One of my favorite old blogs about context (and cynicism).

http://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2012/09/ah-context-these-two-need-it.html

Camera Stuff. Traditional photography has been transformed. You can still do it any way you want but....

I traveled around Austin and across the country this week and I can truthfully say that, based on my current observations , coupled with our knowledge of the trends of the last two years,  the age of traditional photography as we knew it in the film days, and in the transitional days of the last decade, have come to an end. The ever present, single use cameras that were once part and parcel of every mom's, hipster's and gray-haired enthusiast's daily wardrobes have largely vanished from public sight
almost overnight like pay phone booths and DVDs.

It's not just that people in every walk of life have traded in their Nikons, Canons and random other dedicated, interchangeable lens cameras for the latest iPhones or Android phones, with their very precocious, built-in video/photo cameras rather, the great majority have given up the traditional pursuit of the traditional image. The act of taking an image with a large, single lens reflex camera seems as dated, in our current culture, as making a career out of painting in an abstract expressionist style.

We've truly entered the age of photographic minimalism, driven by the evolved informality of the share culture of web as represented by posted pictographic mini-conversations (a relatively scattered activity; at times not much more than a visual grunt ). The sharing is not the same as a traditional presentation in that now the photographs are part of a seemingly endless stream of good and bad imagery. A stream of unconsciousness, reflexively recharged ad infinitum.

Not only has the hardware used to create the images profoundly changed but with the prevailing subject matter becoming ever more restricted and self-referential, and the approach to (interpretation of) that content being shed of substance and meaningful context at a surprising rate as our culture has completely morphed our understanding of photographs from icons and sign posts to something as readily consumable as coffee. Which, coincidentally, is a large part of what gets photographed.

Photography has also moved from a visual dialog about things external to the artist and has become almost completely and exclusively about the artist. The selfie being one of the most obvious examples of encroaching and pandemic narcissism available in the entire history of mental health.

What used to be a symbol of one's dedication to imaging as a passion (the conventional camera) has become an almost embarrassing relic that instantly pegs one as being of a certain generation and mindset as surely as wearing a (non-smart, or is it "unsmart") wristwatch that merely tells time --- or ordering drip coffee as opposed to french pressse or espresso based coffee. The larger camera, festooned with a long, fast zoom lens, is as expressive, and potentially embarrassing a symbol (in today's pyramid of personal, wearables) of one's obsolescence as sporting a Palm Pilot or listening to music CDs on a Sony Walkman CD player.  The world, with a more or less anemic, quasi-cathartic shrug just moved on and this complete transition happened in the space of about two years. Tops. The eery thing is that all this seemed to creep up on us but we would have seen it coming if we'd only been paying attention.

I wondered why I felt the need to do my purge of all the extraneous cameras I'd built up, like calluses, over the years just a few months ago. I wondered the same thing when Michael Johnston started the process of shedding his camera collecting surplus all of a sudden and just a few weeks ago. Were these episodes the result of coming to some sort of subliminal tipping point in our collective psyches?
In a flash years of rationalization and earnest resolve re-directed in a reaction to an unseen but no less real shift of priorities and positions, styles and fashions.

For the first time in the month after the purge I never really felt a sense of loss for the equipment I had worked and researched so hard to accrue. All those cameras represented transitional tools without much future---even though they can be used in the same way they were always used, for years to come. The reality is that the precious stuff we tried to translate into substantive imagery missed the boat like paisley patterns surrendering to the next fashion wave.

Now I've left myself with two scaled down systems that each represent something different. I think our small, mirrorless camera system were a dodge on our part to try and delay a change that I now think is inevitable. The camera as accessory, as fashion, as daily seeing tool is completely over. We can continue to carry them and think about how much we need discrete, single use imaging tools but deep down the true, underlying knowledge has soaked in and we know that there's no vibrant cultural market for the images that used to be more about mastery than anything else. There's no reason to be "always ready" for the decisive moment if all moments are equally decisive and indecisive. If we're doing nothing more with the images than feeding the firehose that's draining the creative reservoir while saturating the ground our eyes walk on with homogenous product then really, what's the point?

I look at the Nikon cameras that I have in the studio. There are two. One is a D810 and it's a high resolution tool that we bring out to give clients the best technical quality we can bring to bear for a reasonable investment. The D610 is much the same but at a lower resolution tier that's more practical for more jobs. We use both of the cameras to produce video for clients as well. Neither camera is a sexy choice. Neither one emulates the newly trendy rangefinder design of decades past. Neither is whimsically small and compact. They aren't exciting to shoot. They are rudimentary tools and that's the way I see them now.

