Mirror Less Finally Goes Full Frame Professional. Sony Might Have Just Trotted Out the First Real DSLR Killer. The A7r.2

They fixed the one thing I hated about the previous model, the howitzer style, ultra-loud, shutter. And then they started adding the good stuff.

I know, I know, I just got settled in with my Nikon cameras and now look what Sony trots onto the market. Why --- it's the camera they should have released back in October 2013 when they brought out the A7 line. A high resolution, full frame camera that's also fun to use and won't scare children and small pets with its cacophonous shutter banging and rattling. And bonus: Professional quality 4K video. In camera!

The new product (yet another "point" two) is, on paper, a remarkable machine for universal image making. It features a brand new sensor which is the world's large (and first full frame) BSI technology sensor. The advantages of the sensor, coupled with faster processors, gives the camera about a stop and a half to two stops of noise advantage over its previous model. The faster processing chain also makes possible the first full frame camera on the market to deliver 4K video that is written directly to the card in the camera!!! No need to buy an Atomos Shogun digital recorder to suck out the 4K as you

Oh Boy. We've got a busy Thursday. Let's start with the exciting announcement of my next camera from Sony --- the RX10.2

Revolutionary? Maybe not. But to me products like this look like the future of image making for all but the most daunting photographic and video projects.

It should come as no secret to long time readers of VSL that I am a big fan of the Sony RX10 camera and felt that, at the time of launch, it was a powerhouse of imaging for the money. With a firmware update to the XAVC codec it became an even better tool. In 2014 I used my RX10 to complete an eight page photo assignment for an architectural magazine. Crazy? No, very straightforward and logical. Using the almost distortion free 24mm focal length of the lens, the 20 megapixel sensor and the lowest native ISO, all on a great tripod, the camera made images that easily blew up to full page size with no hint of degradation when compared to other formats. But the benefits were interesting. The smaller size of the sensor meant more depth of field which is helpful when shooting architectural interiors. The trade off with the smaller sensor cameras is, of course, less control over shallow depth of field. While a one inch sensor camera might be a great choice for anything requiring sharp focus in depth and the convenience of multiple, good focal lengths in one body, the dedicated portrait photographer who likes the look of the focus ramping in full frame cameras with fast lenses will probably not choose the smaller format for his core work.

But I would suggest that the person who buys a Sony RX10 (or a Panasonic fz1000) is more likely to be someone who values the ability to use that camera for video work as well as studio work and in that arena these "bridge" cameras have lots to commend them. The increased depth of field being one benefit. As I do more and more video I've come to understand that razor thin depth of field might be sexy and trendy in videos but trying to keep an on camera talent in sharp focus during an interview with a lens and camera that gives you a couple inches of sharp focus is much more difficult than using the right tool for the job.

Yesterday I learned that lesson when shooting handheld in a crowded and fast moving restaurant. My video partner and I were shooting with fast lenses on the Olympus EM5.2 cameras and even with focus peaking and the greater depth of field keeping sharp focus on fast moving subjects can be tough. If we'd done the shoot with a pair of Nikon D810s the difficulty in focusing would have been infinitely greater. We would have gotten much less done and we would be much less sure of our results while shooting. Add to that the need to attach external monitors to the D810s for focus peaking and you have just created (by comparison) and ergonomic nightmare for handheld shooting.

The Sony RX10 has been on the market for nearly two years and I assume that Sony thought the time was right for an upgrade. To their credit they kept all the things I liked about the camera (the great 24-200mm equivalent focal length f2.8 Zeiss lens, the body style, the great knobs, the easy menus and the ability to have clickless apertures) but they fixed the stuff that made the camera less than perfect. One big improvement is a doubling of the EVF resolution which means one step closer to eyepiece transparency, but the biggest improvements come from the inclusion of a brand new "stacked" BSI sensor coupled with much faster processors. Based on what I read about state of the art BSI sensors we should expect one to two stops better noise performance at higher ISOs, a much faster frame rate (14fps) and much faster autofocusing.

The icing on the RX10.2 cake is the move to provide real 4K video at 100 mbs data rates which will make this camera a challenger to both the Samsung NX1 and the Panasonic GH4. Yes, I know that those two cameras "feature" interchangeable lenses but I would venture to say that you'll spend a fortune to match the focal lengths and quality that come standard on Sony's fixed lens. A lens carefully calculated and matched to the new sensor.

Of course you also get microphone inputs and headphone outputs, focus peaking, zebras and more.

The rest will most likely appeal only to people shooting video but here goes: This $1000 camera will also feature S-Log and flat profiles for better editing and color grading and can shoot much higher frame rates which will give you amazing, exhilarating slow motion. We're talking rates up to 960 fps!
And not at tiny, weenie, image sizes!

