Fun times at the graffiti park. Shooting with the Samsung 30 NX.

I went to the Graffiti Park today to test out the Samsung NX30's video performance. Video takes a while longer to deal with because I want to edit something together that won't make people grind their teeth or reference fingernails on chalkboards. The camera's sensor is great. APS-C is great for depth of field control. Even with a pedestrian sounding 50-200mm f4-5.6. In all the camera does video well.

The image above is a still grab shot. Most of my afternoon was spent shooting handheld video (will I never learn?).

But this particular post has nothing to do with the camera or the lens or the sensor. It has to do with a funny thing that happened to me four times this afternoon. As I was walking through the park I had four different couples come up to me and ask me if I would take their photograph with their camera. Of course I obliged. What else would a civilized person do? But each time the person handing me the camera was very careful to (talk slowly and...) explain which button to push to make the exposure and how they wanted the shot framed. I listened carefully and tried to follow their instructions to the letter. Except for the couple who had their camera mis-set. It would have taken a silhouette. I fixed the exposure mode and took several versions just to make sure we had what they wanted.

One couple thanked me, looked at the images and then told me that they were very well done. I thanked them for saying so.

I can only imagine what we could have done if we'd flown a 12x12 foot silk over the couple, filled them in with 1100 watt seconds of flash from an Elinchrom Ranger flash pack and then used a camera that could sync a bit faster....

Anyway, I was pleased to be asked. When I came home I told my wife about my encounters. She laughed. She thought it was karmic-ly appropriate.

If you are at an Austin landmark look for the older person with the black rimmed glasses and the white, broadcloth, Julian Alexander button down. I'm sure he'll do a good job with your photograph....

A "selfie" from a client request.

One of the agency people involved with Samsung asked me to send along a selfie with one of the Samsung cameras. At one time last year I was the most knowledgable user of the Samsung Galaxy NX camera anywhere. Since I am vain and constantly self-promoting I got on the assignment right away. I pulled out an ancient, non-connectivity Sony a850 and put on the cheesy 24-105mm Sony lens, grabbed the electronic cable release and fired away. I like the black mock turtleneck and the glasses with the black rim over the top.

Pulling out the Samsung Galaxy NX for the photograph got me investigating that camera anew. I think the gap in my thinking last year was my myopic concentration with the camera's still imaging and still photography handling capabilities. I overlooked the video capabilities of the camera entirely. So yesterday I spent a lot of the afternoon playing around with the Galaxy NX as a video camera.

Now I have an all new respect for the camera. I have always liked the sensor and I was always impressed with every Samsung lens I've shot but now I am a fan of the video capabilities as well.

But first one caveat: The camera is not well set up for recording professional quality sound along with the video. There is an all purpose 3.5mm plug on the side into which you can use EITHER a set of headphones to hear playback, or a microphone to record audio, but you obviously can't use them both at the same time. Another constraint is that the audio set up of the camera doesn't allow for control over the sound levels in the recording mode. You get automatic levels no matter what.

But I will say that they do some good software in the audio region that senses gaps between words and clamps down on levels instead of letting them spike up and create hiss and noise. You can still hear some anomalies but it's pretty workable.  I recorded myself with an inexpensive Olympus stereo lavaliere microphone and while it wasn't bad it also wasn't perfect.

But the video at the highest quality settings, and using the 1080p, 30fps is very good indeed. Unlike the big Sony a99 the video written to the memory card is very sharp and detailed. The color balance, even using the AWB setting is great and it's a lot of fun composing and shooting while using the almost 5 inch screen on the back. It's the production equivalent of having an outboard, large monitor.

A bonus is that the camera provides focus peaking in manual focus settings which worked well with the tests I did using the new 85mm 1.4 lens.

