Exhausting, frustrating but fun workday.

 This image has nothing to do with the post below. I just liked it and wanted something to put at the top of the post. And...dog. 

There is something exhilarating about working in a medium where you are still very much a "student." While I've been feeling that photo assignments have been growing stale for me lately the challenge of working at the very edge of what I know in the video editing world is both daunting and very satisfying. 

My friend, Kenny, is a wonderful singer and he was asked to "cover" a couple of songs from an upcoming, virtual, online holiday party. The client wanted him to have us create two videos of him singing; one for each song, with a bit of comedy at the end of the second video. Kind of a "sign-off" for the evening. 

Kenny and I worked on a bunch of video stuff for Zach Theatre (you saw him in the opening video of the virtual fundraiser last month - the guy sitting on the bench, on the bridge, at the very beginning of the video. He gets up and leads the first group of people towards the camera) so he called me and asked me to produce the video. The budget was minuscule and the resources scant, but it was a chance to try out a few more video techniques in the service of a friend. I jumped at the "opportunity." 

We shot all the footage on Saturday and I started editing last night. The actual files look amazing to me. My edit? Less so. The files have some of the best color I've seen. It actually appears richer and has more apparent depth than the stuff I've shot on much more expensive cameras. I think the secret was shooting 1080p in a high data rate, All-I file. That, and getting a nice white balance at the very beginning of the shoot. 

But yesterday and today reminded me of how much I still need to learn in both planning projects and in editing them. Let me tell you what I learned and re-learned.

I shot Kenny in wide, medium and tight shots with a gimbal mounted camera and got great footage. What I didn't get and what came back to bite me on the butt was b-roll. Or the abject absence of enough b-roll. Even though Kenny has a nice enough face and a warm and engaging personality it gets boring to watch the same person sing a song for three minutes and twenty seven seconds. 

I should have shot more: hands on the keyboard, playing the piano, more fun martini shots, some "grand piano hammers hitting strings" shots, and even some shots of just his hands in close ups. I flubbed the b-roll and paid for it with some painful editing sessions today. Part of the fault lies with my lack of pre-planning and part with rushing through the shoot.

Here's another super-genius thing I learned when I started editing on a big screen: Stuff that looks great and sharp on a tiny, tiny rear LCD on a camera doesn't necessarily always look sharp on my monitor. I updated my camera firmware and the big benefit was supposed to be much better C-AF. And it sure did look good on the pixie screen but sometimes the camera hunted and I'd be in the middle of a nice clip only to have it fall out of focus in the middle. Wouldn't having more b-roll be a nice thing?

I had to scramble to find better shots and figure out how to edit to cover up my camera's grievous errors.  Lesson? If I insist on shooting with those Panasonic cameras I need to make sure I'm using manual focusing instead of relying on the cameras. Sure, go ahead and let me know in the comments just how great those Sony A7Siii focusing features are. I'll read it. 

But the thing that saved me in the edit was the fact that these songs and the overall presentation could be a bit campy and a bit retro so I used some transitions that good taste had previously prevented. Aesthetics go out the window when you need to deflect. And entertain.

I did learn a bunch of new editing techniques that work well for making music videos. Since all the clips of Kenny performing were done with the same sound track playing on them I was able to select all four clips (different angles, different focal lengths) and the soundtrack and have them all synchronized automatically instead of trying to sync up each clip individually. I could lay the four visual tracks on the same timeline as the audio track and then cut back and forth between the takes to make the edit. It was a much faster way of working. Very similar to multi-cam editing.

I also learned that when stuff looks good in Final Cut Pro X but parts don't play back correctly after you export everything the safe fallback is to go back to the timeline you edited, copy the whole assemblage, open a new "project" and then paste everything into the new project. I dodged two bullets that way.

Okay. That's enough about video editing for now. I guess it's time to look forward on the schedule and get ready for tomorrow's live theater photography and then another video project on Saturday. Seems like I'm back in the busy mode. But I really am turning a lot of stuff down. I'm only interested in the fun stuff right now.

New motto: Never Enough B Roll.

A lens update. A very satisfactory outcome. And a walk through America's most sought after city with the new lens glued at f2.0. Time to amble.

