Better video camera handling. Those guys with the big shoulder mounted cameras had it right.

For decades I worked as a still photographer at events right next to my friends from a staging and production company. Many times I'd watch their video guys shooting "happy face" videos at big conventions and corporate road shows, or I'd watch them videotape a CEO on stage, switching live from their high-mag, tripod mounted cameras to various handheld cameras presenting closer views of the stage action. A director in the tech booth would switch on the fly between the various feeds and integrate the content, along with charts and graphs, onto giant screens on their side of the main stage. In this way the audience members (in a crowd of 1200 to 1500) would have a great view of the stage action. In fact, the view, because of the 12 by 30 foot screens, was good anywhere in the house.

As technology advanced I wondered why this company, which was quick to buy into the latest projection and sound equipment, still favored the larger, shoulder mounted ENG video cameras over the latest, small and hand holdable video cameras that weighed just a few pounds. I'd read the specs and pondered the footage from both styles of cameras and found them to be almost identical. And the company could have purchased four or five of the new Sony or Panasonic hand held video cameras for the price of each bigger, more traditional, shoulder mount cameras.

Well, to make a long story shorter, it's one thing to stick a camera on a tripod and just point it at a subject but it's an entirely different undertaking to hold a video camera steady enough over a three or four minute interview when it's just sitting in your shaky hands. Even with the best of image stabilization at your command. Just because your new Sony, Canon, Nikon or Panasonic has "state-of-the-art" image stabilization doesn't mean you become a solid pillar of stability while holding a camera in your two hands. But there are times when a little sway or movement is fine; actually desirable. But there is a difference between subtle and pleasing motion and the kind of footage you get from hand holding a camera in front of your face with no physical support.

What the video pros at the production company knew, even years and years ago, was that a good shoulder mounted camera makes optimal use of your body construction to provide a much more stable base for a video camera and allows for longer clip lengths with much less erratic motion than a strictly handheld camera.

I learn mostly through shattered hubris. I try to figure stuff out on my own and change when a good idea turns into disaster on the ground. Then I do some research and try again. I've successfully handheld short video clips (and by short I mean 10-20 seconds, max) with highly stabilized cameras like the Olympus EM-5ii and the Sony RX10iii but have been far less successful hand holding longer lenses on modestly stabilized "video" cameras such as the Sony A7Rii or a Nikon D810 with stabilized lenses. There's something about the two hand (death) grip and the desire to look through the EVF that, when combined, conspires against long term, overall stability.

Several years ago, in a spasm of experimentation, I bought a cheap shoulder mount and found it to be surprisingly good. It was branded as an Ikan and basically held the camera via a big clamp that cinched on one's upper back and on the front of one's rib cage. Once I learned to breath without moving the camera I was able to get much better footage than I ever had by just holding the camera in my hands (in any pose or configuration).

I used the cheap shoulder mount a lot with the GH5 and, along with that camera's image stabilization, have been very happy with the controlled content I was able to film. It was somewhat less stable (but not jittery) than a tripod or a good monopod set up but so much better than any naked grip I tried.

My friend, the full time, professional videographer/director, kidded me about how cheap I am when it comes to buying good tools for the trade. He looked at my plastic rig and laughed. I countered that I paid only $39 for the device and had used it on many jobs. He laughed and suggested that it would fall apart some day, and at the least appropriate moment. I scoffed but he was right...

Last week I used the Ikan shoulder mount to handhold a GH5S + Olympus 12-100mm f4.0 Pro lens while I followed a CEO around the headquarters of his company. I was doing a completely documentary approach and nothing at all was scripted or set up. He would walk down the hallway, run into an engineer or person from finance and they'd have conversation. I moved in and around the conversation getting good angles along with jitter free close ups and moving shots. It all worked so well.  I could pan left and right smoothly by moving from the waist. I could pan up and down easily as well. When I edited the footage together for a minute and thirty second program I was quite happy with how everything cut together. There is a big difference between slow and mostly controlled "camera drift" and the bouncy, sometimes erratic motion I got by hand holding.

At the end of the week I'd scheduled some shooting time for a personal documentary I am working on for Austin's theatrical troupe/theater: Esther's Follies. I went to the Friday evening performances of their shows. The cast works on a small stage and does wide-ranging political satire, some magic acts that are Vegas quality and some song and dance. It's irreverent, funny and topical. And the small, dark spaces backstage can really test your video handling skills...

The old, Ikan shoulder mount. It finally bit the dust. 

Betrayed. 

I was doing well with a Panasonic GH5S blazing away at ISO 3200, sitting on the aforementioned Ikan shoulder rig but at one point I stopped to adjust the camera position and overtightened the bolt that held the camera to the rig. The plastic construction snapped and the camera began a slow motion plunge to the floor (along with my Olympus 12-100mm lens). Only my cat-like ninja skills prevented total disaster. I lunged with both hands outstretched and managed to grab the camera+lens before it hit the floor, tossing my 62 year old body onto the floor in the process. But, as I am resilient, no damage was done and I brushed myself off, tried to shed my embarrassment and go on with the job. Handheld.

Yes, plastic stuff might not be optimal for continuous and long days of actual work. Lesson learned. The hard way. The gods plucked the strings of my hubris and then kicked the chair of fate out from under my feet. What a wretched metaphorical morass.....

Later, nursing my bent ego with a glass of cheap red wine, I sat in front of my computer and looked at the footage I'd shot over the course of four hours on a Friday night and I could see, defined, the before and after marker detailing the demise of my steadying tool. Not a horrible difference but enough of a difference so that I noticed it and was chagrined.

Now, none of this sent me in search of an ENG camera. I'm not buying into putting 20 pounds on my shoulders every time I'm heading out to shoot video. I value my ability to swim a nice butterfly too much to take the risk. But I knew I wanted to be able to get the GH5S and a good lens onto a shoulder rig that was both reliable and highly adjustable. So I set out to build one from the parts I found online.

Here's what I ended up with:

This is my custom rig made of parts from SmallRig, NiceyRig, and a few nuts and bolts. The shoulder pad is adjustable and has metal cheeseplates, front and rear, on which to hang batteries or something to act as a balancing counterweight; if I find it necessary. The camera is also able to be adjusted closer or further from my face. Even the handgrip assembly allows for backward or forward adjustments. 

