My Interview with Chanel as Billie Holiday in Zach Theatre's, "Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill."

Chanel's Interview at Zach Theatre. Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill. from Kirk Tuck on Vimeo.

I recorded this interview at Zach Theatre on April 5th. The still images I used as b-roll as from our dress rehearsal documentation on April 4th. The video footage of rehearsal was recorded on April 2nd. 

Tech notes: The still photographs were taken with a Sony RX10iii camera while all the video content was recorded with the Panasonic FZ2500 camera using its 4K video setting. I lit Chanel's interview with two large, Aputure Amaran 672W LED panels plus two smaller panels from the same company. 

Audio was recorded with an Aputure Diety shotgun microphone. 

My next video is an interview of the production's director. 

(please click through to Vimeo and choose the 1080p, HD version of the video for best quality). 


I decided to film Chanel's interview at Zach Theatre with the fz2500 because my early tests showed me that the color in video was rich and accurate, with little of the overly sharp renditions I'd seen in other, similar cameras. It's incumbent on a videographer to take the time to test the equipment ahead of time to see, personally, how the settings on the camera affect the final results. I was able to see a kinder skin tone rendition with the Panasonic.

I set the camera up to shoot UHD 4K with the idea of downsampling. But, rather than downsample by transcoding on the import of the material I decided to actually work with the original 4K footage in the edit and only apply the transcoding when making the output version into h.264. I thought I would see improvements in overall quality when done in this fashion. When I output the video to the h.264 codec I saw two things: The compression of h.264 exacerbates the noise by a bit (not too troublesome) and it also compresses the tonal range of the middle tones enough to make the overall files slightly darker than they are in Final Cut Pro X, or when played in their native format via QuickTime Pro.

Just to test a bit further and to see where the limitations really hit I also output the file to a Pro Res 422 HQ file. This file had 10 times less compression. The h.264 files weighed in at 695 megabytes while the HQ files tipped the scales at 10 gigabytes. Viewing them side by side makes on more aware of the destruction wrought by compression. The bigger file is much more tonally detailed; the tones are well separated and the tonal transitions are as smooth as they seem in real life. The bigger file also shows less noise in comparison. It's really a moot point for a project like this one which will be used on YouTube by my client. The amount of compression in YouTube's process is at least a whole order of magnitude more destructive than the conversion to h.264 out of Final Cut Pro X. I wish I could show clients, family and friends (and Chanel) just how good the high quality file looks on a calibrated screen in a viewing appropriate room.

I think the secret to getting good video from an $1100 cameras is to pay strict attention to fundamentals. There can be no slop in exposure calculation. If you need to bring up exposure from an underexposed file you'll end up losing precious detail and it will degrade image quality. Don't plan on boosting shadows after the fact; take the time (and light) to fill the shadows to the level you'll want them in the edit before you push the record button. Controlling the range of tones, and the overall dynamic range, is an artistic step as well as a technical process. They are intertwined.

The same applies to color correction. If you've worked with smaller Jpeg files in photography you'll know that they can't be totally corrected if you didn't get it right in camera. Push the blues and you kill the yellows; push the magenta and kill the greens. It's all as interrelated as the Buddhist view of the universe. If you are working with an inexpensive camera you don't have the luxury of endless latitude but, guess what? the DPs I talk to don't believe that their twenty and thirty thousand dollar cameras have latitude to spare either. They get color balance correct in camera. A quick custom white balance at the head of the interview prevents hours of slider jockeying and teeth gnashing later in the process.

If you have the color and exposure nailed into place then the next thing to worry about is shadow and highlight mapping. I use the shadow/highlight tool in FCPX a lot. For this I had a one notch increase in shadow exposure and a one notch decrease in shadow exposure (on an S curve) which helped to open up the shadows and keep highlights from burning out. In the CineLike D profile I used I changed several parameters. I upped the contrast by one notch, upped the sharpness control by one notch and decreased the noise reduced by three notches. In retrospect I should have also reduced saturation by a small amount.

