Sunday, December 09, 2012

How to drive yourself crazy as a professional photographer.

This is an old 4x5 inch photo (transparency)  of chips on a wafer.
We used to do hundreds of these kinds of shots, day in and day out.
Now most everything is a CAD rendering.
That's okay with me, it was boring work.
I came across the film this afternoon and wondered what would happen
if I laid it down in the light path of the Epson V500 Scanner and
Scanned it. The scanner only does up to medium format.
This is what happens. And then it dawned on me that I could make a 
template and do two scans and put them together in PhotoShop.
A new way to scan and stitch some older, bigger film.

I've got a job booked this coming week that is four days long, very taxing, lots of different image requirements and very, very high profile in terms of being front and center with a CEO and a world class celebrity. I even got to select and hire a second photographer to cover all the stuff I couldn't schedule. The job is a conference for large corporation. There will be thousands of people attending from all over the world. The client needs coverage from the first meet and greet through the keynote address and even down into the breakout sessions and cool product unveilings. Lots of segments require some fast turnaround times.

You can imagine that the pressure is on but what's making me nuts is the equipment end of the equation. As most of you know I just bought a Sony a99 and since I like the files very much, and the camera is the best high ISO camera I've ever used (It's kind like the high ISO quality of a Nikon D700 but with twice as many pixels...) I want to make sure it's front and center in my camera bag. But I'm in the process of backfilling the Sony systems in a transition from a focus on cropped APS-C cameras to a new focus on the full frame camera.

My first realization was the I'd need a mid-range zoom for a lot of grip and grin stuff as well as the fast breaking celebrity meet and greet. I have a 16-50mm 2.8 lens that's very good but it's made for the APS-C cameras so I started the search for the right lens for the bigger camera. I played extensively with the Carl Zeiss CZ 24-70mm for the Sony and I was going to buy one until I came across a set of lens reviews by a guy named, Kurt Munger, who is a long time Sony expert and tester. He put the older Tamron 28-75mm f2.8 for Sony  up against the CZ in a very detailed review/test. The Tamron was superior for the kind of work I do and a much better value.  Both are f2.8 all the way through the focal range but the CZ is $1895 while the Tamron is......$499.  I bought a Tamron and spent hours testing it this afternoon and it's really very, very good.  The center sharpness at f4 and smaller stops is outrageous.  Better than the Carl Zeiss. And I'll need the money I saved by getting the cheaper lens because the new Sony a99 uses a different flash hot shoe configuration than all previous Sony digital cameras (except the Nex 6).  That means I can go into multi-adapter mode or I can bite the bullet and buy the new HVL F60 Sony flash which comes with the correct dedicated shoe.

When I found out that the HVL F60 has a powerful set of built-in LEDs which provide an alternative light source my decision was made and I kiss goodbye to another sturdy packet of money.  Many lattes. Now it remains to be seen whether Amazon really can get it here to me in Austin by end of day tomorrow... And whether I can read and understand the manual tomorrow night. I called the local dealer but Sony hasn't shipped them the new flash yet....


The long end of the equation is covered. I have the 70-200mm Sony G lens and it's wonderfully sharp even if it does weigh a ton and happens to be a carpal tunnel incident waiting to happen... It also works well on the back up a77 body and gives another 100mm of reach with the same basic resolution on that camera.

If I need to go wider than 28mm with the a99 I have the Sony 20mm 2.8 lens in the bag. I can also default to the Sigma 10-20 on the a77.  Or I can throw any of the APS-C lenses on the a99 and it will use them at the appropriate focal lengths but will only deliver 10 megapixels of resolution.  With many of the images it might be a workable solution but I think I'll stick to doing the wides on the a77 and sticking with a higher resolution standard throughout the shoot.

Of course, this all needs to fit into one camera bag which I will carry around with me all day, each day, for about ten hours at a whack. Oh yes, I also have to add a laptop to the baggage for one of the days for a fast breaking turn on some timely images.

But the biggest source of anxiety as regards the shoot is my irrational desire to shoot most of the show (not any of the long shots) with the two Sony Nex cameras. They are so small and elegant and everything I shoot with them seems to turn out to be sweeter than candy. So what I really want to do is go back and forth between two systems.

But packing is already getting nuts. I have to bring two speed lights with me. Not just because no professional should commit to a big job without appropriate back up but because one speed light has a shoe for one series of cameras while the other speed light has a different shoe for the other cameras. I'll have adapters that allow the flashes to cross over in each direction but I like to work with made for this camera type flashes and not have to depend on workarounds.