For me, the important ingredient was the actual padded shoulder mount. I love that it works with the 15mm rails. The whole rig is rock solid when everything is tightened up. I can add a platform to the camera mount, just above the top of the camera, to hold a microphone and, in theory, a monitor, but I think that works against the whole idea of being able to effectively hand hold the rig. Too much weight in the front would require more weight in the back to balance and at some point it all becomes unwieldy. 

With another documentary-style corporate shoot coming up on Weds. we'll be sure to put this to the test. I'll also be practicing with it today and tomorrow. If you have a rig that I've missed, is fantastic and is under $300 be sure to let me know about it. I'm in the trial and error phase of shoulder mounts right now and leaving now rocks unturned. Who knows what lurks beneath?

(For SEO...): Will work with CANON, NIKON, OLYMPUS, PANASONIC, SONY and other cameras. Ha. Ha.

Random Thoughts on a Random Thursday. Collaged Thoughts.

I have no idea with this product does but I know it was fun to 

photograph it with a wide enough lens so I also saw this guy's feet...

Yes, that would have been done for a 2018 commercial client 

with the Nikon D700. And, yes, we did get paid to show up

with that ancient equipment....

Most important news first. I had a really great swim practice this morning. I did some research on the web because what I'd really love, going forward, is for some major corporation to pay me just to swim every day. If I had to do less "real" work I could get back to two workouts a day and I'd be in really great shape. I just can't figure out how to spin the advantages of me swimming for clients so they'll want to toss me ten or fifteen thousand dollars per month. I do take a baby aspirin every day...I wonder if Bayer would play ball? Anyway, I think it would be really cool to maintain my lifestyle by swimming for a couple hours a day and maybe starting a blog about that. "Swimming my way to retirement"? 

What makes for a great swim practice? Hot weather combined with chilled water. It was right at 79 degrees today; cold enough to really feel your hands getting resistance in the water but not so cold as to make short rest intervals uncomfortable. Nice lane mates. It's great if you swim with two or three other people in your lane who are just a couple seconds faster per hundred than you are. Then you really have to work at keeping up and making the intervals. Clean water. The clearer the better. A great coach on deck; someone who will leave you alone when you are "in the zone" but who will step in to give you encouragement if something is a bit off. Finally, those wonderful days when someone thinks ahead and brings coffee and fresh fruit for a poolside, after-swim snack. Greet the sun. Feel the water. Raise your heart rate. Feel alive. 

This was my favorite video camera to date. It may drop down a notch 

when I've got the GH5S thoroughly figured out.

I'm heading out to practice handholding the new GH5S in conjunction with a variable neutral density filter and the Olympus 12-100mm f4.0 Pro lens. I've already tested one important parameter: the lens does provide image stabilization while shooting video, and it's very good and very steady. The weak link right now is just my lack of daily experience handholding this particular rig in video mode. It's something you get if you do it all the time. You get comfortable with the best way to hold and move with the camera. I want to get my hand and body skills nailed down first and then I may look at handheld gimbals. They seem so alluring and yet the gimbal can impart its own style if you just go with the flow. I want to know the old school way to handle the camera before I get a new crutch. And, yes, the audio from the GH5S and audio interface is perfect enough for me. I'm heading out to do snippets in downtown and I'll be experimenting with V-Log and HLG. Now I just need to scare up the right LUT for the GH5S in V-Log + Final Cut ProX. 

Monday afternoon is coming quick and I'd like to get about 8 hours of hands on practice in before I start shooting with the new camera for client. So far I haven't run into any monster glitches; not even a small gremlin or two. 

Look!!! Nikon has gone mirrorless!!!

Where are we with all the Nikon mirrorless announcement stuff? Michael Johnston (the Online Photographer) questioned whether Nikon "deserves" to be successful in the space. I thought that was a bit odd but it seems as though that kind of moralizing futurism is a great way to garner comments on a blog. He's gotten about 103 comments, and counting, since yesterday. I would say that most companies who haven't committed crimes, cheated their customers, or knowingly launched defective products deserve every chance the free market will give them. Nikon is not some company that spews out the dregs of the industry and begs for your money; they have a one hundred year history of providing great photographic products and, for the most part, standing behind what they sell. I've heard the same reactions directed at Sony. I think we need to get serious. It's not like these companies are Monsanto or ADM. They aren't poisoning the lakes and rivers or making genetically engineered seeds and then patenting all seeds. They are just trying to make some really nice and precise consumer products for grownups to play with. And enjoy. And make art with. 

We should wish all the camera makers good luck because we'll sure enough be moaning and groaning if they start to exit the market en masse and we wind up with one Microsoft Giant Type, monopoly camera company that controls an enormous swath of the market and doesn't feel the need to innovate or even fix their self-inflicted stumbles. I'm happy when all of the camera companies are humming along and making stuff we love. You should be too. 

Just wanted to put that out here. Now, on to Nikon. Seems like we're getting more and more believable stuff from the rumor sites. Today's conjecture is that we'll have two bodies coming soon; one that's tweaked for high speed (sports, et al) that will have a 24 megapixel sensor, and a second body that's optimized for ultimate resolution and image quality that will have 45 megapixels and the ability to stun people senseless with its image quality. The 24 megapixel version sounds yummy to me. I'll be buying one of those used in a few years. I can hardly wait. 

The other news is about lenses, and two in particular seem to be making peoples' antennae twitch. One is a 58mm f.095 and the other is a 36mm f1.2. Both will be native Z mounts and they'll be joined with the usual suspects; 24-70mm lenses in both fast and vanilla, and a few other lenses in which I had no immediate interest. I have my fingers crossed that they lens mount adapter is not the one accessory that launches on permanent back-order but then again... it's still impossible today, a year after launch, to get one's hands on a new D850 in north America.... All will be revealed in a week. 

How do I know a play at Zach Theatre is very, very popular? I start getting request from friends and family for comp tickets. I'm pretty good at snagging comps for myself but the inventory of ready tickets for "The Beauty and The Beast" is very, very thin and as long as the theater can get hard currency for seats it's tough to convince them to give them away. I've seen the play three times; they deserve your cash...

Here is my very first exterior shot with the GH5S (above). I was on my way downtown and passed by the theater around noon. I shot it close up with the Panasonic/Leica 8-18mm lens. I like leaning buildings but I'm not going to win new architect friends with that backward leaning image. It's a tough building to photograph because the only option other than a super wide is to shoot across four lanes of one of the busiest streets in Austin. Like this......(below).