Funny that this is a camera I didn't really warm up to when shooting stills and yet I am very pleased and intrigued to use it as a video tool. I'm shooting some personal work with it over the weekend and I'll be using the Zoom H4n and a shotgun mic to do audio. In one of the recent upgrades to Final Cut Pro X Apple has basically incorporated the same kind of sound matching we used to need PluralEyes to get. Now it can all be done in the program by matching up the outboard audio with the camera scratch track. You really have to shoot live view with a 5 inch monitor to get the appeal but believe me, it's fun and highly productive.

The camera is currently selling for around $1200. We're getting into a more realistic price range. I'll have some footage to show next week. I'm not advising any one to run out and buy one right away. But if you have one sitting around fire up the video setting and do some work. I think you WILL be pleasantly surprised.

Yes, it's this camera:

I meant to get some work done today. I really did. So after my second cup of coffee and a quick read of the New York Times I grabbed the dog and headed out to the studio. I sent a bill to someone and then I sent along 18 enormous 100 megabyte Tiff files to a service in India to have them masked and retouched. I'm gonna say that part qualifies as real work, although I had uploaded the files yesterday....

I read the usual forums and websites (theonlinephotographer seemed strangely off-line today...).  I got all riled up by a crazy person over on the digital pro forum at DPReview (there's always someone stirring the pot over there).

And I sent off some correspondence to people I needed to, well, correspond with.

Then Studio Dog poked me on the leg with her paw and gave me that look that said, "Really? Sitting on your butt for two hours banging on the keyboard? We've got squirrels to corral and important communications with other dogs to perform.  And your butt isn't going to get any skinnier wiggling your paws on the keyboard." She is so right. She always is. So I grabbed a leash and a bag of treats and we set off to look at the neighborhood. We both growled at the lawn guys with the leaf blowers. We had a few moments of silence for the scrape-off houses that have been recently scrapped off to make space for much bigger houses that will dominate once gracious lots.

We practiced walking "steady" and we practiced giving and receiving treats. I gave many lamb treats and got only joyous hand licks in return. After passing an hour ambling through and checking the smell of every letter box and light pole we returned home.

I answered another e-mail. This one from a client who recently asked for a bid on a huge job. The  response and tentative "yes!" by the client was too quick and then, reading further I saw that I would have to sell myself with a dog and pony show to the final client of the ad agency and I would have to finance about $20,000 worth of hard cost for 30 to 60 days if I wanted the job. I like jobs but I don't like them that much. I sent back a note suggesting that if a dog and pony show and financing for agency and client were part of the mix I might not be signing on. We'll see what happens there but I don't really care how slow or hot the market is, 25 years in the business gives one a tingling spider sense for eminent train wrecks and career stoppers. Some business I can live without.

Well, that took us right up to 11:30 am and frankly not much got done. I took the Studio Dog back to the house, grabbed a towel and headed over to the pool for a crowded, kinetic, fast paced master's swim practice. I rarely remember workouts but this one was devious for it's 300 set that went: 50 butterfly, 50 backstroke, 50 butterfly, 50 breaststroke, 50 butterfly, 50 freestyle. Rinse and repeat a number of times. That's a lot of butterfly to repeat. I guess I'll sleep well tonight.

The reward for any hard, noon workout is a good lunch so I headed to Chipotle Grill for a bowl with beans, rice, carnitas, two different salsas and some cheese. Yummy. Now I'm back at the studio with Studio Dog and she's pretty insistent that it's nap time. Dog bed in place. Yoga mat in place.

Commence napping. It's all part of the rich life of the freelance photographer....

Life gets all settled down and mellow and then the UPS guys shows up to roil it back up with new gear...

Beautiful Sunny Afternoon at the Graffiti Park. 

Punchy, Swirly colors.

Sitting at my desk in my quiet west Austin neighborhood just working away on some silly post processing and minding my own business. I'd just hit the Keurig machine to blast the drooping eyelids back open when I hear the dog barking over in the house. About three minutes later the big, brown truck rolls up and my regular delivery guy drops a package outside the front door. He's here so often he doesn't even bother to knock anymore. 

I wasn't expecting anything but that's how this stuff usually goes. A package arrives out of nowhere and all of a sudden I'm playing with new stuff and changing direction a little bit at a time. I had no idea what was in the box and I left my reading glasses on the desk so the label didn't clear things up. 