When I first entered the Panasonic S1 system I was replacing, wholesale, an entire previous system and I made some knee-jerk purchases based on all the systems I'd used in the past. Every time I've gotten into a new camera system I've made sure to buy certain lenses that I always thought of as "mandatory." 

In my mind the mandatory inventory of lenses looks something like: 20mm, 35mm, 50mm, 85mm and something over 100mms. It's now the age of zooms so I cut myself some slack on the long end and bought the S-Pro 70-200mm f4.0. I also initially picked up the 24-105mm f4.0 to have as an all-around, grab-and-go lens for all those times I want a wide range of focal lengths but I don't feel like carrying more than one lens and one camera body. 

But at the time of the S1 camera launch the selection of nice, single focal length lenses was....sparse. In the 50mm space I had the option of the $2300 S-Pro, 50mm f1.4 lens, the big Sigma 50mm (which didn't focus as quickly or surely, but only cost $1199) or the Leica Apo-Summicron L lens at something well over $5,000. I chose the middle ground and have been quite happy with the Panasonic 50mm. 

The choice in the 85mm focal length was a bit tougher; I could go with the big, fat, heavy and slow to focus, but infinitely sharp!!! Sigma 85mm f1.4 Art lens or um, go back to that Leica catalog and try to find something in the ballpark.  Again, for somewhere north of $5700 the Leica 90mm Apo Summicron was looking good. I hovered over the link for that Leica lens for a few minutes before the blood came rushing back to my brain and I stepped back from the keyboard a bit chastened. I sprung for the chubby Sigma by default and for no small part, financial self-preservation. 

I've used the Sigma 85mm f1.4 DG Art lens (let's just call it "v.1") for nearly a year and every time I used it I came away with mixed feelings. The images were the best I'd ever seen out of an 85mm across all the brands of lenses I've used. Even wide open the darn thing was just flawless. But the world's most cumbersome 85mm was enormous and dense and weighed in at a little less than 3 pounds. You expect that kind of mass from an f2.8, 70-200mm zoom with a tripod mount attached but it's a bit radical for an 85mm and it basically ruined that lens for me as an option for casual shooting in the streets, and also as a "take anywhere" lens. 

I'd pull it out for controlled situations like portraits in the studio or casual rehearsal shoots over at Zach Theatre, but the idea of putting it on an S1R and walking for a full day through the streets of Austin or San Antonio was a daunting thought. Something I might do on a challenge, if there was money involved, but not for sheer pleasure. I figured I'd keep the Sigma 85mm v.1 around and hope that Panasonic or Sigma would eventually come out with a lesser spec'd and slower 85mm that would be a much friendlier companion for a man who lacked Sherpas. It was a sad compromise since every time I used the big Sigma I was blown away by the sharpness and contrast that jumped out of every frame; if it nailed the focus. And if we had time to wait for it...

On the plus side I will say that my left bicep is now twice the size of my right. Partially from holding hefty gimbals but also due from hefting the 85mm v.1 lens on shoot days for clients. Ouch. How lopsided. 

As you probably know, Sigma recently came out with an all new version of the giant 85mm. It is supposed to be an even higher performing (optically) lens (if you don't look at the pincushion distortion!!!) but in addition to being potentially game changing in its performance the new lens, the 85mm f1.4 DG DN Art lens is about a full pound + lighter and about half the overall volume of its predecessor. The filter diameter has slimmed down from a harder to find and more expensive to buy 82mm to a much more available 77mm. The new lens got a physical aperture ring and, as a bonus, you can flip a switch and "de-click" the ring to make it silent and step-less for video. There is even a function button on the side (but I haven't messed with it yet). 

I wanted to get one of the new lenses to test but as soon as they were launched the markets snapped up all the available copies and the retailers started putting people on waiting lists. At the time I decided to just ignore the new lens. I rationalized that the old lens was fine for my commercial work and, at some time in the past year, I bought a Leica 90mm Elmarit  R f2.8 lens and an adapter and figured I could use that as a street shooting lens. In the meantime every encounter with the Big Bertha of 85mm lenses pushed me right back into the confusing parfait of emotions: Love the look, hate the portage. Love the wide aperture, hate that it doesn't compensate for it's tremendous weight with at least a tripod mount. Etc. Etc. 

