A quick re-cap of my work at the theatre last night. Warning: This blog post does NOT include anything about the Sony RX10mkiii.

It was kind of a relief to be back on familiar ground, taking photographs instead of working with video yesterday evening. It was another dress rehearsal shoot for the folks at Zach Theatre. This time we were shooting a farcical English comedy, "One Man, Two Guvnors."  The play is classic theater and the cast was great. Martin Burke is one of Austin's finest comedic actors and he brought some really great energy to the stage last night; as did the rest of the cast.

What a departure from the very serious productions Zach has produced in the last few months! In a total departure from the standard procedure the house opened 40 minutes before the show and there was a full bar up on the stage. Audience members were invited up to buy drinks and walk across the stage. There was a 1960's cover band playing right up until curtain --- on the same stage. A very festive atmosphere to be sure.

This is the first production I've photographed with my full complement of Sony products. My last theater adventure was the dress rehearsal of Holland Taylor as "Ann Richards" and I did that one with the a6300 and the quixotic 18-105mm f4.0 G lens; backed up by a Sony RX10mk2.

Yesterday afternoon I pulled together a kit to take to the performance and it all fit in a very small Husky tool bag. The top of that bag opens wide for quick access... It cost $19 at Home Depot. It's a great bag for a small assortment of day to day stuff, like a note book, some pens, a phone, two cameras and two lenses. Maybe a little zipper pouch with some batteries in it as well.

There was no hesitation in packing yesterday. I grabbed the A7R2 and the a6300 along with the 70-200mm f4.0 G lens and the 24-70mm f4.0 Zeiss lens. I loaded both cameras with fast, 32 gigabyte cards and I brought along an extra battery for each camera.

I set up dead center in the house, just below and in front of Eric Graham, an old friend, and the person who shoots the video documentation of the shows. The row I set up in the cross over row between the two sides of the house so there is no row in front of me. I have the house manager block off the seven center seats so I can shoot from the center and have three empty seats on either side. This is a holdover from the days when I shot with Nikons and other mirrored cameras that were loud enough to disturb audience members sitting adjacent to me. It's still good because I can lean left or right to get a better viewpoint and it also means I'm walking in front of fewer people if I need to get up and re-position to shoot an important shot of an action that plays to one of the corners of the stage.

I put the 70-200mm on the A7R2 and the 18-105mm on the a6300. After a brief consultation with the lighting designer and the videographer I decided to shoot in Jpeg. We'd need to send a ton of files over to the marketing people the next day and extra fine Jpegs at around 20 megapixels is much more fun to wade through than 42 megapixels of raw mania...

I was comfortable in doing so because the nature of the play meant that the stage was lit brighter and a bit less dramatically (dynamic ranges challenges!) than a drama. The videographer asked me to go up on stage with a white towel he keeps in one of his camera cases so he could white balance under actual stage lighting. The lighting designer confirmed that the color temperature didn't change much during the performance. Eric set 3000K on his cameras while I opted to go a slight bit warmer at 3200k. The lighting in the theater is predominantly LED and bare it's seems balanced to around 4400 to 4600K but a large number of the lights used in this production were gelled warm.

So, with the A7r2 set to medium resolution, extra fine, we were getting 18 megapixel files while the a6300 set at large gave us 24 megapixel files. Not a very big different, mathematically speaking.

With the color temperature/white balance set I started looking at ISO settings. Even though the light levels were higher than I am used to working at I decided to set both cameras at ISO 1250 because, well, they make 1250 look like "old school" 200. I've switched from my previous way of using AF in the theatre because the two Sony cameras have PD elements on the sensor and both are very, very fast to acquire subjects. I had both cameras set to C-AF using zones. I'd put the zone over the subject I wanted to focus on a wait for the tiny green boxes to light up in the desired areas. On the A7R2 I'd push one of the focus hold buttons that surround the front barrel of the lens and shoot away, holding the button until my subject changed position. Same with the a6300 except you have to use the AEL/AF lock button instead.

Another change for me was to be able to shoot both cameras in the silent mode, which is really silent mode and not "silent mode."  Really, the only way you know whether you've taken a photograph is seeing the review image coming up in the finder. The lack of mirror slap, combined with good image stabilization in both lenses, and in the A7r2 meant NO photographer induced motion blur.

