Almost forgot about this video. Seems working with gimbals can be fun. All done with Panasonic GH and G cameras. A blast from back in 2020. Just a quick retrospective.

 https://vimeo.com/462396471

Video still frame. Chanel as Tina Turner.

I'm not doing video production these days. It's too time consuming to do right. And I guess my interest is more focused on enjoying photography. But I do really like some of the projects we did just before and right after the onset of the pandemic. This one in particular is a favorite because I think the footage looks good in spite of having to work quickly, without a video crew and with minimal lighting assist from the theater vis-a-vis stage lighting. Shot back in late Summer of 2020.

Currently parceling out microphones, mixers, etc. to young filmmakers. That's fun too.

Last year's model. Cameras as a fashion statement.

Fashion is predicated, to a certain extent, on making aesthetic gestures and flourishes different from season to season and from year to year. As in most industries there are influencers in fashion who drive the dialog about who will wear what in the upcoming months. The clothes that are custom made and worn by super models on the catwalks of Paris, Milan and NYC are the referents for high productions of the same basic styles in the mass retail markets, but at a lesser price, made lower by the magic of mass production. Some fashion, conservative and aimed at the highest demographics, stands the test of time and becomes iconic, almost immune to going "out of fashion." The Chanel inspired "little black dress" or the classic Armani blazer. Oxford dress shoes (not Brogues --- according to a reference from the movie, "The Kingsman.") and the meme-worthy black turtleneck shirts, a la Steve Jobs. 

A lot of over the top fashion is meant to shock or amaze. Most fashion trends are tired and over with in a short stretch of time. The influencers move on the next rhinestone studded frock or Nehru collared blouse, only this year they are available in different colors and with subtle changes to shapes and fabrics. They also switch from Summer to Winter and all the seasons in between.

All of the above refers to wearable fashion. Especially in the realm of ready to wear. 

Funny. I feel as though this is the year we embraced annually depreciable fashion in camera buying, fully and without acknowledging a sense of irony and excess. 

For a while, during the arc of improvement in digital camera technology we had reasons and rationales for rapid but fake obsolescence we felt in the camera market. Improvements in sensor tech and image processing tech kept giving us less noise, more dynamic range, faster AF and more resolution. Given a facile and quick ability to switch from camera to camera one could, at least theoretically, continue to mine the improvements in successive generations. Not "upgrading" seemed a false economy.

But in the last five or even seven years, if you were looking for excellent image quality and ease of use, all the top level cameras had already made the grade and were delivering the goods. Everything afterwards were just tiny, incremental improvements. Not observably better than what you already had nestled in the folds of that Billingham bag. 

But the influencers have now turned to camera fashion. How do I know? I gauge it by how many "influencers" on YouTube have, this year or the end of last year, flocked to cameras like the Leica Q2 and have elevated them to almost mythical, "must have" status. Even though the Q2 was already long in the tooth, not nearly as well spec'd as many cheaper alternatives and even deprived of the usual "helpful" features like in camera charging, input and output ports, phase detect AF ( which amateurs use to measure the times before and after camera evolutions into the "acceptable" category). 

Now cameras like the Leica Q2 are getting more attention in the influencer space than top Sony, Nikon and Canon professional cameras. Gen Z has become fascinated with Leica M series film cameras. The Ricoh GR111 and GR111X are now getting massive attention by everyone who couldn't find a Fuji X100V which is also an influencer driven camera.  Perhaps the ultimate influencer driven camera. Cameras as fashion. Cameras as a statement. Millions of the same camera sold to help you express your own individuality. Frankly, even though I am often eager to follow along, in retrospect it's just downright embarrassing. 

And it's not just cameras. Consider the move from the good, old fashioned camera strap that came packaged for free with your new camera. The strap demanded an upgrade to the Domke strap or the Tamrac strap (my favorite) and the rationale was being able to instantly unhook the camera from the bulk of the strap and use the camera freehand. This was quickly followed by an excruciatingly unfashionable evolution to the Black Rapid straps; mostly worn bandolier style and oh so ugly. The platform shoe of camera straps. Or perhaps the combat boot of straps. These have been replaced in short order by the Peak Design Straps which, as far as I can see, boast only that you can quickly detach or reattach your camera equally quickly via the red disk anchors, complete with delicate "strings." Each permutation or strap fashion change costing more and more. Now? Oh, the fashion forward photographer has eschewed all manner of shoulder or body strap and now embraces the "hand" strap. Just enough fabric and poly-something to hook your camera to one wrist. Unless you hanker after a newly re-traditional neck strap from Arti Di Mano at a cool $228 (Arte di Mano Reinforced Comodo Neck Strap - Minerva Black with Black Stitching). And then we've gone full circle. $228 for a camera strap when you can get one for free in the box? And I complained about expensive batteries --- what was I thinking?

Ten years ago all the buzz was around speed lights. Now an influencer would not be caught dead shooting with one. LED lights had their ascendency until the new sensors with noise free performance in cameras came along, which doomed using any lighting at all. So much talent now unleashed. 

But back to cameras....

Seems to me that the old Leica M series film rangefinders have become the "little black dress" of the fashion world while everything else is a nod to ever-changing fashion. Everything else is more Thierry Mugler and Versace and much more topical. And Leica has assumed an immediacy in the minds of so many YouTube photo enthusiasts....

I was struck by watching three videos by photo fashion plate, Peter McKinnon. In short order he embraced a Leica Q2 which then gave way to a Leica SL2-S which was trumped by a Leica film camera which he is just now learning to operate  (poorly). But he has expressed that he's now driven to explore film cameras because ----- "digital has no soul." This from an influencer whose sole experience over the course of his always on camera career has been with digital cameras. 

Then I watched YouTube influencer, Evan Raft, bumble through a Leica SL2 to a Leica Q2 transition and basically give up in despair before going back and trying Leica yet again. Apparently the lure of the click throughs was too great to deny.  No question that either Peter and/or Evan can make good photographs and may even make money directly from their photographs, but my bet is that the bulk of their incomes are from performances as camera reviewers and lifestyle influencers. Expert at driving legions of people to buy stuff and then, subsequently, reject it all the instant a new product comes into fashion. 

Ever practical James Popsys evolved on his channel from Panasonic M4:3 cameras to full frame Panasonic cameras to Sony cameras (which he suggested were the just right) until --- Lo and behold! He showed up on his channel one day fondling his latest purchase --- a Leica M digital camera and 50mm lens. Today's video compares the performance differences between the Leica rangefinder and his Sony A7xx camera. He can see no differences.... Tune in to see what's next. 

Likewise, Thomas Heaton, whose videos are long on cameras and vans and objects like tripods and propane RV stoves while wandering around endlessly in various UK landscapes getting cold and wet and muttering about not being able to find the "good light." Which is, I guess, okay with everyone who subscribes to his channel. And, admittedly, looking at someone's landscape work over and over again would get awfully boring. But he does a good job at showing his audience just how miserable it can be to go outside and chase after the perfect landscape in an area beset by frost and rain and....flat light.

I bring this all up because, absent a personal profit motive there are really, very, very few reasons to "upgrade" through various cameras now other than to stay abreast of the latest fashion trends. 

