The camera maker's lament: Is it reviewers who don't know what the F#$K they're doing or bloggers just deflating corporate hyperbole?

One of the reasons bloggers need to be careful and always be truthful about their affiliations with manufacturers of products about which they write is that those big companies are very, very good about trying to "bend" or delay a blogger's representation of their product. The marketing teams at major camera makers are good at identifying long term influencers in their niche. They understand the value of a great review and the costs of a "so-so" review. It's always in their best interest to control as much of the "presentation" about their product as they can. I get that.

But an honest opinion should not be for sale. If you are from "the company" and you think we've misunderstood how to best use the equipment it's up to you to tell me what the owner's manual doesn't. To clarify. To put me in touch with your technical staff in order to clear up any oversights I may have made in using the product. After all, we've generally had the cameras we test in our hands for a short amount of time compared to the engineers who actually designed the gear.....

I had a recent phone call in which the representative of a camera maker, unhappy with my observations about video files, asked me if I was using their brand of lenses in my tests.

A hint to everyone making a camera they want to aim at film makers, cinematographers, hybrid photographers, video bloggers, etc. :  People will put all kinds of lenses on the front of the camera. Some  lenses will have been made by Zeiss, some will have been made by Nikon and some will have been made by companies we've never heard from. That's part of the style, the business and the willful customization of video tools that goes along with this particular revolution. Telling people your product is only useful when using your lenses goes a long way to killing your own product from active consideration by a whole community of avid users.

When we buy product we are generally doing so because we hope that it will fill a need or offer a feature that we don't already have. Early adopters have no choice but to dive in and try the gear. To some degree we depend on the makers to be somewhat honest about their gear. For example, Olympus has introduced a "hi-res" mode to their new OMD EM-5.2 camera but they've been very, very good from the beginning about downplaying the feature for day-to-day, casual photography. They caution in their advertising and in the manual that it's a mode only to be used when on a tripod and shooting objects that don't move. They were good at managing expectations and I'm happy they did so.

Other makers tout focusing speeds that only really deliver in zero gravity environments or with non-moving targets that have optimum contrast profiles. Samsung touts their new 4K codec, h.265, as an advantage but anyone trying to transcode the codec to use with Final Cut ProX or Premier would beg to differ....

So, I offer my condolences in advance to the manufacturers but we'll keep calling them as we see them while trying to figure out work arounds to make the products work as they should out of the box. But redefining the parameters necessary for success after the product has left the showroom floor isn't helpful.

A small collage of Behind the Scenes images from photographic assignments.

I'm as guilty as anyone else when it comes to wanting to see "behind the curtain." How do other photographers set up their lights? What do their studios look like? How far away from the subject is the main light? How do they do their "jumping" shots? All the stuff that can be confusing when you are just looking at illustrations in books or hearing descriptions. 

When I started working on the LED book I really started to understand just how much detail people wanted to see when they sat down with a book in order to learn a new way to do something and at that point I started trying to make behind the scenes images of everything we set up. What I found out is that I am very much a creature of habit and love to "key" most images from the left (we read left to right--correct?), love to use soft lights and I could probably always use just one more C-stand or at least one more non-rickety light stand. 

note: I'm pretty tired today. I just transcoded the video I worked on for the past three weeks and I'm uploading the final to the client as I write this. Unlike still photography these video jobs have so many moving parts, the least of which seems to be actually shooting the footage. Motion graphics in particular can be daunting and are the components that are most detailed and engender most back and forth with clients. Finding the right typefaces to match client style books is always imperative and may mean buying and uploading different fonts than you currently have. Some changes in timing are also critical. We ended up experimenting with dissolves, etc. in tiny tenth of second increments.

So finally being finished means more than the fact that you've just delivered a good product. It means you worked with a team, built some consensus and collaborated well with your client. It can be a much more involved undertaking than turning in a well made photograph. But boy oh boy! is it ever a lot of time with your butt planted in a chair.

Makes the stuff in these behind the scenes shots seem like child's play...

Note the two lights on the floor to provide fill from the bottom...

Getting out from behind the camera to direct.

Sometimes all you need is a little "puff" of light to highlight your subject in a  bright environment.

 Black panels to the right provide "subtractive fill" for those times when you wish the shadows were more dramatic.

Small studio+long lenses= back against the wall (or filing cabinet). 

Note black reflector blocking sunlight from the windowns behind.

Ladders. Ladders everywhere.

Fill cards and diffusers abound.

Yes trampoline. Yes flash. No LED.

Eating French Fries in Austin. Reading about a photographer. Novel excerpt.

