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

THE FIVE CAM SLAM.

Samsung Galaxy NX. Kit Lens.

I had a fun, raucous and loud assignment this past weekend. I was asked to photograph the opening of the new location for the Children's Museum (re-named, The Thinkery) on Saturday. I spent most of my day there and, capriciously, used five different cameras to take nearly 2,000 images. When I left my house at eight in the morning it was the coldest day we've had yet this year in Austin, with the temperature hovering aroun 27 degrees. I packed two Panasonic GH3s, one Panasonic G6 and a Sony a99 into my big Domke bag, along with a fun assortment of lenses. But wait, that's only four cameras... Oh, yeah, I also had a brand, spanking, new Samsung Galaxy NX body and a kit lens lingering on the passenger seat of the car. It had been there overnight for a routine "chill test."

When I got to the new museum location at the old Mueller Airport (now a trendy, cool and growing neighborhood) I grabbed the bag and left the Samsung in the trunk along with my swim bag and an extra tripod. The first stop was into the main museum building to check in and then across the street to the big, multi-level parking garage. The wind was whipping and their was moisture in the air. We would start in the parking garage and there would be a mariachi led parade over to the museum. I grabbed out the Sony a99 with the 24-105mm lens and a flash and started making images of kids and their parents enjoying hot chocolate and coffee. The light levels in the garage were very low and it was a difficult location in which to shoot. If I pointed the camera at the walls the outside lighting overwhelmed the interior light and burned to white, even with the flash. I tried to compose images without showing the outside but it wasn't always possible. 

We started the parade and I made images of the whole short procession. When we got into the museum there were a few speeches, a ribbon cutting and then the kids got to tear through a big paper barrier and enter the guts of the museum. I shot the speeches with a mixture of flash, fill flash and available light and figured I would sort out the right direction in post. The paper barrier shot was very much an on camera flash shot.

After the images that required flash were over with I dripped the Sony and the flash into the bag I left under the client's desk in the second floor warren of offices. I spent the rest of the morning shoot with three other cameras: A GH3 with the 14-42mm, a GH3 with the 45-140mm and the G6 with the 25mm 1.4. The cameras all focused quickly and accurately and the files from the GH3s are good and clean up to 3200 ISO. Occasionally I would switch the 25mm to one of the GH3s just to see how the cameras looked with that lens at higher ISOs. After a couple hours shooting available light with that combination I pulled out a 40mm 1.4 Olympus manual focus half frame lens and put in on the G6 in order to try out the focus peaking feature. It worked great, even at f2. 

Around one in the afternoon I decided to put all the rest of the cameras up and go out to my (refrigerated) car to get the Samsung Galaxy NX and use it for a while, just to mix things up. Rookie mistake here. As soon as I walked into the well heated museum space with the 27 degree camera and lens everything condensed over. Instant fog filter. I put the camera under a hand dryer in one of the restrooms and gave it twenty minutes or so to warm up. As soon as the moisture cleared the camera was up and ready. In the next few hours I shot nearly 800 images with the camera and the kit lens at every setting from ISO 400 to ISO 6400 and I decided that, now that I'm shooting with a full production version of the GNX instead of a series of prototypes and pre-prototypes, that the GNX is a pretty good shooting cameras with really good files. Now I regret sending all the super cool lenses back.... 

As the day wound down I finished up with the 25mm Pana/Leica lens on the G6 body and was very happy with how fast (very) and fluid the operation of that combination was. 

So, when I finish shooting a job like this I try to get into post production mode the very next day. I shoot large, super-fine jpgs in all of the cameras (this is to be interpreted to mean that I shot at the largest size setting and the lowest compression setting for each camera) and I am able to do a fair amount of Jpeg file tweaking in the Apple, Inc. program, Aperture 3. 

First thing in the morning, before coffee, I head to the office to ingest every file into Aperture, renaming them with a different code for each camera. I also append metadata and caption info. Once I have them ingested and I've had some coffee I make a quick pass through the whole folder looking for obvious trash (blinks, wildly bad exposure or pegged color) and I dump those files.  Then I go through files with lots of versions and try to find the best versions from each group while dumping all the lesser versions. Once this is done I get down to the work of post processing. Nearly every file is touched; either in a  batch mode or individually and it can be as time consuming as the post processing that wedding photographers do. 

I start with color correction because doing exposure first and then color correcting will shift the first exposure correction and require a second pass. After the color correction I move to exposure  and brightness settings, then on to contrast, then to definition and clarity, then to saturation (most cameras need a slight decrease, the GH3s need a tiny increase...) and finally on to sharpening. I try not to sharpen much as the camera Jpeg engines are already tweaked with my preferred sharpen settings.

