A Campaign Done for A Leading Maker of Diagnostic Instruments.

 

A good, old fashioned, daylong photo shoot. I hired the assistant and the make up artist while the client team worked with several talent agencies to get our models. These ads are three of the dozen that we created on the shoot day. We used a large meeting room (about 5,000 square feet) as our temporary studio and set up a light gray seamless background to shoot against. Since we were looking for movement and action my assistant and I lit the set with six electronic flashes; some in umbrellas, some through grids and a main light in a big soft box. 

The in-house design team put together a bunch of examples of the energy they were trying to convey and we tried to maintain some high energy throughout the day. 

I used a Panasonic S1R along with the 24-105mm f4.0 S zoom lens for all of the shots. Some people like to shoot tethered to laptops but I think that's too slow so I tether my camera to Ninja V monitors and set several up around the shooting area on lightstands so the crew and the marketing team can watch the progress and make sure we're shooting with enough space to crop in, etc. 

When we finished with the shoot I made a web gallery with about 1200 images in it and the client narrowed down their take to about 50 images. I color corrected and retouched each of them and then made selections with masks on new layers for final delivery. We worked with big files because it's easier to do the post accurately; especially when your intention is to drop out the backgrounds and put the people on a constructed graphic background. The images were used on the web but also in very large prints as trade show graphics. 

It was a fun and successful campaign for everyone but as is typical these days nearly all of the original creative team on the client side has either been promoted or moved on to "new opportunities." 

Just thought I'd share one of the fun projects I put together recently. Yay! Commercial photography still exists!!!

Testing an old lens that's "new to me" and wearing an old watch that's not new to me. Here's how the morning went...

 

I'd like to think that I'm not an acquisitive nerd but like Michael Johnston  my "hobbies" also extend to wristwatches. The one in the photo above is an  Eterna Matic, Airforce II which is water resistant to 10 ATM or 100 meters. It is an automatic which can also be hand wound. It's Swiss made with a Swiss mechanical movement and came with a black leather band. It's a watch I have owned for about 20 years. It's one of four Eterna automatics I seem to have collected and, because it is small and minimalist, it is one of my favorite dress watches. 

How accurate is it? I have no clue....Nor do I care.

Yesterday I picked up a used Carl Zeiss 35-135mm f3.3 to 4.5 zoom lens that was originally made to use on Contax Y/C cameras. Cameras like the Contax RTSIII which was an absolutely delightful camera from the 1990s. The lens was described by Zeiss in their technical literature as being of superb optical quality and competitive with many prime lenses. 

It's a manual focusing lens and has no electronic contacts with which to communicate with any camera. When used with an adapter on a Leica SL2 the lens is like the Sphinx. It divulges no information. It just rides on the front of the camera and looks as cool as possible. 

I had no intention of buying yet another "standard" zoom lens since I already have, for the full frame L mount system the Panasonic 24-105mm and the Leica 24-90mm products. Both are very good and very useful but they each bring something different to the table. The Leica brings unbeatable image quality at all focal lengths while the Panasonic brings with it image stabilization (great addition to the non-stabilized, older Leica SL cameras, and the CL + TL) and easier handling on account of its lower weight. 

I also have the Panasonic 20-60mm lens which is often overlooked but, for the money is an excellent performers within its range. And so affordable. 

But a friend alerted me to the arrival of the Zeiss zoom at our local camera store and suggested I check it out. He knew I had used the Contax system for a few years and remembered that I liked their lenses a great deal. In fact, I still have and use both the 28mm Zeiss Distagon and the 50mm Zeiss Planar lenses from that old system, with adapters, on the Leica and Panasonic cameras and find them to be really good when used correctly. 

When the lens is zoomed all the way out it looks enormous. About the size of 

my 70-200mm. When it's at 35mm it's about half the lens. And note, this is without a hood.

