Using the Sony DSLT cameras as "Hybrid" production tools.

Sony's a58. Ultimate cheap video camera that also does great stills?

The typical mindset among photographers, when considering cameras, is to always go for ultimate performance, damn the cost. I've been having different ideas lately about video. While I reach for my Sony a99 when I know I'll be locked down on a tripod and needing to record controlled sound, I've found that there's a joy in handholding a camera and shooting with less need for control. I'll explain it like this: In the early 1950's the cameras of the day for "smart" and "professional" photographers were the twin lens, medium format cameras (as a minimum) and various larger format field cameras as a norm. But two photographers reject the idea that the "need" in their imaging was the highest quality they could achieve. They valued a fluid handling and relative discretion above lines of resolution and detail. Both Robert Frank (See: The Americans) and Henri-Cartier Bresson (The Decisive Moment) went out into the streets, honky-tonks, diners and fields of real life to capture the flow of existence in a way that never lent itself to perfect technique.

I'm feeling more and more like that's something I want to do with video.

Recently, in the world of video, I've done interviews with cardiologists and oral surgeons. I've interviewed artistic directors and a National Geographic photographer, and I've created video content for advertising and for giant projection in live theater. In all of those situations I've followed the standard production norms of the day. I shot in 1080p at 60fps. I lit the scenes and the subjects. I used off camera microphones in the proscribed way while monitoring their sound through headphones and riding levels via manual controls. And while this is the proscribed way to make technically good video it can also be a good way to make boring video.

As an antidote to the structured feel of my commercial video work I went out recently with my "non-professional" Sony camera, the a57. You can pick one up right now, as they are being discontinued, for around $500. As far as video goes even the cheapest Sony's are easy to use and produce really good files. The a57 offers settings that even some of the big boys from other companies do not. The two biggest advantages being the electronic viewfinder and the full time, phase detect (fast, very fast) autofocus. What's so great about those two features? Well, a clear and well done EVF means you can view your video shots right through the eye level finder even in the brightest sunlight. That means no more switching to slow-as-molassas live view and then strapping a Zacuto or Hoodman loupe to the rear LCD sreen of your camera. In even the top of the line cameras from Canon and Nikon, once you turn on Live View you can pretty much kiss autofocusing goodbye. The cameras switch over to a contrast detect autofocus mode that's pretty much primitive, not fast and sassy like any number of compact or mirrorless cameras.

If adding on a separate loupe while loosing any sort of focus automation doesn't sound like a deal killer for the hand held use of a video camera then you've probably never tried it. But believe me the Franken-Rig is a sucky way to do something that could be fun----using your camera as a street shooting video rig.

If you need fast focusing you can use the Sony cameras in AF mode but you will be limited to f-stops of f3.5 and faster. If you want full control you can disable AF and then go into any of the other modes: A, S, and M and use the camera almost as you would a still camera.  "Ah-ha!" you might say. If I want control over all the settings I lose AF. Well, that's true but it's hardly as big a deal as it would be on a Canon or Nikon camera because Sony has included a very well done focus peaking feature. It's like having a full screen range finder. As you focus the areas in sharp focus become outlined in a bright color. It's visual and it's relatively foolproof.

You know that I've sung the praises of the EVF for a year or more but this is another situation in which I find it irreplaceable. You see, the project I'm working on for myself: Shooting in the streets and around town in black and white video, is set up so that I'm shooting everything in black and white. But I want to see the subjects in black and white as I'm shooting. That's no problem for a camera with an EVF. I turn the creative function to black and white and the finder shows me black and white. Instant visualization. I'm not longer seduced or distracted by luscious colors or color contrasts. I can concentrate on the movement and the tones.

I've been shooting a lot of material in this fashion. And I've been using the camera overall in a less than ultimate way. I'm forgoing AVCHD MTS2 files and shooting in 1440x1080 mpeg4. It's easier to ingest the clips into any system and to edit it on just about any machine out there. Am I missing large chunks of quality? Not really. In fact, the only thing I'm really giving up is shooting at 60fps. And I'm okay with that. I come back with files that work instantly on the web, on my iPad and they work equally well in Final Cut Pro X. But working more simply means less work and less time spent on the part of video I like less, the back end. The processing and editing.

