Couple of food shots from Thurs. At the Austin Food Bloggers Event.

I like to photograph food almost as much as I like eating it. I was wandering around the city when I stumbled into this event. I vaguely remember having been invited but who can keep a social calendar totally straight these days?

I didn't have the right gear with me but I thought I'd just browse all the different food booths and see what was being offered. The top is a tomato and fruit salad and I love the way booth geography and time of day conspired to give me some nice backlighting. The same with the wafers, flowers and fruit. I only wish I'd gotten to their booth before the small flowers started to wilt.

There's something magical about having the Whole Foods Headquarters and flagship store in the center of Austin. Something is always happening there and I am rewarded again and again when I bring along my camera. (If you are a sport or BIF shooter your mileage will vary....badly). On this particular day I chose to make Whole Foods my mid walk destination. I was happy to savor their air conditioning after walking for a couple miles in the afternoon heat. When I cooled down enough I walked around the store, just looking at stuff. The wine department was sampling two really nice Pinot Grigios and a white Bordeaux (which was wonderful and refreshing). I also asked the barman at the adjacent bar if I could taste the claret I'd seen displayed all over the store. I could. I did. And I made a note to come back the next day and buy a case.

On my way out of the store I saw a sign announcing free yoga every Wednesday evening in June, out on the second floor plaza. I sent a note to Belinda about that. As I got a cup of water and washed my hands at the hand sanitizer I ran into three different clients. We chatted and all promised each other to have lunch. Walking and business intermixed; the ultimate in social efficiency. It was just after my networking encounter that I noticed the sign for the Austin Food Bloggers Event and headed upstairs. One could sample a dozen different wines, a handful of local craft beers and small tastes of food from many of the city's popular caterers and restaurants.

That's when I ran into entrepreneur, John, who is now working with CookingPlanet.com. We caught up for twenty minutes and were surprised how elegantly our recent food experiences complimented each other and how much our businesses might need each other. Oh my gosh, more hot walk networking!! Then I looked at my watch and realized I'd have to hustle to get back to my car and get home. Belinda was planning a 7:30 pm dinner and I try never to be late.

It was then that I realized I'd committed a rookie error in attaching my NX 300 camera strap. I'd left out one step in the over and under process and I was seconds and a few Planck units of gravity away from a classic disaster (the kind that was rampant in the early days of the Black Rapid straps) wherein the camera and strap divorce and the little brick of optics and semiconductors gets permanently bricked by its sudden deceleration upon interfacing with the surface of the sidewalk... With a combination of brute luck and shaky skills I was able to catch the camera just milliseconds before impact and I was able to do so without spilling any wine from the little plastic cup I was holding in my right hand. Good, clean living.

I made it back to my car and headed west, into the setting sun. My camera and I had done good work, gotten good exercise and I had undone all the good effects of the exercise with an abundance of curiosity at the food stalls. Ah well. That's the way some walks go.

Some more images from my new "test" camera, the Samsung NX300, and a few thoughts about the state of cameras.

The Lamar Bridge.

 Looking East from the Pfluger Pedestrian Bridge.

Looking North on the Pfluger Pedestrian Bridge.

The intake for the old (decommissioned) power plant.

The curvy side of the Pfluger Pedestrian Bridge.

The old Power Plant with downtown Austin in the background.

I shot the images above yesterday afternoon as part of a nice, hot walk from Barton Springs Pool to the downtown Whole Foods store. I used a small, nimble camera with a fairly big (APS-C) sensor, and an inexpensive kit lens. I wound up using the same camera in a dark theater this afternoon. My friend, Colin, and his friend, Noel Gaulin found an overhead projector, some food dyes and other paraphenalia and they were doing pyschedelic, kinetic art (which they were recording to video on a Panasonic AF100) to be used enormously large for an upcoming play about Janis Joplin that will be staged at Zach Theatre. I was there and decided, in an impromptu way, that we should also have a behind the scenes video about some of the lengths to which our technical staff goes to in order to make great looking  live shows.

This little exercise in the dark showed me just how far camera technology has come. The camera was able to automatically correctly expose for the two faces surrounded by total darkness. Walls painted matte black darkness. The camera's image stabilization worked as well as the in-body stabilization in my Sony's and the focus stayed locked on while I moved.

All of this got me thinking about the nature of the business of photography and the rather rude intersection of camera design and art. We can lie through our teeth and talk about how important top notch cameras are or we can admit that just about every camera over $500 in the market place today can be pressed into professional service to make great images, the primary target for which is now the web.  There are still many situations where a long, fast, telephoto lens is critical and there are probably an equal number of situations where a good ultra-wide angle is a an imperative tool, but the camera bodies themselves have been, across the board, ready for prime time for years now.

The mirrorless cameras don't focus as quickly as DSLRs but when they do focus they are more accurate. It's just the nature of focusing on the same chip that also records the images. The metering on mirrorless cameras seems more accurate than the metering on entry level DSLRs as well. And for me the grace note is that every mirrorless camera is also a permanent live view camera, and that means every image gets pre-chimped, which makes the feedback flow of seeing and image correction much more fluid. 

I know it's generational and I know it's because I wear reading glasses now, but I wish every mirrorless camera....oh, what the hell!?...every camera came standard with an EVF. I really like the files I'm getting out of this little camera (NX 300) very much I just wish I could hold it up to my eye like a real camera without having to resort to a loupe for comfort and convenience. To my kid? No big deal. To me....hmmm.

20 really good megapixels on a sensor with wonderful color goes a long way to make up for a feature set that's one check box off for me...more later.