera person" stood out like a sore thumb. The sweet spot will come when enough people are vaccinated and we don't have to wear masks out on the street. Then we can smile at other people more convincingly and invite them to be photographed in a more carefree way.

I'm trying to work fast with manual focusing lenses and with something like the 90mm that means taking advantage of the really good focus peaking in the two Leica cameras.

Lost to the smaller size on Blogger is the fine detail of the weave of the fabric in the blue blouse. And the rough edges of the bokeh "balls" in the background, to the right of the frame...

My favorite 2nd Street mannequin has abandoned her furry hat and her sweatshirt and embraced a more Spring oriented outfit. I like the way the 90mm "describes" the plastic of the arms and hand. 

I don't need a new suit. I have a closet full and most never get worn. But I've walked by a shop called, "League of Rebels" hundreds of times and watched their master tailor, through the shop window, as he crafts custom suits for their customers. I think I'd like to drag Ben over and have a suit made for him. He'll resist but I think everyone in any business needs at least one well tailored suit and a handful of good accessories. Custom shirts, handmade belts, and, of course, really good shoes. But alas, this might just be a generational prejudice. 

Again, the actual image of the tailoring in progress, in its full glory, is just stuffed with sharp, rich details that are lost here. The 90mm Elmarit is a very capable, longer focal length, street lens. Equally at home on both the Panasonic and the Leica camera bodies. 

On Saturday I drove to Dripping Springs to catch up with my restauranteur friend, Emmett. Whenever you hang out with a chef I'm pretty sure you're going to end up someplace new, eating something interesting; and sometimes tasting stuff that's great. We met at his house and then hopped in his car and slipped across HWY 290 onto a winding, rural road and traveled deep into ranch country until we came to a dirt entryway into an new, industrial looking complex that is home to a distillery, a bake shop (bakery) and a flour milling operation. 

Our destination was Abby Jane Bakeshop. It's a decidedly high end bakery, owned and run by a former pastry chef who trained at some very well respected restaurants and, judging by the large number of customers who navigated the long and secretive route to get there, a pastry chef with a following...

Since I was with an avowed, professional foodie I stood by and watched as he ordered one of everything. I ate a $5 chocolate croissant that was pretty amazing. Monkey bread with a delicate white cheese and sautéed onion component that was instantly addictive. A plain croissant that was about as good as my favorite version from Fauchon. We ordered good coffee and then ordered two pizzas to go. 

We ordered the wood fired, Greens and Parmesan Cream pizza and the Carrot Curry pizza and both were delicious. We took these home to share with Emmett's wife, Lisa. We also grabbed a few loafs of bread that were equalled good. All made with organic, fresh milled flours. 

After lunch Emmett boxed up the left over pizza and sent it home with me. There were several pieces of the "greens" pizza left so Ben and I heated them up in the oven this morning, topped each slice with an over-easy egg and had them for breakfast. Ahhhhhh. 

I wish we had a satellite version of Abby Jane Bakeshop here in the west Austin neighborhood but I fear it's one of those businesses that works under the eagle eye of an impassioned owner but isn't infinitely scalable or portable...

I didn't sample their cakes but..... cake! scroll down in the link to see some great cakes...

When I sat down to play with files this afternoon in noticed this "throw away" shot taken in the studio. I shot it because in the moment I loved the isolation of the black stool top reflecting to white as it caught the light from outside. I just wanted to see what it would look like. 

But once I saw it I started wondering how "recoverable" the shadows might be from the SL. So I opened the file in Lightroom and started playing with the sliders. It was shot at ISO400 and I think it's pretty good with the shadows recovered. Just a little experiment. (see below). 

And then there is the routine reflection shot. 

Nice haircut. 

That eerie feeling when your recently purchased camera starts messing up, freezing and shutting down. But deep down it's really ALL YOUR FAULT.

Breathing a sigh of relief because the sign doesn't say, 

"See Good....." 

I was looking forward to a nice walk all morning. When the opportunity presented itself I grabbed the Leica SL (the older model, not the new one...), put the Sigma Contemporary 45mm f2.8 lens on it and headed out. The camera and the lens are both products of the L mount alliance so I never thought twice about compatibility I just assumed they'd work together flawlessly.