A few years back I had lunch with Elliott Erwitt when he was here in town. (Big and obvious name dropping...)  He was carrying a Leica M7 and a 50mm Summicron. Shooting film. Mostly Tri-X. But he never mentioned his camera. It was just there; hanging off his shoulder. He gave no reviews. He didn't sing its praises. He shot it sparingly, as the opportunities arose but his conversation revolved around life, food, art and travel experiences. The camera was, to him, as comfortable as a favorite sweater or a well broken in pair of shoes. Nothing you needed to talk about. Nothing you needed to rush out and buy. Easy for him to say...

Of course Erwitt wasn't making his money hawking cameras and being camera stylish. He was earning money the old fashioned photographer way: He was selling prints of his images to an audience that loved,....the images. Not the camera. Prints made by cameras so primitive that most current generation photographers would be baffled by their operation. Which speaks volumes in itself. (Where is the USB plug on a Leica M3??? Why can't I find the light meter switch? Why does the bottom come off? What? No wireless charging?).

It's funny to me that, as I wind down client driven work the desire to buy cameras for client's sake, which was my my rationale for camera churning, has also wound down. I had coffee with a very wise and dear friend this morning. I mentioned that without the profit motive the act of buying new cameras had become less and less fun. Less rewarding. And without an active audience of fellow photographers to oooh and ahh over a new purchase the buying buzz became so much less buzzy.

He responded that without a good, solid rationale behind the purchase of new gear the purchase itself was bereft of justifiable value. And by extension, much pleasure. 

It's been a while since I bought a new camera. Nothing seems to tickle my acquisitive bones. Nothing has persuaded me to click, "purchase." 

Kind of nice. Less gear to worry about. But I'll quickly lose my photo-fashion credentials without the requisite and showy purchases of new gear --- if I had any credentials to begin with. 

Turn up those collars, grab a pair of Guccis and make sure you have a matching camera to complete the outfit. Yikes ----- photography has now extended its reach into yearly fashion turnover. What next?

Oh...and just so you know....new tripod purchases are so.....last year. As are gimbals. And please....try not to show up with a long zoom. So gauche. 

So, if Leica rangefinders are the perennial "little black Chanel dresses". What are the rest of the cameras? 

I guess Sony would be the Abercrombie and Fitch selection. Nikon for Eddie Bauer and Canon as the Gap plus Old Navy of cameras. Fuji seems very comfortable as Lulu Lemon while Pentax brings up the rear as Burberry's; the classic belted trench coat of cameras...  Olympus has become a Costco store brand of stretch waist Cargo shorts while Panasonic is toiling away trying to become the Carhartt's of photography. An exception for their MF cameras, those are aspiring Tactical 5.11 wannabes.

Sorry, just got so tired of the car analogies....

Revised: Leica, the Hermes of cameras.... That's all I've got. 

 

Revisiting an image from a Sunday afternoon at Willie Nelson's ranch. Reading in the national news about a friend performing with Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones....

 

Selena R. 

It's an odd end to the week. I got a request to bid on a video project for a pharmaceutical company. Came in via email about 10 minutes after I said to myself, "I wish I had a fun video project to do so I could get some use out of that new GH6...". I'll bid on the adventure and see where it goes. I did a good photo project for the same company last year and they seem to have come back around to us based on the success of that campaign.

The bidding process for video is so arcane. Mostly because you can never tell how long the edit will take. People love to make endless changes to video timelines. And endless tweaks to the motion graphics. Shooting the footage is actually the easy part.

No guarantee that I'll get the project but I decided to pull out the two gimbals we use most for stabilization and make sure the rechargeable batteries are still good. They should be okay since we put them on their chargers every three or four months.

Not sure I want to get pulled back into all the minutia of a project that requires models/talent/actors but I'm hoping that's what a good producer is for. I have one in mind. Ran into her at a recent event. She's still working on film and video productions here in Austin. It's always nice to hand off stuff like casting...

Another odd thing this week. Do you remember the video I did of Chanel as Billie Holiday at Zach Theatre? https://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/search?q=chanel+video

Here is Chanel performing for the fundraiser video we created content back in the Summer of 2020. It's her Tina Turner character: https://vimeo.com/462396471  (Shot with a G9 on a gimbal, incidentally...). 

Anyway, back in the fog of Covid I heard that she auditioned for and won the role of Tina Turner in a live theatrical production in the West End, London. Big time. Amazing show. Famous venue.

I was very pleased for her. 

Then I read this week in the New York Times (or maybe it was the Washington Post....the heat, remember?) a short article saying that just last week, near the end of the run of the show, the management let her go. Apparently she'd been invited to perform with the Rolling Stones, in concert, in Milan, Italy. In order to sing with Mick Jagger she had to miss one performance of the Tina show. Not a tough choice in my book. I'd pick the Rolling Stones every time. 

At any rate it seemed strange to read about all the drama in a national newspaper. Chanel is quite a talented performer. I just didn't know she was that famous. 

**********

I photographed with the new (to me) Leica CL today. It was way too hot to do anything complex or even anything that required much effort. In the end I posted one photo of some chairs. Summer is starting to wear on all of us here in Austin. If I walk through the neighborhood in the evening I can sometimes hear the families in their homes praying together that the power not go out and that the air conditioning continue to work. 

I hope their prayers are heard. Coolness is good. 

A few thoughts on loss and learning to live with changes one doesn't like... Oh, and cameras.

Kenny Williams at Zach. The Ghost of Christmas Past.

I have been photographing Christmas plays at Zach Theatre for nearly 30 years. I loved taking pictures of the last three or four years of Zach's amazing and modern interpretation of "Christmas Carol." Many of the cast members have been friends for a long time. The music in the show has always been incredible and mostly sourced from current and recent popular music. It changes year to year.

I would leave the dress rehearsals of the holiday shows with easily more than 1,000 images per show and I'd love 90% of them. I have  photographed the productions with everything from Hasselblad film cameras to the current Lumix cameras, and every size and variety of camera in between. I've seen the images plastered all over newspapers, magazines and community circulars, I've smiled big, toothy grins when I pulled season brochures out of the mail box, and I've hung on to every holiday postcard Zach's marketing crew has produced with my images. 

By this part of the season, in normal times, I would have already photographed a few early rehearsals, some dance rehearsals, and now we'd be getting ready for this Tuesday's big dress rehearsal on the Topfer Stagefor a last non-stop run through before playing to a full house on the day after Thanksgiving. 

But not this year. No, with the increasing spread of Covid-19 everywhere, the Zach board made the decision not to have any indoor shows for the rest of the year, and well into 2021. I didn't think I would take it so hard but I seem to be having trouble accepting that one of my favorite productions of the season, the year, and maybe all time, will not be happening this time season. I won't get to sit in my special, reserved row with a bucket of cameras and boxes of lenses at my side, capturing the magic of it all. I won't get to see the triumph on the faces of the new, young actors as they get over their stage jitters, pull out all the stops and sing a song that makes the audiences jump to their feet to applaud. I won't get to laugh and be amazed by Serrett's incredible make-up art or the costume shop's imaginative costuming. I won't get to cry and get a lump in my throat when some wonderful, young singer stuns us with a particularly poignant version of the song, "Halo" while Bob Cratchit's family visits Tiny Tim's grave....