The Olympus cameras I own are, I think, a last gasp attempt to keep myself rooted in the type of photography that seemed to me to be different from the bifurcated imaging universe I see today; the current milieu divided between images done for money (Nikon) and images done as consumable and wholly narcissistic expressions (iPhones). To me the smaller, mirrorless cameras represent the Leicas we carried in leisure moments and during the shoots to which we brought the big medium format cameras to bear. The smaller cameras resonate with me and my generation because they are a meme and a psychological link to the cameras and photo styles of people whose work and celebrity we both appreciated and envied. The Robert Franks, Alex Webbs, Susan Meisales's, Sebastiao Salgados and so many others who made photography seem glamorous, thought provoking and elite.

We've moved, as a society, from a time when photography was a privileged form of expression--- from people who seemed to be blends of artist and mechanic. They knew the language and they knew how to make the lenses and rangefinders and meters do their bidding in the service of their creation. The turning points for everything in our photographic world came when presentation (in galleries, magazines, portfolios and books) was replaced by the self-involved narrative on the web--- in which the photographer is also actor and subject and a participant in his own constructions. And in many instances, the sole interested spectator.

In the end analysis will probably show that once something that was at one time difficult to do, difficult to present, and difficult to parse, becomes ubiquitous and all encompassing, and as simple as proletariat language, it loses its power in one sense and the power is replaced in a  different way. Now instead of a single image speaking to an attentive audience we have art as capacitor charging up with millions and millions of amazingly similar images until the concentration of images creates a universal reference current of that subject and individual interpretations are completely lost in the inertia to the median.

How else to explain the enormous drop in cameras sales? The drop in enrollment in photography courses? The drop in the use of commissioned images? The general malaise among hobbyists and enthusiasts? The ebb of students from any workshop that's not strictly vocational in service to the craft?

We'll all protest that I've misinterpreted this dip in the rhythm of traditional photography; and it may be that we are just waiting for it to be reinvented in some new way. I'd love for this to happen if it's true. But I think the days of the precious show of landscapes in a stark gallery with white walls all around and appreciative audiences wondering from well crafted print to well crafted print began to die the moment Flickr and the rest of the photo sharing sites were brought forth and flung freely to the masses. Pandora learned the hard way that once the box was open we were never going to go in reverse.

I still go to shows but it's more a reflection of my generational status. Many times the audiences at even the most important shows seem like conventions of men over 50. The world has moved on, we just like to see if we can sense the addictive residue of our time on the walls.

All this rambling doesn't mean for a second that we can't enjoy taking photographs for ourselves. It doesn't even mean that we can no longer create images for money, but it does mean that everything has changed and our culture is shifting. The screen is in peoples' hands now. The images are tiny. Because they are tiny they are much more fun if they are kinetic---always moving. That's where the ads are going and that's where the content is going and no matter how you pitch it the way we absorb images has changed and that makes imaging itself change.

This is neither bad nor good in an existential sense but I can't help remembering that every generation of product development is not aimed at making the consumer happier; it is aimed at making the product itself more economical to put together, less costly to ship, easier to repair  (or replace) and more indispensable. In the same way content is driven in the same direction. How do you make it easier to construct? More appealing to larger demographics? Easier and faster to deliver? And, much more profitable; even if that means millions paying pennies rather than hundreds paying real money?

The current thought poem for the culture of money and art is that rather than make one great thing that shows for a limited amount of time we can manipulate human curiosity by making many, many lesser productions and create a pipeline of continual release that keeps the curious and trend seeking constantly at the trough. That's the current and future middle of the Bell Curve of imaging today.

Is it any wonder that we're all a bit lost about the craft we loved so much?

I love the process. I won't stop. I'll keep shooting and printing even if I'm the only audience left but that doesn't keep me from being sad about what I think we're losing. Flip that around though and a different generation might see the shift as a gift. A plus. A natural part of the evolution cycle.

This may be true but I'm pretty certain that the current camera makers aren't going to be very happy about it either.

Finally, in fine art like painting, every new movement, cenaclé and school pushed out the ones that came before it. Fauvism, Pointillism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, Pop Art and Op Art. Now we're back to Neo-realism (which is manifesto-disguised representational art). Each shift led the successors to destroy the interest in and appreciation of their previous ancestors. No reason why this shift in photography will be any different.

edit:  adding this link from five years ago: http://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2010/04/some-thoughts-about-future-of.html

Just re-read it and it seems cogent.

An interesting, tangential blog post from Thom Hogan: http://www.dslrbodies.com/newsviews/where-were-headed.html

A fun infographic that explains this better than I did: http://kindofnormal.com/truthfacts/2015/05/11

Back from my vacation in Saratoga Springs and ready to get back to work.

