Kirk's Top Ten List of Great Lighting Gear.

I photograph lots of different subjects and most of them require lighting that's designed to work best for a specific situation.  Fast and furious PR and event documentation?  Anything that can't be done with available light probably gets lit with a battery powered flash.  Shallow DOF portraits in controlled environments?  Usually big silks and hot lights.  Portraits in red hot Austin sunlight?  Gotta be battery pack driven flashes.  Big studio shots?  You can pretty much count on a couple of electronic flash packs and an assortment of heads.  I have a reputation of being fickle about gear.  I buy new cameras regularly.

I finally broke down and asked a psychiatrist friend who knows me very well, why I seem to churn through cameras like a stock broker through my SEP.  He had an interesting take.  His interpretation was that methodical engineer types run the numbers and shop carefully.  They check all the boxes after establishing rational parameters.  Then they use the gear over and over again in precisely the same way.  This ensures predictable results.  On the other hand, the very nature of being an artist is to master  a tool and a style, followed by the evolution to the next style and set of parameters.  The next step.  In photography, for better or worse, we are wedded to our tools.  They shape our vision.  A new tool means a change in vision, a shift in point of view=  A new way of looking at things.  This sounds right to me.  And it's not a judgment thing.  It may be why artists master more ways of looking at things but die starving in trailer parks.   The constant search and evolution will never equal the production line for productivity and ongoing profitability.

But for the most part the artist doesn't care.  To do the same thing over and over again would be the death of the artist's soul and he might as well give up and do something entirely different than walk the same circular path over and over again.

So this guy has multiple degrees in the science of the mind and I'm ready to believe him.  While I churn through cameras in an endless search for the next step I am not nearly so fickle about lights.  I tend to buy them and use them for a long, long time.  And maybe that's because I can change the shape, quality and the texture of the lights at my will.  That being said, I do want to play with high quality gear because I don't want to become wedded to the necessity of maintenance.  Fixing stuff sucks.  It should just work.

Cameras are critical but somewhat interchangeable.  Lights are the bedrock of our craft.

Without any further inspection into my weathered psyche I'd like to talk about ten pieces of equipment that I love and would not like to create without, even if I change cameras as often as most people change their underwear.

In no particular order:

1.  When I'm shooting a large set or scene in full sun and I need my light to match or overpower the sun's pervasive power I reach for my favorite big battery light, the Elinchrom RX AS pack with attendant flash head.  It's a highly efficient system with a big ass battery that cranks out 1100 watt seconds 250 times in a row before moaning and groaning.  If you need to put a light in a softbox and go outside to shoot, this is the light that makes the slow sync speeds in most cameras worthwhile.
Check it out here:

2.  When I'm moving quickly outside, without the benefit of an assistant (happens more and more these days in the times of "no budget")  I grab the Profoto 600b battery powered flash system with it's cute, black flash head.  It's half the weight of the Elincrhom, takes only one head, has a smaller battery but......it's totally reliable and I can easily carry it in a backpack.  At "only" 600 watt seconds, I might have to use the flash and softbox combination a bit closer than I would with the Elinchrom but I can still get the job done.  Newsflash for anyone who already owns one:  Profoto just came out with a Lithium battery version and the batteries are backwardly compatible.  Cuts down on the weight, adds additional flashes per charge and cuts the recycle times.  If I could only own one flash I'd have tough time deciding between the two.

Check it out here:

3.  When I need a smaller flash I turn to the Metz line.  I've owned Canon, Nikon, Olympus and Vivitar flashes but for my money the little 48 afi flashes are the best price/performance ratio light on the market.  I bought one for my Olympus stuff and have been impressed by the performance.  It's not the top of the line.  Those are too big.  This is the next size down.  It still takes four double "a's" and since it is slightly less powerful it actually recycles quicker.  The quality of the light is great and, at $229 they are a bargain compared to the manufacturer's flashes.  I also use an older 54 MZ3 in a totally manual configuration (without a dedicated shoe, only the standard middle pin shoe.) it works great in both automatic and power ratio settings.  TTL is mostly overrated.  Works okay if you have time to chimp every shot but if you get your chops down and learn to gauge distances then manual is hands down more reliable.