Once everything is tweaked I go through one more time to see if there is anything I can throw away. That done I burn three sets of DVDs. One for the client and two for my archives. I know DVDs aren't archival but I also know that some jobs have lifespans that are measured in a few years, even months and not everything I shoot is so amazing that I need it to outlive me. I also have the originals backed up on two hard drives. A final fallback is my written disclaimer to clients advising them that once I have delivered a set of final files they are responsible for archiving their copy. We have no legal obligation after 30 days to maintain the files or provide replacements. In practice we keep them for as long as we can but it moves clients to at least think about safeguarding the IP they've paid for and will need to use in the future. 

How do I like the cameras? The Sony has the best files of all but the worst exposure consistency and the worst auto white balance. I'm starting to think of these full frame, DSLR cameras as more studio cameras or cameras to shoot when you can tether them and take your time to assess the shot closely. The Samsung has the second best files in terms of depth, resolution and low noise. The AWB is somewhere between the Sony a99 and the m4:3 cameras. The best compromise (and all cameras are compromises) is the GH3.  The files from those two cameras stand up well to scrutiny even at 3200 ISO at 100%, if you shoot them bright enough. Underexpose and you'll get back high ISO files from just about all cameras. For sheer joy of shooting the G6 is the best of the bunch. It is so small and light that it becomes almost invisible in actual use. I love it with the 25mm Pana/Leica on it. It weighs next to nothing but the EVF is good and the files, though not as noise free as the GH3 are very good and sharpen up nicely in post. It's a least a full stop noisier than the GH3 but with a fast lens you go right back into the whole compromise thing.

Next time I shoot a day long event I'm leaving the Sony stuff at home and shooting exclusively with my trinity of Panasonics. I love pre-chimping with the EVFs and I love carrying around three cameras with different lenses that, in total, weigh less than the one DSLR with a zoom and a flash. 

Your mileage may vary and you may have emotional reasons or nostalgia to deal with in selecting your gear. It's all a compromise so everyone gets to make the compromises that work best for them. That's the way the photo world works. That's my story from the weekend.

I will say one more thing. I was familiar with the menus and the operation of the cameras and had shot all of them pretty extensively before but if you really want to know how a camera handles then use it for a fast paced, all day assignment. I guarantee that by the end of the day you'll find out what bothers the hell out of you and what makes you smile. Saturday reinforced my feeling that the G6 is a wonderful and well thought out camera for the money. Its only flaw is that there is no "constant preview" (or setting effect, in Sony language) in the manual mode and I think there should be. Even if we can never fix this one thing in firmware I'm happy with the camera.  Too plastic?  No, that's just silly.

Kirk Tuck Writes a Short and Happy Review of the Olympus EP-5.

A good, straightforward picture taking machine. The Olympus Pen EP-5.

I have mixed feelings about writing this review. On one hand, this is the camera that I wish Olympus had introduced last year instead of the OMD EM-5, it's a nicer handling camera, on the other hand I no longer use the Pens for my work and the chance to review this camera reminded me of how much I liked the Pens. Which may lead to a new bout of new camera desire... So, let me get my distilled opinion out up front: The Olympus EP-5 (when used with the mandatory VF-4) is the best handling and best shooting micro four thirds camera I have played with yet. Had I gone ahead and bought the OMD EM cameras last year I would want to sell them this year and move to the EP-5. It's the camera I wanted from that system all along. I'm also reticent to review Olympus cameras these days because the hard core fans can get downright nasty when they disagree with reviewers. But that's a risk I guess we'll have to take. (Thank God we're moderating comments now).

Before I dive into the camera itself I feel like I have to talk about the electronic viewfinder. I struggle with the idea of using any camera just by interfacing with the screen on the back. It's a struggle for everyone when out in bright sunlight and it's a nuisance all the time for people who need to wear reading glasses to see the screen and its content correctly. I've been using EVFs in nearly all of my cameras since switching to Sony Alpha cameras and Sony's Nex 6's and Nex 7's. The finder on the Sony Alpha a99 is my basis for comparison with everything else out there. It's a great EVF and works for me in all kinds of lights and shooting conditions. It's not perfect but it's sharp and detailed. I can also adjust the brightness and color balance of the finder screen, easily.

