Breaking in a camera that is new to you. Each camera has a personality, you have to spend time understanding it to make good work with it.

This is a Nikon D810. Widely believed to be the best "all around" DSLR

in the marketplace today. Can I just pick one up and shoot it

and get perfect files right out of the box? Nope.

The web is packed with articles about how to choose a new camera, reviews of the latest camera products, and charts, graphs and infographics about how they perform. But in very few cases are there articles that tell you how to go about breaking in a new camera so that it consistently does what you want it to do. 

I'm sure we each have a different approach to getting familiar with the way our cameras operate but I'm equally sure that we're all looking for similar things: Good color. Good exposure. Good focus, Just the right sharpening. Pleasing or accurate tonality. 

If there was one universal camera menu, and if changes in that menu effected all cameras in the same ways, we'd only have to figure out one universal camera workflow and then overlay that to all the cameras we shoot with. But, clearly, this is not the way our camera universe works right now. Every maker has their own color palette, their own ideas about what constitutes the right exposure formula and so much more. We all want consistency but sometimes we really have to work at it to get what we want. 

I am using the D810 as an example because

Packing for a three day shoot next week, but, "no pressure," it's here in town.

I have no intention to stop writing the blog. 

Sorry if that seemed to be implied in this morning's post.

A year and a half ago I did a bunch of photography for a wonderfully school here in my area of town called, St. Gabriel's Catholic school. Here is the website and most of the photographs on it came from that shoot. I got an e-mail last week asking me if I had any time in the very near future to come back and do some more shooting. It seems that they've expanded the campus and finished up some very nice additions to their already very first class facilities. We'll be making photographs of the students but this time we'll also be working on photographing the students in the context of the architecture. I was able to offer them Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of next week.

It's kind of a dream assignment because the school is in a very affluent area, is well served by the parents, and is in a beautiful location in the hill country, to the west of downtown. The children are wonderful and the staff of the school uses our work well. The one difference this year is that some of the images we create will be printed quite large (think wall sized) and used as display art around the school. In the past the kids were the single most important part of all the photography; in this instance it will be a mix of people and interior design.

We have three days of photography scheduled and, since the additions are new to me, I asked if I could come out and scout. We did that on Weds. The new interiors are very well done. They are modern and open, with very "of the moment" furniture design and lighting fixtures. I'll be spending three full days there so I am also happy to report that the cafeteria food at this school is also well above average. 

With all the basic logistics figured out I sat down this morning to figure out the fun stuff: What to use as camera gear on the job. So, finally, a need for big files. Mostly available lighting, supplemented occasionally  by small flashes. A need for wide dynamic range and great low light performance as well as fast, sure focusing. And a lot of the shooting is dynamic and will be handheld. 

What's my plan?

The Nikon D750 is the perfect combination of features and performance. The D810 is better on paper but since I'll be doing a lot of handholding the extra pixels are sure to get lost in the kinetic mix. To move fast I'll use two D750's, set identically, but with a different lens on each camera. Just for grins I'll put a quick release plate on each body and bring a big, wooden monopod with me to provide a stable platform.  The small flashes are a no brainer and I won't waste time talking about them.

That leaves a selection of lenses. The fun stuff. The lenses are the singular part of every shoot that makes a bigger difference than the number of pixels on the sensor, or the brand on the front of the camera. I decided that this would be the perfect job for a two lens set up, complimented by a few bonus optics on standby, in the bag. 

First up, a wide angle solution. Hmmm. Research, research.... I narrowed down my choices and decided to go with the Sigma 24-35mm f2.0 Art lens. Not a very wide selection of focal lengths but all focal lengths that I use often and understand well. I rarely go wider than 24mm and by the time I crest 35mm I'm really ready to just move on and grab a 50mm. The 24-35mm is big and heavy but one stop down from wide open it's probably sharper than anything I've shot with since the old Leica days.

I put the lens on both camera bodies and made sure (with a LensAlign tool) that we didn't need to do any radical micro-adjusting to get a really sharp image and then I used the Visual Science Lab electron microscope to look at the latent photonics test image on the sensor to evaluate the combination's nano-acuity.  The melange passed with flying colors. Much sharper and higher performance than the Zeiss Otus 24-35mm Ostrich lens. Oh, that's right, they don't have a high speed, wide angle zoom... 

It seemed obvious to me that a perfect complement to the Sigma 24-35mm f2.0 Art lens would be the 50mm 1.4 Art lens. I just happened to have a copy which I just happened to have calibrated on both cameras yesterday evening, before dinner, so I dropped that into the bag as well. 

At that point I was seriously wishing Sigma would hurry up and introduce their 85mm f1.4 Art lens to round out the trinity of what should be every working photographers most used trio of optics but that hasn't happened yet. I'll put the Nikon 85mm f1.8 G on the camera and be pretty happy with the combination. But I'll keep my checkbook handy should those rascals over at Sigma get motivated...

The working combo is (at least starting out) going to be the wide zoom on one body and the 85mm on the other with the 50mm 1.4 Art and the Nikon 24-120mm f4.0 zoom in the bag. The 50mm because everyone should always try to use their 50mm for whatever they can, as God and HCB intended; and the 24-120mm for those times when image stabilization is just flat out highly recommended.

Since I'll be moving from class to class, and from building to playground to gym and back to the cafeteria, for six or eight hours a day for three days in a row, the other important consideration is to wear good walking shoes. And since the boys wear coats and ties to class I think I'll go with the sartorial flow and do so as well. That makes my shoe selection the Timberland Oxford classics. in cordovan. 

Now, how to pack? Hmmm. Seems like a situation for an Airport Security roller case from Think Tank. 

The icing on the cake? The school provides really good coffee to faculty, staff and photographers all day long. Seems like a good way to spend the better half of a week. We'll see how the gear selection survives initial contact with the assignment. 

Photographing "Tribes," A new play at Zach Theatre. A surprising camera choice.

Mitch Peleggi (former X-Files cast member) in "Tribes."

I'm pretty sure a huge percentage of the photographic community thinks I'm nuts for changing cameras from time to time and constantly experimenting with new ways of photographing things but I think they are equally crazy for doing things over and over again in the same style and with the same cameras. Just look up Albert Einstein's definition of insanity somewhere on the web....

But I have to tell you that sometimes you try something new and it works. Against common legend lots of stuff works really well. And here's the important context: You only need stuff to work a bit better than your best targeted end use...  That web profile photo? Doesn't need to be shot with the new 100 mp Phase One camera. Honest. 

A case in point: My photographic coverage of the dress rehearsal for Zach Theatre's: Tribes. 

There is usually an audience ("friends and family") in the theater for the final dress rehearsal and for reasons of budget (and the fact that all the costumes and light cues are done) we've started shooting the "live" marketing images of the big plays on that day. What it really means is that I'm often relegated to a position in the cross over row in the center of the house.  It's a reach to the stage. And on a show with a small cast and a tight set my full frame cameras, coupled with the 80-200mm f2.8 lens is getting close to the edge of practicality. I end up wanting to get closer and have tighter compositions on my subjects. I want to feel the action in the photographs. 