Check out this version for Canon users:

4.  If you shoot portraits you're going to need to soften the light coming from your flash.  There are thousands of products on the market to do this but the physics are basic.  The bigger the total square inches of light emitting or reflecting surface area the softer the light will be.  You can spend over a thousand dollars on an Octabank, hundreds of dollars on softboxes of countless configurations or you can just get over it all and get the most cost effective and beautiful light source out there, the Photek 60 inch Softlighter Two umbrella.  It's basically just a well made 60 inch umbrella with a white translucent "sock" that fits over the front of the umbrella and flash head to make the whole thing a combination softbox/umbrella.  It's much quicker to set up and will only cost you around $80.  Talking attention to detail:  Two different shaft sizes to interface with various flash heads.  If you have European lights like the Profoto or the Elinchrome you'll want/need the thinner shaft.  Super good bargain/must have.  I keep two in the bag in case on overly zealous assistant destroys one.

Here's a peek:

5.  If you do this for any amount of time you'll find that some of the photographers from the 1950's and 1960's had a lot of stuff figured out that vanished from the scene and would be missed if people really knew what they were doing.  You're pretty smart so you probably realize that getting people posed correctly for portraits is tough and it would be nice, for a seated portrait, if the subject had somewhere to rest their arms or elbows.  In the old days every photographer who did nice portraits had a posing table.  Very sensible.  It anchors subjects in place and make the shoot more comfortable for them.  Get one. Make sure it's solid. 

6.  If you are going to put someone at a table it just makes sense to put them on a stool that can be adjusted.  Everyone should be able to sit with  their feet on the ground.  Or maybe one foot on the ground and the other on an apple crate.  A pneumatic stool is just the ticket.  Mine comes from one of the background companies like Denny and is solid and comfortable.  I think just about any good, adjustable stool should work.  This one looks good:

7.  My lighting life would be empty and sad if I couldn't use my big scrim.  A big scrim is just a translucent fabric on a frame.  It diffuses the light.  And the bigger the better, within reason.  You still  have to be able to both afford and transport the thing.  That's why I like collapsibles like the inexpensive one from PhotoFlex.  It's 74 by 74 inches, folders down to half that length for packing and has very few parts to break.  You'll need some adjustable clamps to hook the panel up to a couple light stands but I'll let you research those.......

Sorry, couldn't find an illustration.......

8.  When I work in the studio I really love to listen to music.  Not loud.  Just in the background.  It's calming and helps everyone focus on the job at hand.  I've had stuff hooked up to my computer before but I didn't like that solution.  I wanted something for my workspace that sounds great but doesn't take up too much space.  Believe me,  I've been through a lot of systems over the years.  Got tired of powered subwoofers and all the arcane digital stuff.  I finally settled on a Tivoli Stereo Radio system and a 120 gig iPod.  Who would need anything more.  If you are a rap enthusiast you'll probably want something that will play louder........

I swear by this radio.  It sounds absolutely wonderful.  I bought one in the middle of the great depression of 2009 when the price actually dropped to $139.95.  But back then you could also get a brand new Panasonic L1 with the Leica zoom for around $650........

Everything was on sale then.  Damn, should have bought a factory.

9.  If you work in the studio just skip the light stands and buy a C-stand (Century Stand) from Matthews or Manfrotto.  Super heavy duty and the arm does double duty as a small, strong light boom.  You can get them in black or in Chrome.  I've got both.  I like the look of the black one and in the studio you don't have as many problems with reflections back into the photo.  But the chrome ones are nice working in the Texas sun as they don't absorb heat the same way......you choose.

10.  Finally,  who can get any work done without Foamcore?  This stuff is just essential.  It's the gold standard as a reflector or light blocker and it's the only thing on my list that costs about what morning coffee for me and an assistant costs.  I keep all the scraps.  The small pieces are great for still life set ups.  The large chunks as portrait reflectors and the full sheets, taped together, as 4 foot by 6 foot "V" panels.  Great stuff to bounce a light into.

We cover this kind of stuff in the new book.  If you are interested in lighting, especially in different ways than you have in the past, it might be a handy resource.  I worked hard on the book.  It's pretty darn good.