The new VF-4 EVF is bigger than its predecessor but it doubles the resolution and also offers a better viewing set up.
I love the massive and accessible diopter adjustment on the side. Hey Fuji! Did you really launch the Pro-1X without a diopter feature???? Really???

Olympus fixes another common problem that plagued previous finders. This one locks on so it's harder to accidentally lose. That's a big plus for our clumsier or less mindful colleagues...

While Olympus made a good finder available (the VF-2) when they launched the Pen EP-2 people had a few reservations. The 1.44 megapixel resolution bothered some users and almost universally people found the finder slipped off their cameras too easily. The rear eyepiece and magnification also presented problems. People wanted a bigger exit pupil that would work better while wearing glasses.

With the VF-4 Olympus have upgraded their offering a couple big notches. The VF-4, while bigger, nearly doubles the resolution and the way the finder is set up it's much easier to work with for people who wear glasses. My comparisons between the Sony a99 EVF and the VF-4 point to a tie for viewing experience. And basically that means they both share the title, "Best in Class."  I cannot fathom anyone not buying the VF-4 along with the Pen EP-5. The camera is a high performance imaging instrument and the finder adds so much capability for composing AND reviewing images in harsh light, strong light, mixed light and color contaminated light. That alone makes its inclusion mandatory in my book.

The VF-4 is much more eyeglass friendly but it retains the quick switch button to get you from the menu on the rear screen to the proper shooting configuration (usually through the finder) at the touch of a button.

The add-on EVF is a small price if it keeps you from looking all "hipsterish" holding your wonderful picture taking machine way out in front of you in defiance of the laws of physics and good camera craft.

To use a camera of this caliber with the stinky baby diaper hold (camera held straight out in front of you....) is just negligence, laziness or ignorance. If I were a store clerk in a camera shop I would refuse to sell this camera without the EVF. It would be like sending a new car buyer out of a dealership without tires. Just riding along on the rims.... 

There will, of course, be two complaints. One will be that the combination of the finder and EP-5 body raises the price of the package to the point where it exceeds the purchase price of the OMD (which has an EVF built in). Yes. That's true. But the camera is a better product. It has all the imaging capability of the older product but offers better handling and a much, much better finder experience (when used with the VF-4). The second complaint will be about the additional bulk the finder adds to the camera. I don't mind it aesthetically and it reminds me of using the bright line finders on my Leica M's with the 21mm lenses we shot with. The total package is still less than half the size (volume) of a Nikon D800 and it's still lightweight and agile to use.  Get the finder.

The range of lenses made for the Olympus m4:3 cameras is large and growing all the time. The nice thing is that, with the exception of the kit lenses all of the primes and most of the zooms are really very, very good.

I wrote recently about the "money maker" lenses and my article concluded that for most commercial and portrait photographers the standard, high speed, 70 to 200mm lenses from the majors were the lenses that did most of the heavy lifting in photography businesses. So it's fun to see that Panasonic got with the program and made the equivalent for this format. It works perfectly with the EP-5, which is a benefit of system standard. I've just shot it in the studio but it's sharp and very well behaved. Coupled with their 12-35mm f2.8 normal zoom the combo gives a working photographer 95% of the focal lengths he or she would need for nearly any assignment. And together they weigh far less than either range zoom in the full frame camp. A couple bodies, the two Panasonic zooms and a flash would all fit in my smaller Domke bag and wouldn't make much of a dent on my shoulder...

I saved the best for last. The shutter is a metaphor for the rest of the camera. It's sound is solid, low key and confidence inspiring. You've heard all the clichés: Like the door of our Bentley studio car closing. Like a Swiss watch, etc. etc. It just sounds good. It's very similar in sound to the OMD EM-5 shutter so grab one of those and click it a few times and you're there. But keep in mind that the EP-5 shutter sounds at least as good AND gives you one stop faster shutter speed. Progress.

In the hand:  I worked with the Pen EP-2 and the Pen EP-3 for nearly two years and came to grips with them in a short time frame. While I think the bodies would be more comfortable to hold if they were just a bit taller (or extended further down...) they feel good in my hand once I retrain the two bottom fingers to curl under and support the baseplate of the body. If you are something like 6+ feet tall and have big hands these might not be the cameras for you no matter how much you may want to like them. Not enough space to put all that mass of fingers comfortably. 

I like to work in manual exposure with this camera and with most EVF cameras since you can see directly exactly how your exposure settings effect the final image. It's easy to turn the aperture or shutter speed dial and watch the amount and direction of change. It's such an intuitive way to work. I generally set the AF to single AF, center sensor, bring the camera to my eye, lock focus, add any exposure correction I might need and then fire away.

