Somehow a beautiful portrait makes my day better every time.

I'm sure you've seen a variation of this portrait before. I tend to re-work and re-work the portraits I  like and I'm sure next week I'll come back and decide that this is too processed and I'll look at it again. But for today, after a tedious ten hours of selecting and post-processing images for my presentation and waiting for the delivery thing to be sorted out I'm happy to just look at my computer screen and look at Amy's beautiful face.

When I feel down or tired or like I'm loosing ground I look back at work I like and realize that it's proof that I can do good work. Just like looking back at remarkable jobs is proof that we can do profitable work. Sometimes it's good to just sit still and appreciate what you've gotten done so far.

I spoke with a very nice person at UPS customer service. She actually helped me. I loved it. It almost made up for how crappy their online forms are....

The image above is how grumpy I looked this morning when trying to ship three large containers of gear to Denver, CO. I'm heading up to Denver next week to do a teaching/online project and I needed to have my familiar and tested gear with me to do the best job possible. I'm taking my cameras and laptop with me on the plane... (I wish I was driving...I could take more stuff).

So, I need to show how I do portraits and I needed to pack stuff like my six by six foot frame, my big flashes, my frames and my clamps and umbrellas and all the little fun lights I like to play with. My partner/client asked me to send all the heavy stuff via UPS. Normally I avoid them like the plague because they can be horrible to deal with, especially for a freelancer who hates just hanging around the studio waiting for that "We'll be by sometime between noon and 7pm..." thing.

My partner sent along a sign in and password and presumed I'd be able to hop on line, navigate some of the absolute worst automated programming in the world today and then magically my packages would be whisked away safely. Oh that it was so easy. With my key board in front of me I entered the first circle of Hell. The non-responsive interface. Before I was in too far I asked my contact if I could just drop the packages by one of the ubiquitous UPS stores and have them wayfind their own path through their own cruddy software. I was assured it would be no problem
Into the vehicle go the three large 50+ pound cases and I drive off to the local UPS shop. I haul all three cases in a wait for too long and finally it's my turn and I explain what I need to do and the person behind the counter just shakes his head and tells me, "I can't access nobody's accounts. They don't let us do that. You need to have them air bills printed out and attached to the boxes and then I can take em."

I put everything back in the car and race back to the studio to try again. This time I get an error message about the client's address. I call the client and am assured that the address is hunky dory. I push onward. Finally we get to the summary page: Three packages, three day shipping, $685. Right, I could just buy the cases a seat on Southwest Airlines for that. We try again for ground delivery and the price drops by half. Now the problem is that the magnificent software (done, no doubt by the lowest bidder in the universe) won't allow me to print out the airbills I can see on my screen ostensibly because I am not the account holder.

I call customer service and a very patient and knowledgeable operator actually assists me and walks through the whole process until I've got airbills printed. Then I ask, "Can I now drop these by the local UPS store and have them receive the cases?" She replies, "Oh sure, unless you've declared a value of the cases." No, I always ship thousands of dollars of lighting equipment uninsured because of my deep faith and belief in prayer...... "I insured them."  She replied, "Well, in that case you'll need to take them to the main terminal (in the middle of rural Texas on the other side of the nuclear waste dumps, just south of the active volcano and slightly north of the massive septic tank truck spill....still in the process of being cleaned up..).  My heart sinks at the thought of wasting my day driving around and waiting to wait for some more waiting. And then she throws me the bone...

"We can arrange for a pick-up." Yes, Please.  "What time would work for you?" How about between now (noon-ish) and two p.m? "Okay, just let me enter that into the system. Yes, you are all set. Is there anything else I can help you with?"  No, thanks for all your help. Be sure to kick your I.T. people in the balls on your way out of the office tonight....

I pull the equipment from the car, slap on the labels and get back to work on something more interesting. I'm happy the cases will go out on time and make it to Denver in plenty of time for my presentations. Then Dave calls....

When I come back from getting coffee there's a message on my phone: "Hello, this is Dave from UPS and it looks like we have a req for a pick up from you. Is that a residence or a business? Anyway, I'm calling to let you know that we can't be there by that time and maybe you could call me back.."