I needed a break so I convinced Ben and Belinda that I needed to head up to New York to help Ben pack up all his winter stuff (coats, boots, comforters, many pairs of gloves, acres of Polartec and GorTex and some towels) for the Summer. The boy is really very competent and quite able to handle all this on his own but if you see a travel opportunity you can couch as a favor it's my belief that you might want to consider taking it. I would then travel back with Ben to Austin. It all worked well except for the trip back. And that's totally on the weather! We ended up being delayed overnight in Albany as nothing was flying in or out of Chicago, our half way point back to Austin... 

I didn't take anything spectacular, camera and lens-wise, along with me to Saratoga Springs. Just a Nikon D610 and the cheap but nice 50mm f1.8G. There were times when I would have liked a lens that was a little longer but I am constantly reminded by my more pragmatic photo friends that "cropping is always an option." 

It's an interesting experiment to limit oneself to a single camera and a single lens in this day and age of near endless choices. While we would have thought nothing of the concept back in the days of the twin lens Rolleiflex cameras (non-interchangeable, normal lens) or as a student with a Leica M3 and a 50mm Summicron (too poor to buy other lenses...) it does seem strange to willingly limit your choices in the grand age of zoom lenses. 

It's a good exercise though, and it's amazing to see how quickly one gets used to the focal length and the constraints of composition. By the end of the first day I was finding good ways to cram everything I wanted into the frame and by the third day my brain was only looking for compositions that would match the angle of view; or,  in a pinch, a slightly wider scene that could be cropped. 

The Nikon D610, on the other hand, seems to have no limitations at all; if you discount the reality that the camera can't natively shoot square format images conveniently....

I enjoyed my time in Saratoga Springs a great deal. Unencumbered by the mountains of gear I'd been hauling around on my annual report project the week before I felt almost naked with only one camera and one lens. Heck, I didn't even go through the first camera battery by the end of my visit. The one thing I did do though was to eat well. Saratoga Springs seems to have more than its share of really good restaurants. My good friend in the town introduced me on the first night to a small place that's been there for decades called, Hattie's. The specialty of the house is fried chicken. Of course that's what I got. When the plate came I was overwhelmed. It was half a chicken. Perfect if you live in town and can take home leftovers....  But the chicken and the sides were incredible. And the company first rate.

The next morning I had a superb latte at my favorite local coffee house, Uncommon Grounds, and then lunch with the boy at the dining hall at Skidmore College. The choices were wide and varied and I made an unlikely but satisfying match of fettuccine Alfredo and steamed kale. I'd promised to take the boy out for an "end of the semester" dinner and I left the choice of restaurants up to him. We ended up at a nice place on Broadway called, Max London's. Nicely done Tuscan hanger steaks, arrugula salads, etc. 

The only glitch I have to report in my travels, and that is totally my fault, was leaving my iPhone charger in my hotel room. By mid-day Friday the calls, texts and voice mails were starting to stack up and I planned on dealing with the communications outbreak during our wait at the airport. That's when I discovered that the charger was missing. I was mulling this over when the weather struck. A possible hurricane moving toward the east coast neatly framed on the other side by a thousand mile swath of tornados and violent thunderstorms from Austin to Chicago and most places in between. 

We ended up spending the night in a hotel next to the airport in Albany and then getting up on Saturday morning at 4:15am to make all new connections. I was nervous because I was scheduled to photograph a gala event on Saturday evening in Austin. Two good friends of mine were the co-chairs and Lucy Johnson, the former president's daughter, was to be the keynote speaker. 

Southwest airlines didn't let me down. While the Saturday morning rides were plenty bumpy we pulled into the gate at Austin Bergstrom airport right on time. Four hours later I was shooting "grip and grin" photographs and looking longingly at the open bar...

I took the same D610 body but with the 24-85mm zoom lens and a 105mm f2.5 lens for a little extra reach during the speeches. I also took along an Olympus EM-5.2 and it's friend, the Panasonic 12-35mm f2.8 zoom and a little Olympus flash. I've never thought of Olympus cameras as being strong on-camera flash systems but the combination nailed just about everything I pointed it at. By the end of the evening I was having fun going back and forth between the two systems, mostly just to see how they handled quick flash stuff. 

Now I'm back in the studio and I have a white board full of things that need to get done before next week even gets started. The coming week is filled with "wrap up" stuff. Final retouching on some annual report images, billing jobs already delivered and resettling gear into an organized holding pattern, making it ready for the next wave.

Tomorrow's assignment is to shoot images for print advertising during a video shoot for a large, statewide, medical practice. I pack the cameras but the production company sets the scene and lights it. Should be good, clean fun. 

All the best to my friends in Saratoga Springs. Nice town you've got there...

Not my hotel. Just channeling Eggleston. Or Stephen Shore.

From my Walker Evans phase.