So, the bag already looks like this: Sony a77, Sony a99, six extra camera batteries (Thank you! Sony for making them all interchangeable). 70-200mm for stage shots, 28-75 2.8 for most grip and grins with  flash. A 16-50mm for back up coverage for grip and grins on the a77. Two big, heavy Sony flashes that cover the situation in either camera direction. Plenty of extra Eneloop batteries for said flashes. The 20mm for wide on the a99. The Sigma 10-20mm for ultra wide to wide everywhere but dedicated to the a77. Gobs of SD cards.

I may have to compromise and just take along one Nex with one cool lens for those times when I want to be, well, cool. But I'd like to take both of the Nexi, the two Sigmas and the 50mm 1.8 lens. I already know it's a dumb idea but I'm kind of stubborn.

I'll need to take along a tripod since there is always someone who will want the stage look and signage all shot, along with special lighting effects. Those shots usually require deep depth of field.  But I'll make sure it's an older one that I can leave backstage and not cry over if it runs away from home.

If I were a risk taker I'd just schlep along the a99, the 28-75mm, the 20mm and the 70-200mm. Toss in the new flash and the batteries and be done with it. Easy as pie.  But when I play for high $takes I tend to be conservative and cover the bases so that's not going to happen.

But these are the pitfalls we go through when changing systems, and then changing systems within systems.

When you add the details of scheduling and people management to the mix, as well as arranging for a dog sitter for the duration of the show, you can see that things just pile up. Then there's the famous Austin downtown parking. And the infamous rush hour traffic, amplified by an additional three or four thousand new visitors all heading for the same locus.

Oh, and some parts of the agenda are good with business casual wardrobe while several little segments will require coat and tie. Do I need to shine my shoes tonight? Wouldn't hurt.

All of this means that today and tomorrow are the test and charge days. All the batteries get topped off. The new flash gets used over and over again with the manual open on my desk. The camera settings get double checked and, over the course of the day tomorrow I am certain we'll have more than one phone-in conference to go over new and ever expanding details. Ah well, handling the stress is what we really get paid for. I'm looking forward to a fun and challenging job. Now if only I can settle on some camera choices...














Saturday, December 08, 2012

There's something therapeutic about photographing live theater.


I love photographing dress rehearsals.
They are over in about 2 to 2 and a half hours so you have to be finished.
You get to listen to live music as you work.
People don't want to sit next to you because of the camera noise (++)
The actors and the costumers and stage crafters make you look better than you are.
Intermission is a great time to go out onto the balcony and snap a shot of the LED sign.
Sometimes, when there's a VIP reception, you get to have the good red wine.
You get to feel like an artist who works with other artists.

If you shoot with more than one camera on a regular basis and a lot of what you shoot is fun, personal work, you often get ready to do a paying  job with one of those cameras and realize that you have lots of little, fun stuff already resident on the memory card inside. A case in point: I shot a dress rehearsal of White Christmas at Zachary Scott Theatre last week and the cameras below are the ones I used to document the show. The one on the chair is a Sony a99 with the spiffy 70-200mm G lens an the one in the bag is an a77 with the really nice 16-50mm f2.8 lens. 

Also featured in the image is one of the first really nice holiday presents that Belinda bought me when we were first dating; an authentic, original Leitz monopod. I got it as a gift in 1980. Although it is now thirty two years old it works as well as it did the day I got it and the patina of age makes it seem almost as cool as I really think it is. I have a Saunders quick release plate on it in this photo but it usually has its matching Leitz ball head on top. ( I put release plates on the big lens and on the a77 body and I use them when the light gets dim but most of the time I just depend on my technique and the quite good image stabilization in both cameras.

But of course, if these are my two shooting cameras I must have used something else to take the image. It was the Nex 6, which I have fallen for hook, line and sinker.  The camera is tiny and, when coupled with either the Sigma 19 or 40mm lens, it little bigger than a regular point and shoot camera. But I am finding the files to be tremendous and the feel in my hands to be as good and comfy as its big brother, the Nex 7.

I was out shooting portraits today and pulled this camera from the little backpack to use (in a professional, paid job) and the images in this blog were already waiting for me on the card.


Since I've been taking the 6 with me everywhere, wearing it around my neck like a necktie, I've been documenting all kinds of stuff that seems fun to me. I walked out of a Starbucks the other day at sunset and looked up at the sky to see the image below. All I had to do was reach down, grab the camera, bring it to my eye and shoot. Then I got in the car and drove off. Freedom. Light weight. Everything in one bag. It's one way to go....












Quick and easy light in a very small space.


Added 12/09/2012: Background dropped out. No color corrections other than lightening Lauren, overall. I'm not sure what background the designer will finally use on the web but taking the blue out totally changes my perception of flesh tone, etc.