While the image files of the Nikon D750 and D810 are great and the dynamic range ample, the handling and quickness of the system, for theater, isn't optimal. The light changes quickly and, by extension, so does exposure and even color balance.  Theater photography cries out for the instantaneous feedback of a good EVF camera. I have tried using the Olympus OMD cameras with longer lenses but the focus in low light just isn't fast enough to keep up with the action, sometimes. I've been looking for a different solution. I want a long lens, great image stabilization and fast, sure focusing. I took a deep breath and plunged into shooting Tribes with one of my favorite cameras for most stuff: The Panasonic fz 1000. 

This camera has what I was looking for in all the parameters I just outlined but the perceived weakness of that camera for this kind of work has always been questions about the low light performance of the 1" sensor. Is it too crowded with pixels to keep the noise down to a minimum? Or at least at a level commensurate with the final, targeted use of the images?

On Tuesday evening I headed to the theater with the lightest camera bag I think I have ever taken there. It had just two cameras and two extra batteries. That's it. Two Panasonic fz 1000 cameras (pro's cameras travel in pairs, set up identically. If one fails it's brother is ready to jump into the fray with no hesitation and no set up delays. After all, a lot is riding on getting good marketing images---they help put paying patrons in the seats!

My basic setting for the camera (I used only one) was manual exposure, ISO 1250, raw, and f4.0-5.6. 

I tested the dominate face lighting in an early tech session and found the color on faces to be equal to 3700K with 2 clicks of green. 

Here's my assessment: The magic, dfd focusing of the fz 1000 (same as the GH4) is great. Really great! When used with "pinpoint AF" the camera absolutely nailed every single frame I shot. 100%. If I did not get sharp focus on a face it had to be because I forgot to aim the AF sensor at the face. Better than my Nikons? Well, if the comparison includes the 80-200mm f2.8 then the answer is a resounding yes.

Here's where this seven hundred dollar camera beats the crap out of all the other combinations you might bring to bear in the theater: You get a long, long, very sharp zoom lens that caps out at f4.0. I worked the long end of the lens for a lot of the images and it was wonderful. I doubled my range and did so with a camera that could be handheld down to about 1/60th of second because of the I.S. 

Anything slower than 1/60th is a was at 400mm because you also have subject motion to contend with and their is no magic cure for subject motion as the shutter speeds drop. 

But here's where the Panasonic beats my Olympus OMD EM5-2 cameras resoundingly: The EVF (set to manual, not automatic) when thoughtfully calibrated (which means shooting and comparing the results in the EVF to the results on your post production monitor) is a perfect exposure setting tool. If it looks good in the EVF of my fz 1000 I have a 95% assurance that it will be correctly exposed when I get to the post production stage. That's huge. Try as I might to do the same with the Nikon D810 the rear screen of that camera is good for little more than composition compared to the radically cheaper (but more capable) Panasonic. Again, for a busy shooter doing post processing on say, 1200 files late at night, this is impressive and appreciated. EVF as color meter and finely tuned exposure meter. Sold. Dammit Nikon! Get me a D500 WITH an EVF. Stat.

When I got back to the studio at a late hour I put the images in Lightroom and started playing. Most needed a 1/3 to 1/2 stop nudge up in exposure to be perfect but, in defense of the camera, I tend to shoot to protect the highlights and am willing to put the "sensor invariance" to a little test. The files sharpen up well and there was no objectionable noise in the darker background areas --- certainly no problems with color speckling or grain clumping. The details could use more detail at 100% but in actual use they are right on the money. 

Would I do it again! How about next week. I am shooting another play the Sunday following this one and I'm also bringing along the Sony RX10 (original, not the model 2) to see if the f2.8 aperture really buys me anything. My primary camera will be one of the fz 1000s. I am putting them in their own rotation to try to keep from wearing out one or the other prematurely. I have no idea how well made the shutters are in a "consumer" camera but I do put a lot of internal wear on cameras. I tend to shoot a lot. My final word is that the smaller file size is a post processing blessing and a relief to my client who was getting tired of sorting through 36 megapixel images. "Sufficiency?" Naw, just matching the highest use target to the right camera. 

Experiment successful. And yes, on a paid job. It's not like I haven't put 25,000 exposures on the camera already....

Where's Waldo? Find the grain and lack of sharpness in 

this ISO 1250 image, shot wide open near the long end of the 

lens, handheld. You might see it by I sure don't. 

Not in any meaningful way. 

How the hell do you focus those manual focus lenses on modern DSLRs? Very carefully....

The finest lens design in the world is pretty meaningless 

unless you have a plan to focus it well. 

I've been writing a lot recently about my admiration for older Nikon lenses and my tendency to select older, manual focus-only lenses in my day to day work. To recap: I am currently making good use of the Nikkor 25-50mm f4.0 zoom lens, the 55mm f2.8 micro Nikkor, the Rokinon 85mm t1.5, the Nikon 105mm f2.5, and the Nikon 135mm f2.0 lenses on my two Nikon DSLRs; the D810 and the D750. I'm pretty sure that anyone who has tried to just pull up a modern digital camera to their face and focus an older lens quickly will tell you that the (non)focusing screens in all the modern cameras are pretty much crap for manual focusing. The screens are optimized for visual brightness but not for the acuity necessary to discern (accurately) sharp focus. What's a guy to do?

Some one asked this morning if I had a trick to using these lenses and if the whole focusing issue with manual focusing lenses and DSLRs is overblown. No and no. I wish I had some special trick to nail sharp focus every time but I don't. And since I don't have a trick then, no, I don't think this design fail in modern finders is overblown. That being said I am certain that the vast majority using DSLRs are using them exclusively with auto focus lenses. 

In real life, each of the lenses I use is handled differently. If I am using the 24-50mm lens it's usually outdoors and I'm using the wide end of the lens to capture a scene or a building or something that asks for wide angle. If it's Austin/Texas blue sky sunny I just zone focus with that lens. The beauty of the older lenses is that they usually have very well done focusing scales that are very accurate. Much more accurate than the focusing scales on the new lenses. The single focal length lenses even have hyperlocal distance markings on the barrels which give you another advantage. 

So, if I'm walking around downtown with the 25-50 I might have the camera set to M or A and the lens set to f11. I know from looking at a lot of depth of field tables over the years that by setting the lens at eight to ten feet on the focusing ring that, in the 25-30mm range, I'll have sharp focus from infinity down to about five feet. If I'm really concerned about high sharpness of objects closer to infinity I'll move the focusing ring closer to between 15 and 30 feet. I know with certainty that anything further than 20 feet that I point my camera at will be in sharp focus. I don't have to fine tune for each frame. The depth of field covers it well. 

If I am shooting out on the street with a 35mm MF Nikon I might set my aperture ring to f11 and if I put my infinity setting on the yellow, color coded line on one side of the center focus hash I can look on the other side of the corresponding yellow hash mark and see that I can be reasonably in focus from about 8 feet to infinity. I can walk through the streets and shoot with abandon, knowing that anything in that range will be in focus. 