So, everything I said in the past about the handling of the older Pens holds true for this one as well and in that regard the only changes I had to get used to were the placement of the new dials and the relocation of a button or two.

But as long as we're talking about not changing too much let's talk about the ultimate downside of the Olympus camera experience......the menus. I'm not too stupid but it took me a long time to really feel comfortable with the EP2 menu. A long time. In fact, there are parts I'm still not sure about. Well, the EP-5 continues the tradition of being the king among highly user configurable cameras. And that means the menu is long, tediuous, opaque and confusing. Confusing because there's no uniformity in how manufacturers label certain features or settings. If you want a camera you can just pick up and shoot with a minimum of leafing (virtually) through an owner's manual you probably aren't a candidate for this one. Maybe a Samsung is more your speed. Their menus are short, clear and concise. But....if you are a real camera aficionado (read: gear nerd) and you quickly reconfigure all the buttons on your camera to do five different things with four different options then you and the Oly menu might just have been separated at birth. While I can fire the camera up and use it I'd much rather have fewer choices in configuration and a more direct path to efficient usage. A menu with five settings: Color balance, File Type, Focus Mode, Shooting mode, Drive Speed. That would make shooting direct and simple and the camera maker would not even need to provide a user manual.

So, what's my final word on this camera? Well I don't have one final word I have a bunch of them. I'll start here: If this camera had been introduced in time and before the OMD EM-5 (which I liked in theory, and appreciated the IQ, but never warmed up to the feel) I would have stuck with the Olympus system and never stuck my toes (and then my whole self) into the Sony system. The camera and the EVF are really well matched. The sensor is great, as all the OMD owners already know. The EP-5 is fast enough for the kind of work I do, shooting portraits and food and corporate lifestyle. The lenses have been fleshed out into a full fledged, professional line and any gaps are amply made up by the folks from Panasonic. 

It is, without any doubt, the finest digital camera Olympus has ever produced. While I like the feel of the original E1 a bit better the EP-5 runs circles around it in terms of overall imaging performance and the EVF makes it such an intuitive camera that it's almost invisibly fluid in practice. It's truly the flagship of the brand. 

There is one thing that bothers me, but less so than before.  Once you stick the EVF into the hot shoe you lose the use of the hot shoe for anything else. In the past it pissed me off because we shot most of our portraits in the studio and on location with radio slaved flashes. And I needed a place for that radio trigger. It really was an issue. I still wish they had a PC port on the left end of the camera just like the old Pen film cameras. Then I could have my cake and my champagne and eat it and drink it too. 

But now we shoot almost everything with some sort of continuous light and the triggers have become less important to me. It's almost like the moment at which Apple Computer decided to do away with the floppy drive. And recently when they've started to do away with CD/DVD drives entirely. The market changes. If I were a studio flash guy who wanted to use a camera correctly (at eye level) I'd sure think twice about getting into this system. But for everything else it's sweet.

Will I give up my Sony Nexes and Alphas to stumble back into the Olympus system at this point? Probably not....but that pretty much has more to do with my needs for video production tools and audio inputs, etc than actual considerations about still photography.

If I were starting with a clean slate? I'd give real consideration to a couple of the EP-5's in black, the two Panasonic lenses, a couple of the juicy fast primes and a pocket full of batteries. It would be a close decision. But if I did it I'd probably save my shoulder and lower back for at least five more years of service....

A word about this "review."  I'm not trying to compete with DPreview or DXO here. We don't have massive testing rigs and we don't have big graphs or pages and pages of comparison photos. If you want some idea of how this camera will work in a coal bin at night at 6400 ISO you can head over to DPreview.com and scroll through the OMD EM-5 review to your heart's content. And I'm sure they'll have a technical review of the EP-5 up in no time.  I'm also not interested in infinite file detail.  A finished photograph is generally more than the sum of its tiny, tiny (pixel) parts. My intention is to discuss the camera as it is relevant to me.

I shoot most of my cameras at ISO 100, 200, 400, and 800. Most are really good at those ISOs (except the Sony a850 at 800 ISO...) and I know how to add some photons to a scene if it's darker than that.

Even the most expensive fast lenses are sharper in the center than on the edges, wide open, and I'm okay with that.  The only time I need a lens that's sharp wide open from corner to corner is when I'm shooting flat objects and I stopped doing that because it wasn't very interesting. 