We're wrapping up a complicated annual report job and I have some observations to make.

First of all, when you are trying to do a particular look, the right tools really do make a difference. 

I'm not saying you can't go out with XYZ camera and, with a lot of work and elbow grease, get a great image with enormous detail but if you want a great image with enormous detail and a wide enough dynamic range to help you tame direct sun you could do a hell of a lot worse than selecting a Nikon D810 for your project. While there might (might) be better cameras to be had in the medium format catalogs or in some secret lab, I've never used a better all around corporate image making machine than this one. 

It sneaks up on you. It does all the typical camera stuff while you are out shooting. It has the same screen on the back as other cameras so there's nothing to cue you to the differences. It goes "click" like every camera I've owned. It takes the same lenses as the previous generation of Nikons I've used but the difference is easy to see when you bring the camera home from the field, drop the files into the latest rev of Lightroom CC, and then sit down and start editing.

This thing held on to detail in shiny skin like nothing I've ever used before across film or digital product lines. If you are hell bent on never burning out a highlight again you can set this camera to ISO 64, underexpose by over a full stop and then bring the files back up to a normal exposure setting while protecting your highlights without taking any hit in quality whatsoever. Nothing. No grain, no color shifts. A lot of the current annual report project we are wrapping up was done in direct sun or with direct sun playing over the backgrounds. I worried but I didn't need to (the story of my life...) because nothing I shot was in anyway technically unusable. But the thing that got to me over and over again was the ability to take a full length, standing portrait, zoom in and fill the screen with a face and still not see noise or a lack of sharp detail. 

And do I even need to mention how cool it is to have ISO 64 as your base sensitivity? That means you can go to 1/4,000th at f2.0 if you really need to get that skinny depth of field everyone talks about. You even have a stop's worth of shutter speed in reserve. Just like a camera should be. 

Look at the lens on the front of the D810. It's a cheap, cheap, cheap Rokinon 14mm f2.8. It vignettes a bit and has wickedly bad "mustache" geometric distortion that makes simple distortion corrections in PhotoShop or Lightroom almost impossible. But the fun thing about this lens is that at f2.8 the center third of the frame is really sharp. Probably sharper than anything else in the focal length. Stop it down to f8.0 and the whole frame is very, very sharp. If you use the lens and the software as it is then you basically are trading straight lines and nice corners for a sharp middle section and that probably convinces most people to stop using the lens after the novelty of its wide angle of view wears off. 

I loved the idea of the lens but it was hard to justify using it and giving files to clients if the files had visible and awkward distortion built-in. Clients seem more sensitive to distortion than lower sharpness. But I discovered a custom lens profile made by a guy named, Sven Stork, that can be added to the Adobe lens profile library and basically turns your $300 wide angle novelty lens into a priceless and high performance keeper. And with the D810 you've got more than enough pixels to be able to throw some away during the correction process. 

I just finished post processing some abstract images we did in a big electrical substation and one of them has already been earmarked by the art director as a cover shot for their printed annual report. The details are amazing and the color and contrast of the image, after some post processing, is as good as anything I have ever done. The lens is a damn advertisement in my camera bag that constantly "suggests" to me that I load up on Rokinon's other cine lenses. Hello 24mm f1.4? 

I used the D810 for almost everything in the entire AR project. I used the 14mm for both of the double-truck spreads that will appear. But that's not the only combination I used. 

The Nikon 25-50mm lens got its due in the VSL blog a few days ago and I'm still impressed by just how well the lens makers did their craft in the age before autofocus and plastic barreled lenses became the norm. We've reviewed our older Nikon 80-200mm f2.8 push pull zoom before but an entire section of the AR, mostly shot against the sun also made me appreciate enduring craftsmanship. 

The king of the camera bag this week, though, has been the Sigma 50mm f1.4 Art lens. Every time I see how sharp and how three dimensional it can be in its renderings the  more unwilling I am to remove it from the camera. But I'm not going to write about that lens now. I need more time with it to see just how good it can really be. 

The longest tenure of a flash in my whole studio.... the Elinchrom Ranger RX system.

Sometimes I find myself a bit mystified at just how long a battery powered system can last. I know that my flash system was designed and built by the Swiss (who make watches that run for decades or centuries) but I continue to be amazed at the life of the sealed lead acid batteries the system uses. I've had the rig since 2008 and it just continues to pump out flash after flash under all sorts of conditions. Freezing cold, light rain, tremendous heat. It even refuses to shut down when I'm shooting boring dreck. It's right there with me.

