Prepping for a job on which I need to photograph toaster oven-sized products. Part 2. Testing, testing. 1,2,3...

B.Y. @ the Metropolitan Museum.

My corporate supervisor.

Well, the afternoon of testing is over and so is any nervousness about the upcoming job. Amazon delivered my ten foot, USB-C to USB-C 3.1 Gen2 cables right on time. I read about software issues between the latest version of Lumix Tether 1.7 tethering software and Mac OS Catalina 10.15.0 so I immediately updated my Laptop OS to 10.15.6. The combo seems to work fine with the S1R right now. I ran it all for an hour with lots of full-res and high-res raw test shots and nothing glitched. That part of the job seems locked down nicely. 

 The post focus feature of the camera is a bust for me on this job. It's just not reliable enough to be workable and just being able to pull 18 MB Jpegs is not going to work for this client. There is also a vicious frame crop when using it.  After evaluating the post focus feature I spent a little while testing different lenses for the different shooting situations but my real focus (yeah, yeah) was to see what I could do when it came to the still life shots that require more depth of field than my usual subjects.

Using the normal 47+ raw mode I shot the camera at one second and the lens at f16 and brought the raw files into PhotoShop for some eye-watering inspection. If I leave space all  around (lower magnification) the product/target I can get sharp front and back edges most of the time. But the winner in this race is clear. It's best to shoot with the high-res/multi-shot mode and get the angle I want and the comp I want but leave about 1/3 of the total frame empty. This means I am shooting further from the subject and gaining depth of focus as I move back and making the object smaller in the frame. Works well almost without fail. And the amount of detail in those huge files is breathtaking.

If they throw something at me that's enormous and needs more depth of field I'll shoot it with manual focusing stacking, using raw files, and go back to blending the frames in Photoshop. But I'm pretty certain I've got it wired with the super high res + distancing protocol. 

The next thing I wanted to check was how much sharpness I'd lose stopping down to f16 with my current lenses. The short answer is....not much. I was oversold on the idea that f16 isn't particularly pretty or useful with current digital cameras. That's not true with the lens I have in mind for the product shots. 

I picked up a 24-70mm f2.8  Lumix S Pro lens back in February and have used it sparingly but every time I do so I'm surprised at its high performance. I did test shots at the medium focal lengths (28-50mm) and the results at f16 are just fine. I might want to push in a bit of texture sharpening and boost the low radius sharpening a bit in post but the images I'm pulling out of camera are quite nice and sharper than any I would have gotten from whatever I was using a few years ago. 

If I start with a 180 megapixel shot, using the center 2/3rds of the lens circle, I'll have tons of detail to play with when I downsample to useable file sizes. Another problem solved? Naw, just a bit of anxiety squashed. 

The second part of the job is almost the polar, technical opposite. The clinician shots will be done with very narrow depth of field (gobs of background blur!) and a desire for flares and optical artifacts in the frame. Here's my only issue with that kind of work, so far: None of my current lenses seem to want to flare; even when used wide open with a light source in the frame. And none of them like to show off any artifacts. But the A.D. and I discussed this "issue" and we are both comfortable adding some of those effects in post. We'll start clean and dirty them up as we work on them. 

I've selected four lenses for the shots of a clinician working with each product/device. I like the Sigma Art 20mm f1.4 because it's the obvious choice for any shots that we decide must be both wide, sharp and still drop the background out of focus. While a 20mm isn't a logical choice for limited/shallow depth of field we'll be working close enough to the subject make it do what we need. I tested that lens today and it's plenty sharp by f2.0. Nearly perfect by f2.8. A far cry from the old 20mm's I started with many years ago. Those might have sharpened up enough, generally, by f8.0 or so. The Sigma 35mm f1.4 Art is a good, all around lens for tighter shots that still require soft backgrounds and it's as sharp as I could ask for wide open, getting cleaner and sharper all the way out to f4.0. It always earns a place in the mix.

The 50mm f1.4 Lumix S-Pro is sharper wide open at f1.4 than my Leica 90mm Elmarit is at f5.6. I'll use it for as many of the shots as I can. I'm not worried about the clinician shots because I know it's easier to select and drop areas out of focus than it ever is to try and make something that's already soft in a file sharper. The 50mm f1.4 Lumix was a splurge but every time I shoot with that lens I get two benefits: Tangy sharpness, even wide open, and a nice workout for the bicep and forearm muscles on my left arm. The lens is a big, heavy piece of gear but it was made for style controlled advertising shoots like this one. 

Finally, I have to include the Sigma 85mm f1.4 Art lens because of all the lenses I own the combination of performance and focal length is as close to perfect as I can imagine. I don't think we'll really need something that long and at the same time delivering such a narrow depth of field but you never know, and it would be nice to have an opportunity to stretch my time hanging out with that lens a bit. Especially since, in this case, I won't be carrying it around in the heat at the end of a strap, married to a dense and heavy camera. 