I am as interested in how the cameras feel in my hand and how welcoming the menus are as I am interested in a camera's ultimate image quality. With that in mind I've stopped including "samples" from digital cameras under review because they would be smaller than the camera is capable of, compressed for the web and meaningless unless I was shooting test targets. And life is far too short to shoot test targets. 

If you have a beef with the way I write about cameras then you need to get your own blog and fire up your word processor...then you can write whatever you believe, or want to believe, about anything in the universe.

Thanks for reading all the way through. I give the EP-5 a 92%. It's an "A" with room for improvement (built-in radio trigger? PC terminal? Nicer menus? Faster Continuous AF?). But it's a solid "A" because the images that flow out of the camera and the right lenses are as good as they need to be to make good art.

in other news: Belinda and I finished working on, The Lisbon Portfolio. The photo/action novel I started back in 2002. I humbly think it is the perfect Summer vacation read. And the perfect, "oh crap, I have to fly across the country" read. It's in a Kindle version right now at Amazon. The Lisbon Portfolio. Action. Adventure. Photography.  See how our hero, Henry White, blows up a Range Rover with a Leica rangefinder.....

Remember, you can download the free Kindle Reader app for just about any table or OS out there....

Having Retro Fun In Austin. Janis Dress Rehearsal.

Kacee Clanton plays Janis.

If you like the music of Janis Joplin and you dug the whole popular music scene in the late 1960's and early 1970's I think you'll really trip out on the new Janis show that's opening at Zach Theatre this week. The stage set is vintage cool and the music is really great. It will make older Austinites reminisce about the days of yore when Janis Joplin played clubs like the Vulcan Gas Company and Threadgills. Back when gas was a quarter a gallon and rent was almost free. Back in the days before condos and parking meters. Back when a great meal in Austin was the chicken fried steak at the Stallion on Lamar. But enough digression...

My client, Zach Theatre, kindly moved up my dress rehearsal shoot to last night. We usually shoot on Tues. and post process on Weds. morning but I leave town for a project on Weds. and I didn't want to cut things too closely. The show is well set. The costumes were done and the stage design complete. The part of Janis is sung and played by Kacee Clanton. The part of "The Blues Singer" is sung and played by Tiffany Mann. They both have more energy on stage than you can imagine.

I brought along two cameras and two lenses. The cameras were the Sony a99 and the Sony a850. I used the Tamron 28-75mm 2.8 for my wide shots and medium stage shots and the venerable 70-200mm 2.8 G lens for the tighter shots. I set the a850 at ISO 1250 and the a99 at ISO 3200 and I was happy with the noise performance of both cameras when shot this way. I recently re-calibrated the AF on the long zoom (with the a99)  and I am now officially impressed by the sharpness of that lens, even when used wide open.

There were only two challenges in shooting this rock and roll music production and those were the same challenges that people who shoot bands face. First of all the lighting is constantly changing, both in intensity and color. For manual exposure shooters (all that black in the background tends to throw off even the best in camera meters) that means paying careful attention to shutter speeds and f stops. While the EVF in the a99 makes it all a bit easier I did have to do some quick chimping to stay in the groove with the a850. The second challenge is the constant movement of the actors when they perform. They just flat out rock.  Janis was constantly moving and when shooting at f2.8 at the long end of a long lens you find that you've got very narrow depth of field, and that you pretty much have to nail focus for the shots to work. I used the focus hold buttons around the end of the long zoom almost constantly to quickly lock in focus.

The evening was very successful and the Theater will have images a bit earlier than usual. The show is fabulous and once again I am very happy with the results I got from my cameras. Any deficiency in the images is down to me.

The entire event was quite groovy. I'm looking forward to sitting in the audience, unencumbered with cameras, when I get back into town.

Co-Star, Tiffany Mann, as "The Blues Singer"

Co-Star, Tiffany Mann, as "The Blues Singer"

Co-Star, Tiffany Mann, as "The Blues Singer"

Why I think the Sony a99 is the best camera around for documenting live theatrical performances.

All images above are from last night's dress rehearsal of Mad Hip Beat and Gone, from director, Steven Dietz, at Zach Theatre. All shot with the Sony a99 and the 70-200mm 2.8G lens.

The play started at 8pm and I expected to get to the theatre at 7pm to get my bearings (It's only four miles away from the studio) but real life got in the way. We had a very rare and dramatic meteorological event here in central Texas...it rained. And sometimes when it rains here in Austin the clouds get all urgent and overwrought and try to rain down everything at once. And that's when the fun begins. It was almost Biblical for an hour or so in the late afternoon. Thunder, lightning and seventy mile per hour winds whipped fat rain drops and sharp, spitty chunks of hail at us with no mercy.