Speaking of finder... I have gotten into the habit of just turning off the rear screen altogether. It's as obnoxious as the screen of a cellphone in the theater and with a great EVF there's no good reason to add any light pollution to the space. I can review in the finder and set menu items in the finder as well. I have to give high regards to the EVFs in both cameras. They are absolutely the closest to the final image of any camera I have yet used. I am able to use the finder, along with zebras set at 100% to accurately judge exposure. How accurate? Well, I could have sent along all 1300 images without making a single exposure correction after the fact. I didn't because I wanted to add some shadow recovery to a good number of shots and I fine-tuned everything else out of habit.

The images were impeccable. Both camera and lens sets delivered images that were correctly color balanced, sharp and with appreciable dynamic range. I like to add a bit of clarity slider to give shots destined to run small a bit of "presence."

After I edited the take in half (or less) I did my post production and started the upload to Smugmug.com. I make a web gallery so everyone who needed or wanted to see the images (theater staff) could do so concurrently. I'm sending links with folders of downloadable files from Smugmug to the executive who heads up marketing for distribution to the people who will actually use the images for public relations and marketing. They'll make a subset of the images to send along to social media and conventional media.

The Sony's were small, light and outrageously good. The lenses don't have too many faults (as long as I have distortion correction set for the 18-105....) and the battery use wasn't the drama most people would profess it to be. I changed batteries at the 800+ mark in the A7R2 and not at all with the smaller camera.

So, now I have used my little Sony collection for several events, a bunch of video, a theatrical dress rehearsal, two product shoots and about 40 portraits. Am I still happy? Yes, where do I sign up to be "paid off" by Sony? I would dearly like just one or two more things.... A second A7r2 and a 55mm f1.8 lens. Or maybe the 50mm Loxia. But overall? Happy as can be. But ready to become a fanboy for the right price....(not).

The Steve McCurry Tempest in a Teapot.

You have probably all seen Steve McCurry's most famous photograph. It's the photograph of the Afghani woman with the haunting green eyes. It graced the cover of National Geographic and has been reprinted endlessly, everywhere.

For most of his career McCurry made his living as a magazine editorial photographer. From all indications he performed well, followed the rules and made a living traveling the world. In the last decade he transitioned from magazine editorial work into the art world and has been using the skill set and vision he honed in his previous career to make work that many, many people find truly evocative.

Recently he has been taken to task, sometimes harshly, for apparently PhotoShopping some distracting elements out of his work. The important thing to remember here is that he is not enlisting this work into the world of hard news or breaking news. Rather, it is being sold as "art" in galleries and on the web.

The knee jerk argument, if I can sum it up, is basically: "Once a starving photojournalist always a starving photojournalist!!!" His critics would hold him to journalistic ethics and standards even though he is no longer working in that field or having his work used to directly illustrate news.

To me this smacks of indentured servitude to a cause.

I say, that at this point, all bets are off. The once free press is now settled into the hands of about seven major holding companies and they all have agendas put in place to serve a tiny elite of plutocrats and their pet causes. Photojournalists are being discarded like old VHS tapes. The contract calling for a lifetime of service to the ideals of the free press is null and void by those who no longer work in that niche.

Here's what I wrote in the comments at theOnlinePhotographer.com in response to Michael's thoughtful article, and the reason and unreasonable comments that followed:

Steve McCurry is a very, very good photographer. He may have been a photojournalist at one time and should, then, have hewed to the rules of that industry. For many years now he has worked outside that field and just creates art. His manipulations have no more or less merit than the contrived set ups of Crewdson or Skoglund. The art is the art. He is not working in breaking news. He is not manipulating images in the service of some political agenda. He is creating art. No different than the legion of photographers who routinely edit out teen acne, double chins and wrinkles in images of graduating seniors or mid-level corporate managers. His vision now includes the ability to hone or distill an image for our enjoyment. If he was shooting for the NYTime, hard news, to illustrate a news story then he was out of line. If he was showing us his impression of a place and time and people then screw the critics and go for it. Tell me that every landscape photographer whose work has ever graced a gallery wall didn't burn in some sky, take out a piece of trash in the foreground or pretty up the colors. Should we dig up Ansel Adams and burn him at the stake for his egregious over-darkening of the sky in Moonrise over Hernandez, NM.? Photojournalism is one of those jobs that's been beaten to a pulp by the economy and cast aside by media moguls. McCurry left the fold to do what he does best and make a bit of money for a decent retirement ---- and now a bunch of fat and sassy armchair quarterbacks, who've never risked dysentery and war are going to deny the guy his chance to be an aging artist with some sort of financial safety net under his feet? Get real. Put your Hush Puppies on, button up your cardigan and go out for a walk. Contemplate your misplaced outrage and then direct it somewhere meaningful.