In other notes, we're heading toward September, most public (and private) schools start up again in Austin next Tuesday, and downtown was bustling yesterday. There were lines of thirty to forty people at the popular food trucks, lots of people waiting for tables at nearly every downtown restaurant, and all the burger joints were packed. This  means more people on the streets to photograph and more people coming back to town to share coffee. 

Austin continues to grow but I'm not quite sure of the sign I found below. It's on a fence next to a giant hole in the ground. I'm not sure a weathered and sloppy sign is quite the advertising message I'd want to convey for a new high rise office building. I guess we'll see if their dream comes true. 

Finally, Kirk does car repair. I don't own a lawn mower and I don't have many tools. I have some pliers, a hammer and a set of socket wrenches. Somewhere in the studio I have a saw for cutting nine foot rolls of seamless down to more manageable sizes. I've never changed my own car's oil. I didn't grow up fixing cars. But yesterday I finally did one heroic car repair.

It was a hot and muggy day. I'd just finished shopping for dinner (my turn) at the local Trader Joe's and I had a bag of perishable groceries in the back seat of my car. I turned the ignition key and the car hesitated a bit before starting. I should have driven straight to the Honda dealer and thrown myself at their mercy at that moment. Instead, since the car started, I made a mental note to get the battery checked in the near future and I drove off to a gas station to fill up my tank. Task completed I got back in the car and turned the key only to hear a wimpy and short grrrr. grrrr. from the starter followed by a painful silence and no joy from the engine. The car was in shade and the gas station had both "full service" available as well as mechanics. Good luck for me.

One of the mechanics came over and popped the hood. He put some sort of external jump starting battery on the terminals of my battery and I started the car. Then he used a different device to check the alternator. It was fine. "You've got yourself a dead battery." He said. I asked if they had a replacement in stock. "No. We'd have to order one and we probably couldn't get it till tomorrow afternoon. If it was me I'd just head over to Costco and buy one. You'll save a lot of money." I thanked him and headed home.

I turned off the car in the driveway and borrowed Belinda's car to head over to the local Costco. I took the battery inside and they looked at some hieroglyphics on the outside of the dead box and determined that it had not yet crested their 3 year battery warranty, so.....they traded it out at no cost for a brand new battery.

I Googled how to replace my battery. It was dark by the time I got started but that gave me an excuse to set up four battery powered LED lights, on light stands, around the engine compartment. Things were going well until a skunk showed up. It stood on a sidewalk about thirty feet away and just, more or less, watched me. I'd turn the wrench one rotation and then look back over at the skunk --- I didn't want to be taken by surprise --- and I have enough trouble keeping clients happy without showing up smelling of skunk! He finally relented and sauntered off into the darkness and I was able to devote my full attention to the task in front of me. I know I should have grabbed the GH5S and done a behind-the-scenes video of my heroic battery replacement so you guys could see how adroit I was with tools but there was dinner waiting.

Everything works now but I did have to reset the clock in the car. Tip of the hat to Costco for their generous return policy. A big "thank you" to the skunk for not wanting a more active role in this adventure. Batteries die quicker in hot weather. I think it's all the time we have mired in traffic on super hot days that kills 'em. But, as long as I have access to Google I think I can change another battery in the future. No skinned knuckles.

Not as much fun as not having to change batteries. Funny, when I pulled out the battery it looked a bit smaller than the battery in my last car. My first thought was, "Sony battery." Couldn't help it.

Some strange conjecture about a future collaboration between Samsung and Nikon.

Wiring Harnesses. 

I was reading an article over at Andrew Reid's website, EOSHD.com and it seemed both obvious (in retrospect) but also very prescient. Here's the original source for today's thoughts https://www.eoshd.com/2018/06/samsung-joins-forces-with-fujifilm-will-apply-new-tech-to-large-sensor/

If you read all the technical papers about the chip technologies used in the late, somewhat lamented, Samsung NX1 you would be amazed to see that, at the time, Samsung was bringing to market some incredible design and manufacturing prowess. The sensor in the NX-1 used fast copper interconnecting technology, was BSI before BSI was a buzz acronym, was based on 4.5 nanometer technology which surpassed other makers by orders of magnitude, and much more. The marketing problem was that Samsung lacked experience and panache at haptics, desirable industrial design and an ability to relate well to ( or to even understand ) their primary buyers. 

They had the state of the art sensor but every previous camera they made had serious handling or firmware faults that crippled their ability to frame the sensor well. Kind of like dropping a modern, high performance car engine into a Yugo chassis and expecting people to applaud the performance of the motor alone....

According to Andrew's sources Samsung has continued to push serious money into sensor R&D ($13 billion thus far....) and could whip out an incredible full frame sensor at the drop of a hat. It seems that they are partnering with Fuji to advance the technology but that doesn't necessarily mean that Fuji will end up being the primary user of a full frame version of the joint sensor technology. They would have to re-tool their entire line of lenses to introduce a full frame camera wrapped around that sensor. It might happen; there might be a product extension down the road, but for some reason the first camera maker that popped into my head was Nikon. 

They source a lot of sensors from Sony and like any other business it can be downright dangerous to find yourself wedded exclusively to one supplier. A new, state of the art sensor that can go toe-to-toe, or even surpass, the current Sony product line could be an important differentiator for Nikon at a time when proving their continuing tenure as a cutting edge photography company is vital. It would be interesting to see Nikon roll out a flagship mirrorless camera with a unique and powerful new sensor at its heart. 

If Sony and Canon finally have a large and powerful competitor at the top of the innovation mountain it can only benefit consumers across all camera brands. My experience with Samsung showed me that while they were still immature as a maker of easy to use and easy to handle cameras their sensors were first rate. In fact, reviewing some of the work I did with their (ill fated and over engineered) Galaxy NX camera was a revelation. They had the sensor tech nailed down. It was betrayed by an odd fascination with infecting their late cameras with an Android Operating system...

And no one wanted their camera to automatically update Candy Crush (shutting down camera operation temporarily) just as they were about to photograph the final goal of the World Cup...

It will be interesting to see how Samsung caters to the existing camera market. It may be that they come back into camera manufacturing with a new understanding that the real money (for right now) is either in Phones (which they have covered) or in the high end of the stand alone camera market. Could be another game changer.  Just some Monday Thoughts. 

