"Alice in Wonderland." A mid-day, indoor, outdoor production at Zach Theatre. Another chance to noodle around with a camera.

The Red Queen.

Ah. The Theater... Where modernism meets literature from days gone by. Zach Theatre is producing a children's play based (loosely) around Alice in Wonderland. The play starts on their smallest stage, in the intimate Whisenhunt Theater. Around the time "Alice" falls into Wonderland the audience is divided up into groups and each group follows a character, identified by a playing card suite, on a journey through the middle of the story, across multiple exterior locations on the Zach campus. 

It's an interesting concept and I'm almost tempted to come back for one of the school day shows to see how they corral 150 kids and teachers, moving them from location to location. But that isn't my worry. Today, my task was to tag along with one group and get images to use for marketing and public relations. 

We started our rehearsal around 11:45am and spent the first twenty minutes or so in the theater before being disgorged into the bright sunlight of an unusually warm, March day. It was near 80 degrees by noon and in the direct sun it felt unnaturally warm. The wide range of lighting was also a good test for the camera of the day.

The Red Queen and Alice.

"Battle of the Blond, Stray Hairs."

(click to see bigger).

My source at the theater mentioned that there might be an audience for today's dress rehearsal. I imagined a theater full of elementary school children --- pre-lunch. I wanted to use a camera on which I would not have to change lenses or worry about maneuvering around in tight spaces. I also wanted a camera that would handle a dark theater and bright, Texas sun. Toss in a camera with a wide ranging zoom lens and an EVF and, in my world, you are speccing out a Sony RX10ii. And a Sony RX10 (v.1) as a back-up. You know the specifications. But here's quick recap: 20 megapixel, one inch sensor. Good noise handling at higher ISOs (up to 3200 in dark spaces). A killer lens that goes from 24-200mm at f2.8. Nail it the first time auto white balance. WYSIWYG EVF. Small, quiet, competent. (more>)

We started in the darkness of the small theater. It's still equipped with lower powered, tungsten lights and the levels are such that we get ISO 1600, 1/160th of second shutter speed and f2.8. In my book that counts as low light. Another peccadillo of the small theater is that all of the lighting is mounting on an overhead grid and it comes in at too high of an angle. I'm always watching for the actors to pick up their chins to get the light on their faces just right....

Outside it was every bit of full on, noon, Texas sunlight. But since this was a dress rehearsal with constant movement from place to place we didn't have the luxury of diffusing, reflecting or using flash to tame the very broad range of the direct sunlight. I depended on the Sony, high dynamic range sensor technology and their DRO feature to get open shadows without unduly blowing highlights. It worked well, even in scenes that were predominantly backlit. 

I had the RX10ii in hand and a small, Domke bag over my left shoulder. The bag held the second camera, three extra batteries, a cellphone and my sunglasses. My black sweat shirt felt good in the theater when we got started but I couldn't wait to take it off after twenty minutes in the sun. Good thing I remembered to wear a black t-shirt underneath and a good thing I have deodorant in my swim bag. 

For any outside shot that was situated in open shade I tried to position myself with the sunlight backgrounds behind me and the open shade as the only thing  the camera could see. Inside, I shot with the lens wide open but outside I worked at ISO 100, f5.6 and whatever the matching shutter speed was. 

In the past, because of the tight deadlines for turning around images, I shot in Jpeg but my current computer is fast and agile so I've started shooting the Zach material in Raw. I still shoot a crazy number of files. Especially for a show like this where I have no idea of what it's all going to look like or where we're going to end up at any time. 

With the Nikon cameras I can choose a compressed Raw and I can choose between a 12 bit and a 14 bit file. With the Sony there is no fine parsing of the file details --- you either shoot Raw or you shoot Jpegs and that's the choice you get. I shot 32 gigabytes of raw but I was able to edit down to about 1,000 deliverable files. When you shoot raw you'll consider yourself smarter if you shoot everything with manual settings. That way there's no variation in the coverage of a scene (unless you intentionally change settings) and what this means is that everything stays the same in terms of exposure, color balance, tonality, etc. from the first frame to the last of each scene. You can choose one image, fine tune the hell out of it, and then apply the setting parameters across all the files in that set. It's a very fast way to work. (more>)

As is typical of a Zach Theatre show, all the talent was really professional, and well rehearsed. They could have handled an audience today with aplomb. The same can be said for my Sony RX10ii. It's a chameleon of a camera. It can be almost "hands off" automatic or view camera-like intricate, depending on your personality and your needs. I only wish I could go back and do it all over again in video --- just to see what that would have looked like. (more>)

Light bouncing in under a covered areas from a sidewalk. 

We set up a little group shot at the end. 

Of course, I fear any change in routine so it was anxiety producing to go from the "known" theater space to eight different exterior locations, all with different lighting characteristics. But I managed to get it done and to my satisfaction. There are times a bigger camera might have yielded different results; a more blurred background, for instance. But in terms of getting the job done I couldn't have asked for a more fluid and competent tool than my little Sony. What a fun thing to do before lunch time.

All of my post processing today was done in Lightroom. 

**

Take a class: Become more skilled and knowledgable. Have more fun.

A link to my Studio Portrait Lighting Class with $25 Off.

Food Photography. by Andrew Scriviani

Off Camera Flash Photography. by Neil van Niekirk

One of the original Craftsy Photo Classes and 

still one of the best! 