I'll pre-order one as soon as they start the pre-order list at Precision Camera. If the camera lives up to its promise I'll buy two and use them as my full time video cameras. You may need more but for the industrial and art projects I tend to gravitate to having kick ass 4K with good codecs and profiles for editing, along with a great lens and killer image stabilization is a dream come true. I'll keep the big Nikons around for those times when I want the sliver of sharp reality but for run and gun video, like the stuff we shot for hours yesterday, I can't imagine a better or more convenient tool.  Might also be the perfect "crash cam" for big film productions.

What I find amazing is that you can get all this technology and good camera design for such a low price. If you need it the whole package is remarkable.

Olympus better discover the 4K religion quickly or it may be the one missing feature set that retards their goal to gain market share in the semi-professional space. For everyone else (Panasonic, Sony, Samsung) it's here now and people are shooting it. And the video space is a natural for mirror-less cameras. It's the one arena in which I think Nikon and Canon's traditional cameras have the most difficulty competing in.

Just thought you'd want to know. Head on over to DPReview if you want to read Sony's press release or see the specs.

Visit the new (finalized yesterday afternoon) website for my biz: www.kirktuck.com

Mission Accomplished. The website has been finalized and is up. I'm already on to the next project.

 Noellia. Under the Bridge.

I got a lot of very excellent advice from my VSL readers as I put my website together. A reader named, Max, was harsh but he'll notice that I took his advice (and appreciated it...). I abandoned putting all the galleries on one page, got rid of the cutesy tagline on the bottom of the splash page and made all the galleries bigger. It works in Explorer, Chrome, Firefox and Safari. I know because I checked all of them. It also works perfectly on my iPad. It's even acceptable on my phone now (in landscape mode) and I made the "about" type work in one column that allows someone to actually read what I wrote on a phone.

I know I need to tweak the site and remove a handful of duplicate images. I also want to figure out how to best add a page of testimonials because my clients were so thoughtful and positive when they wrote them. But for right now the site works well and has passed the test with some of core demographic---art directors who use photography daily in their jobs. I'll make little corrections as time permits and that includes adding a link back to the Visual Science Lab.

Thanks to everyone who contributed feedback and helped me work through my iterations to create something with which I am happy. For anyone who wants a simplified application (Apple only)  to make websites with I can whole-heartedly recommend Sparkle. Working with the program I learned more with each revision and in the end decided that it's perfect for someone like me who never, ever wants to sit around and code. The biggest selling point of the software for me was the incredible customer service. If I got stuck or thought something had gone wrong the person in support would respond to my e-mail in minutes. Every piece of advice or instruction offered was right on the money. I hope they keep adding features to their product but I'm not even sure which features I really need.

I have moved on to my next project and times is getting compressed again. My friend, James Webb (incredibly good videographer and artist) is helping me create a 2 minute video like the one I did last year for Asti Trattoria. This year we are doing one for Emmett Fox's newest restaurant adventure, Cantine. We all agreed that we needed to shoot during open restaurant hours to get the energy and kinetics of a working kitchen. But the kitchen is narrow and long and the last thing we want to do is to get run over by chefs with hot pans in their hands. We wanted to be able to shoot without depending on tripods or extra lighting and we needed to work with cameras I already owned (financial constraints) so we decided to go with the Olympus EM5.2s.

James took one away yesterday and came back today stating that they would indeed work for the task at hand. We're shooting in a different way than I did in my previous tests. James suggested that with 8 bit cameras, shooting 4:2:0, that it makes a lot more sense to shoot for the final look than to horse around trying to flatten out the files to emulate what higher performance cameras do via their S-Log files. His contention is that regardless of how much you might want more dynamic range in a file that however you shoot it that's what gets baked into an 8 bit, 4:2:0 file and trying to wiggle and pull on it in post makes it obvious just how little leeway there is in the files for big changes after the fact.

He likens these cameras (and most other consumer based video features) to slide film from the old days. You need to get the color balance and the tonality of the files exactly where you want it because sliding any parameter around is going to cause some sort of compromise somewhere in the mix.

I looked at test files made using a neutral color profile and found myself agreeing 100%. We started filming at the restaurant this morning. We brought along a basket full of lenses. The favorites (from my point of view) are currently the 40mm and 60mm Pen FT lenses. Partly because of the focal lengths and speed but also because they have luxurious manual focusing rings and enviably long focus throws. It's easy to do follow focusing techniques just using the EVF with these lenses. Add to that the ability to stop down or open up while shooting.  It makes for a very fluid shooting style. We're hellbent on shooting with longer lenses and with narrow depth of field but every once in a while I'll grab the Olympus 17mm f1.8 for wide shots. I shot against the light a bit this morning and loved the voluminous flare I was able to get. It's a nicer effect than perfection.

