Local Photo Hero, Michael O'Brien (by way of NYC) still has the real stuff.

©2012 Michael O'Brien.  Do not use or copy without his direct permission.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/2012/07/07/156370928/portraits-texas-ranchers-remember-an-epic-drought?ft=1&f=97635953

Michael O'Brien and an NPR reporter went in search of Texas ranchers affected by the long drought. Michael used a 4x5 inch view camera and black and white Polaroid positive/negative film to capture the images.  Go and see the photographs and hear the story of last year's incredible drought in Texas.  

The images are so uniquely different than what we normally see.  They are incredibly lit.  I can't wait to see them as big prints, chocked full of detail and tone.

To see more of Michael's work:  http://www.obrienphotography.com/

Lead Singer In Church.

I like portraits that look like this. I like all the stuff out of focus in the background and I like the almost defiant stare from my subject.  I like that she's not overly made up. I like that her hair curls up and sticks out on the right side of her head.  The image was done with a Zeiss 85mm 1.4 ZE on a Canon 1Dmk2n.  The light is pretty obviously just what's available.

I guess my point in showing this and talking about it is that I didn't have a traditional client telling me how to shoot.  Rosie and I were out on Willie Nelson's ranch on a misty fall day with no one to please but ourselves.  So much of developing and holding on to a style you like has to do with spending enough time playing and shooting what you want.  Not what you think someone else wants.

I think it's all about practicing the fun.

Ben and Kirk shoot a commercial for Zach Scott's rendition of Xanadu.

Xanadu for the stage is a send up of the movie version from the early 1980's.  And this is the TV commercial that Ben and I worked on to promote the show:

It's fun, it's silly and it's 15 seconds.  Ben and I loaded up the car, set up the green screen and shot a bunch of variations with two of Zachary Scott's talented actors.  Ben acted as grip and sound man while I ran the camera. Creative Concept and Postproduction were done in-house at Zachary Scott Theatre by web marketing guru, David Munns.

Tech Notes:  We used a Westcott muslin ChromaKey green background (10 by 20 feet) lit by four 500 bulb LED fixtures.  The key and fill lighting was done with two 1000 bulb LED fixtures.  The actors are backlit with two of the battery powered Fotodiox AS-312 LED panels, gelled with a weak magenta filtration.  Both of the 1K bulb panels were covered with diffusion materials and the fill was further softened with a Westcott FastFlag diffuser.


We shot with a Sony a77 in the AVCHD 1080 60i setting alternating between the 16-50mm kit zoom and the 80mm Hasselblad Zeiss Planar lens on an adapter.  Focusing was done manually, assisted by Sony's really cool Focus Peaking.


Ben was wrangling a Rode Videomic on the end of a no-name "fishpole." When I looked at the footage on a 27 inch monitor I was amazed at the quality.  Even better, under controlled lighting, than my previous Canon 5Dmk2.  


The theatre is also editing down a :30 second spot to follow up this teaser.

Ben and I will be at the dress rehearsal next week. I'm shooting stills for publicity and Ben will be shooting BHS ("behind the scenes") video for the web.

Just thought I share a little project with y'all.

Edit: Several people asked if I filtered the LED lights that were used as the main lights on the actors.  The answer is no. I did a custom white balance at the beginning of the shoot and it seemed just right.  As the sensors in cameras get better and better so too does the ability to do really good white balances; even with sources that have lower CRI's.

Street Shooting in America. Downtown Austin.

A Whole Different Color Palette, A whole different look.

It's funny sometimes.  I'll mention the color palette or "look" of a particular camera and all the measurement nerds will rush in and tell me in volumes how any image can imitate any other image with a little bit of deft work in Photoshop.  Then I'll talk about the "look" of a particular camera to the newly converted (fill in the blank with: Olympus, Fuji or whatever) owner and they'll wax eloquent about "Olympus Color."  In their minds it's a prime reason to own the system.

But even if it makes technical workers unhappy just about every family of cameras has a distinct look and feel and, while you might get 90% there duplicating that feel from another camera with hours of PhotoShop work, if you have eyes you'll see the DNA of the camera's family come shining through.  I've written before that I own several different camera systems because I like the way some handle some subjects and others handle different subjects.