I was twenty minutes and maybe 15 frames into the walk when the camera started acting up. I'd bring the camera up to my eye to shoot only to find nothing in the finder and a frozen image of something random; like the sidewalk, in a state of infinite review on my rear LCD. I figured it was a one time glitch and pulled the battery, waited ten seconds, re-inserted the battery and kept on walking. I'd take five or six frames and everything would be okay but if I went to turn off the camera that would cause it to take another random frame and then freeze. Very frustrating. 

After I got to the halfway point the camera didn't seem to be getting any better so I went for the full Monty and did a full reset. But after ten minutes or so it became obvious that the reset was NOT going to fix the issue. I finished the walk and headed home to do some troubleshooting but I had the feeling that I'd be sending this perfectly beautiful camera back to the dealer and take advantage of their 30 day warranty. Sadly....

When I got back to the studio I did a quick Google search for: "Is the Sigma 45mm f2.8 incompatible with the Leica SL?" I instantly got links that all said the same thing. And that was that the original firmware in the lens caused an erroneous reading of battery levels in both the SL and the SL2. You could mount the lenses and they would work in a fashion but here was a known fault. A rent in the L-mount armor. 

I checked the firmware in both of my copies of the Sigma 45mm f2.8 lens. One was parked at 1.0 and the other was mildly updated to 1.1. The current software for the lens is 1.3. I downloaded the latest software and updated both lenses. Now they work flawlessly with both Leicas. 

But it illuminated my blind spots for me. I'm pretty quick to update the firmware in cameras because it usually fixes an obvious fault or, on the other hand, adds some new feature I'd really like. But I never have kept up with firmware evolution for my lenses. It just didn't seem vital.

I am now a new convert to lens firmware enhancement as often as I can get it. Both lenses work charmingly well and I no longer have to harbor doubts and insecurities about what is quickly becoming my favorite camera. At least my favorite camera of the week. 

The moral of the story is to make sure all your firmware is up to date before you start pointing troubleshooting fingers at your gear. It may be that you are the limiting factor in your system's overall performance. And it's crazy not to stay up to date since the cost is zero and the time commitment is minutes, not hours or days. 

Do I like the Sigma 45 on the SL? You betcha.

Yeah. So the 45mm is pretty awesome when you shoot it at f5.6 in the 

middle distances. Not at all "soft." 

My mannequin girlfriend changed outfits and I know she wanted 

me to document the new look. I even found and angle that 

allows me to selfie the whole thing at the same time. 

That's all folks.

 

A "Good Friday" Post From Our Time in Montreal...

We're taking the day off on Sunday. 

It's Easter.

 

A second review from the "reprint file." This one from 2009 of the Mamiya DL28. The camera actually worked well. I think the top photo is a good proof of performance.... This is a reprint just to look at what we wrote back in the "old days" of digital.

 Another Camera Paradigm Shift.  Mamiya Gets Sensible.   And a few end of the year thoughts.

By Kirk Tuck

Noellia gives the Alien Bees Ringlight a test flash.  Camera:  The Mamiya DL28.  Degree of difficulty:  Not much.

If you’ve read my stuff here this year you probably know that I’ve had the opportunity to test a couple other medium format digital camera systems.  And every one of them had a unique selling proposition.  But the one thing they all seemed to have in common was price tag on par with the sticker price of a nice BMW automobile.  If you’ve read my reasons for wanting a MFDC you know why I want one.  If this is your first visit then let me bring you up to speed.

I’ve always liked the way the longer focal lengths we used on film medium format cameras created portrait images.  The sharp areas were really sharp and then the images rolled out of focus very gracefully until the backgrounds were just a gorgeous amalgam of softness and mystery.  Somehow I’ve never been able to get precisely the same effect with shorter optics (giving the same angles of view.…) on 35mm style digital cameras.  