I took the time to light everything. There is a big, soft main light and a big, soft counter-balancing fill light on the opposite side. I have lights on the background and a weak backlight on Chanel. The lights establish the highlight and shadow range and are critical to the way I see video.

The one place I wish I had more control was over the ambient noise in the theater. The theater is a large space and we were just a couple hours away from a full audience show. In Texas it is critical to keep the house at the right temperature and we were unable to turn off the air conditioning. You can hear as a low frequency noise bed. I was torn because a lavaliere microphone might have gotten me a bit less noise but the lower noise would have come at the price of really clean high frequency response and also clarity in the mid-tones. I made the choice and I'll have to live with it when I listen to the final result in a quiet room.

I hope you enjoy the interview. Chanel is a world class singer and actor and, I find, an interview subject who makes her interviewers look more competent. I appreciate the time and expertise she put into helping me tell this story about the her show; and about Billie Holiday.

Read this book and save your creative life.

Initial Reactions to the Panasonic FZ2500 that Showed Up Yesterday.

I hadn't really intended to buy an FZ2500 camera but in the end my list of rationalizations made compelling sense (to no one but me) and I decided it would be a profitable addition to my little corral of cameras. In spirit the FZ2500 is very similar to the Sony RX10iii, which I hold in high regard. They are both all-in-one camera packages that have big, one inch sensors and wide ranging lenses. Both are very able 4K video machines and both are highly competent photography tools. On any given review site these two cameras get compared side by side whenever either one is analyzed. Each has its strengths and weaknesses and I figured if I had them both the they would happily complement each other. Right?

Aesthetically they are two different animals. The Sony is designed with a more lux attitude in mind. Metal everywhere and a refined physical interface. It's the product whose makers recognized the selling value of good industrial design. It's sleek....for a big, rounded brick of a camera.

The FZ2500 (from now on, "The Lumix") feels like the designers cut a few corners, spec'd a lot of plastic, borrowed from a 1980's industrial design style, and pretty much scrimped on the stuff that didn't directly effect image quality or basic handling. I'm slightly annoyed at the shiny control knobs on a camera that is otherwise finished in matte. The switches are less than elegant and the overall feel is of a company that values raw performance over finesse. But I'm okay with that because the real reason to buy either camera is to make movies and photographs. 

Both cameras use 20 megapixel, one inch, BSI, CMOS sensors, but

In "Sony Time" it seem like we're getting close to a refresh of the RX10 series. What would I like to see?

The Sony RX10iii in a Camvate cage topped with a Zoom H5 audio recorder equipped with an SSH-6 stereo/shotgun microphone. 

I'm a huge fan of the Sony RX10 series of cameras but I am not blind to their shortcomings. I get a sense that we'll be seeing another RX10 (or two) in the next few months and I'm hoping that Sony makes a few tweaks to the RX10iii product to make it even better. At the same time I'm hoping they introduce a new, more niche-y variant which I'll flesh out below.

The original Sony RX10 was a breakthrough product; a highly capable video camera, wrapped up in a high performance, one inch sensor photography camera. The two things that made the original such an important camera (for me) were the introduction of a really good sensor, at an interesting size, as well as a remarkably good zoom lens with a range I found to be just about perfect.

The original camera had a mediocre video codec but this was remedied in a firmware update which elevated the camera from having an AVCHD video file system that capped out at 28 mbs to a more advanced XAVC-S video file system that delivered 50 mbs; which delivered more detailed video images.

The next generation; the RX10ii kept the lens and body pretty much the same but delivered UHD 4K video and a much improved (higher resolution) EVF. Along with the UHD implementation the camera also offered faster fps settings in 1080p.

The current generation; the RX10iii, more of less blew the lid off

Photos from the dress rehearsal of, "The Great Society." The second interesting play about LBJ's legacy. We're three cameras deep in this one....

A photograph from Zach Theatre's, "The Great Society." 