I'm writing a motion poem of life in my city. Everything from the sway of leaves in the wind to stolen kisses at the bus stop and disaffected  workers sipping coffe and checking (for the millionth time) their text messages on the other side of a Starbuck's window. I'm capturing sound only with the built-in microphones because I know I'll want to overlay a different song to the finished collage. I'm not the only person doing this but it feels different than stalking the streets looking for the still image. It has a different kick for me, a different charm.

Here's how I did it last time. I grabbed my a57 (I chose it instead of the a99 because all the bigger sensors get knocked down to the much smaller video size, ultimate quality of the sensor may only matter at extreme ISO's and probably not at all for black and white....). I put my sharpest lens for that camera on the front, the 16-50mm f2.8 Sony DT. I set the camera to MF. I set the camera to mp4 at 1440x1080.  I set the ISO to 100 unless the light gets low. If the light gets low I try to work at ISO 400. When the light falls apart I stumbled into the nose bleed territory of ISO with no fear.

I know I should be working at 1/50th of a second to match my 24p setting but I don't really give a crap about what I should be doing with the camera. All I care about is how it ends up looking. So instead of messing around with lots of neutral density filters to try and stay at that shutter speed I use whatever shutter speed I want and incorporate the different look into the blender of looks I'm working with for the project. You know what? It doesn't matter.  So, most of the time I'm working outside with the middle apertures and shutter speeds in the 1/125th to 1/250th of a second range. Inside I can lock myself at 1/50th for as long as I've got light and work with wider apertures and higher ISOs. That's the way it's supposed to work.

Purists decry the electronic image stabilization in video but I embrace it. Sony uses the same motion sensors as they would to move the sensor for the still implementation of IS but instead of moving the chip they crop a little bit of the image and compensate for your motion buy electronically moving the frame around. I've looked. It works. And you can see the effect in the EVF. Very cool.

The bottom line is that I'm being thrust into video with my work. It's shoring up the parts of still imaging that we've lost to iPhones and "good enough." Anyone CAN shoot video but it requires more skills to get good sound and good images and even more skills to imagine can capture good content. Hell, sound alone is enough of a barrier for most clients to not want to deal with.

I just figured that I got good at taking stills for business by making photography my hobby and passion as well. I decided that if I'm really going to be any good at video I'd have to immerse myself in the same way. And this time around I decided to ignore the little voices in my head, on the web and elsewhere that chant the mantra, "This is the best practices way! You must do this like everyone else. You must have Red camera. You must have a crew. You must shoot 4:2:2. You must etc."

I want to focus on making the images and telling the story. Not on getting every pixel perfect. We already know how to do that.

So, why do I have an image of a Sony a58 camera on the top of the page? Because I'm buying one on April 21st from Precision Camera to add to my toolbox. It's a 20 megapixel camera, with a state of the art sensor, that comes with a very decent 18-55mm kit lens, and costs only $599. Compared to the a57 I've been using as a general purpose image hammer it improves on the EVF by replacing an LCD based monitor with an OLED version. The new camera keeps most of what I like about the a57 in terms of handling, uniform battery across most of the DSLT product line, microphone in plug, and creative modes. In order to make it less expensive than the camera it replaces it's equipped with a plastic/composite lens mount ring and it loses a bit of buffer for continuous raw file shooting. It's adds the adaptive noise reduction technology introduced in the a99.

I figure that every generation of sensor design yields pretty clear improvements in image quality and I'm sure this will be no exception.