We also loved the sweeping image area of the larger format in film and by extension in digital precisely because it rendered images with a much greater subtlety than the smaller formats when all other parameters were equal.  In digital capture the sheer quantity of pixels goes a long way to making images look smoother and cleaner.  The larger pixel wells (when compared to high res 35mm DSLR’s) also contribute to very wide dynamic ranges.  In the Mamiya DL 28 system the Leaf back is rated at 12 full stops of d-range which is almost two stops more than the best DSLR’s (excepting the exceptional six megapixel Fuji S5 pro).

Finally, it is only in the MFDC realm that you are able to shoot with a true 16 bit imaging file.  This means lots and lots more gradations between tones and colors.  The big drawback to MFDC’s has always been the price of entry.  But that’s the paradigm that Mamiya shifted.  The entry price has plummeted.  The new camera package is just shy of $15,000.  That includes the latest Mamiya AFD3 body (usable with both film and a range of digital backs.…), a newly computed 80mm lens that’s been optimized for digital capture, and a newly released Leaf 28 megapixel back with an enormous touch screen.

Still a bit more money than a Canon 1DS mk3 or a Nikon D3x but maybe a much better investment in the long run.  How could that be?  Well, for starters the sensor industry isn’t standing still but none of the 35mm style bodies are currently upgradable.  That means a big breakthrough in sensor technology demands the purchase of yet another body.  With the Mamiya system it means trading in the back and keeping the camera you know.  It means being able to buy a back up body at a much lower price.  And while DSLR’s keep improving so do the MFDC’s.

The latest from Mamiya goes a long way toward separating a portrait specialist from the pack.  With state of the art autofocus,  digitally optimized lenses and an open standard interface for a wide range of backs, it may be the most scalable, practical and sensible professional system on the market today.

The DL28 is state of the art in a number of ways that give it leverage against competitors.  The Leaf back uses a new generation LCD screen on the rear that presents a lot of real estate for checking composition, histograms and relative color.  The back is also a touch screen and it makes setting capture parameters very straight forward.  Your clients will love the way this camera tethers to laptops and workstations because they’ll be able to see your work writ large.

The well protected touch screen keeps the camera design sleek and pared down.  I think it’s the nicest designed of all the MFDC’s on the market.  Note the battery for the back at the bottom of the camera.  The camera itself takes six conventional double “A’s”.  The back is good for 250 exposures per charge while I shot over 1200 exposures without budging the battery indicator for the body.

So why would you want to spend the money on one of these?  Well, if you are in the business of providing carefully composed and styled images to art directors or big portraits to families, this system will give you a better image than you’ll get with the latest generations of DSLR’s.  If you aim for the top of the markets you serve the difference in price will certainly be offset by the sheer quality improvement.  In some ways it’s an intangible but to the really picky customers you can rest assured it’s noticeable!

The second reason is pure marketing.  If you are truly the best (and most expensive) of the suppliers in your market your customer may want to know why you shoot with the same kind of camera as uncle Bob.  You may think the gear doesn’t matter but if you are in competition with someone who is equally proficient and just as personable as you (I know, that’s hardly possible.….) the choice of shooting gear may just tip the scales in someone’s favor.

If you were a Mamiya shooter back in the film days and you still have your gear you’ll be pleased to know that all the AF lenses work flawlessly while all of the manual 645 lenses can be mounted and used with manual aperture stop down.

Given my recent article about surviving the recession how can I justify singing the praises of a $14,000 camera system?  Simple, if it can give me the edge over several of my close competitors it could pay for itself in a week’s worth of shooting.  Besides, I’m not saying you need to rush out and purchase one of these without regard to the overall market.  I’m sure there will be plenty in rental and I think you’ll be wise to try one on the next large scale production you book.

Caveat!!!!!  If you are a fast paced wedding photographer who routinely slams out 4,000 available light shots per wedding then no medium format camera system is currently for you.  The frame to frame time is too slow (less than one per second), the autofocus isn’t as speedy as that on a Nikon D3, and the luscious, elegant files are Raw only and far too big to make speedy, templated processing fun.

If you are a methodical worker, a portrait photographer, still life shooter or architectural shooter one of these will certainly raise your game to a higher level.

Other News.  Making Book.

