Yesterday's job was a classic example of where we are right now in assignment photography. An ever increasing mix of video and photos.

At some point it's all about the rubber chicken. 

I'm starting to get more and more selective about the projects I accept. If I get the impression that we're being asked for sheer quantity; a shoot till you drop affair, I won't take the bait. Life is too short. But I'm not above mixing and matching a couple of disciplines if the client is good and the project is comfortable. 

While the advertising agencies I usually work with generally have their hearts in the right place they can't always control their clients and sometimes communication gets frayed. But in most instances it's just a case of clients not understanding how long it might take to do something, or misunderstanding a bid based on usage, not high volume production. That's an important point. 

With portraits taken on location often a client doesn't understand that there is always post production involved and that post production is the part of a job that's like an iceberg; 90% of it is under water and unseen by them during the shoot. 

Here's a case in point from yesterday: Part of our job was, on paper, to photograph 5 or 6 people from the blank company. There was an outside location at their H.Q.  that they'd used in the past which was shaded by a tree and had a shaded, non-ugly background that could easily be put out of focus. I set up my camera, and a flash in a smaller Octa-box, and roughed in my lighting. These were quick portraits and I shot maybe 20 or 25 images per person instead of the 70-100 I might shoot for a classic, studio portrait. 

We finished photographing the first six people but more and more people came out to have their portraits taken. The final tally was 13. This was not something discussed beforehand but I have a twenty+ year relationship with the ad agency and decided not to start a discussion about it with the agency owner in front of the client. It was easy enough and took a short amount of time in the moment.

But...what the client won't see, and the agency might not explain, is that the amount of post production time goes up a lot. I have to do a global correction for each person's files since skin tones, etc. are all different. There's the editing down to a handful of selections and then the creation of individual galleries for each person. Finally, we'll get back the clients' selections over a random time period, piecemeal, which takes any efficiency out of doing a final retouch and delivery process. Adding six people might add only five minutes per person on the front end but might adding an hour on the back end. Or more. Next time we bid for that agency we'll just pop in a per person price up front so they know that each person they add will also increase their final bill. 

Next, we moved into the company's manufacturing area and started a quick discussion of how to handle making some beauty shots of products and also how to include some b-roll video. Previously we would have totally separated those two functions. We would have done all our photography sequentially and then packed up that gear and started in on video.

But the creative director presented the idea of shooting high enough quality video to allow for pulling still frames out of the b-roll video for use on the website, etc. leaving the photography of just a few actual products to the still camera ---- because they might need those images for printed pieces and conference graphics.

I put one camera on a gimbal and set it up to have the best shot at making general content that would also work as a "frame grab" resource. I set another camera up on a tripod so I could make high resolution photographs with lots of depth of field.

The frame grabs might work might work. They might not. The b-roll will work for b-roll. The high resolution stills will work for print. But I think grabbing lots of good stills from video is still a bit of a crap shoot. With that being said, we decided to shoot at 60 fps on a GH5 and set the shutter angle at 180° (1/120th of a second) and shot in the Long-gop format. We weren't doing any fast moves and I tried to put in static shots as well as moving shots so we'd have a better chance of having a good range of frames in which the action was more or less frozen. I'd love to have shot in All-I but that's not available at 60 fps in 4K so we tried a compromise.

While I shot in a Long-gop format in the camera (which allowed for 60 fps, 10 bit, 4:2:2) when I pulled the footage into Final Cut Pro X I transcoded it into ProRes HQ which is an All-I editing format. After a bit of color correction on the footage I output it for the client in ProRes 422 which created a whopping big file of about 80 gigabytes. It gives the web designers the best shot of pulling out good still frames from the video. We also output the same extended clip in H.264 so they could scrub through it very quickly and find what they need.

But the idea of frame grabbing brings up some interesting questions. At least I find then interesting.

When the Red video cameras were introduced about a decade ago one of the marketing messages that followed the launch was the assertion that the Red Code Raw video files were so detailed and good that one could use them as still images instead of limiting usage just to video. That was a big ask at the time but there were some sample shoots done by a New York headshot photographer and also by a fashion photographer/videographer which showed some pretty good results. 

Ten years on and now we have cameras like the S1H that can shoot 6k (18 megapixel) raw files, downsampled from even higher resolution sensors and we've got so much more control over the post production. Sure, you have to go through a lot of frames to find the perfect images, and the storage demands increase dramatically, but think of how nuanced your selection of the "exact" perfect moment(s) could be. 

Camera sensors now have very large dynamic ranges and in-cameras tools like vector scopes and waveforms can help us drill down to perfect color and exposure settings. Being able to shoot a continuous burst of frames might be just the thing for a "twitchy" portrait subject. And it might be easier to put a camera on a tripod and shoot a three second burst of video raw files and blend them in Photoshop for products than to switch out between photographs and video on a fast paced shoot. 

One of the downsides I can think of would be the practical inability to use electronic flash. But that's not an issue for most kinds of subjects and LED lighting has gotten so good that it's a nice substitute for scenes where matching the power of sunlight or dealing with fast moving subjects isn't an issue. 