I grabbed my Trident folding knife out of my left cowboy boot and sliced into the cardboard box with  a flick of my wrist. The prize was another box wrapped in some New York newspaper. 

Once I got through the newsprint I hoisted out a dense silver box and deftly sliced the lid off that one with a quick twist. Yep. Another fun toy from the Samsung people. Last time a box from them came it was filled with their new NX30 mirror less camera. The kit lens was a side bonus. This time they upped the ante a bit and sent along a lens that a portrait photographer can really use. It was a brand spanking new 85mm 1.4. Complete with their little iFunction button on the side. 

I pushed a few scorpions aside, made a quick look under my desk for lost rattlesnakes and then I settled back into my chair to take a good look at the lens. Damn, it's heavy. Dense heavy. Like plutonium. It's short and squat and it's got the biggest hood, relative to its size, that I've ever seen. 

I'm always side-tracked by my own curiosity so I put the lens on the NX30 and shuffled over to the door. I took my coffee cup into the house and quick ate a couple of jalapeños just so I'd have something to wash down with the last few sips. And this was Texas coffee...we grind up a few smaller habeñeros along with the coffee beans just to give the brew a bit more zing...

I headed over to hipsterland central, the edges of the Clarksville neighborhood. And I cruised around to the big painted wall where I could do some thoughtful "art" with my newly conjoined rig. 

I shot till the sun went down and the Bob Wills album I was singing to myself in my head wound down. I saddled up the Honda and headed back home just hoping my spouse would get right with her Texas roots and rustle up something beefy and barbecued instead of that healthy stuff we've been gagging down----- Vegatables? Grains? Fresh Fruit?  That's damn tree-hugger fare. 

Well, we had a branding fire raging in the backyard so my hopes were high but further investigation revealed the cruel reality; grilled vegetables. Lots of zucchini. More kale than anyone might need in a lifetime. 

I finally got settled and downloaded the images I'd shot for a little "look-see." 

I liked them pretty darn good. So today, just out of curiosity I dragged out my much maligned Samsung Galaxy NX camera and started playing with that as well. But that camera has me more interested in doing a bit of video. It's the lure of the giant screen on the back.

I don't really have much of a Samsung system going on here. Yes, I've got a couple of bodies with 20 meg, APS-C sensors. I've got the can anyone please choose some different focal lengths for the damn kit lenses 18-55mm kit lens. Somewhere around Christmas I seem to have acquired a really sharp and nice 50-200mm f4 to 5.6 zoom lens. Over in one of the saddle bags I've still got that pretty little 30mm pancake someone sent along last fall and now I've got a super fast, super sharp 85mm. Now, if they'd just send along a really cool wide angle I could alternate camera systems on alternate shooting days. A little work with the Samsung, a little work with the Panasonic. A day off with a Sony a850. 

Just when I think I have it all figured out the UPS guy comes along and stirs it all up again. 

But frankly, having all these choices makes me as happy as a pig in mud. 

And so that's what I played with today as well. Time to take the boots off, unstrap the six shooters and the chaps, take the spurs off at the front door and wrap up a day of Texas photography. Ah, the mystique. 

Today was my first Theater Shoot with my "full" Panasonic GH3 system. What did I like? Was there anything I didn't like?

Pinocchio. This image done with the 12-35mm f2.8 X Panasonic zoom

handheld wide open at 3200 ISO, 1/125th.

Theater. Live Theater. Now that's got to be scary for actors and the people who make every show happen. Unlike most photography the actors can't just "chimp" their ongoing performance and go back to do many, many "re-dos".  Whatever happens in the moment happens in that moment and you can't take it back in the present performance. Those are brave artists.

Pinocchio. Panasonic 35-100mm f2.8. At or near wide open and handheld 

at 1/125th of second, ISO 3200.