The 35-135mm is a combined focus and zoom ring model. One "pushes or pulls" the main ring on the lens  to zoom between 35mm and 135mm. The ring also rotates for focusing. This lens is... and isn't a "close focusing monster." Used in its normal mode it only focuses down to 1.2 meters or about five feet and change. But the ring closest to the camera body can be pulled back toward the camera to engage a macro focus capability that will get one down to about 10 inches. I haven't had the chance to use the macro functionality but I'll get around to it.

Given all these parameters you probably can tell that using the lens for day to day photography requires...patience and processes. For example. Since there is no automatic aperture action you can't just set an aperture and focus. You'll go crazy trying to fine focus while battling extended depth of field at f8.0 or f11. The appropriate way, as often described by Sean Reid, is to set the aperture to its widest setting and then focus. This gives you the shallowest depth of field and helps you make a visual assessment of when you are "in the zone." Once you've hit sharp focus you then take a second or two to stop down to the taking aperture you wanted in the first place. 

I would add to this the idea that one focuses at the widest aperture and augments the process by also "punching in" the magnification to see a much enlarged section of the frame for even more accurate focusing. I also keep focus peaking engaged as a quick double check; even with full magnification. 

Obviously this is a pain in the butt and won't go very far in making you the fastest shooter in town. But that's what the AF lenses are ultimately for. There were some lenses made in the film days that were designed to be par focal (meaning that you could focus at the longest focal length which was also the most magnified and then zoom to a wider angle of view and get a more accurate focus setting that way. This is not a par focal lens. Not by a long shot. Or or short shot.

While a number of lenses that I use with adapters seem to work perfectly for exposure on the SL2 this is also not one of them. I find myself often correcting overexposure with a twist of the exposure compensation dial. A fairly large number of images I made this morning required anywhere from a third stop to a stop and a half of correction (usually darker...) to get the exposure right for me. 

Another thing you need to know if you are considering finding one of these beauties and picking one up is that "picking it up" is a bit of a workout. The lens weigh somewhere north of two pounds and will make just about any combination of camera body and lens feel a bit front heavy. Or just...heavy. The silver lining might be that if you carry the camera and lens all day in your left or right hand (instead of on the strap) with your elbow bent you will build muscle mass. I recommend switching hands from time to time. The front of the lens is big. It takes an 82mm filter as does the big Leica lens. I've also read that the 35-135mm has a tendency to flare but I didn't see much evidence of that today. I will try to source a lens hood because they are beneficial even in studio settings. 

One might question my sanity in buying a lens that's so cumbersome and unforgiving. I would get in line with you to make that diagnosis but...I would declare (disingenuously or not) that the lens has a different look and optical character from the more modern lenses and gives me an extra tool for creating images that transcend the look of current gear. And that my preferred use would be for making portraits with the camera happily ensconced on a tripod and used at a comfortable pace. But another reason for my purchase was purely nostalgia for simpler times and sexier systems. This was a lens I wish I'd bought back 25 years ago and I never did. Being able to play with one to my heart's content now, and for about $300, seemed like a bargain. But I'll let the photos tell the story....

In a full sized, 47 megapixel raw file the texture on the stone on the building on the left is so well imaged that even the texture shows more texture. And you can see the sand in the mortar between the bricks. It's pretty magnificent. I like it.

The "color checker" shot. Does the wall render a greener color than the sky?

You'd be surprised at how many cameras make a mess of this....

this shot is all about my ability to handhold a camera at 1/15th or 1/20th of second with any degree of steadiness. I shot this at 1/20th of a second into a mirror in a dimly lit room. I had already swum two miles earlier, had two cups of strong coffee and walked a mile in the heat. Not bad for an ancient photographer. 

It's important to work on your handholding skills if you use this lens with any of my Leica SL(x) cameras. The two earlier SL bodies have no image stabilization nor does the lens. Your skill is it. The SL2 has image stabilization but requires you to either use an L system lens or to be able to pick from a lens that is in the camera's profile set. This one is not. 