Another interesting point is the pace at which what used to be photography jobs (only!) are morphing into either combo jobs (video and stills) or have progressed to video replacing photography. While we aren't used to the idea right now don't we suppose there will come a time when we can shoot 24 megapixel cinema DNG raw files that will look as good as the best Jpegs from the same cameras? After all, Jpegs are currently on 8 bits while raw video can be 10 or 12 bits and Jpegs have a more limited color subsampling. 

I can see a time when we might show up, arrange a scene the way we like it and then "direct" the subject of a portrait sitting through a range of expressions while running a video/hybid camera shooting 6K raw video. With a little practice I think we would become proficient in knowing when we got good stuff and not running the camera for too long. Bore down to the ranges of frames you want to consider and erase the rest.

It's pretty instructive to watch what camera makers are launching into the market right now. The Sigma fp is much more about raw video than it is about being a still camera. Same with the Lumix S1H; although ti is a much, much better still camera while being more facile than the fp with video. The Canon C70 is a much talked about product in video circles and still imaging is almost an afterthought with that camera. The Sony A7Siii is resolutely a riposte to Panasonic's S series cameras. 

Everything coming out has moved the hybrid imaging game up a lot. The files are much beefier and more detailed. The raw capabilities add so much more control for us over image quality and our ability to set a wider and wider range of codecs and profiles is liberating. 

I get that most of us taught ourselves the pleasure of shooting one frame at a time and that this would be a huge earthquake change for us to get used to but in many ways we're already doing it with our iPhones. The same folks who might say, "I never want to shoot video." might not be aware that some of what makes iPhone photos work at squeezing great images from tiny sensors is the fact that the camera in the phone is blazing away, shooting endless video frames until you press the "shutter button" and is then almost instantly stacking large numbers of those frames, dropping out anomalies and noise while integrating all of the color and detail from multiple samples. It's basically shooting video even when it's not shooting video, it's just that the processing is taking place under the hood. And it's blisteringly fast.

And the video is set up the same way! We're already shooting the way I'm talking about with our phones and I think it's only a matter of time till it comes to our cameras. Under the hood at first but then fully customizable. 

Seems more and more like the future is raining down on us and we can either get soaked or roll with it. 

From a hobbyist point of view no one is calling on you to take any action. Keep on shooting exactly as you like. But if you are one of my readers who is trying to make a living shooting some kind of visual content it behooves you to learn and experiment all the time. It's inevitable that your photography clients will ask for moving pictures at some point in the future just as it's inevitable that all you video guys are going to increasingly be asked to pull great frames out of the video content you just shot and re-purpose them as still graphics. 

A lot to chew on for a Friday evening. 

Currently packing up to do a one person, music video with my friend, Kenny Williams, tomorrow afternoon. A couple of James Bond theme covers.... Nice.

 

The role of social media influencers in the camera market.

I spent eight years working in an advertising agency that specialized in "retail marketing". Now we'd probably call that B-to-C; business-to-consumer advertising. When I was working directly in the industry, as opposed to my current indirect role, we didn't have anything resembling social media and the closest we had to social media "influencers" were the hoary celebrity endorsers. Usually well known sports figures or television personalities who would pitch products and services on TV and in print ads. The idea that someone whose only accomplishment was being alive and documenting their homogeneous existence on a free video channel on the internet would have been mostly unthinkable. But here we are. 

We now have a family of women who are famous they shop, apply make-up and workout, and they are becoming social media billionaires (the Kardashians). We have a desperately under-qualified, sociopathic, social media expert as the president of the wealthiest country on the planet (though seemingly, not for long), and we have a bunch of people in their twenties making seven figure incomes because they are good at telling their personal stories on YouTube; and also getting all gushy and drool-y about products that are sent to them to "review." There is even an elementary school boy who  pulls down millions each year reviewing toys for other children. 

But I have to think hard to understand whether or not social media influencers in the camera and photography space have done more harm than good for the industry; and for their audiences. 

Advertising strategies for camera companies were relatively easy before the web rolled around. There was a handful of national and international magazines devoted to photography and nearly every ardent photographer subscribed to one or more monthly publications (or read them on the newsstands). They ranged from a magazine that started out as a local trade publication for professionals in NYC (Photo District News -- raise you hand if you remember when they used to be tabloid sized and printed on newsprint!) to wide ranging, glossy, general interest publications like Modern Photography and Popular Photography. All more or less relegated to oblivion now by the ever-encroaching web.

If there is an apt analogy to the print age then Digital Photography Review's website is the working combination of Modern Photography and Popular Photography with a little bit of Darkroom Photography thrown in for good measure. The critical focus across each of these media is the reviewing of product, the advertising of the same product, and a conduit with which to link buyer and seller. Now it's the ubiquitous "link" while in the days of old it was the endless advertisements in the back pages of every issue. 

In the magazine age there were few alternatives for advertisers beyond printed ads in targeted publications with a flourish of trade show excitement thrown in for good measure. I suppose the influencers at the time were the top tier photographers of the age. Mostly the editorial ones whose credit lines graced widely published photo stories in large scale, prestigious magazines. But it was a different era and many photographers worked across two or three different camera systems at a time. Every assignment might be different. The tools changed with the job and the publication. This made it more difficult for anyone to commit to a single brand. Photographers as influencers were much more gear promiscuous. 

