A first attempt to make commercial portraits again in the studio. How did I like using the Leica SL2 as a studio camera?

This photo is not related to the article below. It's just for fun.

 This is just a short post to talk about how well the SL2 works as a portrait camera. I photographed two business people in the studio today. I set up on Godox SL150ii in a 48 inch octagonal soft box and used it as close in toward my subject as I could manage. The second light was also a Godox SL150ii (LED light) aimed at the background and delivered through a small soft box. I used a 50 inch bounce reflector opposite the main light. 

I set up the camera on a tripod and set it do shoot in the 1:1 or square format. I also set the camera to shoot DNG+Medium Jpeg. With the camera set to preview and also deliver squares I could use it in the horizontal configuration which is most comfortable. The camera shows the square with the edges masked off. 

Here's what I liked about shooting that way: The sensor resolution is high enough that I can easily crop either horizontal or vertical. With many cameras when you shoot in a different format and choose to shoot in raw you end up seeing the whole frame in most post production software but with a white set of lines (a box?) showing you what the crop to format looks like. But with the Leica SL2 when I imported the files into Lightroom they resolve exactly as the squares I shot in camera. No extra work required. 

When I selected frames to upload to Smugmug from this morning's shoot I was able to convert all the selected raw files to Jpegs and all of them matched the square crop I saw from the raw files. No extra steps had to be taken. 

People have critiqued the AF of the SL2 for lack of speed or hesitant lock-on but I had zero AF performance issues. I selected face detect AF and the camera and lens did a great job at locking in on the faces. The eyes in every shot were perfectly focused and wildly sharp. Well...not too sharp but as sharp as they were supposed to be. (sorry for the nudge toward hyperbole...).

Since I used a custom white balance the flesh tones in the resulting files were absolutely perfect. The dynamic range also assisted in providing good highlight and shadow detail on the people. That makes for easy file correction down the road. 

I used two lenses today. The primary lens was the Sigma 85mm f1.4 Art lens (version 2). It's wonderful. Just the right thing for portraits cropped to square in this set up. The second lens was one I used to get a little wider frame so I'd have room to cut out the person in the frame if the client decides they want to composite an exterior landscape as a background (like the ones I shot yesterday...); it's the Sigma i series 65mm f2.0. It keeps up with the 85mm ART very well. Both are crispy and laden with details. I stuck to just a third stop further open than f5.6 as my working aperture and it was a good combination for getting enough depth of field but also giving me a good blur on the background. 

I shot from 11:30 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. and the files were globally color corrected and online in a gallery by 1pm. 

No hiccups from the camera or lenses. And I'd forgotten just how nice big bright LEDs look in voluminous soft box modifiers. It was nice. 

We're about 90 posts away from having produced 5,000. That's the goal I set for myself when I started this blogging adventure oh so long ago. I'm betting that we will end up getting there in less than 3 months. I'm not sure what will happen then.  I might choose a place in the center of the country and invite all the vaccinated VSL readers to join me for some sort of event. Or I may just ignore the goal and keep on slamming out posts. 

Maybe I'll quit writing and try V-logging instead. It's all unknown. Just advising you that life might or might not change for me when I reach 5,000. Advice? Or not.

After declaring his intention to be "more eccentric in 2020" Kirk Tuck acquires the most eccentric "point and shoot" camera currently available...

I looked around at all the cameras that were introduced in the last year to find the one with the least amount of press coverage, given the least love on blogs and vlogs, with the fewest inches of hands-on, preview, now testing, first impressions, in-depth and field test written reviews, and, with the help of the VSL mainframe and our (not really!) sponsor, Palantir, we ended up with these results: the least loved and least explored, new, interchangeable lens, full frame camera in the world has to be the Sigma FP. 

So we bought one. 

Mary Bridget Davies as "Janis Joplin" for Zach Theatre.

Sigma FP + 85mm f1.4 Art Lens.

ISO 2500.

This is a camera will be universally overlooked by nearly every photographer, videographer, reviewer and retailer in the world in 2020, but everyone who actually buys one will probably love it and embrace it as one of the most fun cameras to work with ---- ever. (disclaimer: unless you shoot: sports, birds in flight, fast moving children, sports, skateboarding, things in motion, sports, or things that require fast, continuous autofocus. You will also be disqualified as a buyer if you need real, in body image stabilization, any sort of professional flash performance, or an EVF or other viewfinder). 

So, who is this camera for and why was I crazy enough to actually spend my scarce American dollars to buy one at the full retail price? Let's dig in and watch me rationalize...