I'd love to hear some feedback from people who've read the book.  This is one I'll likely want to revise every few years to update new products and new techniques.  It's a world of constant change.

Heading to east Texas tomorrow to photograph some really nice attorneys.  I'm thinking about all this stuff while I'm packing up the Honda Element......

Zero to 60 in one week. Camera craziness is part of the bargain.

It's like a dragon woke up and started breathing fire.  It's been a busy week.  I've shot theater and video and portraits and interior architecture and I'm booked up with an out-of-town shoot all next week.  I'm leaving on Sunday, around lunch time and won't be back until late in the week.  Got my magazine lifestyle shot done and sent out just in time.

Book # four, my book about all kinds of lighting equipment for digital photographers is selling well on Amazon.com and has already gotten its first five star review.  Thank you Park Street.  The book is a sleeper.  It starts out with a little history of lighting and works its way up to the fun stuff. I've gotten some really nice feedback from trusted readers and I love the reproduction quality of the images inside. I'm taking a break from writing books for the next few quarters to focus like a laser on my core love, photography.  I"m really getting back into the thrill of shooting portraits.  Loving available light as long as it's available from my box full of lights......

Things are getting a little strange around the studio since my physicist friend, Dr. Charlie Martini, invented a new electronic device which aids people in their enjoyment of photography.  We've been working on a device which, when miniaturized, would allow us to casually slap it on the side of an art buyer's forehead and it would program them to like the style of work that I show in my portfolio.  It didn't work out so well and several art buyers are talking about litigation.  I don't know why they would get so worked up about a few little second degree burns and some (hopefully) temporary amnesia, but we learned a good lesson-----ASK PERMISSION BEFORE ATTEMPTING CASUAL MIND CONTROL.


With these lessons learned we have adapted the device to serve as a verbal to visual translator.  Now I don't even have to take images.  I can describe them in various levels of detail and our Imaginizer 2020 will create visual images in the minds of the subjects who wear the devices.  So far, my verbal descriptions have been described as boring and mundane but I'm buying a thesaurus and I have high hope.  When it works right the subjects stop looking at me as subject #3210z is in the mind-o-graph above and they just get quiet, like this:

It worries Dr. Charlie Martini but I am optimistic.  We haven't lost one in a while.....


On another note, the Austin Photo Expo is drawing near.  It's the weekend of the 14th-15th of May, here in Austin.  I'll be giving a presentation, sponsored by Olympus, three times on each of the two days.  I'll be showing images from a wide range of cameras and a lot of video from the EPL and the EP-2 cameras with a zany assortment of lenses.  I'm working on a title but I think I've just about settled on:  The New Generation of Swiss Army Knife Cameras.  And why you should care.  All six talks are free.  I'd love to see some of my local friends show up and heckle.  There is one guy I can always count on......you know who you are.

I've been shooting up a storm for the folks at Zachary Scott Theater (tried to sell them a box full of Imaginizer 2020's but they wouldn't go for it....).  This is a studio shot will an Olympus camera and the old 40-150 mm lens.  So far they've made some 30 inch by 40 inch posters from the files but nothing bigger.  Looks great at lifesize though.  It's a classic lighting set up meant to reference the work I did in last year's season brochure.  We start with a big, 6 by 6 foot scrim over the the left of the camera and a small reflector to the other side. The gray background is about 20 feet behind and there is a small softbox on a Profoto flash head aimed at a spot just behind Jaston.  The big scrim has it's own Profoto head, married up to a Magnum reflector.  As usual, I'm locked down on a tripod.

In addition to the above shot we just finished two days of shooting for a play entitled, Call it Courage and another day for their Season lead-off, Our Town.  Lots of photons being captured by lots of different cameras....

Love the people at Zach Scott Theater because sometimes they let me do wacky stuff like this.  Not to mention that no one batted an eye this week when I did one of the dress rehearsals with this combination of cameras:
EP-2 with a 60mm 1.5 Pen Film lens and an EPL-1 with a Panasonic 20mm pancake lens.  Amazingly, using the "shimmer method" I could actually focus quickly and accurately with the small electronic view finder.