That takes care of a lot of wide angle stuff but what about the longer focal lengths? Well, first of all I think that very fast. longer lenses give you a certain advantage because, unlike the wider lenses, the apparent focus wide open tends to pop and in and out with more certainty. It's one of the reasons faster lenses were so popular back in the manual focus only days. The "in focus" was more apparent with the brighter lenses and the narrower depth of field. Win, win. 

When I shoot with the medium telephotos in the studio focusing is definitely an issue. Bugs the hell out of me. But when I shoot portraits in the studio I am almost always using a tripod. I use a tripod because it helps me to "anchor" a composition but also because I like to use continuous lighting and a tripod allows me to use slower shutter speeds than I can normally hand hold. If I am using a tripod then with both of my current DSLRs I can go into "live view" and punch in to see a magnified section of the image and really fine tune focus. I also tend to shoot about one f-stop smaller than I might with an AF lens. Instead of shooting the 105mm wide open I might use it at f3.5 instead. It's not much but I'm hoping to cover myself, at least a little bit. 

In each of the Nikons I use there is a three light system of focus confirmation that can be very useful. The issue I have with it is that it's too undiscerning. There's a green arrow on either side of a center dot. If one the arrows lights up then you are out of focus and, supposedly, when the center dot lights up you are in focus. My issue is that the center dot stays lit though a bit of travel of the focusing ring. In other words the indicator is very lenient as to what is in and out of focus. I conjecture that the system was devised with the idea that most people are shooting at f5.6 or f8 and that depth of field will cover them. But I don't shoot that way.

What I have found though is that each camera tends to help me back focus just a little bit when I wait until I hit the center spot of the green confirmation light exactly. I have experimented quite a bit and now I use the "too close" arrow and the "confirmation dot" in tandem. My goal with longer telephoto lenses (85-200) is to hit just at the spot where the "too close" light and the "confirmation dot" blink back and forth and then give a tiny nudge until the green dot wins. At that point I can shoot wide open with reasonable certainty of getting the shot. 

If I am shooting for my own enjoyment I am okay with trusting this dancing dot method and I find it pretty quick to shoot this way in the field. If my kid was running a cross country race I would rely on a different method if I wanted to shoot close to wide open. 

If I am photographing a real sporting event (swimming or running) and want to use a manual focus lens I rely on refocusing at specific points. If Ben were to run by in a race I would have a focus point in his path that I had prefocused on with one of the above methods, this way I would be able to concentrate on just shooting rather than managing an AF sensor or trying to "spin the ring." In a group of runners it's almost impossible to keep an AF point where you want it and pre-focusing can give you more keepers. 

But realistically, I use the MF lenses mostly in controlled situations and mostly when using a tripod. I compose the shot, switch to live view and punch in to a magnified view to attain perfect focus and then I switch out of live view to viewfinder mode and shoot until I change position or my subject moves. The added benefit is that I am focusing at my taking aperture which eliminates the chance of optical focus shift upon stopping down. 

When I am shooting fast moving stuff the optical benefits and characteristics of the MF lenses; the qualities I like them for, are secondary to getting the shot. In these kinds of jobs I don't have so much hubris that I risk outrageous failure so I am quick to switch over and use my lenses with AF. The 24-120mm replaced the 25-50mm and the 80-200 replaced the 85, 105 and 135. They get the job done. 

So, there are reasons to use both. My green dot method works for me most of the time and if I didn't do this for money and clients I would be comfortable using the MF lenses all the time. In nearly every situation I come across there's ample time to work on focusing. And who knows? With enough practice I may yet be able to focus accurately on the screen of a D810.  But I wouldn't count on it....

Rule of thumb. It's better to focus once and lock it down than to keep refocusing. Subjects don't move as much as one might think. That being said, if your photography depends on sharp images of moving objects with shallow depth of field then you might want to relegate your MF lenses to some other tasks and go with the sure thing.

Look versus reliability.

Need some books for the Holidays? Go HERE.

What sort of camera madness have I participated in today? Oh, I remember, I swam the masters workout and then headed to Precision Camera to buy a brand new camera. I really, really needed one. Hmmm.

The Nikon D750 with the reasonably good 24-120mm zoom lens.

August is a dangerous month. Fraught with all kinds of odd impulses. Way too hot for rational thought to prevail. What's a guy going to do? But let's set this up first and at least give me a chance to rationalize yet another zany and seemingly inexplicable camera purchase (full price, no special dispensation for brilliant blog writers...).

I've been playing diligently with video this year and I'm mixing with bad company. These video guys make photographers look like depression era shoppers. And when they add stuff to their "carts" the prices seem astronomical to me. According to them you can buy a Sony FS7, 4K super 35 video camera for a bit less than than $9,000 but in their opinions the camera requires another three or four thousand dollars invested in cages, follow focus stuff, monitors, memory cards and such before you can really, you know, use it. And then you'll need a lens. Or lenses.

These days all the video guys are excited and fidgety about the newest Sony camera, the A7R-2 and they are lining up only to be told that it's now effectively backordered. Amazon.com had them yesterday but today they are saying "deliverable in one to two months." But you know how those guys over at Precision Camera are always looking out for my best interests so they took it upon themselves to place me at the top of the pre-order list for the Sony A7R-2. Yesterday they called and let me know that they'd gotten a handful in and they had one with my name on the box. Did I

Reasonable and appropriate lens buying. Part two. A do-everything zoom?

The Nikon 24-120mm f4.0G lens is not big news.

But it may be a good problem solver for event shooters.

I know it's the opinion of many of my friends and colleagues that I should just calm down, buy into one system for the long run, and use the same cameras and lenses, day in and day out, until technology makes big leaps or the market drops dead. But they all know that this is probably not going to happen at the VSL H.Q. I get bored doing the same thing over and over again and I get even more bored doing the same things over and over again with the same cameras and lenses. Lately, I am trying to be a bit more rational and so I've really tried thinking through the cameras and lenses that might be the best fit for two different assignments this week. 

Tomorrow I need to go to a technology conference and shoot all of the signage, decor, staging and convention style showcases and demo areas for the production company that's producing the show. No talking heads, not fast moving action, just good documentation of a lot of fun graphics stuff. There are two advantages to this job: one advantage is that the graphics and signage materials are beautifully designed and extremely well implemented, and the second advantage is that the show is mostly contained on three floors of a new, big, shiny convention hotel right in the middle of downtown just across the street from Medici Coffee House. I think I may even be able to ride the bus to this job. How novel!

This kind of shooting mostly involves walking around looking for good shooting angles, staying out the client's way and making exposure choices based on how well lit everything is. In this instance I think flexibility with the gear is important. That and image quality. 

I won't have the opportunity to light anything (other than what I might be able to do with on camera flash) and there is a lot to do in a proscribed amount of time, and that led me to start considering a lens that would cover everything from a wide angle point of view to a very tight headshot crop. I used to own a Canon 24-105mm L series lens and found it to be incredibly useful so I started looking for its counterpart in the Nikon lens catalog and came across the 24-120mm f4 (the newest version of three). 