The people who work at Zach Theatre do a lot of live theater that's made for kids and families. It's part of their commitment to the community. Every years thousands and thousands of school kids from across the city are exposed to fun, meaningful, captivating live performances. Some for the first time ever. The theatre is also committed to producing plays that entire families can enjoy like the play for which I photographed the dress rehearsal this afternoon; Pinocchio.

I thought I would just show up, snap some technically legit images and then head back to the studio but I have to admit that the play brought many smiles to my usually cynical face and left me with tears in my eyes at the end. Those writers really know how to lean on the emotions...and those actors know how to deliver the words straight to your heart...

Today was the first day that I had all the toys assembled that I thought I would want to have to shoot live theater performances. I had two identical Panasonic GH3 camera bodies and two primo (not prime) lenses. I used the 12-35mm f2.8 and longer sibling, the 35-100mm f2.8 zoom. These are the "X" lenses, Panasonic's attempt at premium branding a la Canon's "L" lenses. That's it. No other gear. A 16 gigabyte card in each camera and everything set the same. This production was done on the smaller theater at the Zach campus; it's a theater in the round and it means more photographer moving around to get the shots we wanted to use for marketing.

The play was pretty darkly lit. Perfect for people's eyes, lots of deep shadows mixed with bright, contaminated colors, even deeper shadows and little pools of highlights. It was an interesting exercise for the cameras. The average exposure was 1/125th of a second at f2.8, ISO 3200 which was right on the threshold of stopping subject motion---which meant I had to time the action to hit peaks. The time in the actor's expression of lines when they pause for a second just at the top of their delivery.

The two lenses are naturals for this kind of work. The image stabilization gave me a high percentage of very sharp images. The lenses look great at or near wide open and they are small enough and light enough to hold for an hour without any fatigue. The GH3 cameras were more of less flawless. They aren't low light champs but neither are they at all bad. All in all, a good hour's work shooting a good play with some fun gear. Nice to test this stuff in the real world. No kitten's souls were stolen here. And no birds in flight had their privacy breached...

Did I mention that the play was very, very good? It was. 

Medium Format Digital, Here We Come. Hello Pentax.

Now we've got something to talk about.

In recent years I despaired of the chance that we'd ever have an inexpensive but powerful medium format digital camera that would bring back to we portrait photographers the thing we always crave: the long lens on the big sensor. I don't really care about total resolution but I do crave the equivalent of that big piece of medium format film. Now, after stumbling through the endless permutations of 35mm sensor sized cameras we finally have an entrant into the field that seems to check all the boxes I wanted and a lot more. Introducing the Pentax D645Z. My one complaint? I'd gladly trade ten or twenty million of those Sony pixels for a bigger, fatter sensor. One with more real estate for optical effect.

I won't go through all of the technical specs. Those are all over the web. But I do want to hit on the cool ones, from my point of view: The camera has a big sensor. Nearly 50% bigger than the sensors in the Nikon D800 or the Sony A7r. Yummy. Let's put a 110mm f2.0 lens on the front of this and see just how nice a portrait we can make. And now, all the lesser specs: The camera is advertised as weatherproofed. Yawn. It shoots pretty quicky. Okay. It uses a 51 megapixel CMOS sensor from Sony. Wonderful for those rare times when 16 megapixels are not enough (reminder: buy more hard drives....). ISO goes to a trillion. But rationally, it'll be great to have a medium format camera that produces relatively clean files at 1600-6400 ISO. It takes current and legacy Pentax 645 lenses. Cheap ones as well as expensive ones.

Will we all rush out to buy one?

I'm pretty sure a lot of people will. Especially professionals who are desperate to introduce some sort of differentiating value proposition for using them (with said camera) instead of uncle Bob who just happens to be a really good photographer, owns a D800 and dabbles in Profoto strobes. This will be the last ditch attempt to make gear the barrier to entry. I know I'll buy one once the dentists and cardiologists and hedge fund managers get tired of theirs and push them onto the used market in the under $5,000 range. May take a year or two but something else is sure to come along and dislodge the newest and freshest miracles of the present from the first wave's attention....