My second book is wending its way through the production process and will become available at Amazon.com and at quality bookstores around the country on April 1st, 2009.  It’s all about studio lighting and it’s aimed at advanced amateurs and working pros.  We all know a lot about photography but I might know different stuff than you.  It’s already up for presale on Amazon.

One of the early photos done with the Panasonic S1 and the original L mount 85mm Sigma Art Lens.

Mary Bridget Davies as "Janis." 

A little over a year ago I was pacing through the Zach Theatre auditorium at the technical rehearsal seeing "A Night with Janis Joplin" on stage for the first time and trying to predict where I needed to be, minute by minute, to get good photographs for marketing and promotion. 

I'd purchased two Panasonic S1s and some great lenses and I had already shot the big Christmas play just before the tumble into 2020. One of the cameras I had over a shoulder was equipped with the 24-105mm f4.0 Lumix lens while the other was outfitted with the big, heavy 85mm f1.4 Sigma Art lens. The image above was done with the Sigma. 

The Panasonic S1 cameras were (are) a good choice for theatrical photography because their sensors are among of the best performing when it comes to high ISOs. I was shooting the camera with the 85mm at ISO 1600 but mostly because I was interested in setting a fast shutter speed (this was at 1/400th) and I wanted to stop down just a little bit. But as I become more and more experienced with the cameras I found I have no trepidation about using them at ISO 6400 and, sometimes, even up to 12,800 ISO. The files clean up nicely. The sharpness and saturations remain good. 

I really wish the theatre was back in full scale production, inside the main theater building, because I'm very interested in shooting a show with a Leica SL2 or SL on one shoulder and a Lumix S1 on the other. It would make for a great comparison between not just the image quality differences (if any) but also the overall usability of each camera. 

It's one thing to walk around and point a camera at stuff that's not moving or changing much and trying to catch a live show on a stage with ever shifting lights. That, for me, is the litmus test. 

The 85mm was great. Thankfully, so is the new version. And it's smaller and lighter. 

Pix from rehearsal below:

definitely the week of the 85mm 1.4 Sigma. Art.

As more and more Austinites get vaccinated we're starting to slowly creak the studio door open again and starting to play around with more portraits. Here's a blast from the good old days.

 

Back in the pre-pandemic days we felt a lot less constrained about inviting people into the studio to make portraits just for fun. Now we're starting to hear from friends (and even adult children of friends) who want to come over and collaborate in some portraiture. 

Tomorrow I'm putting some time aside to make some portraits and headshots for one of my video collaborator's daughters. It's a pretty open-ended brief as long as we get some great stuff. 

Austin seems to be doing a decent job at getting large swaths of the community vaccinated and it seems most natives are still abiding by the mask mandates even though the "personal grievance" political party is doing everything they can to sabotage the recovery. If we can cut down on tourists from the bright red, surrounding cities we might just have a chance to thrive again.

And that means more and more beautiful faces tromping through the hallowed halls of the studio. For fun and sometimes, for profit. 

I came across a bunch of reviews I wrote for Studio Photography Magazine back in the early to mid first decade of the 2000s. I thought a reprint of what my camera reviews were like back then would be fun. Here's the Fuji S5Pro...

Re-publish of an article/review from 2007...

Is the New Fuji S5 Pro really ready for Prime Time?

By Kirk R. Tuck

We’re always looking for the perfect camera.  It’s human nature.  We all want big, luscious image files with super wide dynamic range.  We all want resolution that goes on forever and a frame rate that competes with an Arriflex movie camera.  And we all want this camera to retail for less than the price of a car.

The sad reality is that every digital camera in the marketplace is a collage of compromises.  But as business owners there are some features we need and some features we can do without.  The secret of investing in photography equipment is to buy a camera that provides the stuff you need to make money.  All the other bells and whistles are just icing on the cake. (To mix two metaphors.…..)

If you shoot sports you’ll need a camera that autofocuses with accuracy and speed, writes files with dispatch, and has a massive frame buffer.  If you’re a still life photographer you’ll want a solution with a staggering number of megapixels.  Autofocus won’t really matter and, since most still life professionals shoot tethered, the size of the buffer is pretty much meaningless.

