What the Focaccia??? I was ready to be disappointed by this lens. But then I shot with it and...

Full frame shot. Jpeg. Standard.

Long story shortened. Bought a lens after reading and researching widely. The reviews were mixed. Actual users on Amazon.com loved it (for the most part). Metrics driven DXOMark gave it two thumbs up. The denizens of the web, and the signal repeaters crapped all over it and let me know (gently, of course) that I was a moron for even considering a lens that was "incapable" of sharpness, and that was "so soft in the corners I could use it for toilet paper..."

The truth was not somewhere in the middle. It was out there just waiting to be discovered by anyone ready to spend $4400 on the lens and the right body on which to test it. So, after days and days of rain we finally got a classic, Austin Spring day. Lots of sunshine and its friend, high humidity.

Well, I had been writing proposals and doing post processing (and writing too many blog posts) so I splurged and spent some time walking around this morning with the A7R2 and its friend, the Zeiss 24-70mm f4.0G ZA zoom lens. I must have gotten a defective one because it looks sharp as a tack everywhere I look, and at every focal length. I shot mostly at f5.6 and I tried to find crappy-ness but have been largely unsuccessful. Plus, I think the color in  the straight out of the camera, medium res Jpegs is just super deluxe. If you click on the images you'll be able to see them bigger. 

The quality of a lens is about more than just pinpoint sharpness everywhere. It'a also about color, contrast, saturation and a personality. I think I'll be just fine with the new wide angle to short telephoto zoom lens. I think most people will be happy with it, provided they put it on the right body...

A central crop of the frame above.

My process for getting portraits selected and delivered to our clients. Let's run through the steps.

©2009 Kirk Tuck.

Regardless of what gear I select for making portraits the portrait session or "sitting" is just part of the overall assignment equation which includes: editing down the number of images, making a global color and tone correction of the first round of selections and then delivering a gallery from which the client(s) will choose their final "keeper." The smoothness of this process, in the eyes of the client, is a critical part of our customer service. 

When I write about my photography business I've alluded to the fact that I am a promiscuous shooter and come home with buckets of images; more than a client might have the time or inclination to wade through. So, I thought this rainy April morning would be a good time to discuss process. 

Let's start at the very beginning. We need to get invited to the party. Then we need to let the client know what the process will be and how much money it will cost them. We have different rates or costs for portraits done in the

How to make your brain a bit more efficient. Sell off all the cameras and lenses you don't need or use.

From a production at Zach Theatre. ©2016 Kirk Tuck.

If nothing else I have spent the last few years unintentionally proving to myself and everyone around me that the actual camera I take out and use on a job hardly matters at all.  I often come to realize this when I head over to Zach Theatre to shoot dress rehearsals. In the last year and a half I have dragged over bags full of Nikon, Sony, Olympus, and Panasonic cameras; in formats ranging from one inch sensor models to full framers, and lenses as current as last week, and as old at the 1960's. But the differences between the images are less effected by the size of the sensor than by the distance to the stage, or my sense of timing and composition on any given day.

When I look at the image above I always presume it's one I made using the Nikon D750 but when I look at the exif information I find that it was done with a Panasonic GH4. I recently did some additional available light portraits for a corporate client. I thought I'd done the first round with a full frame camera and a relatively fast lens, stopped down to f4.0 so I could make sure the subjects' ears would be in focus. I presumed I was using the same combination I did the time before because the color and the out of focus rendering looked like a good match. But when I went back to Lightroom to post process the new batch I took at look at one of the earlier batches and realized that those images had been done with an Olympus EM5.2 and the Panasonic 42.5mm f1.7 shot at f2.0. 

While many of my readers are logical engineers who thrive on the idea of finding the "best practices" of a task, and doing it over and over again, always with the same equipment, I am not wired the same way. I get easily bored with repetition; at least where the technical part of a process is involved. I like to mess things up a bit and see if I can still pull out the images I want. 