This one was shot under pretty low light at ISO 800 with the EPL and the Panasonic 20mm.   I think it works...

This one is from the EP2 and the 60mm 1.5.  I think I hit focus on a moving target with a manually focused lens at a fixed aperture pretty well.  All metering is manual.


I'll be hitting the road on Sunday.  I've got a bunch to say about the new hybrid video/still cameras so I expect I'll write some more tomorrow and then try a couple while on the road.


Hope everyone is happy and healthy.  Think positive thoughts and maybe they'll come true.

It's the little things that make life so interesting.......

From time to time my clients at places like Freescale, Motorola or AMD will come alive and call me with an assignment to photograph a chip "die".  The schedule is usually as short as the fuse on a bottle rocket and the part is usually a beta product with a blemish or defect.  If I remember correctly this little beauty was about 2 or 3 mm in width.  It also had some scratches.  I needed to make it look intriguing and needed to do it by end of next business day, 22 hours and counting.

I don't know if you routinely photograph anything that small but they are tiny enough that a sneeze sends them flying and a piece of dust looks like a boulder on the landscape of the die.  To get the kind of magnification you'll need you'll want to have a bellows to stick in front of your camera and you'll want to use a fairly short focal length lens that's computed for high magnification.  Maybe a 12.5mm Photar or a 25mm Zuiko lens made specially for magnifications that start at five times lifesize.

Many nasty things happen when you go above 5x lifesize.  First, the finder gets really, really dark.   The image gets really hard to focus.  Wide open on an f4 lens the depth of field becomes the width of a human hair.  If you stop down you are immediately confronted with sharpness robbing diffraction.  You must be exactly planar from the sensor plane to the lens plane to the subject plane or you will never achieve sharp focus over the whole object.  We're talking fractional degrees of angle here.

Finally, the chip die is actually a dull finished piece of silicon.  The bright colors on these samples and on samples you've doubtless seen elsewhere is the painstaking end product of moving lights around at different angles and different altitudes until your get a reflection of a layer and the refraction of the reflection creates a dominant color.  Shorter way of saying that:  You gotta move the main light all over the place till you get a blast of color.  But it's never the same color twice.

There are hundreds of ways to get sabotaged. Could be dust in the air, could be an alignment just a tiny bit out of whack.  You can spend hours tracking it down.  But what the heck, the fun is in the challenge.
In the old days the dies were giant.  Some where half an inch by half an inch.  Easy as pie.  We routinely shot that stuff with 4x5 sheet film.  But every 18 months the chip dies get smaller and smaller.   At this point it's no longer feasible to put a standard macro lens like a Nikon or Canon 50 because the lens is too long to achieve the magnification you need on the available bellows.

In a few more 18 month generations this kind of documentation will  probably need to be done on low mag industrial microscopes with oculars for camera attachment.  Right now, if you can do this reliably you'll be in demand.  Not as glamorous as shooting lingerie models but I'm going to be these kind of assignments actually pay better.

Here's two more:

Wouldn't you hate to solder the leads onto the connectors by hand?  Makes me laugh just to think about it.  I hear the micro chip industry is coming back to life.  Should keep some people a bit busier.  They sure are sexy.  Wish I could tell you which camera but I've been through so many I can't.

Next post.  Why some people (me) change cameras a lot.  Conjecture from a famous psychiatrist.

Ah, the source of our freelance pain revealed.....

The last wooden slats in the Paris Metro.

I hear a lot of people talk about how digital is changing everything.  The premise being that a lot of newbies have flooded into the market and they are actively stealing the work from seasoned pros.  I've been nosing around. Free people aren't stealing our work. I've been meeting with clients and friends in the ad and corporate worlds. They aren't hiring cheaper photographers. They're just not hiring anyone.

Here's supporting evidence. Sales tax revenues in Texas (a state LEAST affected by the depression) has seen double digit declines in the sales tax rate since last March. April 2010 and March 2010 are the first two months since then that have ONLY shown single digit declines in sales tax revenue. Which means spending is still dropping. Only when sales tax rev heads to positive growth will we see any of the peripheral (discretionary spending) markets recover.