A nod to Andrew Reid for the topical awareness. 

A successful trip to a client in New Jersey. Good gear selection. Good efficiency. Good images.

Last week I publicly mulled over what equipment to take along with me on an assignment. I would be flying by myself to Newark, NJ, meet up with my creative director from an Austin advertising agency (who was flying in from a video shoot in Dallas, Tx.) and we'd make our way thirty miles south to shoot for a couple of days at a manufacturing/pharmaceutical concern. I ended up taking along all the right gear and I learned some new things from my (much younger and more tech savvy) client about traveling and making work life easier. Seems there's an app for that --- no matter what "that" is.

I ended up packing a couple Nikon bodies and a flurry of lenses but I only used the D750. It was perfect for the main goal of our shoot which was to make stylized portraits of the company's top executives. By stylized I mean they were lit in a way that reflects my lighting preferences and I don't think I ever used a lens aperture beyond f2.8 (at the smallest). We spent the entirety of the first day shooting these portraits in a giant, spotlessly clean, warehouse. I used diffusion scrims to block most of the light coming from the sodium vapor lights high up in the rafters and I used two speed lights for my main and back light. The main light was bounced into a 60 inch, white umbrella and the back light was used direct from high up (twelve feet) and at least 50 feet behind the subjects.

The main flash was the all manual, Cactus RF 60, which has its own internal radio triggering receiver, and the back light was provided by a Yongnuo flash and triggered by a  Cactus V60 transceiver. I thought I should have brought more batteries but when all was said and done the 16 Eneloops were just right. At low power settings like 1/16 and 1/64 the batteries lasted all day long. I can't show the portrait images yet because they need to be approved by the clients first.

I used two different lenses to shoot the portraits and most of you can probably guess which ones there were without me writing it. But for the infrequent readers of the blog they were the Nikon 85mm f1.8G and the older, Nikon 105mm f2.5 ais (manual focus) lens. I worked back and forth with the two lenses in order to vary the look a bit but both were used around f2.8 and both were quite sharp were focused and then dropped out of focus quickly behind --- which is exactly what I wanted.

We spent the next morning finishing up our portraits and then moved on to shooting process shots, working shots and research shots. Our goal will be to use these as splash page images for the website and in some of the company's other collateral. I started shooting with these with the Nikon D750 and the Nikon 24-120 f4 zoom but I really missed the immediacy of an EVF for fast moving images that we were capturing in available light. There is an efficiency to using the EVF that's not talked about enough but it makes all the difference to me in shots where we don't have time to put the camera on a tripod and bring in lights. I also missed the longer reach and perfect image stabilization that my two sets of mirror-free cameras provide.

I know it was a bit sneaky to have included a Panasonic fz 1000 to my camera selection on Monday night, the day before I headed out, but I was really pleased to have it along with me. After half an hour of shooting we dropped the Think Tank roller case full of Nikon stuff into someone's office and spent the rest of the day shooting about 1200 total files in a fast moving blitz through the manufacturing floors and the R&D areas. I could get very tight with the longer end of the Panasonic zoom and I could get relatively wide which made handholding the camera even more stable.

The built in, electronic level was very useful but the image stabilization is so good in this all-in-one camera that I'm thinking it rivals the I.S. in the Olympus EM-5.2 (See hand held shot above).

I have been reviewing the images I took since I got home a little while ago and I am pleased with all the various work we created. It should be an ample trove of images with which to create a first class website with.

The cherry on the top of the trip for me was the flight out of Newark this morning. Our Southwest Airlines flight left right on time at 7:30 am and was scheduled to get into Austin at 11:05 am. We ended up arriving almost one full hour early. Amazing. And the flight was half full. Comfortable.
I was home conferring with Studio Dog about strategy before lunch time. Very grand, I'd say. 

Past Due Reviews. The first in a series. The Nikon D610. Executive Summary. At $1295 it's a cheap and wonderful entry to full frame photography.

#Austin  #SXSW Downtown.

 I'm writing a review here on the Nikon D610 camera. I'm writing it not because I think you should run out and buy one or because it happens to be the best in any one category (it's not) but because it's an affable camera, I enjoy shooting it and, so far, it's been generating images that look really good to me. It's already been superseded by the D750 camera which is largely the same but in some ways "better." But it remains in the Nikon product line up and the price of the camera seems to have stabilized around $1495 which I think is a good value for the quality of the sensor and the particular feel of the camera. 

I shoot with several different cameras and I have reasons for every choice. I have a Nikon D810 when I am after perfect images with unassailable resolution and dynamic range. Lately I've been shooting the Olympus EM-5 camera more often since I discovered both how much I like the black and white setting (with the green filtration) and how nice video can look in black and white when you use the image stabilization offered by that camera in the video mode. But these days I grab the D610 as my personal shooting camera for portraits and street shooting. More and more I've come to value a camera that's a nice balance rather than a tool with which to pursue "perfection." 

Let's jump into the D610 and see why I enjoy using one. 

The race for bigger cameras. Been there, done that, redoing it.

Image from Leaf A7i file.

Many of the more recent arrivals here at the Visual Science Lab like to give me advice like: Try a full frame camera! Or, You should learn how to shoot with a view camera! Or, The pros all use three fast, f2.8 zoom lenses for all their work! You might want to try out the 70-200mm!!! Or, You should get your hands on a medium format digital camera and try it out!!!

The last one is my current favorite. The implication being that we're all new at this and we're all shooting everything with Olympus, Sony, Nikon, Canon or Panasonic. It's a pretty fair assumption given the sheer numbers of bloggers and camera sites on the web. Outside of www.Luminous-Landscape.com you won't find many sites that have a depth of experience, and user/members, with experience in buying and using medium format digital cameras. The reasons are pretty simple, the MF cameras are ruinously expensive for most people and the compelling uses for them are more or less rarified in this day and age of everything going to the web.

But in my defense I think I should point out that three different companies started sending me medium format digital cameras (and attendant lenses) to test and review around 2009, and occasionally we still get the random, big-ass camera tossed over to us through the transom.