I've shot enough commercial work with the Panasonic Lumix S1 series cameras to know that I made the right choice in selecting them for my work-work cameras. They are, in my opinion, the only truly professional caliber mirrorless, interchangeable lens, full frame cameras currently being made by any of the Japanese camera companies. A case could be made for Leica products but I'm almost certain that any improvement over the quality of the S Pro Lumix lenses would be firmly slotted in that category we call, extreme diminishing returns. The S Pro line is sturdy, robust and highly capable. The new Lumix S Pro lenses are astoundingly good. And, as an added bonus, the cameras don't overheat when shooting 4K video (which they do very, very well).

But what might be amazing for cameras that one uses for work might not fit the bill for photographers who enjoy walking miles and miles with a camera over one shoulder, looking for fun images to memorialize while reveling in the exercise, and soaking up the feel of the great outdoors. 

I looked through all the current "real" point and shoot cameras and didn't find one that fit perfectly with the perspective of the ultimately ambulatory, rambling photographer. I also wanted whatever camera I ultimately chose to have the imaging potential of the S1 cameras I've been shooting with. While I may use it in a less rigorous fashion I wanted to be able to put great lenses on the front of the camera, in a pinch, and walk away with files that were as good as those generated by my primary industrial strength imaging cameras. 

While I would love the Sigma FP even more if it used the same batteries as the Lumix S1 series, I am falling under the spell of this tiny, ungainly and slow, brick of a camera in a way I didn't expect. And right now I am writing about it in its incarnation as a still imaging camera (photography) and have not yet switched the magic switch to try out the video. That will be grist for another blog post somewhere. 

I took the Sigma FP out for it's maiden voyage this morning after swim practice. I'd tell you more about swim practice but I think the majority of my audience could care less about training for the USMS Masters National Short Course Nationals coming up in April...... 

I charged the battery last night and charged a generic back up battery as well. The camera does not come with an external charger so you have to use the USB-C port to charge batteries while they are in the camera. I am chafed by this and have purchased an aftermarket charger and more batteries to remedy this oddly vexing issue. I am a bit miffed that a $1900 camera doesn't come with an external charger but I guess I should have expected this since the camera doesn't come with a viewfinder/evf either. It's functionally a brick, just like the "brains" of a Red movie camera. You get to add the parts you think you'll need as you go along and, I suspect, that after you fit out the camera the way you'd really like it you'll have spent somewhere in the vicinity of $2500 instead. 

So, no battery charger, no evf, no dual pixel phase detect autofocus; not even DfD AF. But you do get a strap and detachable lugs for the strap. No dual card slots, just the one lowly SD card slot. But in an interesting side note, you can attach an SSD drive to the USB-C port and write files and video directly to a fast SSD. The SSD drive the few other owners of Sigma FPs seem to gravitate to is the Samsung T5, in the 1 terabyte flavor. You'll need it if you want to take advantage of the completely uncompressed video raw files which write at about 2500 megabytes per second, at their highest quality setting. 

Doesn't seem to be the sort of camera you take to a rock concert or a stage show, right? Well, in the spirit of counterintuitive eccentricity I decided to toss the tiny Sigma FP into my camera bag, along with a couple of Lumix S1s and my four favorite lenses of the moment (24-105mm, 70-200mm, 85mm and 45mm) for an evening of photography at Zach Theatre. 

I started out shooting mostly with the bigger cameras but when I felt I had a lot of good coverage I pulled out the little Sigma FP and started banging away with the 45mm lens. Emboldened by a vague feeling of success I decided to step into the forbidding land of stretching envelopes (landed up here courtesy Ming Thein) and slap the ultra fast, ultra heavy Sigma 85mm Art lens on the front. I'd been led to believe (by many non-reviews) that the focus ability would be slow-to-marginal-to-non-existent. My actual experience quickly proved over wise. But....click on the images below and see for yourself... Nobody stopped to pose for me; the stage was as kinetic as ever, but the camera and long lens seem to have nailed the focus (and color!!!) of everything at which I aimed.

So, what's my takeaway from this one day test?

Mostly that all cameras are good now. The Sigma FP has some really good color science along with a super sharp sensor (no AA filter on the sensor) which makes it a formidable competitor; at least as far as image quality is concerned...

There's a lot left for me to unpack and certainly, one day of shooting is hardly enough to nailed down a definitive assessment of a complex camera. We have some video that needs to be shot and some controlled portraits to be made but my first installment of hands-on with the Sigma FP went much better than I was led to believe possible.

People (reviewers and influencers) love to run with the herd and are most comfortable touting the status quo. It's hard for them to review or assess a different approach which I think accounts for the scarcity of Sigma FP reviews. Everyone here is on notice though...I'll be using it and writing about it extensively. At least for the next 30 days or so. 

I also learned that, with a current prescription for my bifocals I can use a rear monitor, if nothing else is available...