And I won't get to watch Scrooge have his Christmas Eve night spiritual conversion from selfish and bitter to joyous and generous. A transformation that in some ways never fails to touch our audiences where and when it's most needed. 

Zach Theatre has plans to do an outdoor concert instead. I'm sure they'll do a great job decorating the front of the theater and parts of the plaza. They're planning to have five of the subscriber base's favorite singers. Maybe they'll get lavish and have some dancers as well. But it won't be the cast of 50 or 60 we're used to. We won't have the magnificent stage lights and lighting designs or the perfect audio environment. And we'll be at the mercy of the weather. But if I go into this with just the right attitude (and the right gratitude...) I'm sure I'll leave feeling a little lighter, a good bit happier, and better mentally equipped to make the best of an odd and mostly depressing season/year. 

At least the artists at Zach Theatre are fully embracing the old, live theater motto: The show must go on. 

On the subject of living with loss I've been unable to shake the feeling, completely that my recent medical diagnosis, and the need for a bit of surgery on my beautiful mug is some kind of marker, tossed in by the universe, to prepare me for the realization that it's all down hill from here. I know that it's both true and emphatically not true but at the same time I'm just a bit anxious about....growing older. Of course aging is much preferable to the alternative of dropping dead; but I'm still uneasy about every new spot, wrinkle, stiff muscle and oddly forgotten reason I went back into the house to get something... I watched my father become fragmented and frail, and pass away in a process that came step by step. Nothing sudden and dramatic. Just little blows inflicted one after the other until the math of existence became unworkable. I understand much more clearly now that this will happen to us all. So, now is the time to make the most of whatever sum of time and health we have in our banks. 

Stuff I'm doing to make the other stuff more fun. 

I'm going to be out of commission with stitches on my face and a stern advisory from my future surgeon that I WILL NOT be able to swim for AT LEAST SEVEN DAYS following the procedure. I figure that gives me just enough down time to watch all of Brandon Li's "Unscripted Studio" online workshop. It will be the first time I've paid full price to take an online workshop! Check out Brandon's YouTube channel and I think you'll see why I want access to what's in his brain when it comes to video production, video editing, gimbal work, and production planning. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3stPIuUoCDHG7COfwr0tEA I've been following his channel for a few months now and I'm always impressed by his teaching, his delivery and his attitude. I figure $500 is a decent investment if I can learn bunch of new film making techniques and also keep my mind off the swimming pool for a week or ten days. I'm not writing this because I'm getting anything for free from Mr. Li, I just wanted to let you know where my head is in the moment.... (that's a disclaimer...). 

Since I'll have time to work on technique I took advantage of my good friend, James's gear ADHD to pick up yet another gimbal. He's matriculated upward to the new DJI Ronin RS2 gimbal and he was ready to move his "older" Zhiyun Weebill S gimbal along for pocket change. I could not resist. The Weebill S was last year's "hot" gimbal. 

The Weebill S is lighter, much smaller and at least as capable as the Ronin S I've been playing with, and actually handles a heavier load than the older Ronin or the Zhiyun Crane V2 gimbal I started out with. I've charged the batteries but I'm  putting off working with it until I have time to really figure out all the features. That time should present itself this week as I no longer have parents I need to prepare Thanksgiving dinner for and no place we can think of to go that will be safe both "us" and "them." We're staying safe at home.

I'm renaming "Black Friday" "Weebill S Intro Day." Gimbals are wonderful tools for video production. I shot another video for my friend, Kenny at the beginning of last week and I just spent the weekend editing it. The gimbal made the shooting fun and quick. We did use a tripod....but only for about five minutes.

A few of my art friends have asked me why I've been sliding back into the GH system from Panasonic. The blame falls directly on gimbals. The camera and lens combinations of the GH system make it possible, because of their small size and low weight, coupled with high end video specs, to wring the most out of a good gimbal. I also like them. They are nicely familiar. 

The week ahead. 

We're staying close to home. I'm hitting Barton Springs Pool tomorrow morning, solo, to work on my kick and a few drills to lengthen and slow down my freestyle stroke. Tuesday and Wednesday we've got regular practices at the WHAC pool (my club pool) and then Thursday and Friday we'll celebrate the holiday and maybe Ben and I will do some running together. He's so much faster though that it's more like we're running in the same loose, geographic area at the same time. When Saturday rolls around I'll be back in the pool with the regular crew for our annual "Fat Burner" morning-after feasting marathon swim. However long it takes to burn off a big piece of homemade pecan pie is how long I'll be swimming that morning...

I'll save Sunday's swim as the antidote for all the mashed potatoes and stuffing.

Final note: After having lived in Austin (epicenter of laid back counter culture since forever) for the last fifty years I've finally broken down and bought my first pair of Birkenstock sandals. I went with the classics. The "Arizona." I will proudly wear them with socks as I break them in, and also on any days cooler than 50 degrees. I will be mercilessly teased for being "an old hippie" by my disrespectful, younger and cooler friends but I don't care. I want to discover why every millionaire and billionaire I've met --- who has dropped off the grid and checked out of corporate culture--- ends up swearing by their Birkenstocks (and the ubiquitous wool socks). Probably not recommended as winter foot wear for my friends in Calgary or Toronto...

But they sure feel comfy just hanging out on my feet, under my desk. 

Final, final note.  I am not given to depression or angst in long bouts. Those emotions hit me every once in a while, out of the blue, and today was just one of those times. Putting this down in words and sharing it helped me shift into a better mental space. We'll be alright. All of us. The holidays should be time for gratitude, and sharing our joy and privilege, not wallowing in our own erroneous pathos. Funny how exciting it was to buy and, at least for now, embrace the Birkenstock shoe culture. I blame photographer, Dan Milnor, for the Birks. He talked about them on his VLog over at YouTube and I've been thinking about those zany, German sandals ever since. Don't know Dan? Go here: https://www.youtube.com/user/SMOGRANCH

Jaston Williams as Scrooge. 

CHANEL. As the Ghost of Christmas present and also a soloist.

Roddrick Sandford as Fezziwig, Marley and the Minister.

curious....What does everyone want (camera and lens-wise) for the holidays this year? What't the cool toy?

I'm not doing any top ten lists since we all read the same reviews. Your take is always different from mine though.... Maybe MJ will regale us with some unexpected choices....

 

A Nice Distraction from the Post Election Day Jitters. How about a concert under the stars?

Chanel at Zach Theater's "Songs Under the Stars" concert. 

An amazing voice coupled with a wonderful stage presence. 

I can't remember a busier time in the last couple of years. I've been photographing concerts, lawyers, doctors, bio-tech products and demos and an endless stream of performance videos for the last couple of months. I'm ready for a work break. Maybe a trip to Teralingua. 

Last night was a night to go a little retro. I was asked to photograph Chanel's show at Zach Theatre for their outdoor concert series. I was delighted to be able to do so. It was a relaxed and chilled out evening and that was in stark contrast to the pervasive angst many people are experiencing because of the election drama. I showed up for our outdoor concert, grabbed a box of buttery popcorn from the concession stand, along with a plastic cup of Cabernet Sauvignon (and a straw....) and grabbed my little square of space. It's a space where I can see all the angles of the main and secondary stage but not be in any audience member's line of sight. 