My dog cowered in Ben's room, hiding under the covers on his bed and trembling with every thunder boom. Ben, unfazed, continued to study his calculus. I had my hands full in the studio as water started to seep in on one side. The side with the French drain. A French drain that was clearly overwhelmed.

I meant to pack up and get out earlier by there I was with a bucket and a mop wondering if I was bailing out a life boat with a thimble. But as soon as the rain slowed down the seepage stopped and the rest was just a matter of mopping up.  I hopped into the studio's racing Honda CRV and thought it would be the usual quick jaunt to the theatre until I hit the first of several blocked roads. The water had come up so quickly that the main arterial from my house was closed by local law enforcement. Drat. I headed for the secret back roads but in the day of GPS and Garmin there are no longer secret back roads and so I inched toward my destination with thousands of other frustrated drivers.

I got to the theater and blocked off five seats in the orchestra section, dead center. The crowd settle and the play started. I was there to shoot so I had my usual, ever changing collection of cameras in lap and spread over the chair next to me. Two Sony Nex-7's and a Sony a99 with a 70-200mm G Sony lens. Last night the a99 got the most use with 1198 images coming from that combination. It was glorious.

Theater photography is where the EVF (electronic viewfinder) comes into its own. Since there is no single "correct" white balance you get to chose and what better way to keep a handle on the ever changing color of light on the stage but to monitor it in real time, with your correction overlaid and presented to you as a fait accompli in the high res view finder. You get to see, at a glance, exactly how the exposure and color balance you've set will render in your final image. The only way to get that with lesser, OVF camera is to take a "chimp frame" then make some corrections and then chimp again. And again. Eventually you'll get everything into the ball park and will be able to shoot in earnest but by then, chances are, everything will have changed and the play will have moved on to its next collage of colors and light settings and tone.

It sounds like a simple thing, right? But it's anything but. When I look through the viewfinder of an OVF camera I see what my eye sees. And my eye works with my brain to neutralize everything I look at. It makes magenta skin look normal and it makes green skin look normal. I can't see the range of colors that diverge from normal because the eye is only a good comparator, not a good stand alone color checker.  And when I look through an OVF the scene always looks perfectly exposed to me. The only two ways I can tell that it's not perfectly exposed for the camera's use is by either stopping to review images on the back screen or by watching the meter. But the stage is all about pools of terrific colored light and inky black shadows. Exactly what are we metering?

That's why I love the EVF on the a99. At a glance I can tell whether a scene is over exposed for the main subjet that I want to render.  The EVF shows me what colors I'm getting instead of me having to stop, push the review button and evaluate. And if the exposure or color does need changing I can watch those changes in real time as I push a button or turn a knob. I never need to stop and start and iteratively test each parameter. It's like looking at a Polaroid versus a video feed. The feed can be live/now/immediate. The review is past/moving target/gone.

If I enable DRO (Sony's in camera dynamic range expander) I can see the effect of DRO in the review of every shot that comes up automatically in the EVF. That means I don't have to remove the camera from my eye to evaluated a "proof." If I like what I see I tap the shutter button and the camera is ready to take the next shot.

Last night I hit the focus hold button in order to lock focus on a subject. When the camera went into MF mode the focus peaking feature automatically kicked in and the red (color I chose) surrounded the subjects that were in good focus. If a subject moved out of red zone I knew it was time to refocus.

An EVF means not having to upset the people behind you that are trying to watch the show. There are plenty of times we need to make control changes on the menu. With a non-EVF camera that means bringing on the 3 inch screen on the back of the camera and that means intruding into the darkspace of the show. The people around you now have an extra, peripheral stimulant to distract them from the action on the stage. Not so with an EVF. Hit the menu button with the camera held up to your eye and you can change menu settings or review images without spilling light out of the camera and creating visual stink for your seat neighbors. Truly a camera implementation with manners...

The same viewfinder qualities that make the Sony a superb theater camera also apply for all other EVF enabled cameras, such as the Olympus OMD EM-5, the Panasonic GH3 and even my little Canon SX40 IS.

But what makes the Sony perfect for me is the wonderful sensor inside the camera. It shoot well at higher ISOs, just like the Canon and the Nikon's do but it has one more trick up the sleeve that neither of the more primitive, traditional, conservative cameras have: It can do image stabilization with every lens you stick on the front of the machine because the IS is on the imaging chip.

