A photo from a campaign for the Austin Lyric Opera.

APS-H Camera. Nikon 105 DC lens.

Tungsten Lighting with big diffusion.

I took a day off today. Here's a movie review and a restaurant review...

Beef at Uchi. Not the subject of my review.

I've lived in Austin for a long time and so I am always amazed when I go out of town and find out that there are still "smoking" rooms at major hotels. It's been years and years since we've had local ordinances against smoking in public places or in restaurants, hotels, concert halls, etc in place here. Last week the major chain hotel I stayed with in New Jersey overbooked their non-smoking rooms and, being a late arrival, I ended up one night in a smoking room. It was absolutely dreadful. I woke up with a sore throat, a runny nose and a weird, unhappy nicotine buzz. I should not have smoked the second pack before I went to bed, but they were free and the ashtray was right there.....(just morbidly kidding -- I would never dream of smoking a cigarette). 

The next night I was moved to a non-smoking room and it was like moving from the sidewalks of downtown Beijing to, well, a nice sidewalk in Austin. But by the time I made it home I had contracted a full blown head cold, cough, etc. I am enough of a scientist to understand that the smoking room may not have caused the cold, and that it was probably something I picked up on the plane flight, or even the week before, but it's more fun to focus my anger on the most visible and obvious culprit. 

My schedule didn't allow for illness over the weekend as I had two projects in post production and a self inflicted deadline of end-of-day Monday. I shot downtown on Sunday afternoon and spent the rest of the time working on post processing in front of my computer. A job on Monday evening, and again yesterday during the afternoon, took up more time I could have used for recovery so, at 10:30 last night, when I had finished uploading final files to everyone, I vowed I would take today off from business entirely. 

I woke up early with a nagging cough and made myself a couple cups of hot tea before we went out to walk with Studio Dog. After breakfast I immediately broke my vacation vow by billing the three jobs just completed, but after that I put the big, fancy computer to sleep and went on with my "everyman's" day off. 

The first stop was to the Alamo Drafthouse Movie Theater on South Lamar for the 11:00 showing of the latest James Bond movie, Spectre. Here's what I liked pretty well: Lots of things blew up in interesting ways. The main thrust of the plot aligned with my political prejudice against consolidation of power and the surveillance police state. The cinematography was uniformly great. The 4K projection was top flight. And the five other people in the audience followed the posted rules of the house and were silent during the entire 2+ hours. (The policy of that theater is: no talking, no texting, no cellphones. After one warning the management will kick out offenders with NO REFUND of their ticket price. It's a heavenly atmosphere for hard core movie fans and those of us who have trouble tolerating loud and inconsiderate audiences....).

On the downside, the movie was --- boring. It was predictable, unimaginatively paced and predictable. Had I been in one of the smoking cities I could have gone out into the lobby to smoke a pack of Chesterfields, and come back not really missing out on much of the plot. Or the incredibly convenient happenstances (MacGuffins) that helped to save our "hero."  To be sure, I am glad I saw the movie because I wouldn't like to have the string of Bond viewing broken but I must say that I probably won't go see it a second time. 

When I left the theater I walked down the block to get something to eat. I guess watching someone on the screen work so hard can make one hungry by extension. And I had always wanted to try The Shake Shack for hamburgers. The interior design was nice but staid. The workers gruff, but competent, and the the Shake Shack Burger? Let's just say I expected more. It was well cooked and the bun was softer than cotton candy but other than that it was just boring. I guess we are spoiled here in Austin with P.Terry's Burgers, Mighty Fine Burgers, Dirty's Come Back Burgers, Huts, The Counter and, even the miserably named but well loved, HopDoddy's. All make burgers just as well as The Shake Shack, and most are in the same price range. I was expecting bigger, better, saltier, spicier or something-er. 

After lunch I sat down at a table outside of Medici Caffe and caught myself mindlessly checking work e-mails and texts. When I realized what I was doing I turned the phone all the way off and stuck it in my pocket. I was embarrassed to feel the need to connect back to the business so slavishly. 

Makes me want to turn off all the devices, grab a Nikon F and some film and just give the whole digital world a break for a while. But then who would conjecture about the demise of Samsung's camera division, gripe about the menus in Olympus cameras, pine away online for a Leica medium format camera or admit that I never use "my settings" settings? 

Ten more minutes of this time off stuff and I'm going to rebel and order something online. That Zeiss 135mm f2 for the Nikon looks pretty juicy. It's got to be less boring that the movie and the burger. 

Naw, it's a lot cheaper to take a nap on the couch with Studio Dog and hope this cough goes away by tomorrow. I've got some swimming to get back to...

Have you ever been sitting in a meeting and realized that the light just then was beautiful?