 A WARM SUMMER DAY EATING FRENCH FRIES AT HILL-BERTS BURGERS WITH BEN AND MOM.

An excerpt from the novel, The Lisbon Portfolio:

"...As Henry shuffled back down the whitewashed walls of the narrow, high ceilinged hallway he could smell the odors of cooking coming from somewhere on the floors below.  The tantalizing smells of grilling meats brought back a poignant and very visual memory.  

The day his memory conjured up was a warm, slow, summer saturday.  Henry, his sweet wife of eighteen years, and his five year old son had watched cartoons on the television, worked in the garden and enjoyed the leisure of the hot, bright morning without a schedule.  His son Kip had the idea to go out for hamburgers at lunchtime.  No one had to mention the restaurant, they all knew it would be Hillberts.  The moment came into clear focus.  Henry relived the pleasures of the refreshing air conditioning that blew from two noisy and obsolete window units perched opposite each other on top of either glass entry door to the restaurant.  The ordering counter was a long stained,  construction of white formica, accented throughout  with tiny gold flecks. Atop the counter two old cash registers stood guard.  Run by a congenial hispanic family, all the cooks were Hispanic.  They all dressed in white tee shirts and the red trimmed, white paper, disposable hats most restaurants gave up during the transition from the 1960’s to the 1970’s. 

Opposite the ordering counter was a wall of floor to ceiling windows. A sixteen inch deep ledge ran horizontally across the expanse of the windows creating a quick lunch counter. Every three or four feet yellow and red plastic squeeze bottles held mustard and ketchup. Plastic salt and pepper shakers were distributed across the shelf in no apparent pattern. Swiveling round stools on thick silver poles, bolted to the floor and covered with shiny, yellow plastic cushions, provided seating for sixteen customers.

Henry and his family sat three across at the window counter.  Henry could feel the heat of the hundred degree day radiate through the glass. But the air conditioning was cool across his back and on his bare toes, sticking out from the straps of his worn, leather sandals.  The sunlight cascading through the wall of windows was subdued by a yellow translucent shade that flapped listlessly across the front of the building.  Kip, his son, vibrating with the natural energy and joy of a small child sat between his parents and relished the kinetic nature of the rotating stools. He spun his tiny body from side to side. And the seat swung with him.

They ate “home town” burgers piled high with iceberg lettuce, sliced white onions, tomatoes, pickles and yellow mustard.  French fries were shared out of white paper bags that had been twisted shut by practiced hands, nestled in red and white cardboard containers called “boats.” 

Henry kept an eye on his son.  He was proud of Kip’s lack of fear, loved his clear, uncompromised logic, took great pleasure in the child’s blond curls and the smart gray- blue eyes which already seemed so wise and worldly. Kip lavished ketchup from a plastic red squeeze bottle all over the nearest nest of french fries. His lunch vacillated between ketchup finger-painting and stool spinning; eating was so secondary.  Then he stopped, picked up his oversized, white styrofoam cup with both of his small, perfect hands, pulled the red straw into his mouth and enjoyed his lemonade as only a five year old boy can.  

At that moment he turned and looked up at Henry.  Their eyes met and Henry melted as he saw the look of pride, affection and lack of judgment in Kip’s eyes.  It was one of the quietest, most powerful moments of sheer joy Henry White had experienced in his forty six years. 

He pulled a film camera up to his eye from it’s resting spot on the end of a nylon strap, dangling over his left shoulder.  He tried to capture the warmth of the day.  The honesty of the little neighborhood burger joint. The promise and the power of a five year old boy.  And the unyielding support of a wife with a surplus of compassion for his weaknesses and failures.  This moment from his recent memory was so strong for Henry that it was akin to watching a snippet from a movie.  But instead of just sight and sound the memory captured all the pleasures of the warmth and the cool currents swirling together in the noisy restaurant.  The voluptuous smell built from decades of deep fat frying potatoes.  The feel of the glossy plastic seat under his bottom and the air circulating through the old sandals strapped to his feet.  But most of all he could feel the love that flowed through his heart and his chest when he looked into the eyes of the boy.  

Now the memory started to torment him because Henry knew it would be at least a week before he could sink his teeth into a burger at Hillberts.  He was already constructing it in his mind.  It would be a celebratory  burger with two hot, dripping patties, all the usual condiments and a generous mosaic of hot jalapeno pepper slices.

"Quick, bring me the half stop diffuser!!!"

For Austin Sports Medicine.

Shooting in hazy sunlight. The lighting is too contrasty. What to do? While we've been taught to rush to the camera bag and grab a flash with which to add fill-in flash there are some circumstances in which floating a one stop or half stop scrim over the top of the subject is easier and more visually convincing. 