I preset my cameras and munched fresh, hot popcorn as the temperature dropped into the delicious 60's. If my tripod actually had a cup holder I would have put my wine there but I didn't even bring a tripod so even my libation was strictly handheld. I do find it impossible to shoot well with a camera+long lens in one hand and a beverage in the other so I parked the wine cup on the ground, next to my extra camera. I figured they could keep each other company. 

I didn't want to carry in a bunch of camera gear because I'm getting lazy and jaded and starting to believe my own propaganda about the photographer being much more important than the gear. Instead of the big S1x cameras and their ponderous (but exquisite) lenses I chose to shoot the entire show with a doddering old Panasonic GH5 (firmware 2.7) and the newly acquired Pana/Leica 50-200mm f2.8-4.0. As an acknowledgment of the high magnification of the lens I grudgingly pulled an ancient monopod from the cargo areas of America's most coveted high performance car, the Subaru Forster. I used it for almost every shot, flurry of shots, collection of images, etc. Belinda gave me that favored monopod for my birthday in 1980. Remind me to tell you about it. Wow. A forty year old piece of photo gear. 

Old habits die hard so I brought along a Panasonic G9, and the other Pana/Leica lens I use; the 12-60mm f2.8-4.0. It spent the night keeping my cup of red wine company, down near my feet. I just can't leave home for a job without a back-up solution...

The concerts last about an hour and fifteen minutes and the lighting doesn't change, shift, turn other colors, etc. so once you've ranged in your color temperature and hue corrections, and arrived at a good exposure for each part of the stage areas, your brain work is all done and all that's left is a responding to your visceral reaction to the music and the showwomanship of the performer. And Chanel (love the one name thing) is very much a world class singer. She is performing here in Austin this week but heading over to London's West End theater district to star in a production about Tina Turner. That's the big time. 

I over-shot. But that's hardly unusual. I was in the mood so I photographed with raw files instead of Jpegs and the only real difference that makes, which impacts my workflow, is that it takes twice as long for Lightroom to convert from raw to jpeg than from jpeg to "other" jpegs. I was aghast when I looked at the frame count. It was about 1100. I edited down to a bit under 400 for delivery today but I sure left a lot of really good stuff on "the cutting room floor." 

There's no job-ness feeling to the stuff I shoot for Zach Theatre. I decide when I'm going to show up. I decide what I'm going to photograph and what I'll deliver. It's up to me to select cameras, lenses, etc. I can wear my most comfortable shoes. I can get discounted beverages from the bar...

When the show ended and the applause died down I tossed a camera over each shoulder, finished my wine and sealed up my popcorn box. I brought the half full box home thinking I'd munch more popcorn as I edited files today but Ben and Belinda beat me to it and wiped out my popcorn stash last night while I worked, unaware, out in the studio. 

Job overwhelmyness. I've been shooting non-stop this week and tomorrow we'll cap the work week with a full day of product and process/demo photography over at Luminex. I'm working with a fun and kind art director but he wants us to be there by eight. Yes, a.m. I'm working with a new assistant, a guy named Austin who also designs and implements stage lighting at Zach Theatre. I have high hopes that, with a good assistant, I can become ever lazier and still get overpaid. We have a full day ahead of us, working in the belly of corporate America. I am steeling myself for the experience. But there will be breakfast tacos and coffee so all is not bleak.

On Saturday we're doing a three camera video shoot of Chanel's concert back at the theater. Sunday is set aside for seemingly endless postproduction and archiving. I am three jobs behind on photo retouching at this point. Monday we're back at Luminex till 2:30 and then back over to the theater at 5:00 to film Chanel for a different (undisclosable --- at this time) project. We'll be doing a three camera filming adventure on the theater's main stage for this. Tuesday we have a full day booked in our studio by an ad agency to shoot lifestyle portraits and then, Wednesday, I'm back at the theater to shoot video of an entirely different concert. 

At some point I'll put my foot down and command myself to take the rest of the year off. And that will be good because I'm about to write a fabulously nasty diatribe about Adobe ruining my life (very short term) by changing everything I've spent 20+ years learning in Photoshop. Rat Bastards! One day all my adjustment panels are there and the next....poof! they're all gone. Grrr. Hours and hours wasted yesterday. Stay tuned and I'll help you understand my rage at them. But I am still using their products so I guess, ultimately, they win. 

I hope the election stuff doesn't have you mired down in angsty depression. Every body is couching it as the battle royale between socialists and death cult Nazis. But I think that's wrong headed. Democrats aren't socialists...... they're pretty main stream.

Photographing a "Pandemic Safe" outdoor concert. Our theater figures out a way for "the show to go on."

 

Zach Theatre has a big, beautiful stage with seating for 400. Too bad we can't use it this year for live performances. But creative people tend to be.....creative and so the theater's team got together with health experts and figured out how to use the expansive plaza on the theater's campus to produce a series of live concerts. We had the first one last night and it was a raging success. We did a tech rehearsal the night before and I showed up to shoot promotional photos to kick off the series. 

Between now and November 8th the Zach Theatre is producing a series of live concerts that will run one hour in length and will (weather permitting) be held outdoors in the plaza. Seating is set up in pods. You can get tickets as a socially distanced couple all the way up to a "cabana" with seating for six. All pods are distanced about 10 feet from each other. Even though the concerts are held outside the theater is insisting on staggered arrivals and seating to reduce crowding into and out of the venue. Masks are mandatory. And, sadly, there will be no rushing to the edge of the stage to dance to the. You mostly have to stay in the confines of your pod space. 

But after watching both ticket sales and the reactions of our small, "family and friends" audience two nights ago I think there is so much pent up demand just to see good, live performances that people are happy to put up with any of the small inconveniences foisted upon them by a need (and desire) for group safety.

Each week has a different theme with different performers. This week Matt and Jill sing Broadway Show tunes, backed by a small band. Next week it will be Songs from the 70's. The following week will be Motown and the final week will feature Chanel who will show off the "Tina Turner" performance that won her the starring role of "Tina" in a famous, West End, London production. Shows run Weds. through Sunday. While we aren't going to have anywhere near the 400 person capacity of Zach's interior seating the theater will play host to about 120 people per evening, the production costs are much, much lower than those of a conventional stage show and the theater is able to keep functioning and paying staff and performers. It's a really nice solution. And since the weather people suggest that it will be in the low 70's for the rest of this week it's a perfect time to spend an evening on the plaza with a glass of wine and some great music. 

A "day before opening" rehearsal. Matt and Jill have been doing a "creative pod"

to ensure each other's safety at performances. 

Matt and Jill in performance at tech rehearsal.

I have two jobs for each show. I'll be there for the first show of each week's run to make marketing photos (and photos for the theater's archives) from a position that we just finalized in a strategy session yesterday. We tried a location on Wednesday evening but switched to a new spot yesterday afternoon. I'm using two cameras, shooting with a 70-200mm on one camera and a 24-70mm f2.8 with the second camera. The lighting is not as bright as our usual stage shows so we're working at 1/250th of a second, f4.0 at 4,000 ISO. We could not have used this kind of ISO ten years ago but it's now practically a new, low light normal with the Panasonic S1 cameras. Whatever noise you see in examining the files here was exacerbated by my half stop underexposure and then the lifting of shadows in post production. Sorry, it happens. I haven't hit the files with any noise reduction but I'm sure I can clean up a little noise in the shadows without breaking a sweat. 