For months I'd been looking at fun carry around cameras like the Sony RX100 and the Fuji x20 but for my uses I couldn't really mould the cost/benefit ratio into a pleasing rationale for letting go of hard won currency. Comparing the a58 to those cameras (and camera design mistakes/mishaps like the Canon EM and the Nikon Coolpix A) the Sony a58 and kit lens is an absolute bargain. A combination of what I expect to be great imager performance with all the video enhancements (EVF, Phase Detect AF, in finder B&W, wide choice of files, microphone input, big enough body to hold comfortably, full use of Sony's entire lens line, ability to use MF Rokinon Cine lenses) makes this a great second camera for Sony pro users, an interesting secondary camera for people interested in a "throw down" street camera with great video chops for people with hobbled Nikon and Canon pro systems and a lot more.

I'll pass my current a57 along to Ben. He'll have two cameras and that's nice since he's doing some documentary projects at school that would benefit from a two camera system. This generation and price range of cameras is very interesting to me. The parallel in the film days was the introduction of the FM and FE cameras to the Nikon camera line of SLRs.  Since the film and lenses were the same as those being used on the flagship cameras the IQ could be identical, the only differentiators were feature sets such as the ruggedness of the bigger bodies and the ability to use faster motors. I think we are at an embarrassing moment for the big cameras manufacturers. With the exception of full frame sensors we've hit the point where the $600 cameras, for all intents and purposes, provide image quality on par with the $6000 cameras, and the $3000 cameras. The differentiators are things that most people are indifferent to such as hard core weather sealing or dense menus full of different auto focus sensor settings.

The hard, cold reality is that there isn't any more barrier at all, in terms of imaging parameters that most people use, between the entry level cameras and the most expensive cameras from the same companies. Sure, the Nikon D800 or Sony a99 might resolve a bit more detail at higher ISO's or at giant enlargement sizes but for mainstream video (not uncompressed video into HDMI recorders) and mainstream work, even professional work, you'll be very hard pressed to see any sort of difference. And that means we really do need to showcase our creativity and ideas rather than work on technical stuff.

A young photographer entering the market today, doing web video, head shots, events and other day to day work, as well as more creative imaging could be well served with a couple of bodies like the a58 and a couple inexpensive but very good lenses. The kit lens for the standard focal lengths, the 55-200mm DT lens for the longer end and one of many superwide zooms for the wide angles. Those could form the basis of a professional capable camera kit with a flash thrown in, for far less than $2,000. Small and light but packed with a lot of crossover tools that would allow a photographer/videographer to do good, sellable work. Nice.

It's hard to over-emphasize how much of a game changer Sony's cameras are. Even if they shoot themselves in both feet with bad marketing they've given us a taste of how good a cheap, hybrid still & video camera can be and how usable the EVF makes the camera. Once consumers experience shooting video with a well sorted tool like the a58 they'll demand the same kind of performance from whatever brand they'd like to support. The writing is on the wall for Canon and Nikon and they'd better take notice. It's all coming quicker than they think.

Changing business practices to reflect a changing marketplace.

Markets change over time. Destructive market forces destroy existing paradigms and allow for the establishment of new ways of doing business while also opening up the potential for new businesses to fail. In the past markets would remain stable for decades or centuries which gave innovators a life time or at least a good amount of time to profit from their new ideas and their destructive re-imagining of their markets. Not so anymore. Innovation and change occurs in ever compressing cycles. Businesses, it seems, are more interested in volume and being the first mover than in margins and sustainable practice.

In the world of photography stock was one of the first shifts in an established market construct. The introduction of pervasive stock photography sales, with declining cost to consumers roiled the status quo of the maturing assignment markets. And drove down the cost of an image.

The closing of 4000+ portrait studios (mostly in Walmart and Sears stores) is an indicator of a shift, caused in part by the pervasive penetration of foolproof digital cameras into the hands of the lower middle class demographic of the buying public. And the near universal use of viewfinder screens on phones, tablets and televisions has eviscerated the market for printed images at nearly the same speed with which e-books and on-line reading are devastating the market for printed books in many categories.

If you created a business as a portrait photographer and your pricing model was based on the wide spread concept that the portrait session itself (your time, expertise, taste, and technical skills) was to be offered as a loss leader or a break even proposition while the profit from each consumer portrait job lay in the sale of prints you are about to either hit the wall of a new reality or you are already out of business.