If you disagree I'd like to know the reasons why. Not "how I feel" but what rational and logical belief causes you to champion your cause. We are no longer living in the age where the news is anything but un-tinted by the interjection of corporate holding company self-interests; why then should photographers be the symbolic surrogates that help give credibility to an already fixed system?

Give McCurry a break. His art appeals to a broad cross section of our culture. His work is good and visually satisfying. What he did for a living before becoming an artist should not be part of our assessment of the value of his work. 

As I sat editing in still photographs to my recent video project I had new thoughts about what aspect ratios to shoot...

When I shoot portraits I sure like working in a square format. This will come as no revelation to people who have followed the blog for a while...

For most commercial stuff I've been shooting whatever the actual, full format of the sensor is. The reason, no doubt developed in earlier times (the era of insufficient resolution), it to take full advantage of the total number of pixels available.

But as I sat editing video and trying to add still photographs to it I discovered that it might be a better idea, going forward, to shoot the routine documentary work and corporate advertising work in a skinnier format; something like 16:9.

We now have ample resolution at our disposal and shooting with an aspect ratio like 16:9 means we're not losing much quality but we might be gaining a library of images with more flexibility for multi-media work.

Now I know that someone out there will tell me that they have a series of sub-routines hardwired in their massive brains that can immediately identify the intended future use of every image they create which then informs them exactly how much space to leave in their 3:2 composition for future cropping. The rest of us mere mortals would do better with a formal guideline.

The issue in video is that every 35mm, m4:3 and square frame will have to be chopped, top and bottom, to work in the much more horizontal video format. If we start by setting our cameras to the video crop (16:9) we can compose a shot that we know will work for both still and video. With a 24, 36, or 42 megapixel camera we can easily cropped off the ends of the frame without a visible reduction in quality.

For me frame lines in a finder are NOT enough. I want to see the frame, sitting in a field of black, that shows me the exact edges without my mind having to remember to stay "within the lines."

After my time in video editing this week I think I am about to become a photographer of extremes, with my Sony cameras set to 16:9 for general shooting and then set to 1:1 for portrait work and art that will never grace the moving screens. Can't think of a more practical way to do it.

While the a6300 and the A7R2 don't give me 1:1 they do both give me 16:9 and that's a good start. Both the RX10s provide a wider range of aspect ratios that also includes 1:1. I wonder if the RX10iii would also make a good portrait camera? Next experiment?

Just something I fell asleep thinking about last night...

Shooting squares in 2009. I thought this would make a perfect book cover for my best photography book.

 I wrote a book back in 2009 that was published by Amherst Media in 2010. It was called Commercial Photograpy Handbook: Business Techniques for Professional Digital Photographers.

 I like the photograph because I seem to like beautiful women and I know I like beautiful cameras. I shot this with a Hasselblad 500 CM and actual, real Neopan 100 black and white film. It was one of those weeks when I was feeling decidedly retro.

The publisher chose a different cover design and that's their prerogative; but I think they left a lot of business on the table since beautiful women trumps still life and commercial photography collage any day of the week.

I re-read that book today over a tuna sandwich at Thundercloud's sandwich shop. It stands up well. Of all the technical books I've written I have to say that the writing, the information and the images are the very best of my endeavors.

There were some photos in the book that put me back in the mindset of shooting to the square; something I think it well leveraged by the EVF finder cameras. One can set the aspect ratio to 1:1 and the finder shows the exact crop with no extraneous distraction. Very nice.

And I'm sure you know where I am going with this..... yes, the Sony RX10iii has a wide range of settable aspect ratios, at your vision's service. Just cue them up and shoot. "Yes!" He said, "I will."