The big challenges will come each Saturday as we do a three camera video set up. 

I'll be in one set position with an S1H camera shooting 4K video. I'm not depending on the continuous AF of the camera so I'll have an Atomos Ninja V monitor on top of the camera cage so I can see the bigger image and also so I can punch in 2X while recording to fine tune focus. It's a really nice feature of the Ninja. I'll have that camera on a tripod with a fluid head so I can pan with the two actors as they move from the stage in front of the theater to the long concrete wall and walk way about 50 feet to the right. 

Since my longest lens in the 70-200mm I'll take advantage of the ability of the S1 series cameras to shoot in full frame, APS-C or pixel-to-pixel mode and set it to shooting in APS-C which will give me something approximating 300mm on the long end. Using the lens like that will give me a great range for shots of two people together or waist up tight shots of the individual actors. Works well. No light lost either.

I'll use the Panasonic audio interface to pull in sound from the sound engineer's board since the interface has settings for "line in." 

The second camera will be an unmanned camera right in front of the front door stage. Normally we don't do "un-manned" cameras for theater work because the lighting intensity changes all the time and you'd end up with tons of under and over exposed footage. But since the lighting team is small the stage lights are static for this set of performances. That means I can set up a camera, set the exposure and color balance and start it running five minutes before curtain and then not think about it again until the end.

We'll make that camera an S1 and outfit it with the 24-70mm f2.8 S-Pro lens. 

The third camera will also be un-manned and will sit in front of what's quickly being called "the second stage." It's a long wall with a walkway on top. The artistic director originally created the concerts with just the one front stage but an hour with very little movement, no props and no stage settings gets pretty visually boring and that gave birth to the idea of using the second, contiguous space. 

We'll set up a wide shot for that space using the GH5 coupled with a 12mm wide angle lens and let that one just roll as well. To access that camera for changes we'd have to walk right in front of the audience and that's just not a good look. Fortunately the GH5 will run for over two hours on one battery and get me something like an hour and forty five minutes on a 128 GB SD card. We only need about an hour and ten minutes.

I'm so happy that I get to shoot all this but that I don't have to edit any of it. The files go straight to the theater's in-house editor and he can decide how to cut the whole thing together. 

A quick explanation of why I am happy to pay $1800 and more for some of the Panasonic S-Pro lenses. Since we're working in low light on projects like this one I seem to end up shooting a lot of stuff with my lenses at their longer settings; and also set to their maximum apertures. In the case of the 70-200mm f4.0 I find myself shooting at f4.0 for most shows. If these were like lenses from the past I'd be hesitant to work at such a wide aperture but it seems that Panasonic are taking their lens design cues from Leica. The prevailing philosophy seems to center around making lenses that are so high performing at their maximum apertures that there is little to be gained from stopping down other than to increase depth of field. 

I surfed through 300+ handheld images, shot at the long end of the 70-200mm, with the f-stop at its widest and the lens is sharp and contrasty at those settings. 

Same with the 24-70mm which I use a lot at the 24mm focal length, also wide open. They work well and deliver very sharp files. Sharper than the images I got from nearly all previous systems. Nice.

Gearing up for an interesting series of video assignments. I know what I'll be doing every Saturday evening from Oct. 17th through Nov. 7th.

Once you've got a really big project under your belt all the restraints come off and the work flows in. At least that's the way it feels today. 

We've got a couple of photographic assignments to take care of this month but I'm spending more time figuring out and telling ad agencies how we're going to do stuff safely than I am at figuring out the nuts and bolts of the jobs. A group contacted me last week to see about shooting some products on location, and a bit of b-roll of their client's offices, and I was okay with that. But after I agreed and we were in the scheduling phase they came back and casually dropped an unwelcome wrinkle into the mix. They added a request to do "headshots" of five or six individuals, possibly in the office.

My immediate response was, "No." Followed by, "If this is a requirement of the job then I'll have to pass on this one." Now we're in the, "What if we photography them outdoors?" stage of the negotiation. I'm sure we'll work out something but I can guarantee that it won't include me setting up a temporary studio in a small, interior conference room and interfacing with five or six unmasked people about whom I know absolutely nothing. The subject seems especially poignant given the current situation with the president. The agency is generally very rationale and straight-shooting so I imagine we'll figure out something that works well for both all parties. 

Added note: All good here. The client's intention was always to do exterior portraits, it just wasn't conveyed in the bid process. The actual labs and manufacturing that we're shooting are huge and lightly populated by strictly masked workers. I saw footage of the facility just after lunch and there's ample space and high ceilings. Not what I originally feared! I guess I'm just being jumpy after all the recent news. 

I have several other photography projects booked for October but all of the others are planned for exterior locations so it should be smooth sailing. Two are with groups of physicians so I'm guessing they'll be especially careful when it comes to personal safety. 

But what I really want to write about here today is the upcoming series of videos I mentioned in the title. 

Following up on the success of Zach Theatre's fundraising livestream (Sept. 26) we're embarking on a series of outdoor concerts which will take place in the plaza, just in front of the theater building. Each week will feature a different theme and different performers. One week will be "Motown Goove" another will be "On Broadway" the following week will be "70's Female Rockstars" and the final week will feature "Superstar Chanel" (who sang the Tina Turner songs on the livestream video I posted last week). Each genre will run from Thursday through Sunday starting on the 17th of October. Each show will feature one or two singers and a small group of musicians.

The series is being called, "Songs Under the Stars." 

The Theater has ample outside space on their plaza to host a little over one hundred socially distanced people (in various pods) and since it's all outdoors it should be a safe experience. The concerts will start each night at 7:30 and run for approximately one hour. Our collective goal, beyond making the revenue from the live performances, and keeping peoples' interest in live productions, will be to record the Saturday concert for each genre in the series with an eye to streaming the video of the concerts behind a paywall on Vimeo. 

And that's where I come in. 

I'll be at each Saturday performance with three cameras. I'll need to stay stationary during the show so I won't be able to do any fancy gimbal work of the performers (although I would love to...) but I'll be working with two "show" cameras to get a static wide shot with one camera and then do "follow" work with the second camera. By follow work I mean using a much longer lens and getting medium and close up shots of the performers. 

I'm planning to use the S1H as the main/follow camera; coupled with the 70-200mm S-Pro lens. I hope to be close enough to the stage to use the S1H in its full frame configuration but I'm not at all hesitant to switch the camera to the APS-C/Super35 mode in order to get 50% more magnification, if I have to. 

The second camera will likely be the GH5 fitted with the 12mm Meike cinema lens for the wide, stage shots. That camera will be stationary and we'll depend on deep depth of field to maintain sharp focus throughout the show. 

We'll be shooting 4K in both cameras with an eye to being able to crop in for tighter shots where it's needed. Since we'll be editing on a 1080p timeline we shouldn't lose any sharpness with the crop. 