Very few consumers surveyed have an interest in buying a print (as a value-added artifact) from a professional photographer. That doesn't mean that those consumers no longer want the intellectual property that come along with the artifact, they just aren't keenly interested in the artifact itself.

The old pricing model built in margin for the cost of doing business and heaped profit on top of that number. Clients in previous generations rarely had secondary viewing opportunities that were as compelling as a good print. To view an image on a television screen, pre-flat panel and pre-HD meant looking at an image with a net resolution of about 525 lines of interlaced information. The gamuts were extremely limited and color uniformity nearly non-existant. There was no peer-to-peer electronic sharing. Sharing meant having additional prints made and, as the original negative remained in the hands of the creators, that meant consumers HAD to pay for each individual use.

Now it's rare to find customers who constitute both a sophisticated visual market (taking images should still be creative and fulfilling) and who are constrained from wide spread sharing. Their hierarchy of needs has shifted in ways that Maslov could not have predicted.

If our local market is an example then technology-forward, affluent clients are much more interested in having unlimited personal use of images created of them and for them, on all manner of electronic devices, then they are in having single physical artifacts in their homes. They understand the fluidity and ease of the process of having acceptable prints made, understand that the actual costs of good prints continues to drop and that a good physical reproduction can be made from files that they possess. There are no barriers to keep consumers from ordering their own prints and paying wholesale. The mystery has been drained from that "scary swamp" (consumer's previous perspective about printing).

The new customer still wants (for now) the art of the image as it relates to lighting, posing and post processing creation but now, instead of being satisfied with a few images they want to possess and control the digital files. They want to be able to make the canvas print or wrap the face of their toddler around a coffee cup. They want to order the thirty-nine cent, five by seven inch print from Costco without paying an additional $50 or even $100 to have the same print mounted a piece of board and presented in an embossed envelope. And can you really blame them for not understanding the business model? They've been told for years that they should go to a professional portrait photographer for the artist's vision. But they end up paying the lion's share of their budget for the product, not the IP.

What's a business poised on the edge of uncertainty to do? Obviously, we need to re-examine every angle. According to studies of the current, ascendent generation they are much more interested in buying and sharing experiences than they are possessing treasures. So, now owning a house and scrimping and saving for a down payment becomes a more prolonged period of rental and the savings are spent hiking in Nepal or following Formula One racing around the world. Or just taking time off from work to pursue passions. Can we make the actual portrait sessions more fun and interesting? Can we turn a portrait session into a mini-workshop and dinner party as well as a venue to create great work? I know a lot of amateur photographers who've expressed an interest in being photographed or having loved ones photographed so they can experience what a "real" session is like. Why not package the experience?

We can also create very interesting and desirable styles of lighting and camera work in order to give consumers something they can't get anywhere else. That might mean shooting on medium format film or shooting with medium format digital camera for a more interesting interplay between tonalities and focus falloffs. It might mean lighting styles that would difficult to mimic with speed lights and tiny soft boxes. And it might just mean working at  high levels both technically and aesthetically.

Pricing in the consumer world needs to take into consideration the customer's desire to "hold" the potential images in their hands and on their machines. So, instead of anticipating selling physical product down the road pricing needs to be changed to reflect the fact that it's the IP that has the value, not the artifact. This means that to be profitable one must charge much higher session rates.  If you charge a sitting fee of $200 and your average print sales were $650 per customer, you might want to consider making the sitting fee something like $650,  then working with the consumer in a proofing process to select the final images and then charge a standard (profitable) fee to "complete" each image via post processing. That might include sophisticated retouching and file preparation for a number of different output scenarios. So, in effect the post production becomes the printing.