I often end up shooting quick portraits in tight places. For most of my career I carried around heavy monolights or pack and head flash systems for even the simplest of shoots because that's how we did it. Six or seven years ago we started doing smaller shoots in smaller places with portable, battery powered camera strobes but even that is more complicated than it needs to be. You've got to have flash triggers and a modeling light to be able to really see what you are doing.

Today I needed to go back to a company I'd worked with last month to photograph the last few people for their website. These were folks whose schedules precluded them from being at the first shoot. I'm using this garish, blue background because we'll be dropping out the background altogether and putting a solid color in behind the person, so we just needed some color to separate the subject from the background.

This is a one light set up. I have a 60 inch softlighter umbrella set up over to the right hand side of the frame. I was originally going to use a flash to do this shoot and I brought a Fotodiox 312 AS LED panel along to use in the dimly lit room we were put in as modeling light or set light. I stuck it on the light stand with the umbrella for some extra illumination while I was setting up. But when I looked at the quality of the light from the panel, bouncing off the umbrella, I decided to forego the flash altogether and use the light as I had it set up.

I filled the light from the LED panel and umbrella with a white reflector just out of the frame on the opposite side from the light. Two technical things make this work for me. One is that I brought along a tripod. That let me go as low as I wanted to in order to get a good exposure without any camera movement. The second technical thing, which I'm concentrating on more these days, is making a custom white balance.  Once my one light was set up and positioned I pulled my white diffuser into the frame and made a custom white balance measurement directly from the white fabric. The camera set a value of 4300K temperature and +2 M (which is a very, very small adjustment away from neutral to compensate for the very, very slight shift to green caused by the LED light profile). I did not use any sort of color correction filter on the light or the camera.

I used a custom white balance because I am becoming more aware that changing WB in raw has the effect of subsequently changing the exposure of the image file. If I had the perfect exposure with the wrong WB I would then have to compromise exposure and fiddle more with the basic parameters of the image to get back to neutral. The proof is in the tasting of the pudding. The file above has no color correction or exposure correction applied, and it is a jpeg.  To my eye the file is just a little bit "cold" but I think when I drop out the blue my perception of the skin tones will change.

That the scene was lit by a $149, battery powered LED panel still fascinates me. Everything is a trade off but this set up is one I'm happy to take. Every piece of gear I used was hand carried in one trip from the car.

I used a pop up background on a single, centered stand. The reflector was on a small stand with a clamp. I shot with my Sony Nex 6 set to Jpeg fine/large. The creative style was set to "portrait." ISO 800. Exposure setting f2.8 at 1/30th. I photographed six people with this set up this afternoon and the batteries in the LED panel, after over 150 exposures, still showed 75% full. And remember, I could shoot as fast as I wanted to without concern for recycle times because the LED panel kicks out continuous light. 

I used Sony's 50mm 1.8 OSS lens and since I was on a really good tripod I turned off the image stabilization. I think the lens is great. It's sharp enough but has a nice look to the out-of-focus area of the background. After looking at the files I decided I needed to order just one more panel from Fotodiox so that's on the way.

Below is how I have the LED panel set on the umbrella. 

Had I been using the a99 I might have shot at ISO 1600 or even 3200 and used a higher shutter speed. Not that it would have mattered much. It's so much easier to focus and see in a darker space when you add a good continuous light as opposed to trying to do it all with small flashes. The LED panels are perfect for applications like this. And they've become much more color neutral even within just the last year.

Thanks to Lauren at the Spa for graciously allowing me to use her image in the blog.













Friday, December 07, 2012

But is the Sony Nex 7 sharp? I mean, really sharp?


It was a nice, brisk day in Austin in late November. I needed to deliver some image files to the college of Petroleum Engineering at the University of Texas. Good luck finding parking anywhere near the side of campus that contains the Petro complex, with 50,000+ students looking for parking every day you may as well be looking for $20 bills scattered on the ground. I used to teach at UT so I know the drill: Take the first open space on your journey in that coincides with your comfortable ability to walk. But when you walk a mile to your final destination be sure to bring along a camera in case you see anything that you need to photograph.

I had a Sony Nex-7 with me and it had an adapter that let me use "A" lenses from my bigger DSLT Sony cameras. I had on one of the cheap Sony 50mm f1.8 DT lenses because I anticipated doing some casual portraits later in the day. With a 75mm equivalent focal length it wasn't quite the "standard" lens for shooting a bit of architecture.  But as artists, sometimes we have to make due.