When it comes to photographing people the camera attribute most photographers are looking for is dynamic range.  They want a camera that will handle a wide range of tonalities without loosing detail in the shadows.  And they definitely want a camera that won’t easily burn out highlights to bald white.  Portrait and wedding photographers, especially, live in fear of the “blinking highlight” indicator.  The nasty little blinking lines that mean you’ve blown out all the detail in anything close to white that may have been in your frame.  Important things like the heirloom wedding dresses with hand sewn pearls, the fine blond hair of the flower girl, the high light tones of the CEO’s face (especially the CEO who thinks make up is not necessary) and pretty much anything with diffuse highlights.

If you make your money photographing people in the studio and on location you’ve probably been searching for the “Holy Grail” of cameras since the dawn of digital.  I’ve always wanted a digital camera that produced film-like images.  You know, long tonal range with a nice “roll off” in the shadows and highlights.  I thought I found it when I started using the Kodak DCS 760 back in 2001.  That was a great camera,  if you always shot at ISO 80,  and if you shot tethered so you could see what you got on a real screen,  and if you were willing to shoot only raw, and……… I really liked the long tonal range of the Kodak files but the desire for all the creature comforts kept winning out.

Then Fuji came out with the S3.  I bought one and used it but never warmed up to the consumer class Nikon body and baby sized buffer.  Now we’ve got the Fuji S5 Pro and I’m impressed.  But I spend most of my time photographing people, so your mileage may vary.

I’m not going to give you any charts or graphs.  I’m not going to give you test photos.  There is an exhaustive technical review available at DPReview.com.  I’ll give you my somewhat Quixotic review based on owning the camera for six months and using it on a wide range of assignments.  You can read the review below, but here’s the executive summary concerning the Fuji S5 Pro:  If your business entails photographing people, and you use Nikon lenses, you need to buy this camera.  Here’s what it does well:

1. Beautiful, long tonal range images of people with a great, almost unreal, resistance to “blown out” highlights.

2. Built in “film emulation” settings that mimic the feel of our favorite “people” films, such as Fuji NPS 160.  (Many a professional’s favorite “face” film.)

3. Gorgeous flesh tones even from directly “out of camera” jpegs. Raw files can be even better!

4. Nearly all the great handling characteristics of the Nikon D200* ( A few caveats to follow).

5. Relatively clean high ISO files.  Very usable right up to 1600 ISO with careful exposure.

Here’s where the Fuji S5 Pro stumbles:

1. The processing is very slow and the buffer fills up quickly.  Don’t even think of buying this camera if you are a sports shooter.  You will not be happy!

2. The frame rate hovers around one and one half frames per second so you won’t be shooting any fast sequences.  You’ll need to wait for that “decisive moment”.

3. To squeeze the absolute quality out of this camera you’ll need to shoot raw and you’ll want to use Fuji’s Hyper Utility raw conversion software.  That’s actually a mistatement.  I should have said that you’ll have to use the Hyper Utility software because the quality of the files is unmatched, but you’ll hate every minute of the process because the program is as slow as rush hour in Austin.  And the interface is anything but intuitive.

4. If you’re already shooting with Nikon D80’s and D200’s you’ll be seriously miffed that the batteries have been chipped so that they are not interchangeable.

5. If you’re coming from a Nikon D2x you’ll really be annoyed that the file view on the rear LCD can’t be zoomed up to 100% for careful evaluation of focus!  The face recognition feature really works but that’s like saying that my car doesn’t have airbags but the radio is really good.  Sometimes you really need to be able to check details!

That’s it in a nutshell so if you’re still interested let’s get on with the guts of the review.  

Nuts and Bolts.  Fuji got the physical handling of this camera just right.  They used a Nikon D200 body as their starting point and that was smart, because even people who aren’t fond of the Sony sensor chip used in the D200 still have high praise for the ergonomics of this particular body.  Holding the Fuji S5 Pro, with a 50mm lens attached feels just about perfect.  The camera is dense enough so that its inertia helps dampen vibration, yet it is small enough to carry around all the time.  