James has been working the longer lenses. He's got a Zeiss 85mm that he likes and the last time I checked in he was shooting with one of the Nikon 105s via an adapter. What we both appreciate is the really great image stabilization in the EM5.2. It's just amazing how it smooths out shots, regardless of focal length. I don't have a chart for the exact numbers of image stabilization but I'm willing to say it adds a minus four espressos to your work right off the bat.

We had a nice lunch at Cantine and we're taking a break during the slow afternoon in order to download what we shot this morning and recharge depleted batteries. We're heading back over to Cantine around 5:30 pm to capture more images during happy hour and dinner service. The restaurant has a nice warm glow to it when the sun goes down.

The wonderful thing about shooting videos in restaurants is that the better ones keep you well fed.
I think we'll have plenty of footage for our project by the time we head home this evening but I intend to go back and set up five or six "hero" food shots to shoot in stills and in video with a little movement. Incorporating still shots is great because you can get everything just right and also retouch out bad technique before you commit an image to the program.

James and I are both slammed with other work so the edit will probably take a back seat for a little while but I am looking forward to sharing it with you here. If the Olympus EM5.2 video was designed for one thing I would venture to say that the one thing is handholding the camera with fast lenses. The proof will be in the (tasting of the) pudding; and the pasta, and the fish and the amazing desserts, and the whimsical bar drinks and the ............

In the meantime, go and visit the newly revised (again and again) website. It's right here:
kirktuck.com

A new occupation for long term, freelance photographers. Hear me out...

Photo taken in NYC for Samsung. ©2013

I love having lunch with clients who are friends. The conversations can be as wide ranging as we'd like. Today my art director friend, Greg, and I headed over to a favorite west campus area restaurant just to have one of those quiet lunches where we talk about our kids, our careers and what we're going to do next. Greg is a freelance art director who offices inside a big, traditional public relations agency. Some of his work comes from the agency and a lot of it comes from his list of clients who are external. 

We've both been in our respective, freelance market niches for a long time. Decades. We've learned the hard way how to spend money, how to budget, where to buy our insurance and which insurance to buy. We've learned how to do marketing to move our businesses into the future. We've rolled with the economic punches and celebrated the upswings. In short, we pretty much have the self-employed thing figured out. 

So we were munching on mushroom and white truffle oil pizzas at Asti Trattoria and I mentioned an article I recently read that predicted something like 45% of working Americans would be self-employed, out sourced, or otherwise self-directed by 2020. The new corporate paradigm is to outsource absolutely everything you can. It's why Apple no longer has factories. Why Dell stopped manufacturing in Austin. Why Uber owns no cars. And why more and more people are calling Starbucks their offices.

As we mulled this over we came to the conclusion that there is a real need across America (and perhaps around the world) for people to act as guides leading people from their routine (but vanishing) jobs with companies into the glorious life of self employee freelance-ism. 

After all, what did many established photographers do when their occupation of taking photographs collapsed? Right! They started teaching workshops at a furious rate. They still knew how to take pictures, they just couldn't get anyone to pay them for it. By the same token the photographers who've actually made it through the downturn, the collapse of the assignment market and the siege laid on by stock agencies must have some really valuable and unique business skills. How else could they still be out shooting for money and making a decent living?

Now we can finally ditch the race to buy new cameras, and the need to attract new clients for our photography skills, because the next market will take advantage of our newly acquired workshop teaching skills instead. We will now set up classes, workshops and seminars to teach people how to freelance. And how to survive as freelancers.

Imagine it. We can lead them through the dark forest of self-employment and help them figure out how to pay for that next cup of coffee down at the "office." Just like photography students they might not all be successful but the ones who get it will be there to teach the next generation. We'll be paying it forward as the job market goes backwards. 

Oh it all sounded pretty good over lunch ---- still trying to figure out how to expense that. (Article T.I.C.).

I mentioned re-doing my website recently. I've put a new one together. It's sleeker than the last one.

I've been in the mood for a website change for while. I lazed about looking at different design options. In the end I found a program that struck me as kind of whimsical and the demo felt easy to use. I downloaded it from the Apple Store and immediately ran into a problem. The program wouldn't open. I tried stuff but my toolbox, as regards fixing aggravating stuff on computers, is poorly stocked.  I decided to get in touch with the company's support and sent an e-mail describing my issue then I sat back and started retouching images on a different project, convinced that I'd be in for the same long wait that seems to be part of most company's "support."