After I delivered my flash memory stick to the right person I turned around and headed back towards the car. I walked down a street called Speedway and I was amazed at how many new buildings had popped up since my last walk through campus. Some of them looked quite striking so I set the camera the way I wanted it for a sunny day and started snapping away.

I was using the sharpest, middle apertures of the lens and trying to hold everything steady. I think the files are fun and that the Nex 7 is really a sharp camera when used correctly. While the kit zoom is reasonably good prime lenses are even better. 


I'm equally happy with the performance I'm getting out of the Nex-6. So yesterday I spent some time packing a small Nex kit to use for most of my fun work. It consists of a Nex-6, a Nex-7,  the kit zoom (mostly for the widest angle), the Sigma 19mm, the Sigma 30mm, the Sony 50mm 1.8 OSS and the lens adapter for Sony "A" lenses. I've also added a Metz 36 flash, dedicated to the weird and proprietary Sony hot shoe. I've got four extra camera batteries and four extra 16 Gigabyte Transcend SD cards packed as well.  All in all it seems like the perfect little travel system when it's all packed in the little moss green Tenba backpack I bought earlier this year.

When everything is packed together I can just grab it and go. It's the counterpoint to a more extensive system I'll be using most of next week...

















Thursday, December 06, 2012

The very serious business of making portraits.


I love to make portraits. I love that not all of my subjects are required to smile. I love that we can spend time talking about life while we're making portraits. I love to work in black and white but I don't fear color. I love light that can be both dramatic and flattering. I love the contrast of dark shirts against light skin. I love longish lenses and continuous lights. I love going back and looking at old contact sheets to look at the "paths" not taken and then re-scanning and reprinting to see if my tastes have grown or changed since we last peeked into the contact sheets and made our choices.

I love feeling the day slip away outside my windows while the slow and comfortable process of making a portrait unfolds. I love to hear the snap (with miniature Mercedes Benz door closing sound added in) of the shutter and feel the waft of photons fly through the room.

But the part of the portrait experience I like best is what I did half an hour ago. I sat down with a stack of contact sheets and went slowly through them, looking at every frame. And then I found something I'd never really seen or paid attention to before and I zero'd in on it and scanned the negative and worked the file.  And now, regardless of whoever else likes the image I have made a little gem of art for myself. Something special and intimate and non-repeatable.

The same day never happens again.

I count myself lucky that I can still make a living doing the work that I love. Not every client wants to step outside of tradition and popular taste and embrace a distinct style, and that's okay because I can switch gears and become a traditionalist for at least the duration of a shoot. But there are enough people out in the brave big world who like new, different and bette and they are the bread and butter of what we do.

While I guess it helps to learn  how we did it in the bad old days I think we should embrace our own vision and press it forcefully into the world of commerce. How else will the paradigms change?

Wednesday, December 05, 2012

More thoughts about the a99.


It's hard sometimes to write stuff for the web and to also show meaningful photographic examples. No matter how you upload stuff for mass consumption on the internet it will be crunched, compressed and artifacts will occur. So when I write about a camera and then show images from the camera it's frustrating. The qualities in the samples is never what I see on my office monitor.  In many ways the real litmus test for image quality is still the act of making large prints and looking at them under controlled conditions, but we can't really do that every day for thousands of readers. The best thing I can suggest is to read the words and also look at the images but-----if you are looking at the images on an old laptop or the screen of your phone you might just trust the words over the images that you see in front of you.

When I looked at the image, above, on my screen I was looking at Sony's extra fine, full size jpeg which (I can tell by the original file size) doesn't get radically compressed in camera. So I was seeing some good tonal range and a high degree of sharpness and detail. Having slain all dangerous business dragons in the early hours of 6 am to 10 am today I gave into temptation and profiled a version of the above for a print out at Costco, on glossy paper. The image was printed at 12 by 18 inches. When I picked up the print (and some batteries, and 50 rolls of toilet paper and a shrink-wrapped package of 12 jumbo sized cans of tuna...kidding...) I glanced at it under the store's florescent lights, thought they'd done a decent job staying on top of their paper profiles and drove home.

Once I got back to the studio I pulled the print back out, flicked on my big OTT light for print viewing, grabbed my most authentic pair of reading glasses and took a better look. Absent was any hint of noise or file grittiness. The detail was pretty amazing and the colors looked rich and believable. It was a totally different evaluation experience than the one I usually do out of laziness, which is to toss the file into an Apple computer and then pop the file up to 100% in Lightroom or Photoshop and looking at it on a 27 inch, calibrated monitor. No matter which files we're looking into at 100% there's always something we don't like about them.