Night Photography. by Lance Keimig

I met Lance a couple of weeks ago in Denver

and found him to be really fun and knowledgeable 

this class reflects what he teaches in hands-on

workshops in Ireland and Iceland, as well as 

cool places around the U.S.

Narrative Photography: Storytelling with Photo

Essays. by Mike Hill.

How to make what we shoot into a cohesive

train of visual thought.

Perfecting Photoshop Portraits. by Lesa Snider

Why a Sony RX10 mark 2? Why not???

The Sony RX10 mark 2.

So much of our indulgence in photographic gear is motivated by history, legacy and lunacy. The old dinosaurs of the industry remember the days of old when bullet proof cameras were the suit of armor worn into imaging battle by legions of photographic infantry. A camera destined for photojournalism was deemed to be professional only if it did certain things and had certain attributes. For some reason these parameters have been passed down from generation to generation like some commandments from strict gods. To wit: The camera must be made entirely of heavy metal, you should be able to drive nails with it. Even though tons and tons of great work was made with cameras that had to be manually wound from frame to frame the introduction of motor drives meant that every professional camera that came after had to shoot at 3,57,10 and how 12 or 14 frames per second to be used by the pros!. And recently, the misguided mantra about necessary professional cameras is the one must always be in hot pursuit of the most megapixels on the biggest sensor ---- but more importantly, the sensor must be full frame to make the cut.  

All this means bags full of heavy and expensive gear that costs a fortune. If we were all working for clients who needed to blow up all of our images to sizes that would fit on the sides of buildings this might make sense. But the reality is that our targets have changed radically over the years and what we need in cameras is so different from yesteryear. 

The last five professional photography assignments I have done this year have been done on cameras that don't look like or feel like the cameras of the distant past, reworked to evoke confidence in the present. We didn't need to pull out the 36 megapixel, full frame camera or the 24 megapixel camera. I shot two jobs with the Panasonic fz 1000. The photos were good and the client was very happy. I shot one job with an Olympus EM5.2 and the photos looked good and the client's were very happy. And most recently I shot two jobs back to back with the Sony RX10 cameras and I was very happy, the client was very happy and, it was probably the optimum way to shoot the job in question ---- if your brain is willing to start with a clean slate. 

I have had some time to do a few video tests with the new (to me) RX10 mark 2 from Sony. It's not just a good video camera, it's an amazingly good video camera. In fact, when I've come across several pre-reviews from highly excited bloggers covering the hot new (buy it now, buy it now!!!!) Sony A6300 I looked at the con column and realized that the RX10 mark 2 checks way more production feature boxes than the newer camera. Things like a real head phone jack. A 29 minute run time in 4K and the package comes complete with a really good lens. 

The reviewers are breathless about the latest innovations which they apparently overlooked during their cursory date with the RX10.2. Things like: A clean HDMI output so you can use external digital recorders for endless takes. Customizable zebras. S-Log profiles. Focus Peaking. 100 mbs XAVC S files in 4K, right in the camera. Non-line skipping video for much higher sharpness and fewer artifacts. Etc., Etc. It always amazes me when people leapfrog over a bargain in the blind pursuit of the latest package ---- even when the new package is less capable. 

I kiddingly wrote that this year might see "The Rise of The One Inch Sensor Cameras," but now I am more or less serious about it all. I keep looking through 4K video trying to find a fault but, with the exception of high ISO noise limitations (high ISO being a crutch that allows people to think they know what they are doing instead of really learning how to light stuff well) I haven't found any Achille's heel in the mix.

I like the RX10 type 2 because it is so damn capable. So already packed and ready to go! And so perfectly sorted for a vast swath of photographic projects. But the cherry on the top is that this camera is also perfectly suited for a photojournalistic style of videography. Keep a variable neutral density filter (62mm/same as the Panasonic FZ 1000) in one pocket and a couple extra batteries in the other and you are pretty much prepared to shoot at the drop of a hat. Which always brings me back to the same conclusion: The obsession about "ultimate" cameras and lenses is for the entry part of the commercial market. It's the lighting that separates the artist from the gear jockeys. But lighting gear isn't usually nearly as glamorous and much harder to wear (without dire affectation) to the hip, neighborhood coffee shop. 

Below are two samples that I love from the original RX10. 

An ISO 1600 image of a musician on stage at the David Bowie Project

modern dance/concert in 2014 at the State Theater. 

A landscape of flat Texas, between Fredericksburg and Johnson City.

Probably my favorite, personal example in a genre I have very little 

affinity for...

If pushed one could make a business with just one of these little cameras and some decent lights. Very few clients would ever know you weren't shooting with a throwback to an earlier time. And they would like the video better than anything coming out of a Fuji, Nikon, Canon (non-cine) or Olympus camera. Pretty amazing for a retail investment of $1299...

I am running an ad, below, for Lesa Snider's Portrait retouching class. It's the same one I ran yesterday and I'm doing it because I was stuck in PhotoShop today, trying to turn a woman's hair from bright red to a dark brunette without messing up the detail and character of the hair. I watched Lesa's segment about doing that very same thing in her video and it worked so well. I was very happy to remember that the segment was there. It was also a good refresher about using the "refine edge" tool. I thought I'd give it another "two thumbs up" for anyone out there that might want to improve their portrait post production.

Here it is:

Lesa Snider's Course at Craftsy