I recently followed one assignment at Zach Theatre, where I shot with two full frame cameras, with a second, similar assignment where I shot with nothing but a Sony RX10ii camera. In the Theatre's final use, even across big, transluminated graphics, the images were more of less identically capable.

I have switched between formats on many assignments and have come to understand that, if the "seeing" is consistent, and the "style" of shooting is consistent, then, except under specialized conditions, the choice of camera is really incidental. 

One thing that does bother me when I switch between cameras is the operational differences between cameras. I dislike having to keep an assortment of radically different camera menus in mind almost as much as I dislike having to remember, across camera lines, which functions I have assigned to what custom function buttons --- and why. 

I bristle at having to stock different batteries across the brands (and across models) and I chaff at having to learn the rhythm of the batteries' inevitable declines, from model to model.

I have talked about simplifying my camera and lens choices on this blog for years. In the past I have never seemed to be able to

Testing new lenses depends more on how you intend to use them and less on "scientific" parameters. Do your own tests!

The lens on this camera is a 24-70mm f4.0 Vario Tessar T* FE OSS

The 24-70mm f4.0 Vario Tessar zoom lens was released into the market in 2013 at a time when the highest res, high performing mirrorless camera from Sony was the Nex-7. At the time of its release there was much excitement in the photography world for just about everything new. Reviewers immediately put the lens on the Nex-7 (cropped frame) and started writing reviews. Had they waited a month or two they could have tested the lens with the full frame A7.

What they found in early tests was nothing more than confirmation that the sensor in the Nex-7 could be....picky. Very picky. There are many lenses that did not work well with that sensor for whatever reason. It could have been the way the light from the lenses hit the edge pixels or even a design issue with the cover glass. At any rate the reviews of this lens were lukewarm, at best. Most said, "Sharp in the center and soft on the edges..."

These early reviews, like most first impressions, are the pervasive signposts that linger in our collective subconscious where this lens is concerned. 

When I was deciding which short, standard, zoom lens made the most sense for me I looked at the results that DXO got when using the lens with a modern, high resolution body, the A7R. As I recall the overall numerical score they got was around 25 which is quite good for a zoom lens in their rating system. I bought the lens without trepidation knowing that I could return it to my local dealer if I was not satisfied with its performance. 

But I guess my real point here is that everyone has some different idea of what constitutes a "high performance" lens. I want high center sharpness but I am less concerned with what's going on in the corners of the image frame. All lenses are compromises and while you can have a lens that is corrected across the frame you may find that the design requires that there not be a "peak" of sharpness in the center; instead the uniformity requires a slightly lower overall sharpness that is more homogenous. 

Which performance metrics matter most for you? If I were shooting architecture I might worry about corners that were less sharp than the center of a lens. If I shot flat copy work I would be looking at a whole different range of lenses. But am I saying that the Vario Tessar really does perform poorly?

Not at all. While I haven't had time to test it extensively I took advantage of a quiet Sunday evening to put the lens on the A7R2 and to shoot lots of stuff around the studio. I tried the lens wide open at all focal lengths as well as stopped down to f8.0. I used it with flash. I used it on a tripod with LED lights and I used it handheld at 12,000 ISO. I like the lens and find it to be a very good performer. 

I'd be happy to use it for portraits, even wide open. 

I think that what people were seeing in early days was a combination of mediocre focusing on the first round of A7 camera and a mental predisposition to be critical based on the weight of the web reviews as conducted with the older Nex7 cameras. My actual experience tells me that the lens is a good match for the way I shoot and will work well on either the full frame A7R2, or on the APS-C a6300.

I will say that I like the color rendition and the overall imaging characteristics of the lens very much. I also like the compactness and the lesser weight when compared to the f2.8 version. Everyone's mileage will vary but I think it's always a good idea to find out for yourself. 

A quick look at one lens that fits into a popular mould. The Sony 70-200mm f4.0 G.

Sony's answer to Nikon and Canon's 70-200mm f4.0 lenses.