I used a Westcott one half stop silk diffuser directly over the talent's head and as close to her as possible to get this effect. It works for two main reasons. First the foliage in the background always renders darker than it will look to the eye which means that a half stop or one stop increase in contrast won't burn it out or make it look fried. And second, the light colored dirt of the playing field provided additional shadow fill from below. 

With the diffuser on the top, the sand acting as a reflector below, and the background being (lucky me) dark enough the stars lined up to ensure a good exposure. 

An additional help was the wide dynamic range of the camera, an older Kodak DCS 760. 

Hanging a diffuser over a model can be a much quicker, easier and more believable fix to contrasty light than pulling out a flash. But, of course, every situation is different. 

"All The Way" The LBJ play at Zach Theatre in Austin, Texas. Photographs by Kirk Tuck.

©2015 Kirk Tuck for Zach Theatre.

Zach Theatre in Austin, Texas continues to raise the bar in their productions on their Topfer Stage. Last night I went to the dress rehearsal of "All the Way" to make public relations and marketing photographs of the show. Belinda came along to see the show and keep me company. I wrote about what I packed yesterday and now I'm going to write about what I used.

I took twenty or thirty wide shots of the stage because it was really cool and well done but it was largely static and when I felt like I had good coverage I put the Nikon D610 down on the top of my bag and didn't pick it up again until the very end of the show. When you are shooting for press use and documentation your goal is typically to get tight shots of your lead actors and then lots of tight "relationship" shots and small group shots. We've learned over the years that the tighter, more graphic shots always have a better chance of being picked up in social media and traditional, non-paid, print media. 

Understanding the ever growing appeal of video on TV and the web the theater also documents the dress rehearsals with the help of a very talented videographer. His name is Eric Graham and he's usually sporting two cameras. One is set for a wide shot of the stage while the second one is equipped with a long zoom and Eric uses it to follow the action of the shows. 

If I am correct then last night he was shooting the wides on a Canon C100 with a Canon 24-105mm lens and doing the action oriented shots with a Sony FS-700 and a long range zoom. He's got the sound figured out too. He's running a cable from the sound mixing board in the theater directly into his FS700. No coughs and rustling of the audience in his audio....

Back to photography. I did the bulk of the 1,000+ images of the show with a Nikon D810 and an older (but very sharp) Nikon 80-200mm f2.8 zoom lens. It's the old "push-pull" design and it has fun stuff on it like distance limiters that you can set so the AF doesn't hunt. I set mine to 30 feet to infinity and never had an issue of the camera/lens combo failing to lock on. I find the lens to be in the "sharpness ballpark" with the newer lenses but I still have my eyes on a 70-200mm f4 because it's lighter and has vibration reduction inside.  That being said there was very little not to like about the lens I was using. 

I had the camera set to shoot medium, fine jpegs and every once in a while I'd use the 1.2X crop mode just to get a little tighter. It worked well and it comes in handy for those times when you don't have the bandwidth to crop after the fact. Some stuff goes straight to the client to be distributed ASAP. 

I used Nikon's auto white balance and was not disappointed. The D810 has an uncanny ability to nail the right WB for flesh tones and I never felt the need to override it or go to a preset. That's a big change from previous generations of cameras!

I assigned a rear button for focus. It was nice to "lock" focus by taking my finger off the button but still being able to re-compose and lock exposure. Separation of stuff. Nice. 

Looking through over a thousand shots there were less than a handful that didn't achieve sharp focus. Most of my "after the fact" corrections were aimed at opening up dark areas with Lightroom's shadow slider and occasionally brightening frames --- the D810 allows a bit of exposure correction with underexposed images and the noise (at 1600 ISO) stays polite. I'd always rather be a bit dark that lose detail in the highlights. It's a real consideration when shooting Jpegs. 

Why Jpegs? Mostly because of the need to turn the files around quickly. Shooting 36 megapixel raw files means hours of conversion after I've made a few adjustments. The 36 megapixel size is just too big. I could try the small raw but I think 9 megs is a bit too small a file if the client wants to do a bigger print size. It sure would be nice if you could shoot Nikon raw in all the sizes that are available while shooting Jpeg. Kodak at that on their full frame DSLR cameras back in 2004. 

There is also the question of storage. As it is we're taking up 22 gigabytes of storage space with our final output files.  So far, in the last 30 days we've filled an entire 4 Gb drive and it's twin brother, the back up drive (but we've done a lot of video and that makes a huge impact on storage resources....) and I'm becoming concerned about my ability to keep up with storage demands over time. But that's fodder for another blog.