Rising anger and frustration as I hit the number Dave just called from and, after twenty rings, I get a recorded message from UPS and am offered an "800" number. I go back through Dave's message and at the end he's made the mistake (from his point of view) of leaving me a direct line. We go through the typical back and forth of what constitutes a business address and I tell him that one of his people set up the pick up times and I don't want to wait here all day for someone to drop by. Not only that but it's lunch time and I can probably go to the Jason's Deli that's half a mile from here and find six or seven UPS trucks all herding together.... Dave's current placating offer is that he's pretty sure he can have someone here by 7pm.  Yes, somewhere in the next 7 hours. Oh joy. I tell him that's not going to work.

Dave promises to call me back in fifteen minutes with a pick up time. It's be a lot longer now and I'm starting to think that the second circle of hell is opening up and reaching for my ankles. I miss the days of skycaps and $25 per bag airline charges, etc. Why is it so hard to get stuff done now? Did all the embracing of technology usher in (to somehow compensate) a new and receding level of competency on everyone's behalf?

I can only imagine what the next shoe to drop will be..

I hate shipping stuff. I always have. In the future I'll just tell people I have to drive. That way I may arrive tired and road sore but I'll be able to bring all the stuff I want and control it on every step of the way. 

And so begins Canon's journey into mirrorless cameras with EVF finders.....Count on it.

I just read the white paper about Canon's new on chip, phase detect, auto focus technology for the Canon 70D. It basically uses over 40 million pixel elements working under 20 million micro lenses to capture images and to do phase detection AF. Since the camera is dividing all the 20 million pixels in two we can expect two outcomes: 1. The accuracy of the phase detection AF on chip will be really good and the amount of light, cumulatively hitting the AF sensors, will be higher than that in more limited  area systems (current Sony and m4:3rds).  2. The complexity of the processing and control of the sensor will be increased requiring more horsepower from the processors. I also suspect that having two photo diodes at each pixel site will have other, unexpected processing consequences. I'm sure Canon will work it out but it seems obvious that this is Canon's initial step (we, and the world at large, are, for the most part, ignoring their first failed effort...)  in creating an answer to the mirrorless incursion. A new philosophy hoping to deal with the Mongol hordes of mirrorless offerings thundering across the plains of the consumer camera market.

I see this camera as a "proof of performance" sample. The next generation will move to a mirrorless configuration with an EVF because, if the on-chip AF is successful, there's no logical or economic reason to retain the more costly OVF. (To all those who say that cameras with EVFs are MORE costly I would say that you misunderstand. The new cameras may be more costly to YOU but they are much less expensive for the manufacturers and hence shore up receding profits. Not everything gets passed along to the consumer, especially not in a stale market...).

Presuming that Canon's 70D really performs (and the on chip AF is touted as being fully usable with every current Canon lens...) this means that both Canon and Nikon (in their J and V1 cameras) have proven to themselves that they need not have a secondary phase detect sensor integrated with finder optics and can offer a less expensive product at a steady price point to consumers who are acculturated and acclimated to doing most of their viewing and reviewing on big, rear screens. It also means, when Canon pull the curtain open on their mirrorless EVF iterations, that video gets better for most consumers because focus gets better for the video portion of the camera's feature set. And that's been a big source of unhappiness with Canon and Nikon amateur (and pro) video users who've come from faster focusing still systems.

The next step for all the makers is to finish coming to grips with fully electronic shutters. Once that's done we'll have taken out all the moving parts except for the control interfaces and that means faster cycling shot-to-shot and no wear and tear.  Just in time to try and catch up with the mirrorless market that's already crowded in under the big tent.

Count on it.

Before you sell that old camera go back and look at some of the work you created with it...