Buckle up. 

(Disclaimer: I have never been approached by Sigma for anything. Not to write about their cameras or lenses, nor to try or test or review their products. I paid for my Sigma FP and all the equipment I've written about in this post with my own funds, generated almost entirely from my small but happy commercial photography business. I am putting Sigma on notice that if they want me to come to Japan, tour their factory, and write about my experiences, I have my bags packed and my passport ready!).

And then, some photos from around town.

As a part of becoming more eccentric I am growing out the hair. I must remember to get more glamorous glasses frames.... Sorry, not going for tattoos.

How much really needs to be in focus? How soft can objects go in the background and still be recognizable? Does it matter?

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

Right up front we should consider that there are two decision making branches we take when we choose what focal length and which aperture we end up using for a particular shot, or series of shots. The first branch might be the one in which the photographer has complete and absolute technical control over all aspects of making a photograph and can choose exactly which focal length lens and what aperture to use in order to get exactly what they want to get in sharp focus, and what they don't need to have in that zone of sharp focus. This might entail being able to shoot with as much light as you could possibly want. It might also pertain to a situation in which you are shooting an exterior location, have great sun light and a crew of many who can put up giant silks to diffuse the sun in order to get the quality of the light just perfect.

If you have total control over the camera, the lens settings, and the light you get to choose the f-stop that will give you exactly what you want/need for your project. 

In many cases this way of working is the basis of advertising work. You get to cast the perfect model. Your stylist dresses them in the perfect selection of clothes. Your make up and hair people pull off the look you had banging around in your head as you planned the project. The lighting is flawless and nearly infinitely controllable. Ah, it's good to work with god-like control!

But there is a second branch of decision making which is based on pure need. The need to get a usable image into your camera in situations where the only control you have is how to handle the settings on your camera and lens, and also where you point the lens. Oh, and exactly where you are going to place the point of focus to make it all work for you. 

In these situations you will, in my experience, not be able to control the lighting, the movement of the subjects, the speed of the action, the costumes or the pace of the shoot. If you usually like to have full control over what happens on a shoot then situations in which you have little to no control are a hard learning process where your overriding goal is to get the best stuff you can while realizing that your photography is a lower priority to the process you happen to be photographing than just about anything else on the set.

In these situations you are likely trying to find a fast enough shutter speed to actually freeze most action  and, if you shoot like me, you'll probably be looking for 1/250th of second or a little faster (shorter). You might not always be able to freeze hand motion, because hands move faster than bodies, but you'll have a good chance of getting your subject still enough. Once you've got a shutter speed that both "freezes" action and allows you to handhold well enough you'll probably want to select the highest ISO you can reasonably live with. If you are in a "high" illumination setting then --- congratulations! You'll have a wider range of ISOs to choose from and more leeway in selecting a corresponding aperture. But if you live in most of the real world (or in the U.K. where readers constantly write to tell me that even at high noon in the dead of Summer the light is so dim that it's hard to even read a book outdoors...) you might find yourself selecting ISO 3200 or 6400 as your best choice, image-wise, in a particular environment. Especially when working indoors. Then, looking at your choices you find yourself locked into something like f1.4, f2.0 or f2.8 as being your best choices to balance out the exposure/motion-stopping/low-enough-noise equation.

In these cases the choice of whether or not to blur the background, to a certain extent, is largely made for you. Sure, you can try using wider lenses but you risk changing the perspective and/or the shooting distances that make for a comfortable photo.  In the photo at the top of the page I needed the right shutter speed to stop hair movement, and subject body and expression movement. It had to be 1/250th or faster. The low light had me cranking up the ISO to 4000 and that left me with an acceptable aperture of f2.5. With an 85mm lens, and the way the subject-to-background subject fell out, the person in the back, right side of the frame, is more suggestion than substance. 

In the photo just above the person in the foreground was further from the camera (I cropped in to the square) and closer to the person in the background. I think it's less trendy, at least in terms of how humans really process scenes with their eyes and brains. 

The bottom frame, just below, is the sweet spot for me. It was also shot from a further camera to subject distance than the top image and also cropped. The actor was moving slower so I hazarded a shutter speed of 1/125th which allowed for a aperture of f2.8 which, in turn, gave me a bit more focus on the stool and guitar in the background. I like it because the guitar is an important symbol for the production. 

While I was making these images I was daydreaming about putting 12 large (4x6 foot) softboxes up in the rafters and powering each one with a 1200 watt second flash generator. I would then be able to shoot as lower ISOs and smaller apertures---and with electronic flash I wouldn't have to worry much about using shutter speed to freezing motion. 