I guess if you are going to work at a fixed focal length with this lens you could select a Leica R lens profile that matches the focal length and this would enable I. S. but you'd be stuck with a mismatched lens profile which may overcorrect for vignetting or geometry or cause some color spread that you don't want. 

It's a crap shoot. I'll try it and see what works. But for today it was not on the menu.

Which brings up something else. We're spoiled by I.S. in one good way. If you are focusing manually it stabilizes the finder image making it easier to achieve fine focus at longer focal lengths or higher magnifications. The finder images are less jumpy and jittery. 

I'm always been impressed when a lens is capable of rendering straight lines as straight lines without the intervention of software fixes and profiles. It's the mark of a high performance design. 

No geometric "fixes" were attempted on this image in post production. The lens just makes...

straight lines.

It was a strange morning. I hit the pool and swam from eight to nine. I got out, got dressed and went to meet a photographer in the downtown area who said he wanted to "do the walk" with me. When I got to my usual parking spot I checked my texts and found one from him bowing out for today. I was there with a camera so I went right into the walk. From 9:30 till around noon I put in some good miles and got the extra workout from carrying the camera and lens around. By noon the temperature was already in the 90s and I was feeling....tired. Worn out. Thirsty and spent. Some iced tea and bit of lunch was good and sitting on my butt writing this post was enforced relaxation. I think I'll draw the line at getting more than 4 hours a day of exercise and movement. At least not all at once....

Here's to sitting in a quiet, dim studio with the air conditioning cranking and more iced tea in the fridge. 

New lenses are fun. I like this one. I need to find a human to photograph with it. It's a keeper just for its personality. 

Prejudices created by using lenses with low tech bodies in the past can haunt us in the present. Or....how did this lens get so much better?

 

If you go back and look for reviews of the Panasonic 45-200mm f4.0-f5.6 lens for the micro four thirds systems you'll mostly find stuff written around 2010. Most reviews criticized the lens for being "soft" in the range from 150-200mm.  Recently (a couple years ago?) Panasonic "updated" the lens and labelled it as a "type II". They made it compatible with the newer focusing systems (DFD), put in some weather resistance gasketing and also did whatever it was that's necessary to allow the lens and a camera body with image stabilization to use both stabilization systems together. Panasonic calls this: Dual I.S. 

But all the reviewers are quick to mention that the optical formula and optical construction of the lens was NOT changed. So, they are now promising better stabilization, fewer raindrop tragedies, and better focusing performance with DFD enabled cameras bodies. But they didn't make the optics any better. Okay. 

In the distant past, during my ownership of the GH3 camera, I bought the original version of this lens (the "type I") and hated it. The problem? None of my shots taken with the lens zoom out beyond about 100mm were sharp. Not sharp at all. After using the lens five or six times I took it back to the retailer and got a refund (which I'm sure I immediately spent on something else...).  But here's the deal: I presumed that the lens itself was deficient. But consider that there was no image stabilization whatsoever in the GH3 and darn little degree of much I.S. magic in the lens itself. The longer focal lengths magnified any sort of camera movement.  I was trying to use the long end as much as I could but didn't get around to putting it on top of a tripod or, at least, a monopod. The focusing in early GH cameras was nothing to write home about. It was functioning,  to a certain extent, but I'm guessing that as you zoomed longer you added more and more system shake which made the slow image processing of the camera and lens together worse and worse. I had basically set up a worst case scenario for an inexpensive but relatively long lens. 

A decade later I was looking around for longer m4:3 lenses right before a work trip and the one I wanted was out of stock. I had other lenses that would work for my full frame system but decided to do a "Hail Mary" and grab a lightly used "Type II" version of this 45-200mm lens I came across the night before I was leaving; just to have a back-up. Just in case. Acknowledging my previous experiences I didn't have much hope for the resolving power and sharpness of this lens where I needed it most. At the long end. That was my prejudice.

This morning I was rooting around in the m4:3 lens drawer in the studio and I came across this little used lens once again. And on the spot I determined that I'd take it out and see if it was really as bad as I remembered. If so, I would trade it back in and apply whatever refund, minus re-stocking fee, I could get and put the money towards something more promising. So.....