Now I see why it feels like a I've been baling a boat with a thimble. The leak is bigger than I thought. But none of this means that cheaper camera dudes are stealing our work. Just ain't none to steal.  But it doesn't mean that photography will never be profitable again!

Hold on. We'll make it.

It's all about the happiness.

No matter where you are right now in your occupational journey I can pretty much tell you that you'll never be satisfied. Work isn't like that.  You don't do the big project and then stand back and go, "Tada!"  If you are like most of us you say, "Cool.  That's done.  What's next?"  All the sturm und drang over the economy and the decimation of the photo industry mostly affects those who fear change.   And most of those who fear change are rooted into their fear by their own desires.  Bust up the feelings off desire and you break the cycle of soul decay and unhappiness.  It's like flossing.  You keep breaking up plaque deposits so the gum disease doesn't get you.

If your biggest desire is a good cup of coffee life will accommodate you pretty well.  If you must have a jet and a super model spouse and an island then desire might bitch slap you until you die.

In a post I put up several weeks ago I mentioned the Ruby Slippers.  At our core we are not photographers we're artists who've chosen, for now, to express ourselves with photographs.  The power comes from within.  Even if the media changes the art doesn't.  We just adapt to the new media.  We've had the power all along.  We just need to click our heals together and stop listening to the man behind the curtain.  We need to stop being paralyzed by the wicked witch of the west.  We need to stop looking for outside help and switch on that power.

I talk a lot about equipment but this whole game is really about seeing and sharing.  The equipment can make barriers.  The desire for equipment can make more barriers.  Just the right equipment can be transparent.  I'm migrating toward cheaper and cheaper gear because I believe more and more in my own power and less in the magic of the tool.  It's like learning to swim and slowly getting rid of the water wings.

The only real lessons I've ever learned are these:  Kindness matters.  Happiness comes from within.

Someone posted yesterday that even though I had a financially sucky year in 2009 that I was so optimistic.  Having made less money in 2009 sure gave me back a lot of my own time.  And I spent it in the pursuit of happiness.  Nice bargain, yes?

Edit:  Adding gear note:  Joe's coffee shop on South Congress Ave.  A small Mocha with whole milk.  Oh,  the camera?  That's an EP2 with an old 38mm 1.8 Pen F (film) lens from the late 1960's.

Some thoughts about the future of photography as a business.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/30/business/media/30photogs.html?adxnnl=1&emc=eta1&adxnnlx=1269907243-yZ/jjtLNoyncbflgnXJBKw

The above link is to an article that ran last week in the New York Times.  It paints a bleak picture for the future of commercial photography or indeed, the ability to make any money in photography other than by making equipment and peripherals.

The article's two pronged contention is that with "everyman" embracing stock photography and driving the cost down to zero, (or near zero) and with the rise of the amateur who is willing to work local markets at a loss, the previously lofty market for photography is heading for harder and harder times for those who've chosen to work in the industry as full time professionals.

I get it.  Moms who have the ability to stay home, out of the traditional 9 to 5 workforce are making a dramatic impact on traditional children's portrait and low end wedding markets.  Fields that once supported small studios across the country.  In many cases the amateur's work is as good as the professional work that had dominated the field.

And I get in on the commercial side as well.  Over the years commercial photographer's incomes came from a mix of tough, cerebral assignments interlaced with fairly straightforward documentation of products, properties and archetypes.  Now even my best friends who are art directors reach for stock and microstock for images that are generic.  Why wouldn't they?  It's a quick and efficient way to stock up their websites and brochures.  The price keeps clients from just saying, "Fuck it.  We'll save some money and do the whole project in-house."  The AD's fear that their turn is coming next as America (and perhaps the world) accepts that "good enough" is good enough for now.

But is it as bad as the article makes it out to be?  I would say, no.  Just because McDonald's has 60 or 80 franchises in our area and there are probably hundreds of other Taco Bells and Wendy's and Cheap Chicken places doesn't mean that stellar restaurants like Jeffreys or Treo at the Four Seasons or Sullivan's Steakhouse have been closed down and are relics of the past.  They thrive and they've thrived throughout the bust.  I was in Marathon, Texas recently and the Gage Hotel restaurant was doing great business, selling a $48 ribeye (a la carte).  Champagne seems to keep selling even though cheaper prosecos proliferate.

