Shooting square today and using a counter-intuitive portrait camera.

A photograph from a traditional, square format, film camera.

Both yesterday and today I pressed two cameras into service that don't get much respect or interest from advanced hobbyists or my fellow professional photographers. And that's fine with me. I'll let them spend the money and get big ass cameras and ponder the wonders of the Hasselblad instead. Me? I'll take the left over cash (and time) and have more postcards printed. Or hire a designer to re-do the website. But I sure won't be dissuaded from using the new tools. It just takes some people longer to come around. 

When I left the studio yesterday I had written a post that was all future tense: we're going to do this; I'm going to do that... So first thing, I thought I'd report back about yesterday's shoot. 

If you'll remember I was talking about how hellishly hot it was. I packed up the car and headed down to San Marcos and found the last available parking spot in the park. The river was flowing well and the rapids through the park were a popular attraction to lots of central Texans. I parked the car, cracked the windows, put the reflective shade across the inside of the windshield and then texted my client to let him know exactly where I was. Then I quick-scouted the park and found a perfect position that would put my client in some precious shade while, visually, the layered waterfalls flowed directly behind him. It would be a 400 meter hike from the car but that's why we acclimate and stay in good shape, right?

I was twenty minutes early while the client was twenty minutes late so I killed time waiting in the shade. When he showed up I told him about the location, offered him water, and we marched over with the minimum of gear. He chilled in the shade while I set of the small octabox and the diffuser. I decided to use the camera handheld (a departure for me but...we were shooting at 1/1250th of a second... so I felt pretty confident I could hold the camera steady. Especially with Sony's ridiculously good image stabilization.

I'd tested everything previously and the camera, flash and radio triggers worked as expected. In fact, the first shot; my test shot, was right on the money for color balance and exposure. Which is a good thing because when the heat index climbs up to about 110 you really, really don't want to keep a good client standing around --- even if you do have some shade. 

We shot 45 shots in about three minutes. I shot medium, wide and some fairly tight. The brief was to do an environmental portrait so the surroundings were important. The EVF kept me from having to chimp on the rear screen with all the ambient light bouncing around. We called it quits after the 45th frame because we were both starting to sweat. It wouldn't mess up the image if I was sweating but as soon as some sweat spots soaked through the client's shirt we knew we might as well be done. Working in extreme weather can suck because it's easy to miss stuff or get lazy and cut corners. 

We shook hands and I grabbed the stands, camera and sandbag and headed back to the car where I drank a liter of water. And then headed on to San Antonio for another engagement. 

This morning I opened the files and processed them in Lightroom. The images were well balanced and the flash lighting worked well. I did my usual retouching and later tossed in some retouching via PhotoShop's new Facial Liquify. I wanted to open up or enlarge the subject's eyes a little bit to compensate for a very slight squint that was inevitable in the bright environment.  I made a gallery with 20 photo selections and sent it to my client's marketing team. Someone had forgotten to let me know that we were on a short deadline until they remembered and left a text in the middle of the night, last night, asking for a quick turn. They are a good (excellent) client so we obliged. 

I got the final selection from their designer right after lunch today and went to work on the real retouching. Since we were shooting in a public park I started by removing recognizable people from the frame. I took out a plump woman in the background who was wearing far too ambitious a swim suit, as well as stacks of yellow floats, a red cooler and some trash. I worked on my subject's face and eyes and made sure to eliminated any glare on his skin. In the end the image turned out quite well and is already on its way to becoming an integral part of an advertising piece. I felt that the RX10ii was a solid plus in getting this job done in our time frame and with the results everyone expected. It was also nimble to use in a physically uncomfortable situation.

That led me to do a last minute re-pack for today's shoot. 

Having just spent some quality time at 100% with a raw file from the RX10ii I decided to dump out the full frame cameras I had packed for an interior portrait shoot this morning and re-pack with the Sony RX10iii. We were scheduled with a tech company to shoot ten portraits before lunch in a conference room with west facing windows (no direct sun in the morning). 

In keeping with making everything light and mobile I packed portable, battery powered flashes again. A Cactus RF60 into a 60 inch, white umbrella for fill lighting and a Cactus RF60 into the small (32")  Westcott Octabox; both triggered by a VF6 in the hot shoe of  the camera. 

Tired of the tyranny of limited aspect ratio choices in most cameras, I chose one of the RX10s specifically so I could shoot a big, high res file in 1:1. Affectionately known as "square."   You've heard of the "golden ratio", right? Well the visual scientists at the Visual Science Lab are renaming the square, "The Platinum Ratio." The RX10ii and iii get you there with a full 13 megapixels to work with. More than enough for anything I can think of publishing on the web. 

I composed my frames with enough leeway to crop a nice rectangle in either axis and it made shooting so much more convenient. Go Platinum Ratio!!! Go Square! 

I made 665 photographs over the course of the morning, all on the initial battery. There was 15% power left when I finished. Of the 665 photographs shot I edited out 0% because of focusing errors. The raw files were easy to work with in Lightroom, mostly because we nailed the color with a custom white balance at the outset. While I would welcome more control in putting the backgrounds out of focus that is absolutely my only hesitation in using that camera for everything. It's just that good. 