Now my Rokinon 85mm 1.5 and my Rokinon 35mm 1.5 are both image stabilized and with focus peaking and in-finder focus magnification it makes the totally system the most accurate and fastest to use system for taking advantage of a giant selection of manual focus lenses. Pretty amazing.

Great Sensor, Much more useful and flexible finder, IS with all lenses, Great handling.  I'm trying to think of any downside to the big Sony flagship in regards to shooting live theater on the stage and I can only think of one thing that gets trotted out with regularity: Battery Life.

The big hit on the Sony is the idea that you'll only get about 400 exposures on a freshly charged battery. All depends on how you use the camera. Last night I shot 1198 images on one battery with 32% charge remaining at the end. Not so bad. Certainly good enough for me. But just in case I do keep an extra in my pocket...

I'm not saying the a99 is the best all around camera in the world, only the best live theater camera. Now, if I only had the 300mm 2.8G....

A very interesting mix of Live Theater, Still Photography and Video. How big is big?

Image from Zach Scott Production. 

Everything changes all the time. When I first started photographing for Zachary Scott Theater we used medium format cameras and black and white film. The reason? None of the local newspapers, magazines or tabloids ran stuff in color. Color film was slow and grainy and hard to use under mixed stage lights. But with quick reflexes and some darkroom work the medium format Tri-X film could produce nice prints for the media. Last night some of dress rehearsal documentation was done with two pint sized Sony Nex 7 cameras.

While the theater has used projectors for quite some time the show, Mad Beat Hip and Gone, is the first production we've done that uses screens of this size (over 30 by 30 feet) and so ubiquitously integrates video and still photographic imagery into the DNA of the play.  The image above shows the size of the screen in relation to the actors very well. 

 This image incorporates video on the background screen. 

Apparent sharpness in motion comes from persistence of vision.

Since we've "frozen" a video frame it appears 

less sharp that it  appears in the continuity of the video....

The incorporation of moving video, some in slow motion, as well as still images post processed to mimic the look of the time (1950's), added so much visual depth to an already well written play. 

We shot the still images and the video inserts with a Sony a99 Digital camera and a Sony 70-200mm 2.8G lens. The black and white effect was done, in camera, during the initial capture (no turning back!) and the lighting for the stills and videos was done with LED panels modified with a large, one stop silk over the main light.

As more directors take advantage of new technologies (getting the images this large with a short distance behind the screen required that we use two projectors and stitch the images across both machines...) we'll definitely see more and more uses of creative stills and video to add layers of complexity, meaning, texture and nuance to performances. It's becoming a hybrid world for us out there. We might as well just call ourselves, "Creative Content Providers."

Mad Beat Hip and Gone, now at Zach Scott Theater.

I finally took Andy's advice and tried a file conversion in Aperture.

Shot with LED Light Panels for Zachary Scott Theatre.

Camera: Sony a99 with 70-200mm 2.8 G lens.

I don't want to start a war about which RAW converter is best. God knows, there are more than enough religions out there already, but I wanted to share that some files work better in RAW converters we might not have been using in our own workflows. Since I switched to Sony cameras I've felt that Lightroom 4.4 was just about as good as anything out there for conversions so I didn't look around much. I mean, Adobe Camera Raw is considered by most image workers as the standard of the industry.

But recently I picked up a Sony a850 camera (more about that whole deal on another day) and I shot a bunch of portraits with it. The images looked great on the LCD screen on the back of the camera and there wasn't anything really challenging about the lighting or the subjects, but once I pulled the raw files into Lightroom my stomach kind of tightened up. The images were contrasty and for some reason LR wanted to add 12 to 15 points of magenta to the faces in my portraits. Well actually the default seemed to be, "the more magenta everywhere, the better!"

I worked and worked on the files but I was not happy. So I opened Capture One and messed around with 7.0. Better but still not in the "happy camper" ballpark. A quick and disastrous detour through Sony's primitive program didn't help my mood at all. Frankly, I was ready to go back to film and throw the whole mess at a lab. Right....

Then I remembered that my friend, Andy, swears by Apple's Aperture. And his images always look great to me. Great contrast, believable sharpness and great color. And he swears he uses nothing but Aperture. For $79 bucks and a quick download I'll bite.

I re-learned (I'd tried the 1.0 demo a few years back) everything I needed to do the job at hand in about an hour. I tweaked the images and they fell into place without the slightest glitch, color cast or posterization in the shadows. The sharpening worked better and the color controls made the flesh tones....perfect. I batched them and they're spitting into a folder as I write this.