I'll set up the GH5 with no microphone and the built-in mic/audio set to ALC. We need only to get a "scratch track" out of that camera and we'll leave the heavy-lifting for audio to the S1H. The scratch track from the wide will only be used to sync up the audio we record in the S1H to the video streams from both cameras. It's so easy now to sync audio to video in either Adobe Premiere or Final Cut Pro. 

Each camera will be on a tripod equipped with a fluid video head. It's critical for the primary/close up camera since I'll need to follow action, albeit in a limited range. It's better to do it smoothly. It makes the captured video much more watchable. 

I'm putting external monitors on each camera rig and the running cables from the output of the monitors to a monitor for the show director. With the two monitors in front of him he'll be able to call out directions like: "Can you zoom in closer to Bob?" or "Can you catch more of Chanel and less of the band?" Etc. 

If we had more budget it would be great to put wireless transmitters on both of the camera monitor HDMI outputs and then run the received signals into a single workstation so we don't have to run cable or come up with four total monitors. At the current time I own three of the Atomos monitor/recorders and I may just borrow a fourth from one of my fellow, local videographers. Either that or forgo the director monitor dedicated to the wide camera...

Since we're putting a monitor into the director's hands it just makes sense that we'll both be wearing communications gear. A headset for each with an attached microphone and wireless transmitters and receivers. This way we can be socially distanced and still be on the same directoral page. 

The stage area will be well lit with theatrical spots which is a good thing since the show's start time of 7:30 will be post-sunset by the show dates. With good lighting on the stage I don't think we'll need to go over ISO 800 for either camera. A cakewalk for the S1H and well within the range of "good" for the GH5. Added to the mix is the fact that all the footage will be downsampled in the final rendering to 1080p which should minimize any noise that does show up.

As far as audio goes the S1H is an obvious choice for recording it. The camera has a wide range of input sensitivity and, when using the audio interface accessory I am able to accept long XLR runs from the sound engineer's mixing board and match the camera to the line input. We'll monitor the audio carefully at the sound check and get a good sense for the loudest parts of the show. I don't expect to have to do much with the audio levels once we set a "show" level but I'll have a earphone plugged into one ear and I'll be spot checking the meters all the way through. I can send the signal to both channels and set one of them 6DB lower than the other as a means of having a lower level back-up channel in case we hit some unwanted clipping. I'll call that a safety channel. 

As a final safety we'll have the sound engineer record the feed off the mixing board onto a digital audio recorder. That way, if I totally screw up the sound we can replace it with a clean track. 

While it seems obvious why I would select the S1H as my primary camera you might wonder about my choice of the GH5 for the second, wide camera. 

Colorwise it matches up well with the S1H. It has, by far the longest battery life while running, and using it as the wide/close camera takes advantage of its deeper depth of field. With dual card slots it's able to run well past our one hour run time estimate even in 10 bit 4K, and it's rock solid. 

I also want to bring along a third camera, probably the G9 set up on a gimbal, so I can shoot a bunch of b-roll of the pre-show sound checks, the guest arrivals, some wide, establishing shots of the venue and maybe even some "footage" of people enjoying/applauding the shows. The G9 makes sense because I am comfortable with it as a gimbal superstar. And that would leave an extra S1 or two as back-ups for all the other cameras. 

Since this stuff won't be live-streamed it's a lot less anxiety provoking for me. I'm looking forward to four beautiful nights under the Texas stars, listening to live music and making little movies. 

Lots to look forward to and I'm sure I see many familiar faces in the audience and among the crew. It feels good to work on scheduled productions again. Every day I shoot video I get more practice and get more comfortable with it. I should mention that these concert videos are not pro bono. I will be paid.

The video projects are starting to stack up and that's just what I wanted for this Fall. 

More to come....

And Just Like That VSL Is Back. Warning, a lot of this post is about the big show I've been working on. And video. If you don't like that, don't worry, we forgot to charge you for the programming.

 

Here's my favorite video for the show: https://vimeo.com/462396471

The opening number for the live stream program is at the bottom of this post!

You have to go to Vimeo to see them. I don't trust you guys to watch it in some tiny, embedded format here and the bust my chops because it's too small...

Vacation from the VSL blog.

I really needed that break. I was trying to concentrate on this enormous volunteer project for Zach Theatre back in late August and I kept running out of mental bandwidth. And time. I was feeling stale on the blog since we hadn't worked much and even I'll admit that swimming isn't really a spectator sport. I'm glad some of you waited around to see if the blog would revive. I did write in my Sept. 2nd post that "this is not goodbye.."

How did I recharge the "creative batteries"? Mostly by working a lot on new stuff instead of writing about working. That, and copious amounts of swimming and walking. Between sessions of filming out in the heat and humidity I took times for naps, ate well and read more books. The end result is that I wanted to come back and write. Seems like I missed writing at least as much as you missed reading new stuff. 

So, let's catch up. 

I'm not sure I've been very clear about the project I've been working on so I think we should start there with some background and description. 

Zach Theatre's Annual Fundraising Gala: AKA: Red, Hot and Soul. 

Zachary Scott Theatre has been actively making live theater (plays, musicals, dramas, lectures) for the last 99 years. For the last ten years we've been lucky to have a brand new, state of the art theater space to work in as well as three other stages on the campus in which to produce kids programs, smaller productions, and intimate, limited time engagements. 

The Theatre, while regional, is a standout in the country for the quality of its work and is often used as a resource by famous playwrights to develop new productions. Anna Devere Smith has done two of her debuts in our theaters. Holland Taylor debuted "Ann" in our theater before taking it to Broadway. Tony Kushner was in our audiences for the first regional run of "Angels in America." And the list goes on. Steven Dietz often debuts his work here; most recently his take on "Dracula." 

Our theater is big on education and community outreach. Each year 50,000 school age children are treated to live performances here. There is also an accredited academy for kids who want an alternative learning experience with emphasis on theater as well as a regular school curriculum. Many of the children who see plays at Zach are able to do so because their attendance is subsidized. Scholarships are available for those who want to go to the academy but lack financial resources. 

So, every year Zach Theatre's budget is split between creating great, community-based theater and providing a wide array of learning opportunities. Add in a very a professional staff and you can imagine that expenses are high. But in normal years the theater is able to make ends meet by combining ticket sales for their MainStage shows, private donations, grants and support from the city of Austin. They've always been able to come up with needed $$$  and the event that tips the budget out of the red each year is a fabulous fundraising gala they call: Red, Hot and Soul. 

The theater erects a giant, air conditioned tent in the central plaza, the furnishings are top shelf, as is the alcohol. The catering (lovely dinners) is by the Four Season Hotel and is flawless/delicious. Singers and actors serenade and entertain the guests and, of course, there are the pitches for the guests to get generous, open their wallets and support Zach. Every year they raise hundreds of thousands of dollars from this one night event. It covers a lot of the expenses of providing a first class live theater venue for our community. 

But this year is different. The Theatre went dark at the end of February because of the pandemic. Audiences have been unable to attend any indoor productions. Staff has been laid off. There has been a real existential fear that after 99 years of creativity, inspiration, and the delivery of happiness and joy, our theater would run out of money and close its doors. 