The viewfinder is bright and clean, with very good magnification.  If you take the time to adjust the diopter carefully you’ll find that most fast lenses (50mm and longer) can be focused manually without a problem.  The well designed finder is a welcome step backwards in the evolution of cameras and it’s one of many almost intangible aspects of the D200 body that all add up to a happy user experience.

While the file size and buffer limitations won’t allow the S5 to shoot as fast as the D200, the shutter response time and general autofocus characteristics are nearly identical.  You will enjoy the feel of the shutter release and the solid feel of the mechanical processes “under the hood” no matter what systems you’ve used in the past.

So what’s the difference?  Up till now the big complaint of most people photographers has been the limited dynamic range of available digital SLR’s.  How does this limited range affect portrait, wedding and advertising photographers who’s livelihoods depend on gorgeous flesh tones?  The most obvious problem with limited dynamic range is that, with proper exposure, many of the lightest highlight tones in a photograph tend to burn out.  The detail just vanishes and there’s really nothing you can do to bring it back.  Back when the majority of people photographers still shot film they chose color negative emulsions with lots and lots of “latitude”.   The generally accepted interpretation of “latitude” was “I can overexpose by a bit and still recover the highlights in the printing stage.”

When we all started shooting digital the concensus was that these new cameras were like shooting with contrasty slide film.  Slide film was famous for having very little latitude for exposure error.  If you overexposed slide film the highlight areas were nothing but clear film base.  No detail remained and nothing could be salvaged!  All of a sudden photographers who were used to leaning on the latitude of films like Fujifilm NPS 160 ( A gorgeous color negative film designed to have the perfect characteristics for people shooting ) were using digital cameras that produced files more akin to Provia slide film in their tonal curves.

A general howl ensued, especially from wedding photographers who were trying to keep some detail in the black formal wear of a groom and the delicate detail and bead work on a white wedding dress.  These photographers were happy enough with the resolution they were getting from previous generations of cameras but they definitely needed cameras that could keep a handle on contrasty lighting.  It wasn’t so long ago that Denis Reggie was singing the praises of his FOUR megapixel Canon 1D’s as fantastic wedding cameras.  But none of the major photographic suppliers stepped up to the plate to deliver what they saw as a niche product, a camera that compromised speed and high megapixel count for increased dynamic range and image quality.

The Fuji S5 Pro changed everything.  Especially for Nikon owners.  Fuji’s new camera, while not perfect, is a big step in the right direction and is being adopted by wedding and portrait shooters around the world.  It’s the first professional camera that allows you to “dial in” the exact amount of dynamic range you require for your style of shooting. Fuji does this by sandwiching two sets of sensors on their chip.  Six million sensors are big fat, sensitive chips that help the camera achieve really good high ISO performance.  An additional six million sensors are smaller, less sensitive imagers that are resistant to overloading when confronted with high light levels.  Every exposure combines the information from both sets of chips into one very smooth and long ranged file.

The dynamic range menu.  When you set up the S5 Pro for shooting you have a menu option that allows you to set dynamic range, expressed as a percentage.  The ranges are spread out in these steps:  Auto,  100% (Standard),  130%, 170%, 230%, 300% and 400%.  In Auto, the camera computes the range of tones present in the scene and sets a level that captures the widest range of tones.  Here’s the one trade off of which you need to be aware,  the wider the dynamic range of the file, the flatter it looks.  This implies a bit of post processing.  If you set the dynamic range to 400 and you shoot a scene that is not very contrasty you will end up with a very flat image.  That’s okay by me because it’s a file that’s filled with good information.  I can go into Photoshop and make a custom curve that’s just right.  The obverse is almost never true, a file that is too contrasty will have already been shorn of important detail and information--especially at the two ends of the dynamic scale.

The good news for busy practitioners is that the “Auto” setting works very well for 90% of photographic situations!   