In shoots like these the shoulder mounted camera bags stay home and the cameras + lenses travel in a wheeled Think Tank case. We'll move maybe 50 feet in three days. I think my assistant and I can handle that. 

That's all I have to share about the upcoming assignment and the process of selecting and testing the candidates for the gear inventory. I hope this was somewhat entertaining and explained my thought process in getting ready to go on location. I've missed the mental exercise.

Self-casting. I needed a person to do something in the frame and there wasn't anybody around.

I cast myself and made good use of the self timer on my camera. It was easily 100° in that factory in Matamoros, Mexico. This week's job will be in pleasantly filter A/C. 

A historic shot of Austin which predates about ten new high rises. 

A favorite crane shot. With Apple expanding in Austin and Tesla coming here too I'm guessing these cranes will not be an endangered species for a while...

The boy and I had a pre-production meeting this afternoon. 

He'll be assisting me for the last three days of the work week. 

It won't be his first rodeo by a long shot...

a trusty collaborator.

Getting the depth of field right for a product shot

 is....everything.

That's all I've got for now. Hope the week goes well for everyone.

Gearing up for our first "real" job since the end of February.

From a lab shoot in New Jersey. 

A couple of years ago...

I'm very excited. And a bit nervous. I accepted a project for a company that makes all sorts of top tier bio-tech testing equipment. They make some of the machines that are used in Covid-19 testing, blood pathogen testing and cancer screening. They sell the diagnostic products around the world and they need photographs of some new products that are rolling out, along with stylized images of a clinician using the machines.

I'm excited because I think it's going to be fun getting back to work but I'm also nervous because it's been a while since I've done table top sized product shots and I want to try out some of the features of the S1 and S1R Lumix cameras that I either have not used or used only once, to test, months ago, and have largely forgotten how to use.

I'm waiting for a current technology USB-c 3.1 to same cable to arrive today so I can set up and test the first important feature. The client and I would both like to shoot the actual product shots (machines against white backgrounds) with a high res camera tethered to a laptop. The cable I ordered is a high bandwidth cable that's designed for camera to computer transfers. Once I have it in hand I get to download the latest version of Lumix Tether and figure out the best way to make it all work.

I know I can get the actual camera controls to work with the program but I need to be able to quickly review the files and I'm pretty sure I'll need to use Lightroom or Capture One and set up a watched folder for that. So, working on that and then practicing the set-up over and over again is on the agenda for this afternoon.

The one other feature, in camera, I'm interested in is the focus stacking/post focus capability. I have high hopes of making this work for all my stationary product-only shots but I'm a bit bummed that the system is limited to a max of 18 megapixel files (they are blended from 6K video files...). I have a suspicion that I'll want to hedge my bets and shoot with this post focus feature but also back-up each set-up with a high res file in the S1R. We'll see which one gets us the best focus depth+detail. I have a sinking feeling, after playing around with earlier Panasonic cameras that I'll want the higher res file, in raw, as the starting point for our post production. I just wish I could have both the focus stacking with range selection AND a 47.5 megapixel file... Maybe that will happen on the S2R.

Again, I think I'll pull my Canon Pro 100 printer onto a white seamless sweep this afternoon and play around with various lenses and camera to subject distances to see just how much of a typical product I can keep in sharp focus with the high res camera and then with the focus stacking. The funny thing is that I know I could stop down the lens on a Canon G16 to f8.0 and get total coverage but I'm pretty sure my client is counting on a big, juicy raw file to play with once we get through the photography process and into post. I'm putting time in experimenting today because I don't want to get caught short on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of this coming week. We've got a lot to accomplish.

Another thing I haven't thought of for quite a while is the effect of diffraction on sharpness with small pixel/high density sensors like the one in the S1R. Yes, you can get tons and tons of detail at optimum apertures but...you have to be cognizant of the potential sharpness robbing issue of lens diffraction at the smaller apertures one needs to achieve deep focus. Extended depth of field.

In the best of all worlds we'd want to use f16 and, if available, f22 for all of the product shots in order to get good sharpness from the leading edge of the product all the way to the back of the cabinet. My hope is that the Leica certified Panasonic lenses and the Sigma Art lenses I'll bring will be well enough corrected to make the effects of diffraction less obvious, but I know that a lot of the effect is down to the physics of aperture size and focal length. Still, it would be nice to be able to use smaller f-stops.

Again, we'll spend some time testing to make sure we're not setting ourselves up for disappointment.