Millions of Honda Civics, Hyundai Rio's and Toyota Corollas get sold every year and yet they haven't been able to knock off the luxury brands like Mercedes and BMW or even make a dent in their own vertical offerings such as Camry's and Lexus or Crosstours and Accuras.

My experience tells me that all the stuff we used to do that was basic bread and butter is gone.  The cheese has been moved.  But top executives and their marketing staffs still call in the pros for high profile portraits.  My friend Paul got to shoot in Italy for a month in the midst of the worst year for the economy any of us has ever seen (2009)  and his business here, shooting high end commercial and residential architecture, has barely slowed down.

I still get calls to shoot higher end advertising where the products are unique or the ideas proprietary.  I also know that my friends at the high end of the wedding and portrait business are still booking the very top of the market.  Do we miss the bottom foundational layer? Yes, it was a nice source of income.  Do we miss the bread and butter?  Yes, because we could always try to up sell from there.

I'll be frank, 2009 was a financial disaster.  Not just for photographers but for just about anyone who was self employed at the time.  Or anyone who was trying to rent out commercial property.  My fee income from assignment photography dropped nearly 50%.  But we quickly moved to supplement the shortfall with more paid speaking and workshop engagements and more book assignments.  The royalty stream from earlier books kicked in.  I wrote stuff for advertising clients.  From time to time I leaned on the savings account.

But we can't judge our industry by 2009 and 2008.  That would be like judging all boat safety just from the example of the Titanic.  The whole economy got clobbered.  For the most part we are more of a discretionary market than a staple like diapers and milk.  But the flipside to that is that when time are good we are usually able to charge a premium.

If you were a professional who predicated your business success on the microstock industry you probably didn't do due diligence when you started out.  You would have seen the trajectory.  Everyone else did.  You can point to the handful of people who work 80 hours a week shooting thousands of photos they don't really care about who make a great living in the micro stock market but the reality for most people is that the only people getting rich from small sales of stock imagery are the owners of the stock agencies.

If you are competing with the moms with a camera who want the bottom end of the market you'll probably want to re-vamp that whole idea as well.

The trickier part of the market is the middle (yes, everyone will write that the middle sucks and you should only deal with the Buffetts and the Gates families but that's silly.  The middle is where all the volume is and a great chunk of the value).  This is where the people with full time jobs come poaching, looking to score ego points by getting published.  Think of the IT guy who offers to shoot corporate events or the electrical engineer who volunteers to do the company product shots with his new Nikon D3x.  The marketing team would be nuts to not take him up on the offer.  But he may not be a sustainable source.  The economy is recovering in many sectors and at some point the engineer will be too busy or his time will become to expensive.

We need to understand that our markets are changing.  I can't speak to your market but I know I've got to reposition myself to go after more and more high end portraiture.  So many of my competitors who did this kind of work in addition to weddings and babies have gone out of business and there is share there to be had.  I need to take the film making and video skills I learned years ago and repurpose the knowledge to corporate clients who want to move marketing into web based video.  And I need to better communicate my value proposition as a writer for the same industries.  I conjecture that the person who writes the script makes at least as much as the guy running the camera so why not have both fees?

Will we erode other people's market share?  It's inevitable.  They will erode ours as well.

But not to get lost in all this is the understanding that the big jobs will be back, in one guise of the other.  The budgets will come back because the upside for marketers is too big to not do great advertising.  The competition too fierce to stick with "good enough" as a long term strategy.  In the years going forward the rewards will go to two camps:  Those flexible enough to keep up with the fashion and the technical revolution our field enjoys and suffers from, and those whose vision has value and who have not devalued that vision by dropping their prices through the floor.

A final example that bears inspection is Apple.  They've not dropped the prices on their laptops or their high end computers like the rest of the industry which participated in a race to the bottom.  As a result their equity value increased by a factor of 400% in just the last year and a half.  By contrast the winner of the race to the bottom saw the value of their company drop precipitously.  Apple showed product and vision flexibility:  They supplemented the traditional business with other technologies like the iPods and the iPhones and now, the iPad.