The reviews on this lens are decidedly mixed (from the pundits) but the overwhelming number of ordinary consumer reviews on Amazon and B&H Photo are four or five stars. The biggest two gripes are that the lens has a lot of geometric distortion (it does) and that it isn't as sharp at 120mm at it is at the rest of the focal lengths. 

I decided to buy a copy and test it, knowing that I could take it back if I wasn't satisfied with the performance. I bought the lens on Saturday at Precision Camera and spent Sunday afternoon shooting with it on a

Why I keep the Olympus OMD EM-5.2 cameras around. "It's not the horse it's the arrow!"

OMD EM5.2 shot with Nikon D610 and Sigma 50mm Art.

Oh sure, I love the big Nikon full frame cameras, especially when I have the time to put them on a tripod and take test exposures and chimp. Seriously though, it would be hard to dispute that for many applications that require very high resolution and very high sharpness the combination of the D810 or even D610, coupled with a killer lens (like the Sigma 50mm f1.4 Art), is tough to beat. But that presupposes that every shooting situation requires those very structured and measurable performance attributes. Your jobs with a camera may the same day-after-day and year-after-year but mine sure aren't. And when I'm off the clock and shooting for pleasure my mind wanders into other areas. Other camera system strengths. On most routine jobs the bigger cameras are overkill.

Don't get me wrong, I love overkill as much as any other red blooded American male who grew up driving big block V8's too fast. Always nice to have some in reserve in case you need to pass...

The flipside  is that I also sit in the other chair. The editor's chair. The post processing strato-lounger. The Eames chair of file enhancement. And setting there for a long time takes the creative starch right out of you while making your butt bigger.  I re-discovered this yet again on Tuesday morning when I sat down to convert about 900 D610 raw files into Jpegs and Tiffs. The fast SD cards (UHS3) and the quicker buffers of the newest generations of cameras make it easy to shoot fast, and shooting fast generally ends up meaning, "shooting a lot."  I could have shot less but you never know what you'll get next and....the cameras make it so easy. Hand me another slice of pizza...

But dang! Processing those files took longer than I'd like and in the end I'm going to guess that 98% of the images won't make the final cut into the two or three ads that are planned. And in the same vein once the client finds those three killer images they'll probably abandon everything else from the day's take and use the "keepers' over and over again. In this instance I felt like I needed the high ISO performance that the D610 provides. It's no little deal to pull off ad-ready images while hanging out at 6400 ISO.

When I shoot for myself I mostly come right back to the Olympus micro four thirds cameras and the motley assortment of Panasonic, Olympus, Sigma lenses, and the weirder, third party lenses I have adapted to the format. And I sat down today to figure out why.

I started shooting with the micro four thirds Olympus cameras the minute they got the first EVF enabled body ( the EP-2 ) into Precision Camera in Austin, Texas. The size was perfect and it was the first camera I could really use the Olympus Pen FT lenses from my half frame collection on. While we'd never call the 12 megapixel sensor "state of the art" the camera made mighty good images from day one. In fact, when I go back and look at work I did with that camera in 2010 I find that I love the color and really can't see the visual manifestation of lower dynamic range the way I thought I might. The color is as gorgeous as I remembered.

The full frame Nikons are great for things like theatrical photography where I need to make images during a dress rehearsal performance of a play.  The size of the sensor and the speed of available, long lenses makes subject isolation easy while the high ISO performance of the same sensors makes getting good, rich exposures with low noise easier as well.

The Olympus OMD cameras make nice enough images of stage performances but they have lose out to the high ISO performance of the D610s by at least two stops. The alternate reality is that the OMDs have great EVFs and that means every bit of action I shoot during a show comes pre-chimped and well corrected before it's even been shot. And the 16 megapixels on the sensor is the absolute sweet spot for almost every application while keeping editing from being a full time, cave dweller job.

Where the OMD cameras come into their own is travel. Whether you are traveling from your house to downtown and then walking around for hours at a time or when you are traveling to faraway places and need to pack and carry what you'll be wearing and playing with for weeks at a time the smaller cameras just have it all over the bigger, heavier ones. I can pack two cameras and three small lenses in one of my smallest bags and have everything I want in a package that camera be carried across my shoulder for an entire day without screaming for a chiropractor to fix my lower back, shoulder and neck as a result (not that I would ever willingly see a chiropractor...).

The OMD is much more at home sitting on the edge of the restaurant table at lunch and

We're wrapping up a complicated annual report job and I have some observations to make.

First of all, when you are trying to do a particular look, the right tools really do make a difference. 

I'm not saying you can't go out with XYZ camera and, with a lot of work and elbow grease, get a great image with enormous detail but if you want a great image with enormous detail and a wide enough dynamic range to help you tame direct sun you could do a hell of a lot worse than selecting a Nikon D810 for your project. While there might (might) be better cameras to be had in the medium format catalogs or in some secret lab, I've never used a better all around corporate image making machine than this one. 

It sneaks up on you. It does all the typical camera stuff while you are out shooting. It has the same screen on the back as other cameras so there's nothing to cue you to the differences. It goes "click" like every camera I've owned. It takes the same lenses as the previous generation of Nikons I've used but the difference is easy to see when you bring the camera home from the field, drop the files into the latest rev of Lightroom CC, and then sit down and start editing.

This thing held on to detail in shiny skin like nothing I've ever used before across film or digital product lines. If you are hell bent on never burning out a highlight again you can set this camera to ISO 64, underexpose by over a full stop and then bring the files back up to a normal exposure setting while protecting your highlights without taking any hit in quality whatsoever. Nothing. No grain, no color shifts. A lot of the current annual report project we are wrapping up was done in direct sun or with direct sun playing over the backgrounds. I worried but I didn't need to (the story of my life...) because nothing I shot was in anyway technically unusable. But the thing that got to me over and over again was the ability to take a full length, standing portrait, zoom in and fill the screen with a face and still not see noise or a lack of sharp detail. 

And do I even need to mention how cool it is to have ISO 64 as your base sensitivity? That means you can go to 1/4,000th at f2.0 if you really need to get that skinny depth of field everyone talks about. You even have a stop's worth of shutter speed in reserve. Just like a camera should be. 

Look at the lens on the front of the D810. It's a cheap, cheap, cheap Rokinon 14mm f2.8. It vignettes a bit and has wickedly bad "mustache" geometric distortion that makes simple distortion corrections in PhotoShop or Lightroom almost impossible. But the fun thing about this lens is that at f2.8 the center third of the frame is really sharp. Probably sharper than anything else in the focal length. Stop it down to f8.0 and the whole frame is very, very sharp. If you use the lens and the software as it is then you basically are trading straight lines and nice corners for a sharp middle section and that probably convinces most people to stop using the lens after the novelty of its wide angle of view wears off. 

I loved the idea of the lens but it was hard to justify using it and giving files to clients if the files had visible and awkward distortion built-in. Clients seem more sensitive to distortion than lower sharpness. But I discovered a custom lens profile made by a guy named, Sven Stork, that can be added to the Adobe lens profile library and basically turns your $300 wide angle novelty lens into a priceless and high performance keeper. And with the D810 you've got more than enough pixels to be able to throw some away during the correction process. 