I was at a meeting today photographing. I looked around the room and the light coming through the floor to ceiling windows painted the faces of the people across the table from me in the most beautiful way. I had to take a photograph to capture it. Just the turn of the woman's head in the middle of the frame made it all perfect. I have no idea how the meeting turned out, I was too busy watching life being painted right in front of me.

At what point do the camera and lens disappear and let the image just soak through? Oh. I know. When you learn to ignore the camera even when you have it right in front of your face.

Muscle memory. Reaction. Looking for images not targets. You know the camera is in the way when you have to stop and think about how to set it. You know the camera has become invisible when you can just respond to the scene in front of your face.

All bets are off when you see the Jetson's building....

A late afternoon bicycle ride up Lamar Blvd. in Austin, Texas

I can't remember what camera or lens I used but I sure like the position of the shadows and the intersecting lines on the wall and sidewalk.

When I finish up my jobs, back up my files and send out the bills I like to chill out and relax a bit by taking a camera and lens out into the world and practicing my craft. I can't imagine a day without a camera in my hands. I think the way to see photographically is, in a sense, to live immersed in photography.

#addictedtophotographs

I'm a little confused. Some reviewers say that the longest end of the Panasonic fz 1000 zoom lens is not as sharp as the rest of the focal range. I guess they need to work on their handholding skills just a bit more. Or use a tripod...

Go long. Hand held.

The average camera reviewer seems to buy into the "echo chamber" system of camera evaluation. Someone on a different site writes something about the long end of a lens being soft and the writer picks it up and runs with it. Sometimes the weather is crappy and a reviewer (not the camera owner) feels the need to go out in low illumination, gray muck and make some images anyway; after all, shouldn't state of the art image stabilization allow you to hand-hold a 400mm equivalent focal length pretty steady at 1/15th of second?

I read in a couple places on the web that the Panasonic fz 1000 was a little soft at the long end and this concerned me because the long reach of the Leica designed lens was one of the reasons I bought the camera. It's also one of the features I used extensively on my recent, downtown Austin project.

But I did something a bit out of the ordinary for web camera reviewers --- I actually went outside on a nice, sunny day and shot some tests. I shot the tests with the camera locked down on a stout tripod and also handheld. Guess what? The long end of the lens is sharp. The secret is to use it intelligently.

A primer for testers: To find out just how sharp any lens can be turn off the I.S. put the camera on a tripod and use a self timer for release. Make sure you focus correctly instead of depending on some automatic focusing point selection algorithm from the camera. Maybe use that boring, old, center, single point, AF method!  Now you have an understanding of the potential of the lens and if you want to you can take it off the tripod, turn on the  I.S. and shoot tests that might show you how sharp the system can be. But please, tell your readers if you shot the 400mm sample while riding on a street car over bumpy track at twilight, holding the camera at arm's length with one hand, to view the idiot screen, on the back, while your other hand grips the safety rail of your conveyance.

But really, the point I'd like to emphasize here is how important it is for one's credibility to actual go out and do the test instead of taking one of the other web shill's word for something, and then passing on flawed information.

Wow. That sounded like a rant. Okay, well I just get tired of reading misinformed crap.

The ongoing saga of this quarter's favorite VSL picture taking machine.

Click on the photos to see them larger in a separate window. 

All images taken with the Panasonic fz 1000. 

So, I had the opportunity to get paid for one of the photographic pursuits that I do for myself; walking around downtown Austin making images of buildings and stuff. I got to do the job exactly the way I wanted to without active curation on anybody's part. I started out the project using full frame cameras and prime lenses but I quickly came to realize that a wide ranging zoom would be much more effective and efficient. I also wanted to use a camera with an EVF because I was constantly using a circular polarizing filter and wanted to have the immediate feedback one gets from the camera assembling the preview and showing it as one shoots. 

I thought at first that I'd use the Olympus cameras but frankly, I didn't have the lens range I really wanted. I ended up choosing the Panasonic fz 1000 because, in broad daylight, the camera gives up very little to the larger formats when it comes to low noise, sharpness and the general look of the files. I shot raw and did some post processing but most of the files were in an optimum exposure range and already looked pretty good. Camera Raw in Adobe apps tends to yield a pretty flat file from  Panasonic raw files and that's okay because they seem resilient at taking bit corrections and big color changes without falling apart. 

As I got used to the rhythm of the camera the battery life seemed to go on forever. At a 400 mm equivalent focal length the image stabilization (five axis) was pretty incredible.

I loved being able to set the camera to f5.6 and zoom from 25mm to 400mm without seeing any real impact on image quality. This is an amazing camera. Much more exciting to shoot than most other bridge cameras because the 1 inch sensor means I have a great chance of getting competitive files. 

I love this camera so much I bought a second one as a back up.  If you like bridge cameras you should try one. It's amazing. It's the current VSL camera of the quarter. 

Less than the price of a good lens alone....