In 2009 I took possession of a Leaf Aptus a7i medium format digital camera and a 180mm f2.8 Schneider lens for the better part of two months. That camera was built like a rock but it had its own handling issues. Still, the 40 megapixel images were enormous at the time. The biggest thing from Canon back then was a whopping 16 megapixels.... I shot a bunch of portraits with the combo and I liked the way the lens rendered portrait subjects very much. But the camera was clunky to use and at around $40,000 for the camera and one lens it seemed a bit out of whack in the market of the day. A wonderful image surrounded by too many caveats. For me.

The next camera we got on long term loan was the Mamiya budget MF camera of the time with a 29 megapixel sensor. While they sent along a nice zoom I much preferred the images I got out of the camera coupled with a 150mm f3.5 manual focus lens I had for the Mamiya 645e. Was that camera any good? Well, we got a lot of images like this one....

...So I could never really complain about the image quality under good lighting. Though most of the medium format digital cameras previous to last year had issues with noise once one crested the 400 ISO mark.

But again, the camera crossed over the intersection of cost versus performance at a different quadrant of the curves than I thought was good and so, after a few months of evaluation and a nicely done review in a photography magazine distributed to other professionals, I sent the package back to the manufacturer and soldiered on with the 35mm form factor cameras I had as my regular tools. 

The next camera was a Phase One camera that boasted (yet again) 40 megapixels and a much improved interface. I wrote about it pretty extensively and used it for more portraits but it was as expensive the previous Leaf camera and, after I used it to make many images for my book on studio lighting it got packed up and sent back as well. The review for that camera got published in Studio Photographer Magazine. I didn't notice any great uptick in acquisition of the units after my review came out but I was happy to have had the opportunity to live with the camera for a couple of months. 

Kirk in Studio with Leaf A7i camera.

The Phase One. Sitting on top of my wooden tripod. 

What I discovered in almost every engagement with the three medium format cameras above and the Leica S variants I have worked with since is that the lenses are critical and that the sensors in most of the MF cameras need to be bigger. Not denser, just physically bigger from side to side and top to bottom. The thing that makes MF images look better (to my eye) is the way the lens draws on the bigger surface area of the sensor. 

I keep get lured back in. But my new search is to find ever faster lenses that are still good near wide open for the two full frame cameras I have in house. I'd love the longer lenses of MF for the same angle of view but I'm still not convinced that the small difference in overall look is worth the investment. I see these systems the way cinematographers see high end production movie cameras; they rent them when they need them and bring them back to the rental houses when they wrap. I've rented several of the cameras from several sources when I felt the need for something that looked entirely different to me and my clients, and every time I breathed a sigh of relief when I returned the gear. 

But I would like my newer readers to understand that when I make these kinds of choices for myself ( renting versus owning? Shooting everything with one system?)  I do it with the background of having actually shot with five or six different medium format camera samples over a cumulative time frame of about a year. My opinions are rarely the result of having read and then parroted back something that some else wrote on the web. I have lifted the weights of medium format and broken a sweat with the 16 bit machines. So please stop recommending that I "try" one. Believe me, I have. I just can't justify using it to shoot images for websites and I'd rather put that kind of money into a retirement account. Your mileage may vary. 

At this point I think the new flurry of high resolution Nikon, Canon and even Sony cameras are a very good and sensible compromise. 

A quick advertising note: Craftsy is offering a bunch of course at up to 50% off. It's a good way to learn new stuff. You might want to browse their photo offerings. I'll be looking at the cooking classes.....   Here's the link!

Don't optimize your purchase, optimize your technique

The hot wide angle lens on the market right now is the Nikon 14-24 mm 2.8 zoom. And it's a technological tour de force. Exotic lens elements. Nano coating. Hyper Drive focusing (I made that up). And the consensus is that, wide open, it trounces all the lenses in the focal range. By a long shot. It's currently around $1,800 US. If you shoot fast and wide you'll want one whether or not you are a Nikon shooter. Very cool.

But....what if you're a different kind of shooter? What if your wide angle work is outside in the middle of the day? What if you had the good sense to use some of your money to buy a great tripod? What if you'd rather spend your money on food and shelter?

Here's the secret that drives lens junkies crazy: All good lenses are great two stops down from wide open. Almost without exception. Take a 14-24 Nikon and compare it to an Sigma 10-20mm lens and at f5.6 or f8 you'll probably be amazed to find that they are pretty darn close.

This is something I learned a long time ago in two different ways from two different people. Charlie Guerrero (Master Photographer par excellence) showed me on an old Leica that the 35 mm f2.8 Elmarit was actually much sharper than the Summicron 35mm f2 inspite of the fact that, at the time the Sumi was four times the price of the Elmarit. Stopped down to f4 they were pretty even but at 5.6 and 8 the Elmarit walked away with it. Same thing with 50 mm lenses. If you test them at f4, f5.6 and f8 the 50mm f2 lenses absolutely school the 50 1.4 lenses. In fact Charlie used to take cheap lenses and expensive lenses and do a test for our students. He'd have them shoot the pricey lens handheld in regular daylight while shooting the cheaper lenses on a tripod. Same aperture, same shutter speed (well about the "one over the focal length" rule...) and whatever lens was on the tripod was clearly better.

Erwin Puts, an expert about Leica lens design explains in detail why it takes a factor of 16 more precision to grind a lens one stop faster than another lens. His postulate is that all things equal the slower lens is the better lens by dint of manufacturing tolerances.

All I know is that I put my cameras on tripods when I'm looking for high quality and I try to shoot my lenses two stops down from wide open whenever quality is more important than mobility.

The shot above was done with an old, used Olympus 11-22mm zoom lens. One of the lenses that originally came out at the launch of the now "antiquated" Olympus e1 in 2003. Even though I'm using consumer grade Olympus cameras with my 11-22 I find it wonderfully sharp, contrasty and well corrected when I shoot it correctly.

I guess the point of this blog is that the lens isn't nearly as important as we make it out to be. I used to buy all kinds of super fast lenses until I came to realize that I like to see an adequate amount of things in focus. When I made this earth shattering discovery it just naturally followed that I came to believe technique to be worth more than expenditure.

Maybe it's just human nature to resent buying one's way into a craft. I think we love the idea of succeeding with egalitarian tools. As the year progresses and I spend more time shooting and less time shopping I seem to be finding that the enjoyment is not so much in attaining perfection as in having fun. And having some cash left over to buy a round at happy hour.

