In Praise of the All Purpose Lens for most Commercial Work. Video or Still.

The two lenses I used today to complete a job that required stills and video. 

I'm always impressed by the delusional pursuit of perfect lenses. There is a power in the process that is capable of sucking money out of my bank account faster and more frequently than any other part of my expensive photography habit. I recently acquired a Sigma 50mm f1.4 Art lens. It's spectacular. You'd think I would use it for everything but it's only been out for a few walks and it's been toted along but unused on a handful of assignments where I imagined that it might make a critical difference in ..... something pertaining to my work but it ended up staying in the bag and mostly just taking up space.

Over the years I've made the same kinds of errors in critical thinking over and over again. The acquisitive/rationalizing part of my brain tells me that the ultimate lenses will help me make much better photographs. It persuades me that all my clients will see and appreciate the difference that an ultra-cool-expensive-flashy-fast lens will make in the work I do for them. And I follow that bad part of my brain and rush to the store or to my computer keyboard and throw caution to the wind in my breathless desire to own the best. Almost without exception the most prestigious lenses I ever buy inevitably get sold off a while later. Always at a loss that exceeds any sort of depreciation.

I think my least wise purchases over the course of my career were the purchase of a brand new 80mm Leica R Summilux 1.4 for my (also bad choice) Leica R8 system. There was nothing wrong with the lens. In fact, it was really, really sharp, had flawless bokeh (I measured it on the same brand of Bokeh-Meter used by the savants at DP Review -- It was a 9.5 on the Kroniform Thyquisty Coefficient of Wunderblur. Beaten only by a Lens Baby...) but the cold hard reality was that 80mm is a shitty focal length for me and I should have known better before casually tossing down north of $2500 for a lens I used maybe three times and liked maybe once.

The second was an Olympus 14-35mm f2.0 zoom that was made for the now deceased Four Thirds system. It was supposed to be a beautiful lens. It was $2200. I could never get it to focus on the sensor plane. It loved the space behind the sensor and enjoyed the space in front of the sensor but it plainly reviled the actual focal plane of any Olympus camera I ever owned. I even

And just like that....we're back. And packing for a hybrid shoot in the morning.

Last week, and all weekend up until the end of Monday, sucked. My dad didn't like being in the hospital and I sure didn't like spending nights and days there trapped in a small room, with bad coffee and worse decor. But we've moved past that now. My dad is home from his stint in observation and, according to my sister, is back to his (recent) old self. Happy and adjusting quickly to being back in his senior living center. I'm now on to other parent care initiatives such as selling the "ancestral" home. We are on schedule to close next week. There goes another day.

But for now I'm happy to have work and I'd rather write about packing for tomorrow's shoot. I'm heading to the Driskill Hotel in the middle of downtown to both photograph and make video of a team building exercise for a national engineering firm. We've got a short time in which to work and lots of stuff to capture.

The client spec'd 1080p video and that's something the GH5 excels at; especially when you set it to do 1080p in 10 bit, 4:2:2, All-I. I don't think I'm going to have much time to dick around with lenses and settings so I've got the camera set up with the Olympus 12-100mm f4.0 Pro lens and I'll most likely spend the morning shooting it wide open at f4. Why not? It's monstrously sharp there, has more than enough depth of field and I'll have a fighting chance in lower light situations. I'm taking a couple fast primes in case the client throws me a curve ball and we end up in a room with next to no light.

We're not doing interviews, just capturing the flow of the team building episode but it's still important to grab some ambient sound during the process. I'm using the Aputure Diety shotgun microphone mounted on top of the Panasonic GH5's audio interface and I'm toying this evening with the decision of bucking best practices and setting the module to use Automatic Level Control (Satan's setting) so I don't have to ride levels while I'm shooting.

I have a small cage for the camera, and the image stabilization in the lens is great, but I know I'm not Superman so I'm going to depend on a Benro video monopod. It's one of those that has the little "chicken feet" at the bottom to help with overall stabilization and it has a nice fluid head on the other end. I practiced with it today for half an hour and I think I've got the hang of it. 

I did the firmware update on the GH5 last week and the AF tracking seems much improved. I may trust it this time for a bit of an assist. So that's it for the video portion of our morning but I also have to capture much the same progression of event with still photographs as well. 

To that end I'm bringing a Nikon D800e and the 24-120mm lens. One lens, one body. I'm also hedging my bets by bringing along a small, shoe mount, electronic flash unit to bounce off the ceiling for the times when I feel like I've just got to have a little more illumination....