One idea that came to me while working through all of this would be to back up the camera a bit from the subject and make the products smaller in the frame, overall, but to then enable the high-res mode (multi-shot) in the camera to generate those huge 160-180 megapixel files the camera is capable of and then cropping in to provide a right sized image in the frame. If I can double the resolution of the frame and move back to make the object smaller (half size?) in the frame I could still end up with an equal amount of resolution but with more depth of field on the product. Again, this is something else I need to test today.

We'll be using our collection of LED lights for this assignment since the products and the products+clinician aren't really moving fast....

I've enlisted Ben to assist me on this one because we've been inhabiting the same safe "bubble" for the last ten days or so and I feel comfortable with him. I was hesitant to hire an assistant that I didn't know well, or even one I did, since you can never know their actual chain of connectivity to a wider group.

I did a walk through with the client on Thursday. We'll be shooting the products in a large media room at the facility. There is no one officing there now as their media team is working from home. Ben and I will be the only ones in the room for the set-ups and, once we've got something to show, we'll bring in the A.D. to look at the image on the laptop and either approve it or advise us about changes. The rest of the offices and labs around us are also unpopulated and will remain so during the three days of the shoot.

We have two models but we will only be photographing one of them at a time. As usual, most of the time will be spent with Ben and me setting up the basic structure of each clinical setting shot and then bringing in our model once we're ready to shoot. Since the company is a bio-tech engineering company the models (who are also clinicians) will be dressed for their typical lab work: with face masks, face shields, lab ware and gloves. The room we'll be photographing in is about 2500 square feet and totally bereft of anyone but our small team.

As I was thinking about writing this I was so focused on our current reality that I was going to say something like: "One of the reasons I'm nervous about this project is that it's the first time I've had to work with a face mask, etc. for three full days in a row!!!" But on reflection I've spent (cumulatively) many weeks in full "bunny" suits, with hoods, goggles and gloves -- even Tyvek shoe covers --- while photographing various processes in semi-conductor clean rooms over the years. Several years ago we also did a multi-day shoot for another Bio-Tech firm in Houston; one that handles deadly pathogens, and we were fully suited up for most of that project as well. By comparison, this is much less cumbersome.

Ben and I are both up to the physical task ahead of us but I haven't had to pay attention and use my brain in this way for months now. I hope I don't get distracted and wander off. Or get bored and go looking for a swimming pool. But, if we handle this successfully then it signifies to me that we're back  in the mix.

Wish me luck with that depth of field issue. It's kind of new territory for me with this particular camera system but, I guess we've done it all before with lesser cameras so with a bit of luck we'll find it as easy as it should be.

Nice to get back into the mix, have P.O.'s cross the desk, scout locations and re-find some daily purpose; besides swimming and those dreaded downtown photos....

Hope you've got a good week planned. Don't let your guard down but don't forget to mix in some fun.

Old lens. New flowers.

I wasn't expecting to like the combination of the Panasonic Lumix GX8 and the 40mm f1.4 PenFT lens quite so much. The lens is around fifty years old and was made for the original half frame film cameras. It's worn in places on the barrel and is fitted to my camera with an inexpensive adapter.

But when I used it to make raw files yesterday it seemed like a brand new (to me) lens. I shot it mostly at f2.8, which is two stops down from wide open, but I think it was the latest upgrades to the raw conversion program I was using that made the final image resonate so well with me.

There is delicate but discernible detail in the white flowers and the color rendering of the green leaves is, to my eyes, superb.

It's sad to think that a company/division that could produce a lens this good in the late 1960's-early 1970's has just been sold to non-photo-centric company.  I hope everything works out well for them.

Someone mentioned that the new company should make far fewer camera body models and concentrate on making world class lenses for a wider market of lens mounts and formats. I think that's a great idea. In the interim I'm thinking we'll play across the best of two worlds: we'll find our favorite, current, Olympus lenses and mate them with Panasonic cameras like the G9.

Of the current lenses I've used from Olympus my favorites are the 12-100mm f4.0 Pro and the 40-150mm f2.8 Pro. Both are wonderfully sharp and have some nice magic to them.

If you shoot with Olympus lenses I'm sure you have a favorite...

Recent portrait. In the current studio in Westlake Hills.

B.Y. 

What I saw on my vacation this morning. The travel agent said it would be exciting but Expedia never prepared me for this! I should have brought my Lonely Planet guidebook.

Many people commenting on the blog say I should take a vacation. Many more suggest I work too hard.  Or that I'm going stir crazy in the house and studio. I thought I would take everyone's advice so I grabbed my passport, packed a small bag, grabbed a favorite travel-oriented camera and lens and headed to the airport right after swim practice. I didn't know where I would go but I thought I'd get the process rolling. I pulled into the half empty parking garage and grabbed my stuff. Excitement building by the second. I thought I'd splash out for a premium level vacation with no regards for cost or time. 