I stuck the lens on the front of a Panasonic G9, set the camera to "A" priority and f5.6. I set the Auto-ISO to make sure the shutter speed wouldn't drop below 1/250th of a second. Made sure the dual I.S. was engaged, thought to forgo that second cup of coffee and pointed my car toward downtown so I could walk, exercise my eyes and my cardiovascular system and finally, FINALLY, come to grips with this small, light, previously annoying super telephoto zoom lens. 

What I found was that the lens performed much better than ever before. At the long end you really have to let the image stabilization settle before you shoot but that's probably a logical thing to do with any system. All of these images (today) were shot at f5.6 which is either wide open or somewhere on the shy side of one stop down depending on where the zoom ring is set. I used the best techniques I could summon and shot a variety of stuff with emphasis on long, telephoto range images. 

Now I need to apologize to the lens. It was never its fault. Had I put it on a tripod and  shot at higher shutter speeds I would have found that out ten years ago. If you take the time to click on the images while viewing on a desktop computer (instead of that addictive phone) you'll see that the lens acquits itself fairly well. Not quite as crisp as the 40-150mm f4.0 Olympus Pro lens I bought a few weeks after my trip but still in the ballpark of acceptability by a comfortable margin. The 150mm focal length is all I really need so I probably will get rid of the lens but it was a quick re-lesson for me I should do more rigorous testing and not to depend on what other people have written.

It's getting really hot here in Austin. We hit 103° today so I'm glad I got my "walking review" in early today. And it's just going to get worse as the week progresses. Thank goodness for swimming pools and air conditioning!

Don't know what's in the air business-wise but my e-mail was on fire today. I've booked three days of work next week and just when I was so certain the weather would have sapped everyone's spirit and they'd be pushing projects down the road for a while. Everything I'm getting ready to photograph will be portraits and I'm excited to use the opportunities to test yet another new (to me) lens. 

It's actually an older model lens from the film days but not too old and very, very Zeiss-y. We'll start my "out for a walk" testing tomorrow and see where it goes from there. I have to cast some blame on my friend, Paul, who called to notify me of the existence, locally of this lens and the current, most advantageous underpricing of said lens at our fave retailer. I was set up for a resistance collapse when when I remembered which model lens this was and how much I coveted one back in those two or three years in the 1990s in which I was photographing with a Contax RTSIII and a Contax S2. But more details on the lens are forthcoming ....

Sports Bros, walking around downtown. 

Panasonic G9 color test. Passing grade, for sure. 

"Even though I complain bitterly about the remarkable inflation as regards camera prices

my watch collection grows ever larger..." I bought a new cheap swim watch with a 

unidirectional bevel to help me count sets. It's a $50 "Bill Gates" Casio Dive Watch. 

No link required. 

Summer Fashion with Happy Faces is always welcome. 

The 45-200mm seems fine here too....

Puffy dress.

I was walking by the library today when I came across a small crew making videos of...a coffee tasting. They were interviewing people and having them taste two different coffees and then say which one they liked. A classic "on camera" taste test. They asked me to participate so I filled out the model release and submitted to the attachment of a wireless microphone set and stepped into position. I tasted the first sample (right hand) and it was too sweet and too laden with milk to even be able to taste the coffee. Then I tried the second sample of coffee (in my left hand) and even though it was equally sweet and creamy it had more nuanced flavors. Sadly, I picked as my favorite the "wrong" sample. The one the clients is NOT selling.  I probably will not make the editing cut. But it was fun to be on the other side of the camera for a moment. It was sweet of the sound guy to explain wireless microphones to me...

Highlight detail very well held. 

As an ancient Greek philosopher once said: "Give me a lens with a long enough focal length and enough space to use it and I can put the world out of focus behind a table...." Even with a small format camera. 

Stay cool.

Stay happy. 

Do your own tests. 

Walk often. 

Drink only good coffee. 

That's all I've got. Today.