What's the lure? Again, for me it's not about the high ISO or the massive files it's all about being able to use longer lenses on a bigger sensor to get a kind of portrait that we used to get back in the film days. Does this mean my love affair with m4:3rds is already over? Not hardly. It'll take a while for the Pentax D645z to become Kirk-Affordable in the used market and not everything I shoot is a limited depth of field portrait. In fact, more and more of what I shoot seems to dovetail with the look and feel of the smaller cameras. 

But I do think that Pentax/Ricoh is doing something remarkable and disruptive. They join the two majors in the medium format digital racket in using the same Sony 51 megapixel chip. And I'm going to bet it's only a matter of time before Leica jumps on board as well. But the disruptive aspect is the selling price of the Pentax camera. It's less than $9,000 U.S.  It's about a quarter of the asking price of the Phase One product and probably some similar gap with the Hasselblad product. 

Is there some massive difference in the quality of the lenses? Having shot the Pentax in its film incarnation as well as the Hasselblad and the Phase One in their digital permutations I doubt that there's much difference at all between them. Certainly it will take a microscope and some patience to see the difference. For most working pros who actually need the big megapixel count and all the other bells and whistles the Pentax may actually be the most compelling choice because of their vast experience in digital with 35mm style cameras.  They have at the ready autofocusing modules, matrix metering modules and a twenty year history of making great autofocus in small and larger cameras. 

The original film 645 cameras had a reputation for being more reliable than Swiss trains and the handling was always superb.  The only differentiator between the four brands of medium format current still standing and staggering around might be from Leica who really can make lenses that are visibly more drool worthy. But whether that advantage is worth three times the price of the Pentax remains to be seen. 

I will predict one more thing: The Pentax will have the best flash performance of the group. They always have. 

My next camera? I'm tossing a coin to choose between grabbing for that GH4 or picking up another miraculous Sony RX-10. I'll take the path of least painful resistance. 

Just watching my Studio Portrait Lighting Video on Craftsy.com

Link to my class with a $30 off code

I sent a friend who wanted to learn about photography to one of my www.Craftsy.com classes and she came back raving. She loved the way the two and a half hour classes build, the feature where she could stop and start the video and automatically go back 30 seconds and she loved asking questions that I had to go online and answer. The course she took was absolutely aimed at beginner photographers and it's called,  Family Photography: Candid Moments & Storytelling. 

But the class I wanted to bring to my VSL readers' attention is my Studio Portrait Lighting course. In the studio lighting course we walk through different ways to light portraits and it's really a course in how I light a portrait. We cover different modifiers and different lights. I'm a big fan of continuous lights but the use of light and of modifiers works pretty much across the lighting spectrum (pun partially intended). 

I think the Studio Portrait Lighting class might be interesting to readers who haven't spent a lot of time shooting with controlled lighting but who might be interested to see how one person does it. With the code in the link the class is about $30. Once you buy a class you can go back to it as often as you like for as long as you like. You also get to quiz me online but it might take a day of two to get an answer. 

If you hate the course you can use Craftsy.com's money back guarantee to make yourself whole again and if you are particularly careful you can go and look at the trailer before you commit. 

I actually hate doing commercials for classes here on the blog but the classes are one of the ways I generate income and I've decided to be less shy about at least showing my readers what I have to offer. I like the way Craftsy.com does their classes and I'm taking one about making croissants right now. After that I'll find another cooking class that appeals. 

I have also taken Neil Van Niekirk's very good class on portrait lighting with small flashes and enjoyed it. These classes are much more condensed and easy to use than the free, multi-day classes offered at other sites. I hope you'll try one of mine to see how you like it. 

And if you have a friend who is just getting into photography and needs to go from understanding f-stops and shutter speeds and how to hold a camera and some remedial post processing you might want to point them to the Family Photography class. My friends who need the class are telling me they love it. 

I have to add, I learned a lot of new stuff about video production by participating as the instructor! Thanks Patty!