All of these images are from the Kodak SLR/n. It was the second series of DSLR cameras that photographers could shoot without an anti-aliasing filter in front of the sensor. (The first were the DCS 760 series in which you could choose user changeable IR filters with no AA or an AA filter with IR built in.  The SLR/n was a "no choice" camera. You shot with no filter. That's how it came from the factory.  Shooting without the AA filter made the files much sharper. The detail is rendered at a very high level.  Just like in the new Nikon 800e.  But the SLR/n had big, fat pixels and it could go two or three stops deeper into the aperture ring before provoking sharpness defying diffraction.  The camera was heaven and hell to shoot with.  Some things, like fabric with repeating patterns would cause moiré to pop up like garden weeds. But with portraits and architecture the files would be richly detailed.  

The Kodak SLR/n had a more muted color palette and a longer contrast range than present day cameras.  This meant that the files had lots and lots of dynamic range and could hold on to detail in the shadows and highlights just like a badger.  I'd love to see a DXO rating for the sensor.  I imagine that it clicks all the right boxes for their parameters.

This (above) image is a full frame from the camera.  The file would have been 4500 pixels by 3000 pixels but I've reduced it to 2000 pixels on the long side to make everything load up quicker. 

The file below is (once you've clicked on it, opened it in a separate window and then clicked it again...) a 100% crop from the image above.  I have compared it with similar files from both the 24 megapixel Sonys and the 24 megapixel Nikon D3200 and, to my eye, the Kodak actually resolves slightly more detail. This image was taken with the standard 50mm Nikon 1.8 lens.

Debates rage as to which D800 people should consider but you would do yourself a service to read Thom Hogan's recent review here:  Hogan's D800 Review  You might be startled by what you find out about the effects of diffraction and the differences between cameras.  I'll cut to it. The D800e (without filter) is best at wide apertures with fast lenses.  Neither is amazing once you stop it down.  Not the ultimate camera for people (architecture photographers) who need f11 and f16.

While my Kodak cameras are getting long in the tooth and starting to have handling and button issues I am still happy every time I pick up the SLR/n to shoot. I find that it's combination of full frame, wonderful colors and high sharpness is pretty wonderful.

I prefer it to a number of more recent and highly regarded products from other companies.  A pity that Kodak's products were ahead of their times (and the discernment of general users) while their marketing was ten years behind.....

This is a photo of my friend, Bernard.  We were having lunch at Artz Ribhouse, the latest casualty of the recession.  I love the out of focus areas in the background. The 50mm on the Kodak is pretty sweet.

Mismatched cameras and lenses. Fun for an afternoon.

I like heading out the door with a camera in my hands and no real agenda to follow.  Sometimes I use my walks as a time to hand test cameras I'm interested in or cameras I want to write about but sometimes I just want a camera with me for random visual note taking and messing around.  Yesterday morning I had a delicious swim and then Ben, Belinda and I went to P. Terry's Hamburger restaurant for burgers. I had the veggie burger. Plus one for the whole wheat buns and the good jalapeños.  Then I got in the car and went over to Precision Camera where I spent some time playing with the Fuji Pro 1 (a beautiful camera with lots and lots of focusing issues), a Fuji X100 (hit the buttons three times before they work?) and this year's swim suit model of cameras, the Olympus OM-D (all the parts are just right and the shutter sounds sweet but.....I just can't pull the credit card out yet).  Can't figure out why this camera always makes me feel better when I hand it back to its owner or to the sales clerk...probably something in my wiring, certainly nothing wrong with the camera. Not in the face of the reviews and kudos it's received from all the people I trust.

I guess I have my eyes on the new Sony full framer and I just don't want to get too badly side-tracked in the languorous Summer months.  

So I headed downtown to walk around and shoot with a wild pair.  My second favorite Pen camera of all time, the EP3, and a weird lens choice, the Panasonic 14-140 HQ zoom lens.  Earlier in the day I vacillated between taking the Olympus 45mm 1.8 (too purposeful), the 25mm Summilux (too chattery on the EP-3) or something else.  Then I spied this beast of a lens and thought, "Why not?"

Right off the bat there was one thing I really loved about this combination. The lens has its own IS built in.  I could turn off the body IS and turn on the lens IS and I would have a stabilized image in the finder of the camera.  In fact, that's why I bought a Panasonic 14-45mm lens as well.  Even at the longer focal lengths the camera's finder image becomes rock solid.