Testing a lightweight alternative to big flash for shooting outdoors in the heat wave. It takes a certain camera.

Now is when it gets too hot to live and work in Texas. I would guess the heat has already effected my brain because I haven't retreated to a more temperate clime yet. So jealous of Michael Johnston just kicking back in the cool woods of upstate New York. He probably can keep his ice tea cold just by setting it on the back porch.... But we have heat advisories from the National Weather Service for the next few days, in the Austin, Texas area. We're looking forward to heat indexes of around 110 degrees (f) during the afternoons and today those will be compounded with wind gusts of 20-25 mph. Just imagine a nice, humid, convection oven...

And, of course, we have an outdoor advertising portrait scheduled for 1 pm.

Now, normally, I'd grab the big Elinchrom Ranger RX AS with the two heads (30 pounds+/-), four C-stands (two for lights and two for diffusion scrims/sun blockers) four sand bags and various other goodies. I'd head over to the location and set up a big softbox and we'd shoot like that. We would need the big rig if were shooting with one of the full frame Sonys, and that's the way I used to shoot exterior with the big Nikon D810 but, I'm just not feeling it today. I'm out to reduce the load in deference to the heat. 

I mulled the shoot over and suddenly remembered something really cool about the Sony RX10 series of cameras; they have mechanical leaf shutters (or switchable electronic shutters) and can sync with flash all the way up to 1/1250th of a second. This is a great thing because it means I can use a smaller, battery powered flash, sync'd at a higher shutter speed and get the fill flash I want for the image outdoors. However, we never take any information on face value when $$$ is involved so I grabbed the RX10ii (it has the built in ND if I need it...) and started testing. 

Using a Nikon AS10 hot shoe to PC cord adapter I could trigger just about anything that has a reciprocal PC plug but I wanted to see if I could use the Cactus V6 radio trigger along with the Cactus RF60 flash instead. I didn't know exactly what the performance parameters of the triggering mechanisms were in terms of max sync speed but the easiest way to find out is to test. I switched the camera to mechanical shutter speeds and ISO 100 and then started firing away starting at 1/1600th. 

No love at 1/1600th so I dropped down to 1/1250th and there it was: full flash sync. Bright across the frame. Not wanting to leave anything to chance I tried an entire range of shutter speeds down to 1/60th and all worked well. Just to be thorough I pulled the RX10iii out of the drawer, tested it in the same way and it too passed with flying colors. I dropped it into the bag next to the model 2 to serve as a back up. I'll be shooting as long a focal length as I can, commensurate with getting the background scene I want but I know I won't need to go longer than the equivalent of 200mm in this job.

The ability to sync flash at a wide range of shutter speeds is a good thing if you are shooting in contrasty daylight and need to fill in shadows. We'll take this feature and combine it with the way I usually deal with sunlit portraits. We'll find the background I want first and then figure out the relationship between subject and background that is most pleasing. I'll set a base exposure for the general scene. I'm aiming for f4.0 as my base aperture at ISO 100 so I'll be nudging right up to the shutter speed 1/1250th and might need to accommodate the sun by switching to f4.5 to get perfect exposure. Alternately, I could engage the ND and drop down nearly three shutter speeds to play around 1/250th. 

I'll put a diffusion panel or light blocking panel about two feet above my subject's head and sand bag it well. This takes hard light off my subject but it also drops his exposure at least two stops under daylight and that's where the flash comes in. I'll use it to bring the exposure back up on his face but without the squinting that the constant sun would cause. 

But I have no intention of using raw flash; that would just be replacing one hard light source with another. I'll use the flash in a modifier. Today I'm going to go with a smaller, 32 inch, collapsible Westcott octabank. It's quick to assemble and is a nice, soft source that lends itself to being used in close to the subject.  

Other gear includes: Wide brimmed hat, sunscreen, cooler with water, tripod, etc. 

I look forward to spending an hour in the heat and then getting back into the air conditioning. 

Image from a hot Summer day at Barton Springs Pool. Taken with the predecessor of the RX10; the Sony R1. A wonderful camera with a smaller than APS-C sensor and a permanently attached, Zeiss zoom lens. The tradition continues.

Last week our yard was emerald green. Who knows how close to this west Texas desert scene we'll end up in a week or so..... (Olympus EP-2 and Pen F 60mm f1.5). 

A Portrait of a Graphic Designer. In the studio on Westwood Terrace.

©Kirk Tuck

When I lose confidence in my abilities as a photographer

I run back to the very basics and start my 

education all over again. 

One light. One subject. 

Then I regain my footing. 

It would be so sad if we couldn't light people....

It was impossible to do commercial photographic work with digital in the early years of this century because, you know, resolution and noise.

Image from Kodak 660 and Nikon wide angle lens, circa 2000. 

And dynamic range. And sharpness. And color.

Hmmm. Maybe it was just a learning curve.

(Sarcasm strongly implied).

Shooting food at Manuel's Restaurant for their website.

Portrait made in the 500 San Marcos Studio. Big light, slow film.

©Kirk Tuck

Hand printed on the premises.

A Portrait Made with Agfapan 25 and a Big Light.

Anna-Marie in the 902 Studio.