The video rough cut is out the door. Time to play for a while......

Oh yeah, and buy the book! Commercial Photography Handbook.  Read it like a novel....

Mr. Friedman. Gosh I wish he was our state's governor.

Renae G. Printed and then later copied from the print into a file.

Just resting my eyes and brain for a while today. Too much work done in too short a time span. A mental recalibration reminds me of what I like and why I like it. 

Every "big picture" person needs a "fine-tuner" to make stuff really work. At least I do...

Oh goodness. You learn so much about a craft when you drop yourself into a big project and get close to the end. I've been shooting video for the last two weeks and I'm learning more than I want to by having to edit my own work. God, I can get sloppy! A couple of times in the last few days I wanted to either put myself in "time out" or "dock my allowance" for some of the goof-ups I made in the video capture part of the job. Some of my missteps were clearly a result of hubris while others were caused by making the decision to go ahead and shoot in less than optimum environmental conditions. My biggest errors were in trusting the gear too much and not monitoring it enough.

None of the kinds of mistakes I've been making are really obvious in the field but they become very obvious once you sit down at a monitor and start going through footage over and over again. On the flip side, I think I partially redeemed myself by overshooting. My videographer friend, James, always says, "You can never have too much B-roll." And he's right.

But one thing I am learning is that when you are shooting corporate stories you can make incredibly good use of still imaging inside your moving program. My one lesson for next time is to force the client, at light stand point, if necessary, to give me every shred of historical photography then have hoarded away as a starting point for any project. Then I will remind myself to take stills all day long as I shoot video. Being able to start with a good video interview shot and then cut to a still shot that's been enhanced by some Ken Burn's "pan and scan" can make all the difference in the world.

So, by the end of the day yesterday I had edited down to a seven minute timeline. That's right inside our target zone. In the seven minutes I'm using something like 358 discreet clips and, in places, five or six audio tracks deep. But here's the issue I've always been aware of: I am a big picture editor. By that I mean I see the grand arc of the project and I understand where I want to go. But I am not detail oriented or methodical. It's just not part of my nature. I know I want to go from interview "A" to interview "B" and I know I need good transitional material but the intricacies of cobbling it all together are more or less lost on me. I have an intellectual understanding of the process but I'm like a guy who has read a lot about dancing but rarely tried it to actual music; with a partner.

When I review what I've edited it gets the message across but feels a little .... kludgy. Truthfully, it's rife with almost invisible or inaudible glitches that stem from (metaphoric) fat fingers and not enough discernment. Agile fingers (metaphorically) and sophisticated discernment come at the end of the 10,000 hours of editing, not near the beginning.

But self-knowledge can be grand power. I know all these things about myself and I have work-arounds that help to offset my weaknesses. My son, Ben, is the Mozart of Final Cut Pro X performers. I watched him last Summer as he cobbled together a clean and very watchable corporate branding video with nothing but a supply of so-so stock images, some logos and a deft hand at using keyframes; as well as an uncanny ability to quickly illustrate icons. His real power in video comes from his attention to video and audio detail; spacing, pacing and structure.

So, after I'd done the best I could, I hired him for eight hours to sit in the ersatz editing bay and "sweeten" my project for me. We're in the rough cut stage but I've found (from my tenure as an advertising agency creative director) that the more polished the rough cut is, the better it looks, the less the end clients complain and the less they mess with the final product. In the first hour he made the project 50% better overall than it had been. At two hours it was a different presentation altogether. We are heading into hour five and the cumulative power of lots of little changes and fixes has become enormous.

I am now looking forward to sending my client a rough cut instead of having the typical anxiety that comes from approval stages. After all, it's hard to remove every trace of one's own ego when you've concepted, written the script, directed, shot and also done the audio on a project. We'll get this up on a private Vimeo channel later today and see what the client has to say.

Once we have final edit changes I'll hand the project over to Ben or James to finish and polish. Keeping me "out of the kitchen" from this point on seems like a smart thing to do. I may use my "big picture" skills to get the work and shoot the big arcs but, if I want the projects to sing  I'm a lot better off calling in people who have different talents and strengths from mine. I guess this video stuff really does work better with a team...