But then I started wondering about the image above. I posted a version earlier that started life in LR and I wasn't totally happy with the contrast and the overall look of the image. Since Aperture is a multi-thread application I tossed this image file into the program and started playing with it. To my eye it's a totally different image now. I could see a big difference in the way the program made the initial conversion and how well it works with Sony files.

I'm not saying that your Nikon or Canon or Olympus camera will necessarily see the same kinds of improvements that I saw in the files from two different full frame Sony cameras but if you are using an Apple machine it may be worth your while. Particularly if you feel less than thrilled with the stuff that's coming out of your current workflow.  Just a thought.

ed note: look what popped up this morning over at DP Review: review.com/articles/8219582047/raw-converter-showdown-capture-one-pro-7-dxo-optics-pro-8-and-lightroom-4

Talking about a lens is one thing but shooting with a lens is quite another. Here's some stuff from the 35mm 1.5 Cine Rokinon.

 

Oh my gosh. I'm having a blast with this lens. A couple years ago I reviewed the Leica 35mm f1.4 Aspherical on an M9 body. I shot most of my images on a 105 degree day and it was miserable but the one thing I discovered is the one thing that is counterintuitive about an ultra fast 35mm lens: the real power is getting the subject in context and still being able to drop the background convincingly out of focus. But in order to do that you must have a lens that has the same properties as the $5,000 manual focusing Leica lens; it must be sharp at and near wide open. Not all of the fast lenses from the big boys do that....But I'm going to throw in this spoiler and say, that in my opinion the Rokinon (Samyang) 35mm Cine 1.5 lens does. With ease.

The image above is a quick portrait of a stranger on 6th street from this afternoon. We were in open shade and I walked up and said, "I like your hat and the way it goes with your jacket. Would you mind if I made a portrait of you?" He was flattered and more than happy to stand there, in front of the famous Driskill Hotel, for an extra thirty seconds or so. I used the focus peaking built into the Sony a99, got a quick focus at f2.0 and shot. If I'd been on a tripod and used the image magnification to focus at 10X the image might have been marginally sharper on his face. It's sharp enough for me just the way it is.  Is the Rokinon 35mm Cine 1.5 lens sharp enough wide open? Can't say. But I can tell you I think it's nicely sharp at f2.0...which is one stop down. And I think the out of focus characteristics are very nice in the background.  The contrast in the center, the part that's in focus is snappy damn good.

When I have time I have a new focusing routine for the 35mm on the Sony a99 in aperture priority mode. I open up to f2.0 or somewhere around there, get the focus peaking outlines where I want them and then stop down till I like the shutter speed and ISO combination. I'm generally looking for exterior exposures in the f5.6 and 1/500th category with ISO's around 100 or 200.

When I left the highly secure compound of the Visual Science Lab in my up-armoured and very discreet, Honda CRV I made the decision to try and shoot everything on my walk/test shoot at apertures from 1.5 to f5.6. I wanted to see how the lens performed in the meaty part of the curve. Any middling focal length lens is fine and dandy at f8 and f11. I shot the wall above at 2.8 and I think it's pretty juicy (technical term we testers bandy about).  I've been by this wall many times a year for many years and have never seen this pattern before.

In easy circumstances (f4.0 and f5.6) the lens is unimaginably good. Every bit the equal of the Leica lens at these apertures. If you shoot on a tripod you should look no further for your 35mm optic. This one is all work and no play in the middle.  

I walked over to the Hilton and photographed their ceiling (see below) and even near wide open the lens cuts the line between tones like a razor blade.

 

I shot everything as a Jpeg today and most of the images here are straight out of camera with perhaps a little exposure correction here and there. Some slight sharpening with the wide open   images. But I was amazed at the concentrated, saturated colors the lens consistently provided. The green temporary food trailer below is a great example. The green just oozes radioactive...

 Near the end of my walk I started thinking that my evaluation of the lens would not be complete without a few little snaps at one of the "easy" apertures. Here (below) is an image of a building shot at f11. Seems sharp to me. Diffraction ignored.

My early assessment of the 35mm 1.5 Cine Lens from Rokinon (Samyang) is glowing. The images speak for themselves. On monday I have one of my favorite models coming by for a little session. I'll sneak the 35mm in just to see what it does wide open at low light levels. But most of the session will be done with the 85 Rokinon. Both of the lenses are totally manual. I think that's cool. A bit of control and user responsibility are refreshing. Being in control (or the appearance thereof) is calming and affirming. I like it. More like this lens. Hello camera makers! Are you listening?

Someone asked for a close crop of the top image......