The images took post processing in stride and nothing fell apart. I am delighted with the vast majority of the take and, as always, there are some I would love a "do over" on. But the first volley of selects is already on its way to a bunch of community papers, the popular alternate newspaper, the theater's web resource and into social media. 

How's the production? It's funny, sad, fabulous and amazing. Like a history lesson wrapped in drama and compelling stagecraft. Well worth your time and money.  If you are in Austin any time this month be sure to catch it. Thanks!

©2015 Kirk Tuck for Zach Theatre.

©2015 Kirk Tuck for Zach Theatre.

©2015 Kirk Tuck for Zach Theatre.

©2015 Kirk Tuck for Zach Theatre.

©2015 Kirk Tuck for Zach Theatre.

©2015 Kirk Tuck for Zach Theatre.

©2015 Kirk Tuck for Zach Theatre.

©2015 Kirk Tuck for Zach Theatre.

Packing up to shoot the dress rehearsal of "All the Way." The play about LBJ's time as President. What to pack?

Tonight is the big night for me on this show. It's when I pack up the cameras, figure out the best seat in the house and spend a couple of hours trying to get the absolute best images I can wrangle of a big, wonderful, complex show. A lot has changed since I first stated shooting marketing images at the dress rehearsals for Zach Theatre nearly 24 years ago. Back then I shot everything in black and white because that's what the daily and the alternate newspapers were willing to run. In those days I shot every show with a couple of Leica M series cameras. One with a 90mm f2.0 Summicron lens and the other with a 35mm f2.0 Summicron lens. I kept a 21mm f3.4 in the bag --- just in case we really needed a wide shot of the stage. 

While there were faster films around at the time my favorite was always Kodak's Tri-X. I shot it as if it was ISO 800 and pushed the development in D-76, diluted one to one. After the show I would head straight over to the darkroom to process the eight to ten rolls of film I'd shot, keeping track of two or three development tanks at a time. Once the film was through the wash I'd dip it into a Photoflo solution to prevent water spots, hang the film up with clothespins and then head home and get some sleep.

The next morning I'd go back into the darkroom and, if we had time, I'd make contact sheets to share with the young, new marketing director. Sometimes we would be on a tight deadline and he and I would have discussed the shots we thought might work best the night before and he'd leave the edit up to me. Either way we'd figure out five or six different "hero" shots and I'd make five eight by ten inch, black and white shots of each on RC paper (resin coated, it processed and dried quicker). 

As soon as the prints dried I would rush them over to the theater so they could distribute them to the various media outlets. Then I'd wait to see if the papers would give me a photo credit. Yes for most of the little one. No for the bigger ones....

But today is now. And I'm packing up to go and shoot a dress rehearsal that starts in a couple of hours. Here's what I'm packing and it seems like nothing to me. A Nikon D810 which will be paired with the Nikon 80-200 f2.8 and a Nikon D610 which will be matched up with a 24-85mm f3.5 to 4.5 G zoom. I've also packed the old 105mm f2.5 (just in case) and the 50mm G f1.8 (again, just in case). Each camera has a 64 Gb card in it and I've got extra batteries in the front pocket of my battered and tattered Domke "little bigger bag." I'm carrying along a small Benro monopod with a small bracket on the top in case I want to stabilize my unstabilized long zoom. Can't use flash so I'm not packing it and don't really want to mix formats. Full circle. All the way back to two shooting cameras and two shooting lenses. I think I can handle that.

These are shots of Martin Burke (superb and justifiably famous Austin actor) horsing around on a theater chair. They were originally shot as a fund raiser for the new (now three year old) Topfer Theatre on the Zach campus. I love working with Martin. Off camera he is quiet and thoughtful while on camera he's a maniac. Just one of the hundreds of great artists I've met through Zach Theatre. 

 If you are in Austin for the month of April you might want to saddle up and get to the theater to see "All the Way." It's going to be amazing. But you know you'll see images from the performance sometime tomorrow. We'll have them up in the afternoon.

Now that I'm packed for the evening I'm making two final changes to a video project that morphing into a three week long assignment. I think I've learned and used every control in Final Cut ProX.

Wrapping up means I now get to bill. One of my favorite parts of every job.

Hope you are having a swell week!

Sorry, no ads today. 

Homemade soft lights for almost every purpose.

If you are tired of spending money on photo gear but you need a good light consider what we did for a project. We bought four fluorescent "under the counter" lights at Home Depot, taped them all together and bungee-corded them to a light stand. Spent $24 bucks + sales tax. Worked perfectly for the project we had in mind. There's more than one way to skin a Scheimpflug Principle....

The dour assistant is extra.....

It's a great way to practice your custom white balancing skills.