The senior staff decided to throw a Red, Hot and Soul gala this year, but virtually. They needed to capture the excitement of the event but without the catering, the cramped banquet table camaraderie and the open bars. But what we still had was a bunch of very creative and popular actors, a committed choreographer, a bright, young in-house video producer and a masochistic volunteer with a history of shooting video. That last one would be me. 

It was decided that we'd create a bunch of creative content, intermix that creative content with a live show featuring two emcees, and we'd stream the whole thing up live on YouTube and Facebook. The show would eventually come together (last night) and run almost two hours. The first half hour consisted of photos of past productions intermixed with music, auction items people could bid on, and snippets of interviews with actors and directors. 

After that virtual happy hour we'd launch the main show. It would have a creative opening video which we shot back in August mixed with the two live presenters. Then a video of the the kids performing a musical dance number mixed again with the two wise guys in the house.  We would cut away to (pre-recorded) quick "check-ins" of people celebrating the event with "watch" parties in their homes. I filmed one such party and my brief was to cut back on the production quality and try to make video that looked like the party attendees were shooting it with their phones. I tried but sadly, it's still in focus and well exposed. I did shake the camera a lot... But the audio is just too damn good.      

The one hour (plus some O.T.) ends with Los Angeles based singer/actor: Chanel singing two hits from Tina Turner. That's no coincidence as she was recently cast by a theater in London's famous West End to take on the role of Tina Turner for the season. Of course, that was just before the pandemic shut down the whole London theater scene. 

After Chanel's video there's a video of tap dancing to a Stevie Wonder hit and then we sign off and cut to a pre-recorded video of a D.J. to finish up with a bit more house party. 

So, what was my role? 

It started out with me volunteering to help make video, along with a couple other professionals who initially volunteered. But before we even started shooting they realized that this was an enormous project and they (gracelessly?) backed out. That left me and the in-house producer as the sole crew for a couple parts of the project. Namely, the first half and the second half. 

Using a creative narrative conceived by the theater's artistic director, Dave Steakley, we would need to create original video for six different modules for which Joshua and I would do the pre-production, story-boarding, camera work, direction and post production. One critical duty I had for each program was to bring the bling. I was the donor of any and all camera and lighting equipment that was required. I operated the camera for every second of every video. I also went from being a gimbal virgin to a gimbal pro over the space of six weeks (easy enough to do if you have a gimbal in your hands for at least a couple hours a day, every day).    

When we ran out of light I pulled lighting stuff out of the studio inventory and had it ready to go. If we needed to record an interview I brought along the bag full of microphones. We'd let the space dictate the microphone we ended up using. 

Joshua worked with the development team to schedule our talents. On several shoots we had several dozen talents on exterior locations to work with. We'd do a quick rehearsal and try to get our footage in a couple of takes.  At the end of every day I'd put all the raw footage on a hard drive and Joshua would have to take it home and scrub through it, looking for whatever visual gems we happened to get. Then he had the unenviable task of doing all of the editing. We worked hand-in-hand to find codecs and color profiles that would work under wildly different conditions but still keep shadows and highlights under control. 

Just last Sunday we were shooting the last of our video properties. We'd shot nearly every weekend and lots of weekdays between August 16th and September 20th. Mix in regular clients and a consistent schedule of swims and you start to get an idea why I felt that also keeping the blog well stocked might be a step too far...

So, at some point in the mix, we had to decide how to handle the live show. We would have our creative performances pre-recorded and in the can but how would we handle the live streaming? In a moment of heedless delirium I suggested that we do a three camera production but I was pretty adamant that since I'd never streamed live before (and didn't want to learn how or buy that kind of gear) we should get a professional crew to do the live show audio and technical work of making a show seem bulletproof and seamless. We bit the bullet and hired a company called, "Werd." And they turned out to be great. They brought along a show director, a video/switching professional and an audio engineer. They did their jobs perfectly. And they were fun to work with. 

We lacked a teleprompter and teleprompter operator and the three cameras that would present the live feed on the big day. I guess I was still dazed from a month of volunteering but as my consciousness floated above my body I heard myself suggest that "since I was no longer busy shooting video every day I guessed I could handle the three cameras on the big day." As I floated back down into my body I screamed at my inner self -- "What the hell were you thinking?" It was a rhetorical question. I was already committed. 

One of the emcees provided the teleprompter pro. An old family friend. He was great.

The three camera "TV" show. 

So, here's what I learned about live streaming a multi-camera show to Facebook and Youtube: 

No one streams 4K video. No one streams 10 bit video. No one streams 4:2:2 video. No one streams .Mov video. Your goal is to provide a 1080p video feed that is as skinny (anemic?) as your camera can possibly provide and to make all the color and contrast tweaks humanly possible in camera, in advance, since there is NO opportunity to fix anything in post. Good files = small files. 

I found out that all three of my Lumix S1x series cameras can (under humiliating distress) shoot M4P files at the blistering data rate of.... 28 mbs. Not 280. Just 28. 

To make things easy for the continuous uploading while switching seamlessly between three cameras you want to make sure that all the settings match up. If you are shooting the show at 30 fps then all three cameras need to be set to 30 fps. If you chose to make a custom look with a tweaked "natural" profile then all three cameras need to have the same color profile. 

To make it visually transparent to the audience you also need to make sure you color balance all three cameras with the same target in the actual lighting the presenter will live in. And it's a big help to keep both of your presenters in focus. 

We filmed our live presenters in front of a wall of donor plaques in the main lobby of the big theater building. I had the Lumix S1H set up, with the teleprompter, right down the middle. It was a medium to medium wide shot that took in both presenters and bookended them with a flower arrangement on each side. My instructions to them: Stay inside the flowers and you'll be visible. Venture beyond the flowers and you'll quickly fall into obscurity.

The S1H was equipped with the battery grip which (tested in advance) would give me a minimum of 2.5 hours of run time. Without high data rate files, AF and image stabilization it would be closer to 3 hours. I used the 24-70mm f2.8 at f5.6 and tweaked exposure with the ISO setting. At the shooting distance, f-stop and shutter speed I had a zone of sharp focus that was about three feet deep. If needed, I could tweak on the fly. I knew the presenters weren't used to using teleprompters and I figured they'd be scared to go too far off script and get lost so I knew our center camera would get the most play time. 

I used a second camera, a Lumix S1, over to the left (as I faced the presenters) by about 35 degrees in order to get a different look. That camera was used with the 24-105mm zoom set to about 50mm and also tuned in at f5.6. Since I only had the one battery grip I set up each of the two side camera with  Anker Power Banks plugged into the camera's USB-C input. This charged the battery while the camera worked. 

The third camera was an S1 on the other side, but a bit further back than the left camera and set up to use a longer lens so I could get tighter shots that showed bigger heads and less background. This camera also had an external battery running into the USB-C and sported a 70-200mm f4.0 Lumix S-Pro lens. Since this and the 24-70mm both have manual focusing capability via a clutch I took advantage of it. I decided on a focal length that worked well and then focused on the closest presenter. I marked that focus point on the lens with a piece of white tape. I then focused on the second presenter and marked that focus point with a white piece of tape. By using those reference marks I could fine tune focus for each person, when they led the script, without having to punch in to check focus. Two reasons for this: First, the Lumix cameras won't punch in while you are currently running video recording! and secondly, if you could punch in you'd see the magnified image in the mix at the video mixer. The old, tape-on-the-lens method works without a lot of fuss and obviates the need for eye-strain. 