I don’t shoot  weddings but I do shoot a lot of portraits on location for advertising agencies and direct corporate clients.  I find that the same dynamic range capabilities are a real advantage to me.  We don’t always have the luxury of working with make-up people and faces can get a bit shiny in Texas in the summer time.  The dynamic range control helps to keep big, soft diffuse highlights on portrait subjects’ faces from burning out to white.  And I can still keep necessary detail in the shadow.

All this and clean Jpeg files into the bargain.  From their very first professional, digital SLR, the S1, Fuji has had a reputation for building cameras capable of producing very nice jpegs directly from the camera.  No user intervention required.  The S5 Pro carries on this tradition.  With the introduction of this camera and the introduction of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom we have a “perfect storm” of workflow options for busy shooters.  The camera delivers wide dynamic range Jpegs that look great.  Lightroom allows the same kinds of color and tone controls for Jpegs that have been traditionally only available with RAW files.  And now Lightroom can batch correct Jpeg files.  Wedding photographers should rejoice as they now have access to files that are nearly equal to the quality of RAW files with all the convenience of batch  processing and file management.  And that’s a good thing considering that the RAW files from the Fuji S5 are over 20 megabytes each.  The large, fine Jpeg files are about 3 megabytes each.

Let’s talk about the files for a second.  The bottom line is that this camera delivers great Jpeg files and even better RAW files.  The color and tonal quality of each is very impressive but there is a bit of confusion as to the size of the files.  Fuji advertises the S5 Pro as a twelve megapixel camera, and it’s true that there are twelve million pixels being used to generate most images.  But  in terms of real resolution the camera is taking two sets of six million sensors and combining their tonal data.  The real number of image sites is six million.  The camera uses  interpolation to produce it’s final twelve megapixel files.

You can set the camera to produce 12 meg, 6 meg, and 3 meg files in Jpeg but in RAW you are stuck with only 12 Megapixel files.  If I’m shooting for a client that needs immediate access to the files as Jpegs I routinely shoot them as 12 Megapixel files.  If I’m shooting portraits and will be going back to the studio to make web galleries or proofs I rarely go above 6 megapixels.  For most uses these sizes are absolutely fine, and with the six megapixel files I’m post processing files that around a quarter the size of the larger interpolated files.  That makes every step of the workflow more efficient.

If you’re looking for the highest quality possible you’re going to end up using RAW.  Most RAW shooters are control freaks and there’s certainly nothing wrong with that.  There’s good news and bad new about using the Fuji S5 Pro as a raw camera.  Here’s the good news:

The files can be absolutely gorgeous!  Silky smooth skin tones.  Long, detail rich tonal values, and a sharpness that belies the real resolution of the camera.  If you have the time and patience you’ll be rewarded with rich color images.

Now, here’s the bad news:  To really unlock all the potential of the Fuji RAF Raw file you’ll need their $100 raw converter.  It doesn’t have the depth of control you’ll find in Adobe Camera Raw (the built in Raw converter for Adobe Photoshop CS 3 and Lightroom) but Fuji knows their own raw file better than anyone else and it’s the only program (currently) that recognizes camera settings such as dynamic range and “film looks”.  I used Fuji’s raw converter for the book cover shots of Sianelli and the results were smoother and more realistic than the same images converted in either one of the Adobe products.  In same way that Nikon NX delivers the highest quality from Nikon NEF files, Fuji has a decisive quality edge with the combination of their RAF files and the Hyper Utility Converter.

At the beginning of the last paragraph I stated that the need to use the Fuji HU converter was bad news.  How can that be if the files are wonderful and the conversion is a level above the Adobe Camera Raw conversion?  Simple.  The Fuji converter is slow, slow, slow.  If you are using an older Powermac G5 machine or one of the new Intel Macs, be prepared to wait for every single step.  Hyper Utility is also an very non-intuitive program so be prepared to do some “trial and error” training.  

My advice?  Buy the Fuji converter for the times when each individual image must be absolutely perfect.  But do all your sorting, web gallery proofing and general image administration in a faster, more flexible program such as Lightroom or Bridge.  Nikon users tend to spend most of their time dealing with NEF raw files in a variety of different programs, chosen for their speed and robustness.  When the client has made final selects most Nikon users turn to Capture or NX to ultimately fine tune color, tone and other parameters.  I suspect Fuji users will want to adopt the same strategy.