But I actually remembered doing shoots like that when we were using medium format film cameras to do the same kind of work (but with fewer soft boxes and heads). It was incredibly time consuming to rig something like that (plan on at least a day of pre-production) and to trigger all the lights. With medium format cameras and ISO 100 film though it made for really high quality images, reliably. But not much better in overall image quality than what we can get out of today's miracle cameras and lenses. 

Today's work looks different because we're playing right at the edges of acceptable camera/aperture settings. The older work had more front-to-back focus but was so much less spontaneous. And then there was the cost!!! I calculated the cost of banging off 2,800 medium format film shots with 12 shots on a roll. It's approximately 233 rolls of film (X 12 frames per roll) which, with processing included cost about @$15 per roll, and would have set the client back somewhere around $3,495. Just in film and processing; not counting Polaroid tests and the manpower to keep a bunch of film backs loaded and humming. Not to mention the rental fees on a truck load of lighting...

Choice is more expensive than working with what you have. But sometimes the unknown and the surprises make winging it a lot more fun. I've enjoyed working at the edge of wide open for the last week or so. It's an acquired taste and, like haggis, not something I want at every meal. But it works when you have to get the shot and circumstances limit your options. 

Then it's: Go wide open or go home.

Work I did decades ago still drives my search for the right digital camera and lens. Odd how that happens. I'm finally narrowing it down.

L.L.

This was photographed in my favorite, old studio at 500 San Marco St., over in east Austin. I was renting about 3000 square feet of space which came complete with 20 foot ceilings. I got the space when the company that owned the building was converting it from warehouse space to office and studio space. I think my rent was somewhere around $750 a month and included righteously good air conditioning and electric power + water service. Now $750 would barely cover utilities on a space that size....

I still have a recurring dream that I inadvertently left a bunch of gear and paperwork in the space and also that I forgot to tell them I was moving out. I wake up worried that I've lost precious negatives and that I owe tens of thousands of dollars in back rent, starting from 22 years ago... But the reality is that I renovated a new space at a property we bought and settled out with the previous studio landlord with all the paperwork done nicely and properly.

But it was such a fun and expansive space in which to shoot. I could set up a portrait subject ten or 

twenty feet from the front of my camera and still have a space of 25 feet behind the camera for the background. With those kinds of distances one could use longer lenses and the focus fall off to the background was nothing short of exhilarating. I make due in a much smaller space now and for the most part it works out because: A. We own the space. And, B. The vast majority of projects I do these days are on location. Would I still like a studio with 60 feet of linear space to work in? You bet. Would I like to pay thousands of dollars per month to occasionally shoot a portrait with absolutely no constraints? Hmmm. Maybe not so much....

The image above was shot in the studio just for the hell of it. We went through so much medium format film in a month that burning through ten or twelve rolls of color transparency film photographing a beautiful subject was a tiny drop in the bucket, financially. 

This one was done during a test session. We were breaking in two new lenses for our Hasselblad system; one was the new just then 180mm f4.0 Zeiss lens and the other was the 250mm f4.0 Zeiss lens  (I was replacing the 250mm f5.6 version with the faster version made for the 201F and other F cameras). The image is a look that I liked (and still like) very much. A long, fast lens on a big chunk of film. 

In fact, it's been the gold standard I still use to judge how successfully a current camera and lens system comes to matching or even getting close to what we could do with MF film, without breaking a sweat. So, my system from 24 years ago drives me to look at particular cameras and lenses, in a particular way, even now. 

When I used the 180mm f4.0 lens on a 6x6cm square Hasselblad format the corresponding 35mm equivalent angle of view was about 100mm. It always seemed just right to me. The 250mm was equal to about a 135mm on 35mm which was wonderful in my longer studio but would be unmanageable in the current space. 

I'm currently trying really hard to fit the Panasonic Lumix S1R, coupled with the Sigma 85mm f1.4 Art lens, into the mix and trying to set up the smaller system to best emulate what I used to get from the bigger film system. It's tougher work than I thought it would be but with every model encounter I get closer and closer. The first big step for me was to limit the S1R to shooting in the square, 1:1 format. That makes the 85mm effectively about 10mm longer by comparison. The next thing is trying to find the right imaging parameters with which I can get deep, dark shadows but wide open, airy highlights. Not exactly trying to leverage the ultimate in dynamic range at both ends of the curve but mostly just at the lighter (shoulder) edge of the tonal range. It's all a compromise but then again, so was film and film processing. 

I'm in the studio today trying to reverse engineer my own lighting from the 1990s. I'm afraid I really will need to re-buy one more five by six foot soft box. Somethings just can't be substituted...

I hope you are making good use of your vacation. I'm re-branding and re-strategizing for 2020 and I'm working hard and locking down what I want to make. It takes new work.