As you might know I've spent quality time over the last 28 years documenting almost every single production Zach Theatre has done in that span. I've used at least 30 different cameras and hundreds of different lenses and I've enjoyed watching somewhere between 350-450 performances. I know a lot about theater, I just don't know what I like... Just kidding. I know exactly what I like.

I like plays that challenge my view of life, make me laugh, make me cry, etc. But most of all I like plays that are fun to shoot. That doesn't always mean comedies or musicals; it means any play that is well staged, beautifully lit, powerfully acted and, in some way accessible to me. Having literally photographed thousands of hours of material (both content on the stage and set-up advertising shots in the my studio, or a temporary studio at Zach Theatre; on the stages at Live Oak Theatre, The Paramount Theater, the State Theater, The Rollins Stage at the Long Center, and the rehearsal stage at the Austin Lyric Opera) I think I finally know a thing or two about how to photograph plays and operas, and just how my photographs will be used. The photographs I share here on my blog are not necessarily the ones I, or the marketing people from the theaters, think are the perfect ones to use for mass market communications, they are the ones I like from the shows --- for one reason or another. 

You would think that, over time, I would become a bit jaded and, more or less, just photograph productions on auto pilot by now but you would be wrong. This year I decided I needed to up my game a bit, mostly for my own enjoyment and for the challenge of making better works. A constant push for me and for my clients, and especially for the actors who commit so much time and energy to make their art work.

To this end I've started going to rehearsals and digging into the look and feel of the content while trying to better understand what the artistic directors are trying to do in their interpretations of the material. 

For "The Great Society" ( a drama about the second term of LBJ's presidency) I started my research by going to an early rehearsal and mostly watching the blocking while reading over the script. I came back a week later and we set up some lighting and used an a6300 to record three video interviews with key actors. About a week before the design rehearsal (the first rehearsal with full costumes and fully finished sets) I came by just to sit for a while and look at the set on the stage. It was also a nice chance to talk with the lighting designer for the play and try to understand the way she would use lighting to help drive the drama. 

I came to the design rehearsal which pretty much gave me the run of the house for photographs. This is where I got a lot of the closer, wider shots which I like very much. It was also the first time I was able to see a production run all the way through the script. It's great to know where the action builds and when there might be "reveals" that are important. This play is in three acts with two intermissions so there is a lot of action to remember and to prepare for. 

For the design rehearsal I brought along "the twins." The RX10ii and the RX10iii. Don't know why I did it that way but I liked it. A lot. I used the 2 for most of the close stuff and

The quality of good video depends on so much more than the performance of your camera.

Let's get the obvious stuff out of the way first. The primary driver of watchability for a video is first, how interesting/compelling is the idea you are communicating. Second is the quality of the script. After acknowledging those two things we can dive into the technical morass that seems to surround any project that is made with fun gizmos and tools.

From what I know of the photography business and what I've seen and heard in the video business pretty much everyone is obsessed with cameras. It's a subject that comes up endlessly and one that gets argued all over the web. Which camera is best? Which files are best? Should I shoot 4K or 2K? Should we invest in Zeiss Primes or go all out for the Leica primes? Should we stick to zooms? Can a camera be any good if it doesn't cost more than $10,000? More than $2,000? Do you need to have a touchscreen? Is Canon better than Sony? Can a project actually be done with a micro 4:3rds camera? Will clients run screaming from the room if you aren't writing files to an external recorder? How will we mount the camera? What cage should we get for our camera? Is the rosewood grip better

Workflow from last night's shoot.

I shot on three different cameras last night. I was testing the limits of the RX10iii and keeping the A7Rii + 70-200mm f4.0G close at hand to shoot vital group shots that are so popular for theater marketing. Then I filled in around the edges with the Sony a6300 and its companion, the 18-105mm G lens. The photographing was a straightforward as I could make it. I shot raw not so much for post shooting color correction but in order to lift the shadows and have fine control over the noise reduction settings. As usual, I shot too much but I have been working on "speed-editing" so the final count for post processed files was a little over 500, which meant I had achieved a 3-to-1 reduction in files shot versus files finished out. 