I did cheat on the center camera by using a Ninja V monitor (not recording video, just monitoring). With the Ninja you can take the HDMI signal out of camera and into the monitor so you can punch in there to confirm or tweak focus. The magnification doesn't affect the image output. It also gives you a bigger, brighter screen that's easier to visually assess accurate focus on. In the "monitor but not record" mode the Atomos Ninja V lasted all evening with one Sony NP-900 series battery. In fact, it was so parsimonious with power that the battery indicator never showed less than 100%.

When the live show started I stayed close to the "tight" image camera on the right side as long as we were live. If we switched and played a canned video I made the rounds to the other two cameras to make sure everything was going according to plan. I knew the run of show from memorizing the schedule earlier so I knew the points at which we'd be off and the pre-recorded stuff would be on. I'd get back to the tight camera with 30 or 40 seconds to spare, check focus and then pay attention to the presenters' movements.

The streaming production team was thrilled to get feed from three tightly matched cameras but I have to say that seeing the final product highly compressed on YouTube or (even worse) on Facebook is a bit depressing. At least I have the three isolated channels saved from the three cameras. Just in case I want to make some alternate edits in the future. 

So, how did the show work? 

We didn't miss a beat. No one on the crew messed up. The teleprompter guy was a consummate pro who never got ahead or behind his speakers. My cameras were rock solid every step of the way. The two back ups weren't needed. The presenters sold the program well. We did this whole thing on a shoe string but at last count we raised, over the course of two hours, well over $200,000(+) for the theatre. We beat our initial goal comfortably. Success. 

Funny to observe that during the technical rehearsal the day before, and prior to the start of the show, nerves are frayed, anxiety runs high, actors pace the room like trapped animals and engineers triple check their tools. 

Once the show starts people get pulled away from thinking about "what could go wrong" and just get into the flow of doing their jobs.

When the show is over there's a delay of any show of emotion until the donation tally is announced. If we did a good job everyone becomes euphoric. Happy. Optimistic. 

Someone actually said, "I can hardly wait to do this again next year.....!" I slunk closer to the wall and quickly got my gear out the front door. I didn't want to take the risk that I might inadvertently volunteer again. For once the logical side of my brain had a firm grip on the car keys. 

And here's the video we opened the show with: https://vimeo.com/462399373

This week I'll break it down into smaller chunks and talk about how I learned to gimbal, etc. Stay tuned.

_____ Theatre's "Red, Hot and Soul" coming via live stream on September 26th.

Chanel singing a medley of ________________ songs. Freeze frame from 4K video shot on a Panasonic G9+Pan/Leica 12-60mm f2.8-4.0 mounted on a DJI Ronin-S gimbal. Filmed on the stage at the ______ Theatre. 

More event info: Zach Event

Video production: Joshua Cummins, Producer/Director

Kirk Tuck, Cinematographer, camera operator

Volunteering? Just remember: "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished." 

What did I learn last night when I used the Fuji 100-400mm lens for 95% of my documentation of a play?

Chanel as "Vinette" in "The Ballad of Klook and Vinette."

I photographed this play's technical rehearsal on Sunday evening and I used two different lenses; the 16-55mm and the 50-140mm f2.8. I covered the production from the second row, center of the house, and got lots and lots of good images. But not everything was "set" of the final production that evening. There were a few costume changes and some more set dressing to go before the dress rehearsal with audience so I came back last night to build some new images into the catalog which would give the marketing people some updated images to use. 

But since I felt that we were nearly 100% covered in terms of needed photos I decided to experiment and do things a bit differently for last night's shoot. I packed the 100-400mm f4.5-5.6 Fuji lens and an X-H1 body. I also packed a second body and the 16-55mm because ---- just because. 

My intention was to shoot from the very back row of the theater in the center. It's a smaller house than our main stage so the top row is really only ten or twelve rows up... from the stage floor. I also intended to use the 100-400mm mounted on a big, Benro video monopod; the kind with small "chicken" feet that help anchor the monopod. 

I shot for a few minutes with the monopod but it really hampered the way I usually work in the theater, which is entirely handheld. It was just to cumbersome to use when following people around the stage and trying to comp very quickly. 

The lens is sharp and, out of nearly 1,000 frames only a handful were spoiled by not getting exact focus.  Even though parts of the play were quite dark I only had the lens hunt or refuse to lock on twice and in each episode a slight change of targeting got use back on track quickly. 

I probably won't try this again because the long focal lengths were too limiting. I'm usually working from the other direction (with lenses like the 16-55mm) and trying to zoom in just a bit more than the lens will give me. In this situation I worked hard at 100mm to get good "two" shots (two actors in the frame) with enough air around them  not to feel claustrophobic and I didn't have nearly as many opportunities as I thought I would to take advantage of the really long end of the lens. I took a bunch of tight shots near 400mm but they look more like headshots than documentation of a play. Live and learn. Or, rather, try something new and learn. 

What I really learned was that working above the stage feels off to me. I prefer to be level with or just very slightly above the actors for camera position. I learned that the 100-400mm is a very good lens. I was impressed with the sharpness I was able to get, handheld and wide open. The image stabilization worked well and, with the camera in "boost" mode everything felt snappy and engaged. 

Hitting and holding focus is tougher when you go longer. If you use S-AF and lock in on a point, like an eye, you run the risk of the actor moving just a bit before you commit to engaging the shutter. On a long lens just and inch or two can mean the difference between acceptable sharpness and the trash can. With C-AF you might start with your focus point on the object you want in focus but as actors move and the frame changes the point of sharp focus may end up somewhere else. The solution for some shots is face/eye detection but there were plenty of shots where the eyes weren't visible in the way the camera might need to see them. 

I learned that my initial choice of lenses for theater work is optimal for the way I do stuff. The 140mm of the 50-140 seems to be long enough, even on the main stage and the 16-55mm, when used close enough to the stage, is great for wide shots, full width of stage shots and then also medium to large group shots. 

I've really gotten the color, contrast and general look I like down to a near science with the Fuji X-H1 and I'm happy I have three....just in case. Adding back contrast and saturation while keeping the shadows open is like magic. The Eterna color profile is by far my favorite when working on contrasty stages. I dial down the noise reduction a bit which wins me back some sharpness in Jpegs and reduces the chance of getting plasticky skin tones at high ISOs and reducing the sharpness in camera also helps keep noise in check. 

I was able to use ISO 6400 without fear last night and the files look almost as good as those shot at 3200. The real secret is just to get your color balance and your exposure correct. That buys you some wiggle room when it comes to overall quality. Surprisingly, the Jpegs are pretty solid and can take a lot of tweaking in Lightroom. The don't faint and fall apart with some aggressive post production. 

I won't drag along the 100-400mm for the smaller theater assignments again but I have come to respect the optical performance of that lens and can't wait to use it at the next swim meet. It's definitely a keeper. I'm still a 24-200mm adherent (ff equiv. implied).  That's about it. 

400mm. wide open.

400mm. Wide Open. Handheld. ISO 6400.

400mm. Wide Open. Handheld. ISO 6400.

Around 230mm. Wide open.