I was astonished when less than 15 minutes later I had an e-mail from one of the developers telling me exactly what I needed to do. Turns out it was an Apple Store download issue and not an issue with the software. I spent a day getting used to the interface, reading the documentation and playing around with the little boxes and the typefaces.

The next day I got to work in ernest and started putting together my fairly simple, four page website. Frankly, the hardest part of the whole process is trying to decide what images go into the galleries and which ones are left along the side of the road like a crushed cigarette butt.

The second hardest part of being your own website designer is writing about yourself and your business. The last time I meandered down the road of auto-biographical pontification I felt like I was being too folksy and light-hearted. This time I feel as though I might be erring the "overly stern" side. But the wonderful thing about fun and simple to use software like the app I used to do the site is that the site can change all the time. Almost blog-like in it's topicality.

The software I used is called Sparkle and it's made for Apple Computers. It's not for anyone who needs an e-commerce site or lots and lots of moving parts. It's perfect for a smaller business that just wants to present the products and services to interested clients. My site is mostly an online portfolio and I know I'll be adding to it with more galleries of images and also video.

I'm asking my friends for their feedback before I send any links to clients or prospective clients. Crowdsourcing the code?

At any rate, here's what I put up today: www.kirktuck.com

If you see the same old site you might need to refresh your cache...

More as it comes in.

Edit: 3:03 pm. Yes, It's already changed. Wow. that was quick....

Edit: 8:32 pm. Well, we're on revision 6 and everything works well except the boxes around the testimonials on the "about" page. Hmmmm. There's always tomorrow.

The Video Snapshot. A twenty second, unplanned clip. Still testing the fine art video waters with the Olympus OMD EM-5.2... :-)

Olympus OMD EM-5.2 short field test from Kirk Tuck on Vimeo.
I was testing the OMD EM-5.2 with a Pansonic 12-35 when two women walked into my frame...

I have a day long assignment to make a video for a restaurant on Weds. I'll be shooting with a friend so we can get a lot of coverage. We'll be working all day long and the restaurant will be open for business and filled with customers. I want to do the whole video hand held so we can move quickly, don't have to take up floor space with tripods and other clutter. Since that's my target I am pretty much set on taking the two OMD EM-5.2 cameras and a bag full of lenses that we can share. But I'm always testing, testing, testing to see what we can get away with so I was out today getting more and more familiar with the camera and the Panasonic 12-35mm lens. I figure the more automatic my processes are while shooting the more and better moving images I'll be able to get.

It was bright and sunny today and I was shooting outside for the most part. I stopped by the Graffiti Wall and shot some stuff and everything looked really good. Extremely fine detail, like distant, blowing grass, still aliases more than I'd like but the close in stuff --- like we'd want to use in a restaurant video --- is very well behaved and looks good.

Since the light levels were high and I was shooting the All-I, 77mbs format at 24 fps I wanted to stay at 1/50th of second shutter speed. I wanted to stay at ISO 200 for best quality and I wanted to stay under f11 to minimize diffraction effects. It all added up to exposure chaos until I put the six stop Tiffen neutral density filter on the front of the lens and then everything fell into place.

I'm always trying to think of how to do video differently and I like the idea of very short videos as "snapshots." Inadvertent street photography-type video. Today two woman visiting the wall walked into my frame as I was practicing holding the camera still. I let the camera run for 20 or so seconds and the video above is what I got. It's a selfie wielding woman in a black skirt and the back end of someone else. For some reason, when thrown together I think it is interesting (and funny).

Between now and Weds. I am also experimenting with the Nikon cameras on monopods for the project. We'll see which version makes the cut.... And gets into Final Cut.

Thanks, Kirk

(I initially tried to embed this video using the blogger service but the compression was amazingly huge and extremely bad. I took down that version and uploaded the video to vimeo instead. Ahhhh. Much better. )

World's finest portrait lens? Or my own personal crutch?

World's finest portrait lens? Or my own personal crutch?

I had an assignment yesterday to go to an office on the 26th floor of a very nice building and make portraits of three men. I had shot in the office space before and had taken advantage of the beautiful, indirect light coming through the floor to ceiling windows on the north side of the building. The architecture in the space is very modern, with lots of clean lines and interesting diagonals. The method that worked best for me the last time I shot there was to use the natural light from a three quarters angle and add the barest touch of fill light to add some spark to the image and a nice catchlight in subjects' eyes. I knew I wanted to shoot fairly long and to drop the background out of focus so the lines all softened and created a contrast in sharp and soft between my subjects' faces and the shapes in the background. 