One could still offer large prints since some people will still order large family portraits for display but you'd probably be better off offering photo books since the market seems to lean more toward personal coffee table books of multiple images rather than larger, single display prints. The big sellers will be disks full of images to playback on consumers ever growing and ever improving TVs and monitors. Parenthetically, we used to sell a batch of five by seven inch prints along with every corporate head shot. It was a good profit center. We haven't sold or had a print ordered for a commercial client in probably seven years. That went away. We raised our session prices to compensate for income that's never coming back.

The benefit of making your money upfront while, for all practical purposes, jettisoning the extra labor and costs of selling, printing, shipping from labs, mounting, etc. is the certainty of good profit at the time of shooting, or shortly after. That's when consumers have the highest motivation and desire to transact.

Look, if you are a professional portrait photographer you know that the portrait you just made is going to end up on the sitter's iPad or Surface tablet and that's where it will have it's dominant "residence." You might as well get paid for that use. Because, remember....it's the vision that has value, not necessarily the paper it's printed on...

When markets shift you have choices. Sooner or later your customers will decide for you.

Mousumi.

Rarely, but sometimes, I just don't feel like writing anything and I'd rather show a photo.

The Search. It always boils down to one thing...

Rancher. Hasselblad. 150. Tri-X.

I'm not particularly suited for the field in which I find myself. At least not in the usual sense. You see, while I understand the importance, financially, of customer service and production and diligence, and creating sell-able products; I really just want to be left alone to search.  You see, I'm on the search for the perfect subject. On some level I'm totally convinced that I need to find just the right subject in order for my "genius" as a photographer to be totally understood. Widely acknowledged.  And, of course, I'm therefore on a search for just the right background or setting that will allow my subject to enable me to show off that genius. That's also a search that seems to border on infinite.

But before I can really express the unique inner vision I'll have to make sure the lighting is just right so, of course, I am on a constant and unrelenting search for just the right light. Which means I'm searching for just the right type of light. And I know I'm not there yet because that genius  hasn't leapt out and made itself known just yet. But after two decades of focused searching I have narrowed down the field a bit. The ultimate lighting, as gleaned from my reading, research and experience is either: natural light, electronic flash, tungsten, fluorescent or LED light. Or, perhaps some sort of light that hasn't been invented yet. But never fear, the search continues unabated.

The unsettling thing about the search for exactly, irrefutably, unquestionably, the right light is the fact that the moment I find just the right light I'll need to ramp up the search for just the right modifier. Because the modifier completes the light.  But that's a whole other series of blogs just waiting to be written, because, of course, I am sure there is one right modifier for the perfect light. It's all like pieces of some cosmic puzzle. But the search for the perfect modifier has to take a back seat to other, more pressing, searches in the job of expressing my genius... Like which camera to use in the high calling of creating "genius level" images to share with the world.

That's a search that seems to take most people a life time and that's a pity because the importance of the search is critical to finally being able to realize one's true visual genius. My readers will understand that the search is well underway here. I guess my strictly scientific methodology is to buy and use every camera in every category because the definition of the ultimate camera is a very subjective thing and, once we've sorted through and created a hierarchy of objective metrics I'll need to go back and work with each camera to truly parse it's immeasurable qualities.  Things like the camera's "soulfulness" or the pitch and aesthetic merit of the sound of its shutter. And, of course, whether it feels sexy enough in one's hands...

But my search for my ultimate camera---vital for the ultimate realization of my genius vision---is somewhat stymied by my search for the ultimate lens. (I know only that it cannot be a wide angle). What if my ultimate lens is only made for an un-ultimate camera? Will the promise of my potentially life altering vision be extinguished like a soaring bird shot down from the sky? Are there enough gifted optical technicians out there to convert say, an early dual range 50mm Leitz Summicron (with Lanthanum glass) with seven elements to work on the front of a Leica SL2 body, equipped with a Phase One 180 back? If they can't pull it off will my vision be in jeopardy? And will the technicians be able to retrofit an EVF into that older body?

Ah. The agony of getting everything just right and then realizing that a newer camera tests .001% better on DXO's sensor evaluation system....