There's always new photo stuff coming out and I'm as fickle (or more so..) as the average photographer. It took all the lip biting and jaw tightening self restraint I could muster not to buy into the initial hysteria surrounding the Nikon D800 cameras and plunge into another system shift. The thing that saved me was my embracement of the EVF world view and the hold that superior technology has on me. In retrospect it was good to stick with my Sony cameras and leverage their special advantages for video. While the D800 files might be a tad more detailed that would be the only real advantage of the camera for me, and for my way of working it's not much of a perk.

But I never seem to learn and the other day I was handling yet another camera at the camera store and my undisciplined brain started leading me down a pathway that promised a newer, better and snappier set of tools than those I had in my own camera bag. Well, I'm pretty taken with the Sony SLR stuff (this is how the thoughts progress...) but I haven't used the Sony Nex stuff in a while (damn Samsung NX300...) and I could probably trade in all of my Nex stuff and get the new stuff. An ill-conceived plan began to form and before I knew it I was heading home to fetch gear and all the while my gear driven dark side of the brain was tossing out little cupcakes of imagined happiness....if only I had that new gear to play with. Ah, almost seduced once more by nothing more than the beautiful sound of a wonderful, mechanical shutter mechanism and some nice exterior design. But if I had gone through with my thinly considered plan I'd have ended up with two overlapping SLR systems and no fun, little toys.

I'd like to write that my good sense and reasoning bubbled up and overwhelmed my more random and emotionally driven acquisition glands but the reality is that my plans were thwarted by the drudgery of maintenance. 

I'd been on a trip to Boston in the Spring with the family and took only the two Sony Nex 7 cameras (Michael Johnston is wrong; I do not have seventeen of the cameras. But I suppose I would if money were no object). I also took only three small but potent lenses. Two from Sigma and one Sony. The focal lengths were: 19mm, 30mm, and 50mm. I shot a bit and when I came back I stumbled into project after project and never really paid much attention to the images I'd shot. Well, as I was cleaning up folders, making space and generally getting ready to incorporate the new Mac Pro machine into my workflow the minute it is released I came across my  Boston Images folder. When I looked at the images I found them compelling and different than images from my past and present cameras. I found that I really responded to the tonalities and colors in a direct way. I resolved that, whether or not I flirted with newer or different cameras, I would have to practice camera polygamy because the Nex flagships were too cool to give up. I guess they will eventually go into the stack with the Kodak cameras from the early years of this century and I'll trot them out to prove, in 2019, just how good today's technology was. Is.

Once upon a time we considered a 6 megapixel file to be the Holy Grail for digital cameras. Can you imagine going back?

Production Image from Aida.

I'm going back through a lot of older portrait work, looking for fun images so I can put together a presentation next week in Denver. I'll be presenting in front of video cameras for three days and I wanted to have samples of the kinds of images we'll be talking about and creating. Since I was in an exploratory mood I didn't put any date restrictions on my search but I did want to stick to good digital files and not get into a marathon of film scanning and post production.

Today's foraging brought up some images I hadn't played with in a long time and I was surprised when I found these promotional shots for a production of Aida at how much I liked both the lighting (which is simple and straightforward) as well as the tonality I got from the files. The color in the shadow to highlight transition areas is very clean and the transitions themselves are smooth and detail without much evidence of banding.

I was in Bridge so I checked the info on the file and was surprised to see that it came from one of my earliest professional digital cameras, the Kodak DCS 760. The image was taken at ISO 80 and lit with Profoto strobes. The lens was the Nikon 28-70mm 2.8 zoomed, used at f11 and around 55mm. The original file is 2000 by 3000 pixels but when I examined the file at 100% I found it to be tightly structured and fairly noise free. I tried a quick blow up just using the interpolation in PhotoShop CS6 and found that the file could be res'd up to much larger dimensions with very little loss in quality. I was impressed to see how well the old technology holds together in a modern workflow.

I have made a mental note to myself to go back soon and convert all the Kodak raw files to .dng files as I'm almost certain that fewer and fewer raw conversion programs will continue to support cameras from a functionally defunct camera maker.

Given that most work now goes up on the web I think this could still be a viable studio camera. This isn't the first time that the DCS 706 surprised me in a good way.  I guess that, and nostalgia, are the reasons I keep the camera, lenses and bit and pieces around still. That, and the fact that five pounds of hard alloy are good for driving nails when I forget to bring the studio hammer along on projects.