Loving the 11-22mm and all my recent down market purchases. I love relying on my vision more than on my wallet.

Practice makes competent. Plus some Sunday observations.

I don't believe anything I read on the web or hear from other photographers about cameras. If I did I would be walking around with a Nikon D3 or a Canon 5dmk2 and some giant zoom lenses. Okay. That's a bit of hyperbole. There are a few people out there who are pretty good at making the right case for the right camera but we don't always see eye to eye because there are so many factors besides sharpness and noise to consider.

Most of my friends think I'm crazy for getting rid of all the Nikon, Kodak and Fuji stuff and moving back to the Olympus cameras. And given the parameters that they think are vital they might be right for them. But after my first full week with my Olympus stuff I'm more and more certain that I made the right choice for me. And here's the kicker: I didn't make my choices based on the great reviews given the e620 and e30 Olympus cameras. Didn't give that part much thought. The lenses were half of the decision making process but the other half was pure romance. I'd just never gotten over my largely illogical but sincere and quixotic attraction for the e1 cameras. The e1 with the battery attachment always fit my hand better than anything I'd ever used and the darn things worked.

I'd let my brain be swayed by logical arguments into turning against the e1's when the megapixel wars started to heat up. "The AA filter is too strong!" everyone said, "You'll never get any sharp detail with an e1!" Then, in true herd fashion all the photographers I know decided that the only way to shoot was in raw. It must be raw to be professional. And it was obvious that the buffer in the e1 was just too slow. Gotta have the speed. The next thing was the enormous amount of time it took for Olympus to get the next professional camera out onto the market. "They just can't compete in the professional section of the market!"

Well. I bought the e30 camera last week so I could give the art directors who care a real 12 megapixel file without any explanations. And I bought some cool lenses so I'd be ready for wide ranging jobs like the three or four annual reports we do each year. But I really did it so I could keep shooting my own stuff with the e1's.

When you buy a new system, or return to an old system, it's vital to go out and burn it in. Shoot two or three hundred shots a day until your mind and your hands remember where the controls are and just how far you can go before you start burning out detail or blocking up shadows. I think the eye-hand-mind-camera interface is important to your success as an image maker. Much more so than which camera or lens you use. When I took a class with Gary Winograd back at UT in the 1970's he suggested that we take our Leica rangefinders with us to the movies, to dinner and anywhere else we were headed and practice setting the controls without even looking at the camera. We got to know how many shutter detent clicks it took to go from 1/500th of a second o 1/15th of a second in the dark. Most of us could load a Leica in the dark. For many of us a Leica M3 or M2 was our only camera and we knew just by the sound what our shutter speed was set at.

So much of the auditory and tactile references have been obliterated by new camera design. How do you count detent clicks when changing the shutter speed is done with a button and a spinny dial? Sure you an see the display in the dark but the whole idea is to be able to set it without bringing the camera to your eye or into your subjects consciousness until the moment you need it.

I knew that I'd forgotten so much of the e1 feel so after lunch today I went total photo geek. It's 105(f) here today so I put on the Khaki shorts and my rugged walking sandals. I rummaged thru the closet to find my white Columbia shirt that's made out of the really thin fabric that blocks UV and wicks away sweat. And I grabbed my rickety old Panama hat that's been sat on by several different assistants. Drank a big glass of water and headed downtown.

Nothing much happens in downtown Austin in the middle of a Sunday afternoon in the dead of Summer. The street people were out but there wasn't anyone to panhandle from. They were heading to the shelters. Heading to the library. Heading for new shade. No tourist on the streets. A few insane natives sitting at the outdoor tables at some of the restaurants on 2nd street. Car fumes and reflected heat from acres of black top swirling around them. Desperately trying to read the paper with salt sweat burning their eyes......

And then there was me. Walking down the sidewalk with an Olympus e1 fitted with a 50mm f2 macro lens. This wasn't a "looking for adventure" type of afternoon excursion. It was a "dial it in" afternoon. How well does the spot meter track the actual exposure? Where does the sharpening work best? How wide an aperture can you shoot with and still get sharp images? How well does the auto white balance work? what tricks it?

The beauty of a simple camera with straightforward menu selections is that once you've set the parameters you've come to trust there's very little reason to fire up the "menu" switch again. The ISO, WB, Compensation, and meter settings are all accessible via dedicated buttons.

I found some rotating doors on an old government building that I'd never seen before. I might actually get some images for my "industrial decay" portfolios. I found a painted sign (Joseph's) that just saw the light of day after decades of seclusion behind another building. I think the file I've posted is perfect in all regards. I shot stuff inside an old parking garage at ISO 400 and I'll be damned if I can find the noise I'm supposed to be tripping over.

Here's my quicky assessment after four quality hours in the Texas sun: The 50mm Macro lens is really great. I'm building a small altar for it in my studio. I put the camera down an hour or so ago and I already miss it. I'm so pleased with the files. The camera, even with the battery attachment, has a demur and stealthy feel. Especially with the smaller lens. My experience today makes me wistful. Here's why. I think Olympus made the perfect digital camera and nobody "got it." When I tried to explain why I got rid of my D700 i fumbled around with the foibles of a value system in a culture that doesn't really believe that inanimate objects can contain energy and intention. I blurted out that I didn't like the D700 because it didn't have a soul. And I really believe it with the same intensity that Shinto priests believe that all of nature, the rocks and all, have spirit. The D700 is the ultimate camera for a technologist because it "measures" well and tests well, and for some people it performs well.
It always vexed me. The monitor was indifferent to my need for consistency. Change ambient light, change monitor rendering. The files were always technically perfect and lifeless. Which may say more about me than the camera.

The opposite is true for the e1 and in fact for the e system in general. There are so many technical "gotcha's". The screens on the back are small and low resolution. The files are "plagued" with a new malady called, "low per pixel sharpness!". And to most reviewers all but the latest Olympus cameras are saddled with more ugly noise than all the early heavy metal music pumped through giant speakers in the back of a teenager's car. But. But. These cameras have soul. They connect with your hand and your heart.

I'll understand if you don't think this is rational. It's certainly not measurable. But none the less it's how I view the whole deal. Do I wish that Olympus cameras had great flash performance like the Nikons? You bet. Do I wish they had the high ISO noise profile of the Canon full frame cameras? You bet. But they've got at least two things going in their favor: They have wonderful lenses (and very rational focal lengths). And they have soul, energy and spirit. ( I wonder if this is easier to explain in Japanese?)