When I last shot there I was using the Nikon D7100 and the Samsung NX30 with each makers 85mm lenses. The 128mm equivalent focal length (when compared to a lens on a full 35mm frame camera) was just a bit too long and a bit too compressed on the APS-C cameras to be visually comfortable for me. There was a friction between the tools I had and the vision in my head. I wasn't close enough for a really effective (and quiet) rapport when I got to a distance that allowed me to shoot with the composition and head sizes I wanted. The images were fine but it always bothered me that I couldn't quite get exactly what I wanted. 

 In anticipation of yesterday's assignment I rummaged through the drawer full of Nikon stuff in the studio and dutifully loaded the 80-200mm f2.8 zoom, the 85mm f1.8, the Sigma 50 Art lens and even a 24-85mm zoom. Almost as an afterthought I also grabbed the diminutive Nikon 105mm f2.5 ais lens. It had served me well on a similar assignment last week during which I got over any fears of manual focusing this lens on the D610 and D810 cameras. 

The Nikon 105mm f2.5 is a five element lens with four groups that seems to me to mark the high point of quality among affordable, non-esoteric lenses that people can actually afford and would actually want to shoot with. It is dense with glass and metal and the focusing ring of this aging optic makes the "fly-by-wire" focusing rings of most autofocus lenses feel cheesy and toy-like. Since it is an Ai (auto indexing) lens it works in aperture priority and manual exposure modes, with full metering, on any current (or recent) professional Nikon cameras, including APS-C cameras like the D7000, the D7100 and the D7200. It also works with any of the full frame cameras, as well. 

I set up my camera on a tripod with a giant wall of windows to my left and the subject in the middle of a wide space, turned 45 degrees toward the window. On the shadow side were pure white walls which made for good natural fill. I used a new flash and flash trigger that the people at Cactus sent me to test. The flash is the RF60 and the radio trigger is the V6. I set the flash onto a light stand with an umbrella stand adapter and a 48 inch white umbrella. The fun feature of this flash and radio trigger combination is that one can control the manual power settings of the flash from the camera position via the trigger mechanism. I was able to keep dialing down the flash power until its effect was very subtle but very effective in cleaning up the portrait image and adding catch light. This rig was portable enough to bring along in my rolling case and takes about a minute to set up. At 1/32nd power the flash could sit there and pop all day long. I only needed the system to do so about 220 times.

Once I had the balance of light the way I wanted it I concentrated on comping my shot and getting just the right camera to subject distance to give me enough person for context but a shallow enough depth of field to make the background soft and unobtrusive. I used f2.8 for all of the waist up, horizontally framed shots and I dropped down to f4.0 for a little deeper focus with the tighter "chest and head" portraits with each person. This made fine focusing critical. I've been reticent to trust the focusing screens on the camera since I could never sharply focus any manual lens on the D7100 or D7000s I had. I would always double check by going to live view and punching in on the magnification. 

I did that a lot last week but every time I checked the magnified view matched what I was seeing in the finder and also matched up with the green confirmation dot in the finder of both of the D610s and the D810. Yesterday I put the 105mm on the Nikon D610. I recently put a +2.0 diopter on the eyepiece to bring the correction on the dial back to zero for my eyes. It seems to have made a difference for me in how well I can see focus on the screen. 

I did the live view mag. confirm focus thing a couple of times and then I became reasonably convinced that I had finally mastered manual focus with this body. The images were just as I imagined them when I looked at them with my naked eyes. The tonality of the lens and the dynamic range of the camera sensor added up to portraits that were convincingly sharp when zooming into my subjects' eyes but without the harsh sharpness that sometimes plagues newer (amped up) glass. 

When I did my first round of post production there were only three images I needed to trash because of focus problems. The the colors, textures and general feel of the images was just what I wanted. The lens isn't quite as contrasty as more current lenses but that's a very simple thing to fine tune in post processing. And while the broad contrast is lower the micro-contrast is highly competitive. Maybe it's this reverse application of contrast qualities that makes this lens such a spectacular portrait lens...

At any rate, when I finished shooting I was so enthralled with the overall performance of the lens and the cameras in combination that I searched KEH.com and ordered a second one. I bought another late model Ais (the last version made) in excellent condition and it should arrive next week. 

Why on earth would you buy a second one?

My answer? The lens has a particular look and feel. It's not made anymore. The supply will eventually either dry up or become much more expensive. If this lens really is the sweet spot for my particular vision of portraits is the small, extra expenditure to ensure access to its unique set of features wasteful or wise? I vote wise. 

Edit: The additional copy of the lens arrived today from KEH (three days quicker than they promised) and it is absolutely perfect. I can hardly wait to shoot an interview with it.