Now we have people who are called influencers, ambassadors, explorers of the light, and other silly titles. 

Instead of shooting for big magazines and then using the awesome quality of their real work as leverage for their camera company clients the new horde of influencers rarely shoot anything for real world clients and are proudly pursuing careers in.....testing and touting cameras. And lenses. And gadgets. And presets. And t-shirts. And baseball caps with logos. Tony and Chelsea strive to be the Kardashian family of photography. All of them got into their influencer niche not because they loved being out photographing but because, for a long while, it was easy money. 

Wouldn't it be super cool if every "influencer" in the camera space was judged by his or her actual work first? Imagine going to a YouTube channel and having the first thing you see be a giant gallery of the influencer's work. Imagine that the work turned out to be was soulless and vapid and not particularly well done. Would you still "highly value" their recommendation of the 25th or 26th camera they have reviewed this year? 

Imagine a reviewer whose whole life revolves around reviewing. Certainly they should be able to sharpen their reviewing stick and really nail well produced and entertaining reviews but... would the value be there for you as the viewer? As a dedicated camera user? Is it enough for you that they talk a good game? Can you trust someone to really judge the handling of a camera if all the handling is done at a sponsor's junket? Would you rather hear from someone who buys the camera with their own funds and uses it daily for months or years until its operation becomes second nature before they write about it or discuss it? Is it enough for their audiences to listen to a regurgitation of the press release and the owner's manual?

Certainly it's the frothiness and the studied earnestness of the influencers that helps us come to think of our recently bought photo gear as quickly becoming obsolete, antiquated and less than capable. Surely it's their smug appreciation of that new menu item or seventh function button that drives us to want to buy and use a new camera just to have access to a control feature we never needed in any of our past photo adventures. 

In one sense the camera market, under constant pressure from the influencers, is becoming tribal and divided as never before. Even though camera sales are dropping like a bag of lead feathers every time a new model launches the appended comments on every vlog and website are strictly demarcated between ardent fans and hate filled detractors. One camp certain that this or that new camera will bring them closer to photo heaven while people in other camera tribes protest with loud conviction that the same camera is a tool of Satan and riddled with booby traps and  crippling failures that will bring nothing but sadness and rent cloth to the bewitched adopters. 

Why am I writing this now; today? Because I just saw a flurry of reviews for a Hasselblad product across nearly twenty YouTube channels by "reviewers" who rarely stray from talking about Canon/Nikon/Sony and who've never, as far as I can see, used or even flirted with medium format digital cameras before this bunched up flurry of reviews.  And I'm baffled. Or cynical.

It's enough to make me grudgingly believe that an old school review site like DPR has merit. Not enough depth but a lot more value than some dingus fussing around with brand after brand after brand, week after week. 

I understand that a unified marketing platform no longer exists on which a camera maker can place a year long buy of ad space and have any chance of hitting 50 or 60 % of all targeted buyers. But I wonder just how influential the social influencers are in moving brands that won't move at all by themselves. 

Or said another way, where are the Pentax influencers? Have the influencers saved Profoto? Do we need the shallow and transient information the vloggers are sharing or do we just visit their channels because we're bored. It's kind of sad.

Hold that thought. 

Circling back, let's have a zoom workshop. right....

Above somewhere in the post I wondered if the influencers do more harm than good for the industry. Think about this for a minute, in the stock market there used to be people who encouraged investors to buy and sell frequently. Jump on a hot tip. Sell in a moment of anxiety. In each sale or purchase the agent or broker made a bit of money. A monetization of their suspect advice. This was called "churn." Some brokers would work their audience (fans?) hard and in the end the investor would lose a good part of their net worth and either change their overall investment strategy or run out of money. 

A good Sony Vlogger works for Sony by churning Sony users (same with Nikon, Panasonic, Canon, etc.) and manipulates them to become dissatisfied with the very camera the influencers themselves recommended only a few months before. The audience capitulates to the sales pitch couched as informational/editorial content, sells their old camera at a loss and pays a premium for a new camera that may or may not be even fractionally better than the one it's replacing. Eventually the buyers catch on and stop buying altogether. Or they realize they've been "marks" who are systematically beggared by a relentless wringing of their financial sponges. And they remember that this is just a hobby and that everything they liked about the hobby seemed much more fun before the gear churn set in. They might decide that their phone is good enough and exit the hobby altogether. Sony (or other manufacturers) in concert with their influencers could have churned away what might have been a long term source of well paced income; if only the product cycles and the churn weren't so relentless. 

We're trained, I think, to regard those YouTube channels in the same way we do television channels. We know where the commercials begin and end on TV but we fail to understand that most photo/video blogs are one big commercial all the way through. And we trust our influencers because we mistake them for educational experts instead of understanding that they are just salespeople priming the overflowing pumps for the camera makers. It's an odd construct and one that leaves me cold.