Moving on from dynamic range I find that my second favorite aspect of the Fuji S5 Pro is a menu that lets you set the “look” of the camera’s files to match those of some favorite films.  When you set this in Jpeg you are locked into a film look.  When you shoot RAW and process in Fuji’s raw converter you can change the settings during processing.

The menu lists four settings in additional to the default (Standard).  They are: F1, F1a, F1b, F1c and F2. Here is how Fuji defines each setting:  F1: Suitable for studio portrait work.  Similar to professional color negatives.  Suppresses flare in flash highlights. Also provides smooth tonal transitions in skin tones.  F1a:  Saturation is slightly increased in comparison to F1 mode.  F1b:  Reproduces skin tones with smooth transitions  Also provides vibrant reproduction of natural colors such as blue skies and is ideal for daylight portraits. F1c:  Increased sharpness in comparison with F1.  Ideal for fashion photography.  F2:  High color saturation like Fujichrome slide film.  Suitable for nature, product or architectural photography.

It’s obvious that Fuji brings a lot of expertise to the creation of digital solutions from their experiences as one of the world’s dominant film makers.

The final area I want to cover is that of high ISO performance.  This is one area that Nikon shooters have worried about for years.  Everyone seems to be fixated with the idea of shooting at ISO 1600 or 3200 for every day photo work.  The Fuji S5 Pro is the first camera to use Nikon lenses that gives relatively good performance at ISO 1600.  I’ve included some examples from a dress rehearsal shoot for a theater performance of “High School Musical”.  I think the Fuji does a fine job at 1600 ISO but I think all cameras do a hell of a lot better at settings between ISO 100 and 400 and that’s where most of our commercial work gets shot.

So,  to recap the positives:  Great camera body.  Really superior Jpeg files.  Outstanding RAW file performance using the manufacturer’s conversion software.  Dynamic range that will cut down on the need to retouch and post process. Fast enough in camera processing to handle most weddings and events.  A camera that can handle wedding dresses in sunlight.  An ISO 1600 that’s reliable and usable. The S5 can meter and shoot with any Nikon manual focus lens equipped with AI or AIS.  The ability to use most D200 accessories except for the ones you want to use the most---the batteries.  The camera is stingy with battery power.  Two batteries in an MB-200 grip will last you for at least 1600 exposures with lots of “chimping”.  And finally, the price.  I think $1900 is quite reasonable for a camera with all this imaging potential.  

Now to balance out with the negatives:  It’s hard to get used to 1.5 frames per second once you’ve shot with a Nikon D2x in the crop mode at 8 frames per second.  Even the D200 at 5 frames per second seems blazingly fast.  Many will want a “real” twelve megapixel sensor rather that a six megapixel sensor that uses software “voodoo” to get there.  I didn’t like the menus at first but now I’m used to them.  The raw file size is about twice as big as I’d like.

My totally subjective conclusion:  This is the camera I’ve wanted since I put down my Hassleblad medium format film cameras and started trying to make digital work for my business.  I know that when I shoot a portrait with Fuji S5 Pro I can light a little “hotter” and shoot a bit closer to the right of the histogram without constantly worrying about blowing out highlights.  I know that flesh tones will be delicately and accurately rendered, and I know the color will be right on the money.  Saving time and effort on post processing, combined with files that are rich and beautiful is a successful business strategy for any portrait professional.  I’m sold.

(About the author.   Kirk Tuck is a people photographer who works mainly for corporate clients and advertising agencies.  Based in Austin, Texas he works for clients such as Dell, IBM, Motorola, Freescale, Time Warner, Renew Data, AMD, Ziff Davis, and Tribeza Magazine.

Gear:  All current professional Nikon Digital Bodies, Fuji S5 Pro, 2 Sony R1’s, Rolleiflex Medium format cameras, Profoto and Alien Bee lights.  Apple Computers.

He has just finished writing a book on location lighting for a major publisher.  He lectures to college classes and is a successful speaker on photography and marketing.)