Everything packs down into a small backpack (except for the monopod) and I like that because I'm working without an assistant and I want to get in and out fast. I'll shoot raw for the stills and deliver corrected Jpegs but I'm sending along the video as OOC (out of camera) files and letting the client's team in another state incorporate it into whatever project they have in mind. 

I'll head to swim practice first thing in the morning and then see if I can't catch the bus downtown. It's so much easier (and cheaper) than trying to find weekday parking in downtown Austin. For a couple of bucks I have convenience and a nice break from having to pay attention to anything. Should be a nice change....

One reason I am looking forward to working at the historic Driskill Hotel = they have really good coffee...

Young Ben at Asti Trattoria. 

It will be nice to get back to something I am reasonably good at, for a change. And I love having engineers as subjects. Then it's back home to put on my "real estate" hat and get a house sold. We've got some contract stuff to get through but should be closing on the property next week. It's actually fun to keep checking stuff off my list. 

Dad is in good hands back at his memory care facility. The staff is great. The nurses are great, and my little sister flew into town to spend the rest of the week visiting him and catching up. No panicky sub-routine running in the back of my brain while I'm trying to navigate two different system menus. 

I also wanted to write a quick bit about owning one's own copyright. I know a lot of people will tell you that owning the rights to your images and charging additional fees for licensing is extinct or somehow last century, but we still do it. Case in point: we photographed for an architectural firm a few weeks back and we billed them for my time and usage fees for public relations and marketing use of the images. Late last week the multinational construction company which built the project I shot for the architects got in touch with me having been referred by the architect. 

They needed images from the project as well and it dawned on them that our images were real, not future tense or virtual, that they reviewable and that they could have the option of licensing (not buying---just renting) the images individually for their PR and Marketing as well. I checked with the first client and we have no conflict. My offer to the construction company for the use of the images was $125 per image or $1250 for the use of the catalog of images from the half day project. They looked at the galleries and quickly chose the second option. Getting paid twice for the same job is the best way to make this profession profitable. It's not cheating anymore than selling multiple tickets to the same movie is cheating. 

If you aren't currently estimating and bidding based on usage fees and secondary or shared usage you might want to give it a try. Five minutes of phone time for a good fee seems worth learning how to explain this business method to potential and existing clients.

The Summer shooting season is picking up. We've got three theater productions to photograph as well as some fun stuff for several of my medical practice clients. Now, if we can just all stay healthy I think this might work out...

 The rest of the images are just here (below) because I like looking at them. You could stop reading here if you like. ..

back lighting mania.

Crusty old photographer. 

Evening report.

Dad is back at his Memory Care/Assisted Living Facility. My sister is in town handling stuff for the rest of the week. I made it back to Austin late this afternoon in a little over an hour. Can't wait for dinner with Ben and Belinda, with Studio Dog in attendance under the table, leaning on my feet and waiting to see if anything is left over for her. I was only gone since Thurs. but I think that dog used up all her saliva licking my face in welcome when I walked in the door....

Photo of Ben from 20 years ago.

Job on Weds. Stock sale today. Lunch with a best friend tomorrow. Momentary recovery.

Where the heck is Kirk?

Hey. I drove to San Antonio on Weds. for a meeting, got a call from my dad’s cardiologist, rushed dad from assisted living to the hospital. He has a pacemaker/ICD with cellular telemetry that indicated ten cardiac arrests in the middle of the night. The ICD revived him each time. I’ve been  sleeping on a chair in his room since then. Being there makes it easier on him and the nurses because his dementia is exacerbated by the absence of familiar faces and routines. It is taking a toll on me and reduces blogging as a priority. Dad is getting discharged today (finger crossed) and things will return to normal soon. I sure miss swim practice. And I hate writing this on a cellphone. 

I’d very much appreciate any supporting and well intentioned comments.

With a bit of luck you’ll hear more from me soon! Kirk

There are some shots I take that seem meaningless but which I like looking at. I might be the only one but that's okay.

I think I enjoy this one because there is so much blue in this shot that the red construction elevators just seem to come alive by contrast. I see the buildings as large waves and the elevators as small fish. It's kinda crazy but endless building is a topic of art exploration that will become more and more interesting as population growth heads toward geometric and there is an ever mounting pressure to build enough living and working spaces to accommodate everyone. It will be ever more relentless.

Documenting the growth of a city is like taking a long term pulse....

On a different note, I was comparing images taken with the same wide angle zoom on the D700 and D800 cameras. I like the files from the D700 better --- at least if no one is going to blow them up really large. They just seem sharper and more topographically juicy.