If my own habits are any indication this must be one of the most overlooked lenses around. I've owned it since I bought my first GH2 and yet the only times I think about it are when I'm getting ready to shoot video.  Several reviewers give the lenses some lukewarm praise with the usual stuff  accentuating mediocre corner performance or the lower contrast at the longer end but I've found, overall that it's a really good performer.  Especially on the right camera.  It's also nice to have focal lengths (35mm FOV)  from 28mm to 280mm and have them all be very usable.

I walked to Lance Armstrong's bike shop (Mellow Johnny's) to look at transportation/street bikes and ran into a guy I'd met years ago on a photoshoot at Dell, Inc. He noticed the weird mismatch between camera and lens and that's what got us talking.  I saw some really cool bikes  from a company called, Public Bikes.  Here's a link to their website:  Public Bikes V7 (the one I'm thinking about...).  Still pondering the bikes. I love my electric Bodhi Bike but sometimes I just want a light framed manual bike....for those manual moments.

(above) That's a good looking bike but I don't really like the front rack. I'd like a back rack and maybe a pannier to one side.  Good to see people out biking all over downtown yesterday.  There's still an incredible number of really fit humans in Austin. Not everyone in America weighs 300+ pounds.......at least not yet.

Being fit, however, doesn't mean people will always make good choices about their shoes...

I took the neck strap off my EP3 a couple of days ago and stuck a cheap wrist strap on it instead.  I don't walk with anything in my hands and I leave the cellphone in the car so I was able to keep the camera in my left hand for the entire time. It was a refreshing change from having the camera banging away at the end of a strap, at my side.  And it was much more "ready."  

When I shoot with the EP3 I always use the VF-2 finder so I don't have to wear my glasses and also do the "baby with a stinky diaper" pose, holding my camera way out in front of me with my arms outstretched.  While the EP2 is my favorite of the Pens for nostalgic reasons when it comes to having fun shooting, and getting great results, the EP3 is a bit easier to work with in terms of response.  I kept the camera on the aperture mode, trying to keep the lens at or near its wide open settings for most of the time. I'd correct exposure by riding the exposure compensation button while viewing the image in the finder.

I was shooting on a bright day so the camera had no trouble at all focusing quickly and locking on, even at the long end of the zoom where the max. aperture hits 5.6.

Don't know why but today I was fascinated with manhole covers.  They really can be such fun industrial art.

While the EP3 isn't as advanced as the EM-5 I like it because I feel as though I've mastered the menus and I userstand all the shooting potential of the camera. I've mentioned before that I think 12 megapixels is somewhere close to the sweet spot for digital cameras at the moment. Big enough to look detailed on the coming generation of retina computer screens yet small enough to work quickly in post processing.  I was processing files today from the Nikon D3200 which creates 25 megabyte files alongside the raw files from the EP3.  The difference in speed is pretty stunning. Even with a fast manchine.

I also prefer the look and feel of the EP2 and EP3 bodies to anything else.

Circling back to the lens I must say that while there are single focal length lenses that produce somewhat sharper files the Panasonic lens does a fine job.  Especially when you run it through the sharpening and clarity filters in one of the post-processing programs that are ubiquitous.

I prefer to import my files into Lightroom 4.2, give them a brief once over and then size and send them to a program called, Snapseed.  I look at Snapseed as an almost universal "quick adjust and enhance" program. I use the general brightness and saturation settings and also do some sharpening in that program.

The series of images (above, just below and one more below that) are on good argument for using a flexible, high quality zoom like the Panasonic. At the long end I have very good reach for pulling in subjects which are at a distance from the lens. But I can also turn around and get a wide angle shot.  With the Panasonic I can shoot mostly wide open and still be sure that I'll get usable shots.

I'm certainly not advising people to run out and buy what I use. Everyone's taste, hands and sensibilities are so different. In fact, from day to day the cameras I use tend to change. But every once in a while it's nice to have a comparatively small system that does powerful work.

Copyright. I know we're all having fun playing with our cameras but please read this...

http://thetrichordist.wordpress.com/2012/06/18/letter-to-emily-white-at-npr-all-songs-considered/

It's an incredibly well written piece aimed at enlightening copyright infringers about their moral and ethical obligations to artists. In your particular job it might not mean much to you right now but things change and you may want to try your hand at being a professional musician, writer or photographer someday and all of a sudden it will mean something to you.  Getting paid or not getting paid....

Thanks for taking time to read it.  If you have the inclination you might consider forwarding it to a young person who likes to download free music.  Or you could send the link to the guy in the next cube who thinks it's okay to download (steal) photographs for that big PowerPoint presentation....