I can't believe I was trying to sell this system a few years ago. In the time since I've made tens of thousands of dollars shooting with this machine and it's still one of a very small fraternity that can belt out precise 1100 watt portions of flash about 250 times in a row from one battery. We haul around a second battery when we are out shooting in the middle of a barren field or in the oil patch but it's rare that we've ever pulled out the spare and pressed it into service. The last time we did was when we were taking photos of swimmers for Ben's old Summer swim club. We photographed about 250 kids, five or six shots a piece, along with twenty or thirty different group shots (well over 800 images) before the first battery yelled, "I surrender!"

This is the flash system we hauled out to a park for the beginning of a day of shooting with the company's CEO. Our first shot was of him standing in a large field with big trucks in the background and the sun over his right shoulder. We put up a big softbox and matched the sun, lumen for lumen, as we coaxed just the right expression across the executive's face. Again and again and again. No shut downs, no hiccups and no interruptions.

Our Elinchrom systems has two heads and sometimes we supplement the system with three cheap flashes. We have one brand new Cactus flash that the company sent me to try our and I have two Yongnuo flashes that I picked up to use as slaves. They have slave triggers built in and so far ( a year down the road) both them work flawlessly. That was the bulk of our lighting package on this adventure but I would be remiss if I didn't mention our most valuable modifier for shooting in the sun. That would have been our 4x4 foot Chimera aluminum panel with a one stop diffusion silk stretched out across it. The first thing we did on almost every shot over the course of the week was to put that scrim up on  sturdy C-Stand (with sand bags) between the sun and our subjects. It turned hard light into soft fill. The big softbox did the rest.

While we're talking about necessary tools of the trade....

Doesn't matter if you live in Texas or Norway, if you stand out in the sun for a couple of hours you're going to get burned. Your skin will turn red and you'll be uncomfortable in the short term. It might kill you (cumulatively) over the long run. I generally always wear a cap with a bill when I am out and around for a while but that kind of hat does nothing to keep overhead sun off the tops of your ears and off the back of your neck. The older, black cotton one I have had for years doesn't do much to cool you off either. If you are going to spend a week outside in Texas you need your Texan Wear. And in most cases that might include a stray cowboy hat from Stetson. The weave around the top is great for cooling ventilation and, as you can see, the wide brim does a good job protecting tender skin. You might have to tilt yours back while shooting but really, isn't most annual report photography ( or any photography for that matter) really a lot more standing around figuring things out and talking people through the process than actually working with the camera stuck on your face? 

If the action gets thick you can always get your assistant to hold your hat for that part of the program. But really, it's nice to have when you are walking around a big electrical substation looking for just the right shot. Keeps light off the viewfinder too. 

So, those are the pieces of gear that are new to me for this annual report. I'm happy. The client is happy. The assistant is happy (and wonderful) and everything is right with the world. Now I'm just resigned to the long process of retouching and bending the finished images to the mercurial wishes of the client.... But that's part of the job.

Here's my happy face at being done with all the shooting and the first round of post-production on our current annual report project. The balls are now in the hand of the client and my retoucher until I get back from New York. Hope y'all are doing well. Happy trails.

An Interesting and Compulsive Approach to a Photo Assignment.

NASA Exhibit at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum.

Nikon D610+Sigma 50mm 1.4 Art Lens.

I think that when most people conjure up an image of a working professional photographer they imagine a guy in a khaki vest of many pockets, several large cameras hanging around his neck with a long zoom lens on one and short zoom lens with an intricate hood on the other. Over his shoulder they anticipate seeing a large, black camera bag the size of an ice chest, filled with flashes and a Whitman Sampler of different lenses and ancillary gadgets.  He would be trailed by at least one assistant who would also be toting a case or a bag; perhaps filled with lights.

They would not be far from the mark in most cases.

After spending the entire week hauling a Think Tank roller case filled with cameras and lenses around to various locations in central Texas, as well as cases of heavy lights and their attendant light stands, umbrellas, panels etc. I came into Sunday wanting nothing more than to return to my "amateur" roots of one camera and one body. 

To round out my already full dance card for the week I had a job booked at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum from noon till 6:00 pm. I would be looking for interesting people and making their photographs, both candidly and with their knowledge, for use on the Museum's award winning website. The museum forbids the use of flash (policy now changed to allow flash as of this week) and definitely forbids the use of tripods when the facility is open to guests.

While the exhibits are well lit the surrounding areas (where my potential subjects stand) are, by contrast, very dark and hard to make photographs in. I knew from previous experiences that there would be many times that I'd want a fast lens and a low noise camera body and I decided to plunge in with only one of each; the Nikon D610 and the new Sigma 50mm f1.4 "Art" lens. I brought along a small shoulder bag but it was not filled with the usual photo paraphernalia. It held five pens and a clipboard with lots and lots of model release forms for the museum. The need to get model releases from adults and parents of kids was also a good reason to go light on gear. How much can you really juggle?