But maybe I'm looking at the wrong "genius" spread sheet. Maybe the real search is one for meaning. How disappointing if my real search should be about looking for beauty in life instead of ultimate sharpness. How will I measure beauty when I find it? And how will I improve on transcendant beauty if I don't even know which lens is the right one? Or which body resonates with the beauty paradigm I finally discover?

I guess I'm destined to keep looking until I find that absolute, multi-threaded intersection of technical perfection. The search for beauty and meaning? It'll have to wait. I've got so much equipment evaluation to get through first...

Shadows and Bread.

The week has started and it's started well. I've cleaned up my studio in anticipation of an assignment that starts at noon tomorrow. Portraits. New people. One of my favorite subjects to photograph. Making my daily "bread." I've got the lighting set up already and I've tested it. I wanted to shoot the portraits with the new fluorescent lights but I've only received one and the background light doesn't arrive until Weds. (I'm so cheap, I went with the free shipping). I'm shooting with flash instead.

I've set up a Elinchrom monolight with a 60 inch Softlighter 2 as my main light. I'm using a second Elinchrom through a small 20 by 30 inch softbox on the grey paper background and another monolight into a 20 inch beauty dish, covered with diffusion, for a hair and back light. The fill is just a big, white flex reflector. I'm thinking broad and modern.

Don't know what it is about the bread shot above that I like. Maybe it's the very defined shadow against the bread and maybe it's just the look of the bread itself. Either way it's like trying to dissect a joke. When broken into its pieces it all falls apart.

Sony a850 with the nasty, old 24-105 Sony lens. I like those two pieces of gear precisely because they are NOT perfect.

Remember how cool it felt the first time you made a website?

http://kirktuck.500px.com/food_and_restaurant/

http://kirktuck.500px.com/food_and_restaurant/

We made our first website in 1998 and, of course, everything had to be hand coded. Bandwidth sucked back then so we had to make sure that every image was a tiny little jpeg that would open quickly. Once you had everything the way you wanted it on your machine you lived through various levels of agony every time you saw your site on someone else's hardware. If they weren't using the same browser that you optimized for the elements of your crafty site ended up all over the place and the type got replaced by some goo type that made your design look like crap.

Now you can just hop on the web with a bucket of images and make a quick web portfolio to share in minutes. When I finish shooting something fun I hop over to 500px and add to a gallery or build a new one. I can send the links out to potential clients pretty darn quickly.

With blogs and portfolio sites everywhere I think the traditional sturm und drang of creating a masterful website has been tamped down. Most clients just want to see the images or get the contact info. If you've done your thousand little marketing jobs right they've already seen your images in more than one place.

I'm looking into Animoto right now. Seems like a fun way to make tasty little motion bites. Do you have experience with Animoto? Would love to hear how you use it and how you market with it in the comments.

Thanks, Kirk

The photographer as a farmer. Just do the work.

Crocs for the dirty work.

It's easy to fall into the trap of comparing yourself with others. It's easy to fall into the no win situation of comparing your work with the work of everyone else's you see. Some work is exciting to look at when you first see it. Some work grows on you over time. Things you thought were exciting at first blush have a parabola of excitement. The faster you fall in love with a look, a statement or a style the faster you fall out of love. Who would want a constant diet of whipped creme or a constant display of fireworks?

Your own style is more like a marriage than a one night stand. You build trust and love over time until you get to a point where you can't conceive of any other relationship. In art, then you know you have a style. You trust the process of just doing the work. This is why, statistically, married people have a much better sex life than single people. Practice, practice, practice.

The problem with the web is that we post things and hope others will like them. When you do this you give strangers power over your work and over you. The true masters of the craft ignore everything else. They do their work and then they walk away. They do their work and then get up the next morning and do it again. They don't read the reviews. They just Practice, practice, practice.

Share your work but leave your ego at the door. Present the work and then step away. The need for approval obscures the true value of what you do. 

These statements seem like declarations but they are just reminders I write for myself. Good work, like good wine, takes time to mature. It's not a process I can hurry along just because I want to. Copying someone else's vision is the quickest way to kill mine.