RAW VERSUS JPEG REVISITED.

I had coffee the other day with an old friend and he was talking about the Will Crockett, "Kill it and Bill it" philosophy. In a nutshell it goes something like this: With a good light meter, good work habits and well profiled cameras and assorted support gear you should be able to nail your images in Jpeg such that they need NO adjustment or post processing. No butt time. No layers and layers of adjustment and plug in massage.

I think he's right. Sure, if I was photographing the landing of Alien Beings in quickly changing light at Opray's wedding on assignment for National Geographic Magazine I'd probably hedge my bets and shoot in Raw. But for most of the stuff we shoot SHQ or highest quality Jpeg seems to be pretty fabulous. After hearing about this I've embraced it as a bit of a challenge and I'm getting a lot more careful about using and assessing my incident meter as well as shooting tests while tethered so I can have a much better idea of what the screen on the back of the camera is telling me as related to the image on the calibrated studio monitor. Even if I revert to shooting RAW I'd like to think that the practice will make the raw conversion process quicker and more effective. And even in raw lack of perfect exposure exacts a penalty. Always.

In a roundabout way I consider highest res Jpeg the "real" professional's format. Anyone can shoot sloppy raw and fix stuff. In a way it's like the old slide film versus negative film argument. The lab was the raw converter for the negative film. Interesting that the newest cameras give an unequalled amount of feedback, information and control and yet we feel constrained to hedge our bets even more. Where is the sense of challenge? Of mastery? Ultimately, where is the sense of control?

Finally, I've been reading a lot of books from my Publisher, Amherst Media. Most of the books I've read through lately are squarely aimed at portrait and wedding photographers. And when I first started going through them I was a bit dismissive about the information because we always saw ourselves as somehow more sophisticated if we shot advertising and corporate that the guys who did weddings and portraits. Fat chance. The one thing that comes thru loud and clear is the fact that there aren't any dilettantes in this group of writer/photographers. To their credit they see their business as a business and they have mastered the most important part. Not the purchasing and testing of new equipment. They've learned how to market and sell.

I learned something brilliant in nearly every copy I read. Cliff Hollenbeck's book was superb. It pays to read what other parts of our industry are doing. Just as many ASMP and other editorial photographers have discovered this decade: There's money in weddings and babies.

MARKETING NOTE: If you like the blog take a moment to check out my second book over on Amazon. I feel like it's the bastard stepchild. We named it, Minimalist Lighting: Professional Techniques for Studio Photography, because many of the lighting techniques were done in the studio or with studio lights. That's led a number of potential readers to bypass it because they don't have studios or they have perception that they'll need a studio to use the techniques. But, in fact, the theories and practicals are absolutely universal, and the book is full of good info about lighting in general. Maybe just go to the page and read the reviews......get your library to order a copy.


Finally, If you didn't find today's entry particularly scintillating or relevant, or you find it downright bizarre just remember I've spent most of the day walking around in the heat. The temperature may have addled my brain cells. Have a great week.

A new strategy for buying cameras. Circa 2009.

Ceiling detail from the Alexander Palace in Pushkin, just outside of St. Petersburg, Russia. 1995.

If you were alive and shooting in the time of film you worked with the presumption that you would buy camera bodies and lenses and then use them until the little cogs and gears were worn down to nubins, then you would sell them all to your first assistant and retire. The image on the left was shot in the time of non obsolescence with the epitome of that breed of camera, the Hasselblad medium format film camera. This shot is most likely from an SWC/M wide angle camera but we didn't have exif in those days so I'll never know. Film was the thing that got outmoded but we could remedy that by buying newer and better film. Although sometimes the film was merely newer.

I caught myself being stupid over the last four years. I was using a film business model in the acquisition and retention of camera bodies. I was buying digital SLR's as though they would last a lifetime. In one sense, they might. The Kodak DCS 760's that I adore are well made and seem to go on forever. But what i really mean is that every two years there is either a doubling of resolution or the introduction of a "can't live without" feature that compels us to rush out and buy another body.

So I looked in the drawer and there were generations of cameras. Fuji S2's S3's and S5's (and I couldn't bear to get rid of them because i'd gotten "magic" files with each of them.....) Nikon d300's, d2x's, and D700's. Old lenses that were purported to be magical, like the Nikkor 50mm 1.1.2 and the 105mm 2.5 and so many more that hadn't be used in years. Like the 28mm f2 that I bought because all the reviews raved about it. It never focused well on a D2x so it sat in the drawer.

We are quoted a price to trade in our older bodies that seems laughably low so we keep them and justify this by calling the body a "back up".......as though we'll go back and use the antiquated thing in the uncomfortable case that our main (and brutally expensive) main body dies prematurely. We won't.

When budgets were rising and work was plentiful the strategy was relatively harmless because we could assuage our longings for more and our nostalgia for the recently retired cameras by shrewd applications of massive cash flow. And are we really doing anyone a favor with all the equipment overkill anyway?

I don't think so and here's why: Since the beginning of the recession over two years ago clients have moved relentlessly to the web. I hardly need to tell anyone here that you don't need four or five thousand pixels on a side to make a good web image. Some magazines have lost 70% of their ad pages. When they fold they'll never be back. We might fantasize (while in front of the camera case) that we'll be shooting double trucks again before long but it might be a couple of years and by then the $8,000 wondertool that we crave today will be old news and ready for the scrapheap. Do you have more downtime than you really want? If so, do you want to spend it with an extra $8000 to $12000 worth of camera inventory?

I took a hard look at the kind of work we're doing lately. The one thing that seems to not go out of style is the need to light things well. If we light them well then we don't need peerless high ISO performance. Oh I'm sure someone will chime in and say that we do but I notice an interesting phenomenon: The ultra pro shooters who demanded super high ISO performance in their 35mm based DLSLR's moved into medium format DSLR's for a spell and never whispered a peep about the high ISO output of those $30,000 cameras. Which are not anywhere near as good as a $1,000 Canon or Nikon....

If you shoot weddings or sports I don't begrudge you the best high ISO tool you can find but if you are shooting advertising, corporate work or studio portraits you don't need (or probably use) anything over ISO 400, maybe 800 in a pinch.