Having just one focal length to grapple with I quickly fell into the groove of composing in that frame. What might be perceived as a limitation was actually freeing because it eliminated one variable in the collage of choice we make each time we pick up the camera bag.

The combination of the D610 and the Sigma 50mm was pretty cool in that I felt confident I would get sharp images at all apertures and especially sharp images at f2.8 and smaller apertures. I could also  shoot without worry at ISO 3200 and still manage noise in a very satisfactory way in Lightroom CC.

There are some combinations of tools that really make you want to shoot with them and them only. The 50mm Sigma and the D610 are like that. While the D810 camera has more detailed files I think that by the time you factor in the lower noise of the D610 and the more manageable raw file sizes the 24 megapixel sensor makes much for sense for tricky available light shoots in darker interiors.

I have a long history of preferring the 50mm (or format equivalent) angle of view. I can move in and make a nice, tight portrait or I can step back and put a person or several people into context. The focal length is very much a chameleon.

When I got back to the studio I noticed two other things: First, the lens and camera combo is heavy and my left arm was a bit sore after hand holding the rig for the better part of a day. Second, the files, even at f2.0 and f2.5 were very sharp and detailed and the lens has a very good look to it. The sharpness is more consistent over more of the frame than I'm used to with many other 50mm lenses.

I was able to get about 400+ good images to add to the Museum's marketing content reservoir. I mostly shot at ISO 1600 but did go up to 3200 for about a third of the shots and 6400 for another ten percent. All were very usable with the ISO 6400 images requiring a bit more noise reduction in post.

One of the things I like about the new generation of Sony sensors in the Nikon full frame cameras is that ability to pull up detail in the shadows. At lower ISOs like 400 and 800 you can pull up nearly a stop and a half of shadow detail without really effecting the overall quality of the image. It's a nice buffer when shooting in contrasty light.

A note: I will be in Saratoga Springs, NY on Weds., Thurs. and Fri. of this week and don't plan to take a laptop. I won't attempt to write a column on my iPhone but hope to be back in the writing mix on Saturday. I'll try to make tomorrow's blog good enough to last you for a few days. In the meantime, if all the other photo blogs on the web bore you to tears you can always buy a copy of "The Lisbon Portfolio" at Amazon.com and get a nice dose of my long-winded writing.... And you'll be supporting my blog. You might also enjoy the story of a working photographer caught in a web of corporate and national security intrigue...

An Image I made today of Russell Harvard for Zach Theatre. Almost the end to a long week of shooting....

Russell Harvard will be starring in the Zach Theatre production of "Tribes." 

We've had an exciting and busy week here at the VSL H.Q. We spent three days working on an annual report shoot for a central Texas utility company which necessitated early mornings and the fun filled stress of managing a CEO, a group of marketing and advertising people, four large trucks, eight linemen and assorted additional crew, all on exterior locations. This all followed days of pre-planning meetings, conversations with drone experts assistant booking and lots of packing and re-packing. But we aren't done yet. 

One of the things that jumped out at me from my calendar (and the white board next to my desk) was that we had also booked a marketing shoot for Zach Theatre's season brochure for today. We needed a  bunch of shots to promote our version of Mary Poppins and also a play called, Tribes. After I put all the batteries back on chargers yesterday evening I started packing for today. I would be using completely different lighting gear than I had been using for the A.R.

I packed my standard white background kit because we would be doing a series of set-ups that the art director at Zach Theatre would use in the campaign. She will be dropping images into different colored backgrounds and, in some cases, into composite scenes. What we'd be looking for is nice, clean lines to cut against. We are no longer in the search for perfect white backgrounds right out of camera. And that was good in this situation because our shoot was relegated to a small space that didn't give me the front to back depth to do our traditional white background set up. 

In this case all the lights are in front of our actors and I'm counting on the inverse square law and smart placement of lights to carry the day. I packed our four Elinchrom mono-lights with umbrella reflectors, five light stands, our background set up with a white seamless paper background. All four lights had 42 inch umbrellas mounted on them and I used various ratios between the lights to get the look to the overall light that I wanted. 

I triggered the lights with Cactus V6 transceiver triggers. 

My camera and lens of choice for today was the Nikon D810 with one lens; the 24-85mm f3.5-4.5 G Nikon zoom. It's a step up from a kit lens and I often see them for ridiculously low prices in my favorite camera store. It must have been part of a Nikon bundle at one point. All I know is that while the lens has some linear distortion it's very sharp and very well behaved. It's perfect for work like this where we need to be able to go from full body to close head shots from one frame to the next. 

I packed everything but the cameras into the car last night. Our call at the theater was set for 11:00 a.m. and as today is Saturday (my most holy day of swimming) I was determined to be ready to go on time but without missing the wonderful (and difficult) Kristen Turner masters workout and the post swim coffee klatch at Starbucks. I figure if you are a freelancer you need to get your socializing where you can, right? 