I sometimes feel that we've all been chasing the wrong rabbit. The cameras are fine, it's the education on why and when to use them that we should have been (should be) working on.

Metering is a wonderful thing.

I have two lazy habits that sometimes sabotage my best intentions when making photographs. I've gotten used to using cameras in automatic settings when shooting quickly, outside. I let the cameras set the white balance and the basic exposure. It make sense in a lot of situations but when you get into the studio and you are inventing the light it pays to do two things on every shoot. The first is to use a light meter. In my opinion an incident light meter is the only metering tool that works every time. The second thing I always do, if I am being mindful of quality in the studio, is to make a custom white balance. Here's the tricky thing: White balance affects exposure. Exposure affects white balance. I always meter first and then I do my custom white balance.

When I do a custom white balance I use the exposure I've gotten from metering instead of relying on the camera to compensate.

You may be able to make adjustments in raw to your exposures and your overall color balance but they will be compromises and you'll see it in non-linear color casts in shadow areas and you'll regret not metering when you find that the histogram in your camera convinces you to underexpose in nearly every situation. That under exposure robs you of detail in your shadows (if you want it) and adds color noise to the overall file as you "lift" exposure to get where you should have been all along.

We (collectively; not royally) tend to use RAW as a 24/7 crutch and a convenient excuse not to practice our craft with the diligence and mindfulness that we could. We've come to believe in an industry wide mantra which states that RAW is always better than a Jpeg file. I've done some technical digging and I'm here to tell you that a Jpeg file that is accurately metered and color balanced at the time of capture spanks the heck out of an underexposed RAW files that's brought back under control in post. And part of the problem is color shifts due to exposure differences.

I don't care what the web says on this. Every studio photographer and videographer needs to own and know how to use an incident light meter to work at a high quality level. And every photographer and videographer looking for consistency and quality should know how all their cameras make custom white balances. Over time it will save one much time and energy. Once you practice mindfully using your meter you'll walk off your shooting sets knowing that you've nailed the technical stuff. Getting the emotion right is a different beast. Don't let the technical get in the way of the wonderful....

And, yes, I get the irony of using a black and white image as the illustration for the top of the article. For all the literal folks, here's a color version:

A quick review of my time with the Leaf Aptus AFi7 medium format camera.

I wish I still had the Leaf Aptus 39 megapixel, medium format camera in my studio; especially if I had gotten to keep the 180mm Schneider short telephoto lens as well. At the time the files were much more detailed than anything we could have gotten out of a 35mm style DSLR. Nowadays? The only advantage might be the real 16 bit files but you'd have to be looking at great prints or a $2,000 monitor to really see the difference between those files and the ones that start out as 14 bit files in our current cameras.

When I found this file in my archives I looked for a similar file done with the Sony a99 and compared them both at 100%. The colors were close and could be matched without too much brain sweat. The shadows are more nuanced with the bigger file camera. But I can get very close to the Leaf in post with the Sony.

What I loved about the Leaf was the combination of lens and sensor size but lately I've found that a good 85mm at f2.8 gets me so close to the same look. And pragmatically, my audience has changed as well. Most clients are working more and more on the web and at 8 bits the discriminating factors between the files vanish. At that point any good business person has to consider the price of ownership differential and the cost/benefit analysis.

The medium format package as I was using it was close to $40,000. The Sony a99 with a Rokinon 85mm 1.5 lens tips the total to $3200. The Sony files are easier to do the day to day plumbing work of photography with and the camera is much more agile in use. I'm glad to have kept the extra $36,800 in my pocket. It went a long way toward shepherding my business through some tough times. Sometimes the only way to make a real assessment of the value in your hands in to put the gear in your hands and try it. Anecdotal stories are too imaginary to use as decision making metrics. Now, the real question is whether or not the Sony/Zeiss 85mm 1.4 is worth the difference. I'm getting one to test. Should be an interesting and potentially embarrassing run through. More later.