I just finished post processing some abstract images we did in a big electrical substation and one of them has already been earmarked by the art director as a cover shot for their printed annual report. The details are amazing and the color and contrast of the image, after some post processing, is as good as anything I have ever done. The lens is a damn advertisement in my camera bag that constantly "suggests" to me that I load up on Rokinon's other cine lenses. Hello 24mm f1.4? 

I used the D810 for almost everything in the entire AR project. I used the 14mm for both of the double-truck spreads that will appear. But that's not the only combination I used. 

The Nikon 25-50mm lens got its due in the VSL blog a few days ago and I'm still impressed by just how well the lens makers did their craft in the age before autofocus and plastic barreled lenses became the norm. We've reviewed our older Nikon 80-200mm f2.8 push pull zoom before but an entire section of the AR, mostly shot against the sun also made me appreciate enduring craftsmanship. 

The king of the camera bag this week, though, has been the Sigma 50mm f1.4 Art lens. Every time I see how sharp and how three dimensional it can be in its renderings the  more unwilling I am to remove it from the camera. But I'm not going to write about that lens now. I need more time with it to see just how good it can really be. 

The longest tenure of a flash in my whole studio.... the Elinchrom Ranger RX system.

Sometimes I find myself a bit mystified at just how long a battery powered system can last. I know that my flash system was designed and built by the Swiss (who make watches that run for decades or centuries) but I continue to be amazed at the life of the sealed lead acid batteries the system uses. I've had the rig since 2008 and it just continues to pump out flash after flash under all sorts of conditions. Freezing cold, light rain, tremendous heat. It even refuses to shut down when I'm shooting boring dreck. It's right there with me.

I can't believe I was trying to sell this system a few years ago. In the time since I've made tens of thousands of dollars shooting with this machine and it's still one of a very small fraternity that can belt out precise 1100 watt portions of flash about 250 times in a row from one battery. We haul around a second battery when we are out shooting in the middle of a barren field or in the oil patch but it's rare that we've ever pulled out the spare and pressed it into service. The last time we did was when we were taking photos of swimmers for Ben's old Summer swim club. We photographed about 250 kids, five or six shots a piece, along with twenty or thirty different group shots (well over 800 images) before the first battery yelled, "I surrender!"

This is the flash system we hauled out to a park for the beginning of a day of shooting with the company's CEO. Our first shot was of him standing in a large field with big trucks in the background and the sun over his right shoulder. We put up a big softbox and matched the sun, lumen for lumen, as we coaxed just the right expression across the executive's face. Again and again and again. No shut downs, no hiccups and no interruptions.

Our Elinchrom systems has two heads and sometimes we supplement the system with three cheap flashes. We have one brand new Cactus flash that the company sent me to try our and I have two Yongnuo flashes that I picked up to use as slaves. They have slave triggers built in and so far ( a year down the road) both them work flawlessly. That was the bulk of our lighting package on this adventure but I would be remiss if I didn't mention our most valuable modifier for shooting in the sun. That would have been our 4x4 foot Chimera aluminum panel with a one stop diffusion silk stretched out across it. The first thing we did on almost every shot over the course of the week was to put that scrim up on  sturdy C-Stand (with sand bags) between the sun and our subjects. It turned hard light into soft fill. The big softbox did the rest.

While we're talking about necessary tools of the trade....

Doesn't matter if you live in Texas or Norway, if you stand out in the sun for a couple of hours you're going to get burned. Your skin will turn red and you'll be uncomfortable in the short term. It might kill you (cumulatively) over the long run. I generally always wear a cap with a bill when I am out and around for a while but that kind of hat does nothing to keep overhead sun off the tops of your ears and off the back of your neck. The older, black cotton one I have had for years doesn't do much to cool you off either. If you are going to spend a week outside in Texas you need your Texan Wear. And in most cases that might include a stray cowboy hat from Stetson. The weave around the top is great for cooling ventilation and, as you can see, the wide brim does a good job protecting tender skin. You might have to tilt yours back while shooting but really, isn't most annual report photography ( or any photography for that matter) really a lot more standing around figuring things out and talking people through the process than actually working with the camera stuck on your face? 

If the action gets thick you can always get your assistant to hold your hat for that part of the program. But really, it's nice to have when you are walking around a big electrical substation looking for just the right shot. Keeps light off the viewfinder too. 

So, those are the pieces of gear that are new to me for this annual report. I'm happy. The client is happy. The assistant is happy (and wonderful) and everything is right with the world. Now I'm just resigned to the long process of retouching and bending the finished images to the mercurial wishes of the client.... But that's part of the job.

Here's my happy face at being done with all the shooting and the first round of post-production on our current annual report project. The balls are now in the hand of the client and my retoucher until I get back from New York. Hope y'all are doing well. Happy trails.

I had the opportunity to use the Sigma 50mm f1.4 Art Lens in the Nikon Mount this morning and this afternoon and I am buying it. It's really good.

Sigma 50mm f1.4 ART

One of my friends is an avowed Canon shooter. Dyed in the wool. Full contingent of Canon T/S lenses at the ready. Fifty-four megapixel cameras pre-ordered, etc. He also frequently uses a Leica medium format digital camera in his day to day work as one of the country's best architectural photographers. For some strange reason he became enamored with the supposed mythology surrounding Sigma's very well reviewed 50mm f1.4 Art lens and when he saw one used, in a Nikon mount but at a very incredibly good price, he bought it immediately. Then, realizing that all of his camera bodies were of the Canon variety, he also bought a Nikon D610 to go with it

Since then he's come to realize that going too far across cameras systems is probably counter-productive and costly and that the learning of new menus takes time and can ultimately cause confusion under the pressure of shoots for money. (Yes, I know there is at least one of you out there that can compartmentalize information with ease and float across all menus without stumbling or hesitation but the rest of we mortals think you might be full of B.S.).  He decided to get rid of the Nikon and pick up the Canon version instead. But he's as mercurial as I am when it comes to gear and it won't surprise me at all when he chooses the Zeiss 50mm f1.4 Otus lens instead. But that's another story altogether.

He handed me the lens earlier in the week and I put it in my Think Tank rolling case and intended to use it liberally.  I used it on one of the exterior, environmental portraits we did yesterday but really, what can you tell about a prime at f5.6 that isn't just about the same story with every decent prime? They're all really good at f5.6, or they should be...

Yesterday's portrait images were well behaved, convincingly sharp with no intervention from Lightroom and the color was neutral and impressively complex. But again, it was all shot at f5.6 so I expected most of what I was observing in post production.

Today was another matter. We are on day three of an annual report project and I got to shoot the lens nearly wide open and in a few situations I tried it wide open just to see. I was shooting the Sigma 50mm on two different bodies just to see how different they might look. I used a D610 and a D810; both at their lowest rated ISOs. I used double the shutter speed I would normally use with this focal length and faster. Once I got back to the studio I opened the files up and went right to full on pixel peeping. 100%. Blow Up.