We logged some serious wet miles and we drank coffee. I stayed right up until 10:50 am and then said my goodbyes and headed to the theater to set up. I used the Marshall Electronics monitor we made such good use of earlier in the week because I wanted to be able to share the images we were taking with a room full of make-up artists, costumers, an artistic director, art director and marketing director. God, I was outnumbered.....

The Mary Poppins portion of the shoot went well and we moved on to making images of Russell Harvard for the play, Tribes. Here's copy from the Zach website that explains the play:

As the only deaf member of his sharp-tongued British family, sweet-natured Billy has spent  much of his life feeling out of place. But when he meets a young woman on the brink of  deafness, he finds out what it means to belong for the first time. This provocative and  touching play is as much about the tyranny of language, as it is about the challenge of  not being able to hear it. ZACH's production will be staged on our Kleberg Stage  starring deaf, Austin actor Russell Harvard, who won a 2012 Theatre World  Award for Outstanding Debut Performance, and garnered Drama League,  Outer Critics Circle, and Lucille Lortell Award nominations for Outstanding Lead Actor.

Same image cropped in to nearly 100%.

Russell was great to work with and we ended up with a couple hundred really good shots with which to promote the play. I was struck with how well the 24/85mm lens worked with the D810. It's a powerful combination and I feel like many people who immediately default to the clichéd 24-70mm f2.8 are missing a really good image maker at a very advantageous price. 

The images from Mary Poppins and Tribes are already color corrected and transferred to a small hard drive for delivery on Monday and you'd think that might be a good place to break for the weekend but my iCalendar had other plans. I am also booked to shoot all day tomorrow for the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum.  

This job will be more of a "reportage" style escapade. I'll be "wearing" two cameras; one with the new Sigma 50mm 1.4 Art lens and the other with the Nikon 24-85mm f3.5-4.5. I'll also have a small flash with a modifier and a messenger bag full of model releases. The batteries are recharged and the small camera bags are packed. All that stands between me and the project tomorrow will be our Sunday masters swim workout. That and a full day of shooting and I should have the weekend all wrapped up and I'll be ready to dive into new work on Monday morning.  Yippee. Never a dull moment around here. 

Counting down the moments till my trip to Saratoga Springs, NY gets underway. I leave Austin at 5:30am on Weds. and should be in S.S. by 1:30 or 2:00 pm. It'll be great to see friends and hang with Ben. I'm looking forward to it. After a long week of lugging around Nikons I think this trip definitely calls for the more discreet and almost silent Olympus EM5.2. 

Thanks for reading. I'll catch up with you tomorrow.

Go to Amazon and check out the two new reviews of the Novel, The Lisbon Portfolio. The economy is recovering. Now you can afford to buy a copy!

One more program note: We've spent the last year making hundreds of images for the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum and many of them are used on the new website. That website, the design of which was overseen by David Munns, won the Gold Award for Online Presence at the American Alliance for Museums convention in Atlanta this last week. The site beat out competitors like the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum and many others.

Nice to see good work acknowledged.

Another lens review: The Nikon manual focus 25-50mm f4 ais. A classic from the film age that works well on modern cameras.

big electric insulators. Nikon 25-50mm f4.0 lens.

We often operate under the mistaken idea that anything invented or manufacturer more than a year or two ago is crap and that every newer iteration is much better than anything which came before. Where the only metric is efficiency or the only real value is the cost savings to manufacturers I tend to agree. When it comes to finely crafted tools, great lenses and well made grip equipment I'd strongly disagree.

In the past few months since I re-embraced Nikon cameras (and particularly the Nikon D810) as the primary shooting cameras for my commercial image making business I've auditioned a number of different lenses for the system. I've found that many assumptions about lenses are erroneous and little more than conjecture and the general re-spewing of advertising bullet points from the makers.

I don't use wide angle lenses very often. When I do use them it's usually on a tripod and with complete control of focus, exposure and depth of field. I use them when clients want to show expansive works of architecture or when they are looking for dramatic near/far exaggerations. What I want are lenses with simple rather than complex distortion patterns. I'd like the lenses to be sharp across the frame and I'd like them to perform very well at f8. I don't use wide angle lenses in combination with shallow depth of field very often, if at all.