I've been getting more mercenary as the size of the raw files continues to grown. I flagged all the images I think are best, select the flagged images in Lightroom and then inverse the selection and throw away all the non-flagged photographs. And when I say "throw away" I mean that when the little box comes up and asks me if I just want to "remove" the images from the catalog or if I really mean I want to delete them from the hard drive I summon up my courage and dump them. It's actually a nice feeling to see the file folders shrink in size. 

After I ingest everything into Lightroom and do my edit (which means "keep or throw") I then go to the files that survived and start to post process ( which means to color correct, enhance, crop, sharpen, etc.).

I work from the top down in the menu system. I start with color, move on to exposure then onto shadow and highlight protection and so on. I shoot a bit on the dark side so I'm generally adding +35 to +50 to each file. In situations where my main subject is in spotlight and the rest of the cast or background is darker I routinely pull the shadow slider up to 50-70% to get some detail in there. There is a certain balance between the exposure setting and the shadow and highlight settings. If I have time I work the relationships a bit to find an optimized combination. 

I shoot in single frame burst of 10-12 shots without changing camera settings so if I like a series of images I need only work the first one diligently and then the rest are sync'd to the first file. 

Moving further down the menu we get to sharpening and noise reduction. Depending on the lens in use I might need no sharpening and usually just a small amount if I do need to add some. I like big percentages as small radii. I'm equally conservative with noise reduction because I want to see detail everywhere. +20 is generally the sweet spot for images shot just above the ISO comfort level (for instance, ISO 4,000 for the A7Rii or ISO 1250 for the RX10iii...). 

Once I get everything applied the way I want it I select all the files and output them into a folder as low compression (92%) Jpegs and I fix the image size at 6000 pixels wide for the theater. Too much bigger and it slows everything down, too much smaller and I get nervous about posters and print magazines. I do have a close working relationship with the in-house art director so if she is making huge lobby posters I'll go back to the files and output her selections at the full file size. 

Once I have all the images output they get uploaded to Smugmug.com. Today's upload of Jpegs was just under 6GB. Once they are on Smugmug I set the gallery controls accordingly. With the Theater I want to make sure everyone on the marketing team has access to what they need so I make the files individually downloadable if the person has the password. In this way they can share the gallery with the actors and crew but have control over what ultimately gets downloaded. Smugmug makes it easy for me to select an entire gallery and send downloadable (and expiring) links to clients who need access to all the high res files. Doing this saves me the cost of a memory stick and a trip in the car. 

With a non-profit client like Zach Theatre social media can really make or break goals for ticket sales so we allow the principal actors access to the images for Facebook and Twitter, etc. We might lose some individual sales but actors generally don't have much budget to buy production stills and if we didn't allow social media use we might win the battle (short term, small income) but lose the war (sustaining productions with marketing allowing us all to continue to work together and get paid). 

Uploading to Smugmug also gives me one more place to archive files. At $150 a year for unlimited storage, and convenient retrieval as well as display, the service is a bargain. I have the files on at least one hard drive and generally write them also to a DVD (I know, old school). Then I send along a bill and I'm done. Just thought I'd share my process. Everyone has a different way of doing this work.

RX10iii at near full lens extension.

OT: Post Swim Croissant Tasting at Cantine Italian Cafe and Grill in Austin, Texas. Post workout fun.

Croissant Trio from Pieous, Dripping Springs, Texas.

I woke up this morning, gulped down a cup of hot Irish Breakfast tea with milk and a tiny bit of sugar and headed out the door for the 8:30-10:00 a.m. Masters Swim Practice. I was a few minutes late getting to the deck and when I got there all the medium pace lanes were filled up. I ended up sharing a lane with a notoriously dedicated triathlete whose workout philosophy is harder, faster, better. She dragged me through 4800 yards and I was spent by the end. Feeling virtuous but physically spent.