The files were not exciting in the sense that they were unreal in color or that the resolution or sense of sharpness called attention to themselves. It was more like looking at an actual scene instead of looking at the representation on the monitor. The lens is really, really good. I've just started playing with it but I am already very impressed with its quality and look. I need to spend at least a month to get used to it and I intend to do just that. Once I've amassed a collection of representative images I'll circle back and share more complete thoughts about it.

There are two downsides to this lens. 1. It's very big and heavy. And, 2. It's expensive for a 50mm lens. But I guess that's really relative when the Otus lens from Zeiss is over 4 times the price and the Leica M 50mm Summilux 1.4 Aspheric is three and  one half times the price. Based on the performance I saw today, and the advantageous price I got for buying used I think I'll count this one to be an absolute bargain.

Thanks for reading.

Just a program note. Samsung sent me one of their NX-1 cameras. I will shoot with it and see if it matches the marketing speak.

I resigned from Samsung's beta tester/user program in the middle of last year because I got tired of waiting for a camera that felt like it was aimed at my particular market. I may (or may not) have been premature in my resignation because their new flagship camera, the NX-1, was announced shortly afterward. While I am happy with my current set of cameras I was, initially, very interested in the video capabilities of the new camera. The control set seemed good and I was intrigued by the availability of 4K video and the very fast processor set of the camera.

My initial interest was diminished when I learned about the new codec (H.265) Samsung used in the camera because it's highly compressed in camera and must be converted to an editable file for use in Final Cut Pro X. The resulting converted files can be enormous and the process time consuming. I've since read glowing reports about the image quality and I'd like to see for myself.

As to the still imaging capabilities of the camera-----I think all the cameras on the market are fine for my use. Some menus are better than others and some sensors (like the one in the Nikon D810) are standouts. But most advancements in the still field will be less spectacular than the big jumps in capabilities we saw five and ten years ago.

I am not a sports shooter but if I was I couldn't really test the performance of this camera and it's 15 fps because I only have a handful of lenses for the system and if I was shooting something like the USMS Swimming Nationals in San Antonio next month I would want lenses like the fast tele zoom or the equivalent of a 300mm f2.8 to use in order to really frame tightly while having the lens speed to give me fast shutter speeds as all that work would be handheld.

It's interesting to have three relatively new products in house at the same time. And three such different permutations of photographic tools. I have the EM5/2 with its very nice image quality and color, coupled with the world's best image stabilization. I have the Nikon D810 with its incredibly detailed sensor and massive dynamic range. And I have the NX-1 which shoots fast and offers up the promise of excellent 4K video.

I wish Samsung had sent along two things to help me make a better evaluation of this camera. The first would be their fast, longer zoom. The 50-150mm f2.8. If the camera is going to shine then this lens would go a long way to unveiling that shine. And secondly, on a much more pedestrian note, there was no charge of any kind in the box Samsung sent. I ended up having to buy a USB cable and charging the camera battery, in body, with an old Apple USB phone charger. Hmmmm..... In addition I think every camera maker should supply reviewers with two batteries...

I am waiting for the battery to charge before I begin going through the camera menus and setting it up the way I want it.

It's always a bit awkward to get a review camera within a week or two of having bought a new model camera for one's own system that also wants reviewing. The Olympus got here first so it gets priority in the next few weeks.

Lots of good cameras out there. I guess we'll see which ones are the most FUN to shoot....

Recent Acquisition of Olympus EM-5 type 2 Driven by Desire for More Beautiful Handheld Video. Tests Begin.

A new player in the house.

Hot on the heels of my Nikon D810 review I must let you know that I find it impossible (for me) to be a "one system" guy.  It seems like there is always some feature or some combination of features on a different type of camera that are just the perfect complement to the other camera. 

After much consideration I headed over to Precision Camera yesterday. The trip was slow and plodding as the brain trust that is the city of Austin is doing major construction to one of our two major, north/south highways in conjunction with the arrival of an extra 2 million or so people for the SXSW music festival. Observational evidence would suggest that many of the arrivals for the festival are experiencing driving in cars for the first time in their lives....but that would still make them better drivers than many native Texans.

At any rate, I made it to the optical candy store and traded in a bunch of accumulated studio bric-a-brac and duplications and walked out the door with a brand new, black, OMD EM-5 type 2. I also sprung for the HLD-8 battery grip. I made it back to the Starbucks in my neighborhood and sat down, with a cup of coffee, and started piecing the camera together while reading the manual.

As a veteran camera buyer I knew to bring along a charged battery, one of my favorite straps and a nice lens, as well as an SD card. Having the camera outfitted the way you like it makes configuring it much easier. 

It is immediately obvious that the new version of the EM-5 is better built than it's predecessor. It's nice and tight. The dials make sense and I'll probably use the function buttons if I can figure out where to post the sticky notes reminding me what each one is configured for....

This morning I posted a review that called the Nikon D810 the best all around camera in the world so why in the world did I go out and buy a totally different concept of a camera if that's true? 

Here's the best reason I can give you: The Image Stabilization in the new camera is so good and so useful that I would be shortchanging myself as a videographer NOT to have one of these amazing cameras as a premium tool for handheld video. 

I've shot plenty of test with the original OMD EM-5 to know that the I.S. was useful. Even vital for handheld video work. But the thing that kept me from embracing the last version for production work was the video codec. The quality of the files with movement and low light. It's almost as if the in camera processing of the video files cancelled out the benefits of the I.S.

While the new, type two, codec isn't without fault and detractors it's laps ahead of its predecessor and that makes it more than useful for handheld shots. The addition of a dedicated microphone port and a headphone jack, along with manual control for both of these features provided the final tipping point to purchase. 

I am currently producing a video that calls for clean, handheld movements and I'm getting up to speed as quickly as the Basque language Olympus menus allow. Already I am finding that this little package is like getting a video with its own free SteadiCan attached. 

I will be working on a full review to post near the end of next week. Not just video but anything that stands out about the photographic side of the camera as well. 

I am excited about having the fluidity of this camera at my fingertips for real productions. The next step is to see how well the files from the Nikon D810 cut together with the files from the EM5/2. 

I still can't believe the performance of the I.S. in video. Amazing.

Past Due Reviews. The second in a series. The Nikon D810. Executive Summary? The best all around camera in the world today.

Ben, hard at work in the studio. Fourteen years ago. 

Nikon D810 Camera.

Two days ago I wrote a review about the Nikon D610. It's a really great, full frame camera that provides a higher image quality than most photographers will ever need. The design, overall, is mature, easy to use and familiar to those who grew up with conventional film cameras. At the current, widespread pricing of $1495 it's a camera that many of us working professionally would have paid three or four times that amount if we could have gotten that camera in our hands six or eight years ago. So why in the world would anyone want or need the Nikon D810? I've spent the last few months finding out.