We need to embrace this model.  Keep our value intact.  Keep our key product prices and fees high.  Find new ways to grow the business.  If you need to sell a cheaper product find a cheaper product to sell.  If your premium product is location lifestyle photography for ad agencies, don't erode your value/pricing model on that product.  Find a product like studio head shots that you can offer at a lower price point and maximize the potential of that market.  If you do head shots in the studio as your primary product then explore buying into the market for consumer experiences and create a product like location fashion shoots for everyday consumers that you can package as a step up or up sell.

Everyone always suggests that photographers write more or do video but I would also suggest that you understand leveraging content into visual metaphor and might want to explore ways to leverage those skills.

Bottom line:  The NYT article was a casual look at the most obvious trends.  Predicated to sell papers.  The reality is more complex.  After any cataclysmic event like the melt down of 2009 the ground is prepared for a new revolution and, even in existing businesses there is pent up demand for products and services.  Identify.  Price them.  Sell them.  Now is not the time to stay in the bunker.

It's funny to me.  I wrote a book about how to use battery powered flashes.  It's still a best seller in its category.  I wrote a book with lots of research about how to make photography profitable and that book languishes.  That's good for some of us because it shows me that people entering the field think technical knowledge is more important than marketing and business knowledge.  That's why I'm
optimistic........


      

It all came together on Saturday afternoon. Beyond lens lust.

Okay.  So it's a couple of branches.  So what?  Well it's also a wide open shot done with a 60mm Pen (film version) f1.5 lens from the late 1960's.  On a Pen EP2.


Let's get this out of the way up front:  I love the new micro Four Thirds cameras.  I think they are great and for the kind of contemplative photography a lot of people do I think they are better than traditional DSLR cameras.  There.  I said it.  Better.

Here's why:  You get to look through an electronic finder and watch as the exposure, DOF and color are shown to you in a real time preview.  Like what you see?  Go ahead and push the shutter button and you'll most likely get an image that's exactly what you saw.  It's so different than an optical finder that you have to try it out to understand how much different it is in real life.  I can hardly wait until the bigger cameras like the Olympus e30 types (and the Nikons and Canons) lose their mirrors and go all EVF.  And I predict it will happen sooner rather than later.

But there's a second reason I like the little Pens.  I can put just about any lens on them.  But what lenses work best?

Here's the same shot at around f 5.6 and a half.  The background is coming in....

You can't just put any lens on the front of these cameras and be absolutely happy because most older lenses for bigger format weren't really designed to be high enough resolution to put enough detail into the dense and condensed area of pixels wedged into these 12 megapixel 2X crop cameras.   I've tried older Nikon lenses and they work okay but they really didn't do anything that the meager collection of dedicated m4:3rd lenses couldn't do.  I have used the Nikon 50mm 1.1.2 lens but wide open the sharpness suffers.  And the bulk of the lens makes the whole camera package unwieldy.  In fact, using big lenses cancels the whole system out.  If you put a two or three pound lens in front of the tiny camera you might as well just use a big camera to begin with......

The dream for many micro EVIL users is to have a handful of small, super fast primes that were computed for the smaller frame size and can be mounted without issue on the front of a Panny or Pen.

Well, I'm here to tell you that they exist and they are superb.  Something new from Korea?  No.  How about something quite old from Japan.  I'm talking about the jewel-like interchangeable lenses originally made for the Pen F film cameras from the 1960's and the 1970's.  They are out there on the used market and they are gorgeous.  Computed to cover a half frame of film with high contrast and resolution these Olympus optics have been in my equipment drawer since the mid 1980's just waiting for the right opportunity to shine.

A street shot of my friend Emily.  Shot today on Sixth St. in downtown.  f2.8.  No lighting.

The first lens I'm testing is one of my favorites from yesteryear.  The 60mm 1.5 is small, relatively light. The manual-only focus ring is like butter.  You can set infinite intermediate aperture values and watch the exposure subtly change through the finder.  The lens is a bit less contrasty than modern lenses but seems to have greater resolution.  I'd read a technical paper about lens design in the late 1970's which basically said that you can either have very high resolution or you  can have very high contrast or some compromise between the two but not both.  I think, given the high contrast of films back when this lens was designed, coupled with the small frame target that the Olympus engineers gave the nod to resolution.  Happily we live in an age of Photoshop (tm) wherein we can change the mix between the two parameters to meet our own tastes on every shot.  I added about 5% contrast to the image above before converting it to a web sized version.