Afterward fellow swimmer, Emmett Fox, asked me if I had my camera (yes, always) and reminded me that we'd be forsaking our mundane local Starbucks for after-swim coffee in preference for a morning at Cantine Italian Cafe And Grill. Emmett and swimming spouse ( partner of one who swims... ) Dr. Jim Grubbs were going to host a tasting event to decide, once and for all, which bakery had the best croissants in all of Austin. No burnt coffee and refrigerated pastries at Starbucks this week!

Cantine, the restaurant, is closed on Saturday morning so we had the entire place to ourselves. Jim and Emmett had put together a selection of eight candidates from favorite local bakeries, as well as one mystery entry, the identity of which we discovered at the end. They put out three each of the croissants on nine plates and numbered the plates. No one was told the provenance of the pastries until the tasting was over and the scores tabulated. The eight local candidates for butter and flour supremacy were from: 

Baguette et Chocolat, Texas French Bread, Sweetish Hill Bakery, Easy Tiger Bakery, Cafe No Sé (S. Congress Hotel), La Patisserie, Elizabeth Street Cafe, and a bakery near chef Emmett's home in Dripping Springs --- Pieous. 

We tasted in small amounts, clearing our palettes with wonderful, stout coffee (thanks Cantine!) and we made notes and rated each entry on a scale of 1 to 5. The results were tabulated and the winner (by consensus) was Pieous Bakery from Dripping Springs. The very, very close second was the entry from Café No Se. 

I brought a Sony RX10iii camera along and made images of our encounter with good food. It was a fun way to spend a toasty and humid Saturday morning; swilling coffee in the air conditioned comfort of one of Austin's best restaurants while chewing on croissants. Especially fun for me as I had my camera in my hand. 

So, the surprise inclusion, made, I am sure, tongue-in-cheek, was three croissants that Jim bought in the frozen section at the local Trader Joe's Market. He took them home, followed the baking instructions and included them in the artisanal mix. Anonymity didn't matter, even the least discerning in the group was able to understand the difference in texture and overall taste. Like one other in the group the Trader Joe's version had added sugar, which we believe D.Q.'s it from being "authentic." 

We disbanded and went our separate ways, planning to meet for next week's coffee at Cafe No Se.

An earlier motion to move to McDonalds was roundly vetoed.

Why the move from Starbucks after 15 or so years? Easy, they remodeled the local store and did an incredibly bad job with the remodel. It is much louder, the overall seating was reduced and the seating that is left is almost impossible to configure for any group of more than four. The final straw is the chain's new devotion to costumer confusion. They changed the flow and now no one knows how or where to line up to order their stuff. Instead of a line you get a confused group of people who would dearly love to get coffee but have no idea of who is next or why. No signage. No stantions. No directional supports. It's very sad when companies make customer experiences meaner and dowdier. And whoever sold them the pin spot LEDs that shine in everyone's eyes, no matter where they sit, did no favors to people who are sensitive to good lighting and/or good design. Next time they remodel they might consider hiring architects, or at least consider keeping the ones they use (if they did) sober and rational. So there is a basket of good reasons to shun this member of the chain and search out better. local providers. My advice? Short the stock...especially if all their remodels turn out as poorly as this one did...

#5. My personal favorites for flavor and texture. From No Sé at the South Congress Hotel.

The overall winner.

The runner up. By a nanometer.

Our host was Cantine; my favorite South Austin restaurant. Renowned for their great pizzas. 

Emmett preparing the blind taste test. 

Martha takes notes.

Rating for appearance. 

Incidentally, Pieous wins for best appearance. 

discussing the fine points of baked goods. 

The Co-Captains: Dr. Jim Grubbs and Restauranteur, Emmett Fox.

Lisa Fox (co-owner, Cantine) slices croissants into sample sized servings. 

Patty and Jim get serious with their evaluations.

Stout and virtuous, free flowing coffee to cleanse our palettes between samples...

We rated on both texture and taste.