In printed form the file from the a99 Jpeg was about as good as a print gets. How would I know? I've been making prints and ordering prints for large commercial clients and magazines for about a quarter of a century now. It gives me some perspective.


Today I used the a99 to do a holiday card image for a very creative advertising agency. I'd show you the image but it's top secret until it goes out in the mail. I used the a99 with the 85mm f2.8 at f 5.6 until we all (two creative directors and an art director) looked at a few test files together and all agreed that the lens was too good, the files too detailed and the look too clinical. I pulled a Minolta 24-85mm f3.5 to f4.5 (long since discontinued and forgotten) out of the bag and we shot with that instead. It had a different look; a bit less clinical, and the agency liked that. We banged out 125 shots against a white background and here's how we did out post processing:  I sat down at the art director's desk and downloaded the files into her MacBook Pro via the SD card slot. We put the jpeg files into a folder on her desktop.  Then she picked up her computer and everyone followed her into the agency's conference room where she hooked up her computer to the 50 inch HD TV and hit "slideshow" in Preview.

The images popped up onto the screen and we all laughed at the funniest ones and made the intern mark down the frame numbers. I packed up my few lights, the backdrop and the camera and left. That was the extent of my post production on the job. 

I did have the images on my SD card when I came back into the studio and I was curious what ISO 125 looked like so I put them into my computer and started blowing things up. And blowing them up.  And blowing them up. Now I can say a few things about the Sony a99's low ISO Jpegs.  1. Zero Noise. 2. Perfect color (thank you, custom white balance). 3. Some of the best files I've seen for technical goodness.

It's been a busy couple of days here and I'm doing a lot of pre-production for another spa shoot on Saturday and then a three day marathon for a giant computer company that starts next Tues. (warning, probably a very sparse time for blogs from the 11th to the 13th....) but I do have the whole day to myself tomorrow and I'm going to be doing the next critical camera test. I'm going to shoot and process some raw files and I'm going to break out the weird shoe to normal hot shoe adapter that comes with the a99 and see if it does a better job with  shoe mount electronic flash than the a77.

If the tests go well I will share them with you. If they go poorly I'll just sit on the floor and pout.

One of the challenges for any camera is radically mixed light. The kind I hate is sunlight on one side of a person's face and florescent or tungsten on the other. You can see in the image above that the people outside the spot light are lit mostly by coolish tungsten balanced light (approx. 3660K in this example) while the people seated at the table are in a pool of cool daylight (6200K, approx.).  Since the main action is the interplay between the lead actors at the table I quick set the color temperature for their position and let the chorus actors go blue. Very blue.  No camera in the world will make the color any more uniform since that's not the role of stage light. I do find it interesting that the color balance of a scene is intimately tied to the final exposure of a scene. Many times I'll correct for color and find a scene going much lighter or darker than it had been, either in camera or on the monitor.

The biggest example is in warming up an image that's too cold, light-wise. The exposure can change by up to a stop in some situations. I guess my point would be to color correct first, then set exposure, then fine tune the color balance a little bit more. I mention it here because I shot several frames in mixed light before I decided what I would emphasize and I watched again this morning as the exposure rocked around during color corrections. The Sony a99 will store three or four custom WB presets. The way to make theater photography easier is to come in early and have someone go through the major light cues while you set up custom white balances for the two or three predominant ones. If you know the lighting on the stages you normally shoot on you could keep those balances locked in.

An example might be daylight in preset one, 4400K in preset two and 3300K in preset three. With an a99 or a77 or OMD you'll be able to make the changes while keeping your eye on the viewfinder and you'll be able to pre-chimp the effect of each WB setting. Since the presets are all right next to each other in the menu you won't waste precious time scrolling through the menu.


My nemesis are the big optical spotlights that the theater is using as follow spots. They seem to have an almost cyan/green cast to them that doesn't seem to bother the lighting designer or anyone else in the theater but, when juxtaposed with the tungsten stage lights, they have a distinct color cast that drives me nuts. The correction in Lightroom is the addition of 24 pts of magenta and a bit higher than 5800K temperature correction. It's actually the one compelling reason I've come across to use raw files when shooting in the new theater. Let's me do tightly constrained color correction with the adjustment brush before I make the final conversions. 

Breaking in a new camera can be like learning to drive a new car. Everything is not where you expect it to be. But drive it to work everyday and you figure out all the important stuff pretty quickly. And really, most cars and cameras are more the same than they are different.

Final note. Battery life with a well used (but not too old) battery was much better than the battery life I experienced with the camera and it's brand new battery.

Thanks for reading. 

Be sure to order some books for Christmas.  Or get yourself one of those really nice a99's....