The Sensor: While everyone seems riveted on high ISO performance capabilities in new cameras I personally am thrilled with the low, native ISO of 64 on the D810. At 64 ISO the dynamic range is as wide as it gets. There is a (somewhat) linear relationship between escalating ISO and diminishing dynamic range. While people talk about ISO-less sensor performance they are mostly referring to noise, not dynamic range or color accuracy. There are plenty of Sony sensor infused cameras that do high ISO well (the D610 is one of the absolute best in that regard) but what some of us are looking for is how to achieve the very best image quality you can wring out of a camera. If you want to maximize the impression of quality in your photographs the place to start is at the bottom (native) of the ISO scale.

This is really what the D810 does best. Shooting at lower ISOs has some operational advantages in exterior shooting as well. ISO 64 means when we go outdoors to shoot portraits with flash we can use wider apertures at the maximum sync speed to drop more stuff out of focus. 1/250th at f5.6 if pretty nice. Add a bit of neutral density and you could be shooting that premium optic at it's pricy aperture in full sun. With maximum DR. Nice.

But this ignores the Brontosaurus in the dining room, the sheer resolution. In the past I scoffed at the idea that we needed much more than 16 megapixels in our cameras to do the vast majority of our work. I still feel that way for lots of applications like portraiture and just about anything destined to be used only on the web. But there are shoots that professionals who shoot for corporate clients and advertising agencies are commissioned to do that really do require just as many pixels in the mix as you can reasonably bring to bear. As the economy in the U.S. recovers trade shows are flourishing again. New printer technologies mean that it's more cost effective for more companies to use bigger and bigger posters and wraps in their marketing and the designers who put the work together are constantly looking for more information/ more resolution. We've been asked for samples from our cameras by more agencies in the past four months than we ever did in the past five years. The files from the D810 are appreciated by this audience!

I've also come to appreciate the increased resolution when using the D810 for still life photography. Yesterday I was shooting small computer servers on a white background. If you try to fill the frame with the whole server and you are shooting down at the server in order to shot it in the deep dimension there's no way to cover the entire product with uniformly sharp focus. At f16 and using every idea about distribution of depth of field I could either keep the front panel and the bulk of the server (but not the back end) in focus or the opposite. Yes, if I was working with one product instead of five or six with three views each I might try to do some focus stacking but we have realistic deadlines to meet. Instead I back up instead of trying to fill the frame as we did with lower res cameras. I tried to find the right distance at which I could distribute sharpness over the entire image in one shot.

When I brought the files back into the studio I was able to crop and still have a larger image area than I would have had with a 16-20 megapixel file. The higher resolution also helped when using lens correction tools to correct perspective. The image files start as 14 bit, uncompressed RAWs and even when cropped the sharpness and dynamic range, along with the color accuracy, remains.

When I do this kind of work I am always trying to shoot at ISO 64-100 or 200 (at the max). I am using the camera on a stout tripod and I use the mirror-up along with an electronic release. Used in this fashion I believe I am getting work from this camera that matches the 4x5 view camera systems I used in the days of film.

But....don't think that this camera is a specialized tool that can only be used like a view camera. The camera can be used in exactly the same way as any other high quality DSLR camera. And that includes shooting up to 3200 ISO with little regard for noise. When you use the files in the same way that you would when using a 24 megapixel camera with a better high ISO performance you'll probably find that when used at the same sizes the reduction in the D810 file size reduces noise to pretty much the same levels.

Overall performance: While there is a push in marketing to talk about super high frame rates most of us are happy to shoot at five frames per second for just about anything except sporting events that are over in a flash. Stuff like 10 meter diving, pole vaulting, broad jumping, etc. For my use as a generalist professional photographer with a leaning toward portraits the 5 fps of the camera is just fine and, even with the huge 36 megapixel files, the buffer is quite adequate---even when shooting with raw files.

The D810 uses Nikon's best auto focusing system. It locks on quickly with both AFS and screw-driver motivated lenses (old D series). I don't do a lot of tracking shots but the times I've tried C-AF with moving subjects the camera performed well.  What most of use find is that certain lenses focus quickly and others less quickly, regardless of which camera model is used. But the real benefit (at least to me) is focusing accuracy as opposed to overall speed of focus.

The camera is robust and feels very solid in one's hands. The marketing material implies that the camera is water resistant and I'm happy with that idea but mostly because I think that also makes the camera more resistant to dust as well.

If you've shot with Nikon digital cameras over the years all of the controls and menu items will seem familiar and comfortable. It had been a while since I used Nikon cameras. The last time I was using them was in the heyday of the D700. I reacquainted myself with the system last year via the DX model D7100 and was happy to find how quickly I adapted to the interface. As far as menus go moving from the Olympus system to the Nikon system is like going from some sort of highly encrypted document to reading a Dan Brown novel--- the later being easy to read and highly predictable. (To all the seething Olympus fans: yesterday afternoon I bought an OMD EM-5 type 2 with an HLD grip.....I am correct about the menu but the camera's value far exceeds the menus opacity...).

The Nikon D810 side view.

Image Quality. Whether I shoot in uncompressed 14 bit raw or in medium sized (20 megapixel) fine Jpeg I am happy to report that the camera turns in great performances without caveat. One attribute that surprised me the first few times I used the camera to take portraits was the way it absolutely nailed color on flesh tones. Even in mixed lighting like a recent project that was mostly lit with LED panels but also had bleed light from a cloudy outdoors and some fluorescent light sneaking in around the edges the camera seemed to nail the general color for skin with ease. This is a wonderful thing and cuts a lot of time out of the post processing phase of a job.

Having spent most of last year shooting with a Panasonic GH4 and a bucket full of Olympus EM5's the leap in dynamic range was.....exciting. I noticed this most in two types of shooting. The first "Aha!" moment was in shooting a dress rehearsal of "Peter and the Starcatcher" for Zach Theatre. The camera held highlight detail like my dog holds onto her squeaky toy. And the camera did so while looking deeper into the shadows than I am used to. As a result I spent very little time in post sliding the highlight and recovery sliders as I had done in the past. 

The second shooting situation was shooting portraits in a high sun environment. I was blocking sunlight from my subjects with flags and then adding the light I wanted with a strobe in a softball but I was also shooting at ISO 64 which is the dynamic range sweet spot for the camera.  Instead of blocked up shadow areas in deep shade in the background everything in the image was recoverable. In effect, the camera helps you to be better than you are by acting as an exposure lifeguard via its wide range of exposure latitude. This is also seen in the ability of the files to be recovered gracefully from underexposures and overexposures. 

Assuming you are shooting at the lower ISOs you can recover up to two stops with no worries and up to three stops with a little work from underexposed images. In raw I can easily recover files that are up to a stop overexposed. When I compare this with previous generation cameras like my older Canon 5D mk2 I am pretty amazed.

It's not the fastest shooting camera in terms of frame to frame fps and there are cameras that can beat the D810 in terms of lower noise at high ISOs but in every other regard, including focusing speed and accuracy, color accuracy, dynamic range, usable resolution and general handling I stand by my executive summary and happily call this camera the best in the world (for the price).  From an image quality point of view I am completely satisfied and have warm and fuzzy new feelings about being able to offer my clients the best quality work I have ever created. Ever. 

But these days I want even more out of my cameras------ I want them to be good video shooters as well.