Finally, since I don't rely on wide and ultra wide angle lenses for my day to day work, as an architectural photograph would, I don't want to invest a small fortune in them.  I'll distribute the bulk of my gear investments where I know they'll do the most good for me and that's in normal, slightly wide and slightly long focal length lenses that I can use to make good portraits. The idea of buying a Nikon 14-24mm lens for nearly $2,000 seems wasteful to me and the two samples I tried have lots of trouble flaring with side light and any light source in the frame. But I can make good use of an 18-35 or a 20-35 or even a 25-50 for the vast majority of all my work; including architecture and annual reports. After testing and returning a Nikon 18-35mm f3.5-4.5 G lens (way too much weird distortion and an inconsistent sharpness across the frame) I've settled into using my old 25-50mm f4 for most of the things I shoot that need to be both full frame and relatively wide angle-y.

When I need to go wider I put the 14mm Rokinon f2.8 Cine lens on the D810 and use a very nicely done custom profile in Lightroom to correct frame geometry. The lens is very, very sharp wide open in the middle and the sides and corners come into high sharpness by f5.6. By f8.0 it's perfect. If I need a longer focal length but one that fall under the 25-50mm or the 24-85mm G f3.5-4.5 I'll just shoot carefully with the 14mm Rokinon and depend on cropping to get me exactly what I want in the frame. With the huge amount of resolution provided by the D810 it just makes sense.

But for my All Around best buddy wide angle shooting lens I'm beginning to think that nothing beats the old, manual focus 25-50mm f4 ais.

Why?

Many of the newer lenses I've tested make a bad trade-off. The makers juggle distortion, sharpness and cost in interesting ways. While I understand the mania for ultra-fast lenses in medium telephotos and especially in long telephotos I am mystified about the usefulness of f2.8 lenses for ultra wide zooms. According to Leica engineers making a lens one stop faster requires about 8 times better manufacturing tolerances to make the lens equally as good (meaning sharp and consistent). In almost every focal length being able to go one or two stops slower in the design of a lens increases the manufacturing consistency when grinding lens elements. Since most people are using their ultra wides to shoot architecture and landscape the f2.8 becomes irrelevant and most knowledgeable shooters would gladly go to a lens that only opened to f4 or (God forbid!!!) f5.6 is they could be assured that the slower lenses would have much better resolution AND micro contrast.

To my mind the previous generations of optical engineers made the compromises I like for the 25/50. It's an f4.0 lens so no false heroics in design were attempted for the sake of marketing. It's a very short but very useful range of focal lengths that takes one from wide angle to normal and maintains a consistent aperture setting across the range. The lens design reflects an old school aesthetic wherein the first two stops are "good enough" but two stops down and three stops down are the sweet spot for the lens where the sides match the center for sharpness and they do so without introducing a mustache distortion signature that seems to be the hallmark of more modern zooms.

The 25/50 does have distortion at its widest focal length of 25mm. The distortion continues to about 30mm but the important thing to me is that the distortion is a simple "barrel" pattern in which the side bow outward on a consistent and simple curve rather than having several waving curves across the long axis of the frame. This kind of simple barrel distortion requires only the sliding of the distortion slider in the lens correction panel in Lightroom. The opposite design approach is that which is found in the Rokinon 14mm lens which requires a more complex, custom profile to correct the wave-y distortion and the plunging distortion at the corners.

I like the rendering of the 25/50mm lens. The colors seem rich and not brittle. The sweep across the frame (when photographing blue skies for instance) is consistent in color and value when the lens is stopped down to f5.6 or f8.0. The lens has very good resolution but a lower amount of apparent contrast. The lens is by no means "flat" but when compared to more modern optics it's a bit lackluster. Of course the remedy is simple and is, again, just the matter of moving the contrast slider or clarity slider in Lightroom to taste. It's much easier to add contrast to a file (if it's already rich in resolution) than it is to remove the effects of too much contrast in an image.

I used the 25-50mm lens a great deal last week while we were shooting photos for an annual report. Almost all of the uses were outside in available sunlight (where the lower contrast had the effect of enhancing apparent dynamic range) and in available light augmented by flash from umbrellas and soft boxes. I am certain that people who have had less stellar results than me with this lens stumbled in achieving good focus. A wide angle, manual focus lens with a slow maximum aperture is very difficult to accurately focus on the focusing screens of modern DSLRs. Their screens are optimized for brightness but at the expense of accutance which kills focusing accuracy. I find it impossible to accurately eyeball at the wide end. But when I use the lens on the D810 (in controlled situations) I am using a loupe and putting the camera into live view mode to focus a magnified image and then, once focused I revert to shooting with the viewfinder.

If I'm shooting in bright sunlight I generally use the lens at either f11 or f8.0 and then zone focus using the very legible and detailed focusing scale on the lens. This method has also been foolproof so far. While this lens was made over 20 years ago there are six or seven different images that are ready contenders for wrap around cover shots on the annual report. And they bow to none of the other images we took during the week regardless of the price or pedigree of the lenses used.

Not a bad investment for a couple of hundred dollars.