Here we're at f8 and I'm seeing incredible detail and a tenacious grasp of shadow detail. (Sounding like a wine critic today......)  Look at the detail in his hair and shirt.

Here's the other thing I like about shooting with manual focus primes,  once you focus you can recompose till the cows come home without worrying about "locking" focus.  Small, light, sharp, detailed, lack of flare,  single focal length lenses blow zooms and Rube Goldberg/big fat lenses with adapters clean away.

Do I need a caption for this?  It's the same building I seem to shoot for all my lens tests.  But every lens is different.

I learned an interesting thing about fine focusing today.  I had been setting up the display setting so that when I shot with non-dedicated and purely manual lenses I would get the screen with the green square in the middle of it.  (This is with the EP2).  If I pushed the "OK" button in the middle of the four way controller it would magnify the image up to 10x and allow me to fine focus on small details.  Excellent way to manual focus by the way.  But today I noticed that when I achieved sharp focus (without the magnification) I would see an interference pattern of the details of the image.  It would shimmer in and out as I changed focus.  If I shot on the shimmer everything was incredibly sharp.  It was a cool phenomenon and I tried the high magnification focus to check what I was seeing.  Yep.  It works.  Look for the shimmering interference pattern in the fine details and you are fine focused.

Every lens has it's own look unless it's been homogenized by its maker.  I think the combination of color and contrast from this lens references the popular look of lenses from the 1960's.  It's so "NASA".

In order to make all of this work you'll need to order a Pen F to Pen adapter.  This will fit between the lens and the body and will give you a lens that focuses perfectly, to infinity and beyond.  It will also operate seamlessly in the "A" (aperture) mode.  The only place I've found them is from a supplier on e-bay.  They run around $65.  I think they ship them from China because it takes about ten days to deliver.

Mine is all black and fits perfectly.  Not too snug, not too loose.

One of the coolest things about a lens of this speed and ths focal length is the ability to drop backgrounds out of focus.  This is the 85mm 1.2 of the micro four thirds world.  And, amazingly for a 1960's optic, it seems to be very, very sharp even when shot wide open.  I picked mine up in 1985 for the whopping big sum of $65.  I think they've gone up since then but they are still less than a quarter the price of the Canon 85mm 1.2 and, if you have nimble fingers, I bet it focuses faster too.

Thumb your nose at this new format to your own peril.  I think this is a fun view of the future.  And, in light of the desperately depressing article about the state of the commercial photo industry that ran last week in the NYT, why the heck would you want to spend more for photo equipment anyway.  The consensus is that most things are going to the web.  Do you really thing we'll see the difference there between 24 megapixels and 12 megapixels?  I think we're much more likely to see the difference between about $1200 bucks for the above described rig versus a cool $10,000 for a Canon 1ds3 and the 85mm lens............

The snarky ones out there are always dissing the limited ability m4:3rds users have to limit depth of field.  You wouldn't know it from some of my samples today.  Seems pretty convincing to me.

I whole heartedly endorse the use of the 60mm 1.5 on the EP-2 (and by extension, all the other small crop cameras in the family).  The next lens to go under the microscope will be the 38mm 1.8.  But I may need to talk about inspiration before we get back into the nuts and bolts.  I'm still feeling the reverberations of my trip to the west.

One more thing:  I heard the UPS truck roll up on Fri.  I was hoping it was free camera equipment.... but that never happens....instead it was a box full of my new book on Lighting Equipment.  If I got 12 books I'm sure Amazon will get theirs soon.  It's a pretty darn good book if you want to delve into lighting equipment.  And what red-blooded photographer doesn't?  I put a link below.  Check it out.  If you pre-order it now you won't be disappointed when it sells out and you don't have one.......(smiles...).

Hope you have a great Easter.  Or just a nice Sunday.  All the best, Kirk