Video Performance. Before I dropped $3,000 on this camera I spent a lot of time looking all over the web for information and samples of this camera's video performance. Nikon is pushing hard on the video capabilities of this camera and its lower resolution counterpart, the D750. I wanted to be able to press this camera into service in both disciplines. That meant, at a minimum, that the camera had to give me manual control over sound levels, exposure and focus, had to have both a headphone and microphone inputs, needed to have a clean HDMI output and be usable with an Atomos digital video recorder, and most important, had to have sharp, detailed and clean video files. 

What gave me pause was the lower bit rate of the camera's native codec. The "in camera" files are 24 and 42 mbs in 30p and 60p, respectively. No most meat on the files than what I had in the Sony a99 over even the Olympus OMD cameras. But "the proof of the pudding is in the eating" and I went looking for samples. What I saw was good. Not as detailed and wickedly sharp as the high mbs bit rate files of the GH4 (but what is?) but better than the Olympus, Sony and previous generations of Nikons. From every set of samples I could find the D810 was demonstrably better than the video coming out of Canon's (un-hacked) 5Dk3 as well. 

Once I acquired the camera I pressed it into commercial use by doing two video projects--- end to end --- with the camera. One was a controlled interior project which required exposing at ISO 1250 and the other was a series of location interviews with minimal added light. The interior project showed me that the camera could create usable, good video at lower light levels. It also showed me that I need lots of practice panning and maybe an investment in a better fluid head... One thing that I'm starting to understand are the strengths and weaknesses of 1080p video. Wide, highly detailed scenes never look great with video that's just 2,000 x 1.000 pixel because ===== wait for it==== there just aren't enough pixels to make everything convincingly detailed. Doesn't matter which camera. You just aren't going to make great, detailed landscape videos with a camera and format that's limited to this pixel count. 

The strength of 1080p video is that it looks great in close ups. It's great for interviews with big talking heads. It's great for tight telephoto shots. And it's convincing when you let the backgrounds fall out of focus. Then your eyes don't go looking for detail they're never going to find. 

So the giant wide shots we did on the interior job worked as well as 1080p video was ever going to work and the low noise at this mid-ISO setting was very acceptable. Where the camera did shine though was in its FLAT profile. The new profile isn't dramatic like an S-Log profile but it provides a nice, flat, lower saturation file that sharpens well in post and can be graded with more saturation and contrast and look really good. I leaned on that in this project.

The other project was series of interviews on uncontrollable locations all over the place. But, being interviews in my style meant that the frames were comped like portraits. Nice and tight but not too tight. These looked uniformly beautiful with lots of detail and no artifacts whatsoever. This camera is eminently usable for interview work and close up work. And if you have enough light to head up to 60p the files are drop dead sharp. 

Some downsides. The on camera microphone preamps seem noisy. Not weird noise but mostly just high frequency hiss. They also require a lot of gain if you use balanced microphones straight in. I was working with a Rode NTG-2 that was good on the GH4 but needed way too much amplification on the Nikon. Part of the problem might have been an impedance mismatch so I used a passive BeachTek DX2A as a mixer and impedance transformer between the NTG-2 and the camera inputs and that helped a lot. But even better was sticking a digital audio recorder, like a Zoom H-5, in the middle and using the output of the digital recorder to drive the microphone inputs on the camera. In that configuration the camera audio was much better. Very usable. This adds a layer of complexity that's not always wanted but good sound can be so vital in most instances it is worth it. 

The most glaring downside in video on the D810 is that the camera does not feature focus peaking on the rear screen. When working in video, up close with long lenses, in conjunction with a full frame sensor, focusing accuracy is critical and, while photographing subjects in motion an aid like focus peaking can be critical. I very much hope that this is something that camera be added in firmware. 

The camera is also a bit of a battery hog in video. You'll get about 40 minutes of shoot time out of each battery. It almost makes sense, if you are a heavy video user, to get the battery grip that allows the use of the D4s battery inside. That should give you hours of shooting without issues. Except that there is one last issue: 

The camera only shoots 20 minutes files at it's highest quality settings. The camera doesn't over heat (in my winter time experiences) but it does count down to zero and stop every twenty minutes of shooting. I used to shrug this off because most narrative work never calls for long takes but as luck would have it I did a 2 hour interview a few weeks ago and that had me watching the elapsed time on the camera like a hawk. When we we're in the last thirty seconds I'd try to time the shut down and restart of the camera with someone's cough or long pause. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes we lost a few seconds. Something to consider. 

Nothing against the D810 but I will say that there are times when other formats are better overall for shooting video or even fast action in still images. A much smaller sensor gives you more depth of field which means less drama and trauma over focus issues when going for the close ups. Or shooting stills "on the wing." I am also spoiled by Olympus's incredible image stabilization, both in video and still photography. But these aren't issues specific to the Nikon D810. 

Overall assessment: This is a wonderful camera. As a portrait photographer the only way I think this camera could be improved with current technology would be to shoot squares easily (yes, I know, you are mentally magical and can crop in your mind and apply later---but that's not the way everyone else's brains work...). The files are great and the handling, as a still camera could only be improved in one way---the removal of the optical finder and its replacement with a nice EVF. A really nice EVF. The EVF would make the addition of focus peaking a no brainer and would make it a perfect tool for shooting with many of the older cinema and Ais optics we really like to use. What a perfect complement that would be to my old Nikon 105mm f2.5 manual focus lens....

As a video camera it's pretty good but would benefit from a more robust codec. But there is always a trade-off. More mbs means much more file size. Which means much greater storage issues. I have seen really, really good quality 4:2:2 color from uncompressed files written to ProRes on an outboard recorder and am confident that the Nikon can do amazing video with these add-ons. If the client has the budget it's a somewhat logical thing. But in reality if the client has the budget to spool terabytes of uncompressed files it would make more sense to rent a dedicated video camera like the Arri Alexa or a Sony F65 or F55 and just get all the bells and whistles in one robust package. 

In a way I think Nikon is making a good compromise for the kind of video use this camera is going to see. That use is from photographers who also make video and do so for businesses and corporate clients aiming at showing their marketing videos on the web and in other non-broadcast venues. Like everything else it's production that exists in tiers based on the wants, needs and budgets of the project. 

By my nature I will pretty much always aim to use very small crews for video projects. I want to run camera and direct. The second person I would always hire (unless I was shooting solo) would be a sound person to wrangle microphones and move audio from mixers to camera inputs. After a sound person would be a second shooter for cutaway angles. That's about it. 

It's smaller, less complicated productions like these at which Nikon seems to be aiming their new generation of video enhanced cameras. Will this marketing niche work for them? Maybe. But if I were their product marketers I would be demanding that engineering give me cleaner audio and focus peaking so I would have some assurance of total parity with other products in the price range. For now the GH4 still trumps the Nikons in video for everything except the ability to limit depth of field. 

But all this video mumbo jumbo aside this is a still camera whose image files everyone will love. The only advantage to other formats is the size and weight. For commercial work this one hits the sweetest of the sweet spots.