I bought a new camera on Friday but you know that no one really buys into a new camera system without grabbing some new lenses to go along for the ride. I bought two. In this blog I will write about the one that makes me most happy; the 70-200mm f4.0 G zoom. It actually has more letters in its name but I can't keep up with all the abbreviated garble. 

For the last two years I have been using one of Nikon's 80-200mm f2.8 zooms. It's an earlier, push-pull design and I have absolutely no complaints about the optical performance I got from it. It's really sharp! Even though we now require lenses to be sharp from corner to corner, wide open to consider them passable, that lens from the 1990's was a very competent optical system for use in the real world. 

The thing that bothered me about the lens was the weight and the lack of a tripod collar. Given the design and the operational target of that lens there's really not much Nikon could have done about the weight. Their reasoning for not including a tripod collar was a bit disingenuous though. They suggested that the lens was aimed at photojournalists who would rarely ever want to use a tripod and who needed fast, handheld operation. The time spent removing a collar might mean precious seconds that could spell the difference between winning that Pulitzer or not....

But it was a disaster for a studio/tripod shooter. I liked the

Recently evaluated cameras for an upcoming video project. My first choice? A Sony A7R2. But why?

Sony A7R2. Want one? Buy it here. 

Video production is a weird thing. You have a lot of people who came up through traditional video production pathways. For them the over the shoulder camcorder, with all the right connections, is the preferred equipment combination for just about any project. And it makes perfect sense. You have a package that combines good video codecs with all the things traditionalists want: Zebras for exposure control, focus peaking for accurate focusing, XLR connectors for balanced microphones, as well as power zooms, and a camera body that can be balanced over one shoulder. Sounds cool, right?

But not to me. I like the idea of shooting to a form factor that's familiar to me. I came up through a different set of gear traditions. To me, something like a DSLR or mirrorless camera seems more practical and familiar. And a camera on a tripod is even more familiar.

I've been watching the maturation of the Sony A7 series for a couple of years now and that's a form factor that I'm more comfortable with. But it was only with the upgrade to the recent firmware 3.x  for the A7r2 (reduces overheat incidents) that made me feel more confident about using the camera for my clients' projects. The cameras have finally come together in relatively robust packages that make sense, and in a build quality tha

My photo shoot with Kinky Freidman.

Kinky Freidman ©1992 Kirk Tuck

I was working in the old studio off east 5th street, just east of the freeway in downtown. I'd won the assignment to photograph novel writer and musician, Kinky Freidman, for the cover of a Texas lifestyle magazine. The art director wanted a white background so I set up the studio and tested my lighting design. At the time we delivered only medium format transparency film to the magazines so I took time to load six film backs for my Hasselblad camera. 

Mr. Freidman (who would later run for Governor in Texas) was scheduled to arrive at 6 pm. He came into the studio and we introduced ourselves. I went over the plan for photographs. He lit up a cigar and started smoking. I explained that the building had a strict "no smoking" policy. Didn't phase him and he went on puffing away --- which, in hindsight, was a good thing because the image the magazine loved and used was of him partially covered with a plume of cigar smoke. 

After I felt that we'd nailed the cover shot I picked up a Leica R camera and shot a few 35mm slides, just for something different. 

When we finished Mr. Freidman announced that it was protocol for the photographer to take the celebrity photo subject out for dinner and I decided to go along with the program. This was a time in which publicists and entourages were not yet pandemic in the business so it was just the two of us who headed over to Serrano's Mexican Food Restaurant.

Mr. F. was a well-known regular there and had his own table. He order his favorite beverages and we ordered our meal. He had some sort of custom beef creation which he asked to have covered in serrano peppers. I ordered a plate of enchiladas verdes con pollo (chicken  enchiladas with a mild green sauce) which prompted Mr. F. to say, "That's a dish for women. Don't be a pussy. Get something with some kick!" 

It was an interesting photo shoot and an entertaining dinner. I have run into Mr. F. occasionally around Austin and he's still got that ineffable charm. Anyway, this is my visual take away from that encounter...