I just finished up a job last Thursday and I was looking forward at the next week's schedule. I needed to replace a gray cloth background that basically fell apart from overuse so I was shopping online at my local camera store. I was just checking out the website to see what kind of backgrounds they might have in stock when I decided to take a shopping detour through the L-mount lens inventory. And there it was. They were showing an 85mm Sigma V.2 DG DN lens in L-moount, in stock. But sometimes websites are inaccurate. I called to confirm. My sales guy, the infinitely wise Ian, let me know they did indeed have one in stock and would be glad to hold it for me. I called the person at the store who takes trade-ins and we negotiated a value for my existing, portly, 85mm v.1 and I headed in their direction. Deal done. 

Today was the first time since I bought the new lens that I've had time to put it on a camera and take it for a spin. It was a beautiful day so I took the new 85mm and an S1R out for a pre-lunch walk. First observation: It's a good compromise between the speed and the size. The lens balances well on a good sized body and is comfortable at the end of a well made shoulder strap. 

Since we always like to say that no one buys a fast lens to shoot all day at f8.0 I decided to shoot every single image at f2.0, which is one stop down from wide open. I could have shot everything at f1.4 but that's such a shallow depth of field that I'm not sure how much I would have learned today; other than whether the camera focused accurately there. 

So, all the images here were shot at f2.0 and minimally processed from raw files. I am very happy with the performance of the lens and can't wait to use it for a night shoot coming up on Wednesday. 

If you look through the images you'll find several building shots where I've included a direct reflection of bright sunlight off highly reflective window glass. While I can see a slight flaring on small parts of the image there is no veiling flare at all and everything remains "crispy" even though the super bright highlight is included in the frame. 

It seems that Adobe has included an 85mm DN DG lens profile now in Lightroom because there is none of the pincushion distortion in the frames which I had seen in early reviews, which were pre-software update. 

This is a situation in which trading up to a newer design pays off well. The lens is infinitely more manageable and easy to carry. It's easy to use and has more features. But more to the point, Sigma was able to deliver all this at the same price point as the older model. We even got extra goodies such as the external aperture ring. That's a plus even if you never shoot a second of video. It's all about having operating options. 

That is one bright running shoe. Damn, that's ugly.

I shot a number of images like this one where the foliage is in focus and the buildings in the 

background are out. It's interesting to see the effect. More depth?

I mentioned in the title that Austin is now, once again, the most sought after re-location destination in the entire United States, according to a recent article (today) from Forbes. You can read it for yourself: 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/petertaylor/2020/10/11/covid-19-has-changed-the-housing-market-forever-heres-where-americans-are-moving-and-why/#2ff5989861fe

People are moving in droves from last century cities looking for warmer weather, the ability to be outside for more of each year, the presence of smart jobs and the presence of an embarrassing oversupply of high tech employers. The wildfires are chasing people out of California and Oregon, last century hate politics  and lower educational achievement are making Southeastern states unbearable for nice people and smart people, and the rust belt has run out of jobs. Everyone else is trying to escape the cold. 

But if you have visions of re-locating to Austin you should know that it's currently the most expensive city in all of Texas in which to live. Property taxes are high and housing prices in the city proper are much higher than national averages. You'll need one of those high tech jobs to make it all work. So dust off those post graduate degrees before you fire up the mini-van and load up the roof rack. 

Current prices for "tear downs" in the most desirable neighborhoods of West Austin have, on average, breached the one million dollar mark and even at those prices the market is red hot. I never imagined we'd see single family house lots hit that dollar amount but here we are. And if Forbes is right this is only the beginning. 

Funny that "bluest" city in Texas, replete with a liberal, democrat mayor, boasts first place as the desired destination for employers and families in a comparison with the rest of the country. 

On my walk today I saw and cataloged at least ten new 20 story or higher buildings in various states of construction in the core of downtown. That's just in one small area. The giant cranes are a fixture in every corner of the city and in many of the quickly growing small towns that surround our city. It's a region poised for quick and continued growth. Just remember, markets ebb and flow...