So why go crazy on the bodies. It's the lenses that retain their value.

With that in mind, here's my new buying strategy: I'm buying up the pro level Olympus glass for the E system but I'm swearing to only buy camera bodies that are less than $800. I'll keep em for a year and then trade em for whatever comes out next. That way I'll always have the current sensor technology without the investment in the "talisman of power" that the high end cameras represent.

Don't believe me? That's okay because I'm not always right. But I ran into John Isaac the other day (big time Olympus shooter) and he was sporting the e620. Swore it's his favorite camera. Cost? $599. His take? Superb.

Just a thought. Lenses for the long haul, bodies year by year. No matter which system you favor. Because even when the megapixel hysterics wear out we'll still have dynamic range to drive the market.

I've sent off most of the Nikon and Kodak inventory. For jobs that require (and pay for) the high end gear I'll gladly rent. For all the rest I'll be happy with the 12 megapixel bodies that are now $599 and blow away anything that was available for less than $5,000 just five years ago.

Works for me. Might not work for you.

Hope everyone is staying cool.

I stepped back in time yesterday and bought a Nikon F4

It's silly.  The tidal wave of progress long since ground the champion cameras of yesteryear to the ocean floor of photography to be compacted over time into an archeological layer that future scholars will dislodge with tepid interest.  I couldn't help it.  The Nikon F4 (film) camera represented a revolution in so many ways.  It was the first professional autofocus camera.  It was the first of the Nikon F series cameras to come with a self contained motor drive.  One of the first cameras to include "predictive" autofocus.

From a manufacturing point of view it was the pinnacle intersection of mechanical and electronic symbiosis.  A blend of 1700 parts.  Each chosen to be the best ever crafted for this kind of tool.  The inner shell of the body was constructed with a specially concocted alloy that boasted incredible strength while also dampening vibration and shock.  The view through the eyepeice was designed to introduce as little dissonance between the object as it was and the object as it was observed.  Even the metering was new and spectacular.

But why would I fling $200 away on a piece of antiquated industrial art in the age of digital?  Well, precisely because this is the age of digital.

Let me explain.  In one or two generations the camera manufacturers will advance the craft of digital camera making in a number of ways.  One of which will be the removal of the moving mirror which must lift up to make an exposure and then drop down again into order to allow the photographer to see through the finder.  SLR cameras that still feature this sort of "thru the lens" viewing require precision ground, silver pentaprisms of extremely high quality glass.  The best are still pretty much hand finished.  The mirror mechanism in the professional cameras has to be engineered to rise and fall up to 12 times per second which requires appreciable mass to be started, accelerated and then stopped in milliseconds. The mirror mechanism also requires a highly precise shutter to shield the sensor from light until the exact moment of tightly timed, and highly repeatable exposure.  All this costs money while introducing less reliability than a totally electronic camera.  It costs lots more money.

So the drive is on to drive cost from professional grade cameras.  The first thing to go will be the pentaprism and the beautiful image projected optically through the finder.  The next thing to go will be the mechanical shutter.  In one fell swoop every mechanical connection between man and camera will be eliminated.  Withdrawn.  And this is generally a good thing for both camera manufacturers and people who will never experience a "real" camera because both will save money.  And the difference in images may not even amount to a hill of beans.

But it seems as though the tactile integration of man and machine will be greatly diminished.  Like a race car driver who can no longer shift gears.  A mechanic with computers but no tools.  A chef with a microwave.  The Nikon F4 represents to me the collective drive that existed in the last cenury to make a machine that wasn't sensible and efficient (or worse, cost effective), not the best in a category,  not just "good enough"  but the very best machine that could be built, for its intended purpose,  with no holds barred.  And in my mind it's come to represent something that's missing from our digital culture:  The Pursuit of Creating the Most Excellent Art Possible.  No excuses.

Since we capitulated to the power of the web, and the implied cost effectiveness of digital cameras, we've gone down a sinister path that may be more devastating to our culture than the present economic disaster.  We've allowed ourselves, collectively, to be subdued by the economics of process progress.  The web represents the lowest common denominator of quality precisely because every image placed upon it is a compromise between size and quality. Resolution and loading time.  Color depth and quickness.  Surrendering to the idea that color is just relative since no two monitors will perform identically.  We work with the expectation that everything will turn out to be crappier looking than ever before so we aim for that target.

The economic fear that we live with is already reducing the number of printed magazine pages, month by month. The driver of the professional digital camera market has been a relentless pursuit of higher and higher resolution but that will become increasingly meaningless as the drive to the web accelerates.  Even ad agencies are finding ways to make "social marketing" and "networking" profitable (in direct opposition to the intention of social networking......) which will further decay the need for true quality.

As the demand for large prints diminished so will the demand for the last remaining photographic labs and their master printers.  All photographic art will be destined for the screen or the wild interpretations of ink jet printers on papers of dubious quality and keeping potential.  We, as a culture, will have done to art exactly what we have done to the DVD player and the hamburger:  We will have commodified it, driven it brutally to it's lowest price with all the attendant compromises and we will have sucked the "humanism" out of the process in a vain and egalitarian attempt to make all things accessible to all people.

So, the F4 convinces me that the expedition in search of excellence is still part of human nature....even though it is temporarily in hibernation.  The feel of the camera is superb.  The feedback of the shutter and mirror noise is sensuous.  And the looks of my photographic peers are priceless as they try to figure out just what the hell I'm up to now.

Bottom line:  You owe it to yourself to go out and buy the industrial art of your era.  The Nikon F2's, F3's and F4's.  The Leica M3's, M4's, M5's and M6's.  The portable Hermes typewriter.  The Linn Sondek turntable or the Luxman tube amplifiers.  Once they disappear, like spirits and whimsy in old fairy tales, they disappear forever.  And over time the tool, and the imperative it represented recede and finally vanish.

That's why I bought a used F4.

Note.  I'm doing a little experiment.  I'm buying color film from Costco.  It's Fuji 400 speed color print film and it can be had for around a dollar and change per roll.  Each roll gives you 24 individual frames to fill.  When you've got a handful of the rolls shot you take them back to Costco where their lab develops the film and color corrects and prints the film and finally puts all the images on a disk for a very low price.  Then I'll come home and look at them.  And I'll be happy that the images exist in a physical form.  That they can be physically cataloged and reinterpreted.  It's comforting.