I walked up to the American Airlines counter. The person behind the counter looked up from the novel she was reading, took another bite of her chocolate chip cookie, washed it down with some Earl Grey tea, cleared her throat and asked, "Can I help you?" A tumbleweed distracted us for a moment as it billowed across the airport lobby and headed toward the Southwest Airlines counters...

"Yes. I'd like to book a first class ticket to Rome, Italy." I thought it was a prudent vacation request since Rome is one of my favorite cities in which to photograph. I pulled several platinum cards from my wallet, trying to remember which one paid back the most points for miles flown. But when I looked up to see the progress of my ticket request I saw the clerk standing there, nearly motionless but with a sardonic half smile on her face. 

"Yeah. No!" She said, looking at me like I was daft. "The E.U. isn't allowing Americans to travel there right now. Try someplace in this country." 

"Okay." I said, disappointment dripping from every word.  "Any suggestions?"

She went on to explain that I could go to NYC and quarantine in a hotel room for two weeks but that once I emerged back into the sunlight I'd find all the great restaurants closed and the museums mostly shuttered. Oh, and all the public bathrooms are also closed. She guessed I could walk in the park.

I asked about San Francisco and she let me know that all of the restaurants, every single one of them, were closed forever, same with the art galleries, and all the rich people in the city had already moved to their fortified places in Napa, etc. so maybe there wasn't much to do there either. 

I asked about Seattle but all the five star hotel rooms there are currently booked up by anonymous agents of the federal government so.....that would be a long shot too. Same in Portland. But at least, she mused, there would be ample outdoor activities...

We went through city after godforsaken city until finally we winnowed my choices down to lovely Des Moines and spicy Oklahoma City. I was a bit frustrated at that point and I asked her where the bulk of trendy, chic, affluent, artsy, elitist travelers were flying to, statistically, for vacations this Summer. She replied...

"Well, there is this one city in Texas that's really cute and desirable and has some great little take out places, and outdoor live music, and some cool private swim clubs, and some gorgeous/enormous houses in the western hills that catch the evening breezes. It's surrounded by lakes and rivers. It's pretty trendy but so many of the folks who live there are into outdoor sports and coffee. You might like it!"

I told her that sounded like the best option and asked her to book me a first class, roundtrip ticket on the next flight. 

"So, you just need one roundtrip ticket to Austin, Texas? Is that right?" She asked. I said that it was and slid my credit card across the counter to her. I thought the fare was a bit high for such a short trip but she was right, it's a charming place in which to spend time during a pandemic. I was able to find a number of very good coffee shops in my first few hours after arriving here today. And the place I checked into is nearly as comfortable as my own house at home. That's a nice thing.

But right now I'm investigating traveling the country in a giant recreational vehicle, just to assuage the worry about my non-vacation which so many of you have expressed. I kind of like the idea of traveling from small, rural town to small rural town (bereft of culture, restaurants, attractions, etc.) while driving something bigger than a Greyhound bus. I like the idea of getting 6 miles to the gallon (unless there is a hill or a head wind) because gas is so cheap right now. I'm just grappling with the whole concept of me having to keep up with something called a "black water" tank. That, and the whole idea of cooking with propane. But I'll let you know how it goes. I've always wanted to visit Montegomery, Ala. and then there's always Universal Studios in Orlando....  

Let me know about your vacation plans...

One of the first things I did on my vacation this morning was to channel my inner Alec Soth and find something mundane and featureless to "interpret." This building worked for me. 

I'll send a large print along to the HRC and see if they need it for their permanent collection. 

And, of course, Austin is known for its trees.

I admired this one for a while. I wonder why the gift shops don't have

post cards of it.

I toyed with the idea of living in a high rise loft space for a while.

The shared air conditioning sounded quaint and cozy.

I guess these are rides for tourists. I'm a little acrophobic so I didn't bother finding out 

how to get a ticket. 

All of today's "vacation" photos were taken with a black, Panasonic GX8 camera and an ancient, PenFT 40mm f1.4 lens which settled in nicely at f2.8 for.....every image. It's a sweet lens. Better than a Zeiss Otus or a Leica Summicron. I love mine.

OT: Hey, did everyone see what Apple, Inc. stock did in after-hours trading? It popped over $25 per share on news that they had double digit growth y-o-y for the quarter that just ended. Maybe we should hire them to deal with the pandemic. They sure know how to get stuff done!!!

Double OT: And the stock is splitting 4:1 in August... now that's a decent vacation!!!!!!!!!!

added end of day: And...Apple stock gains 10% in one day. Now that's a real vacation. 

Advertising on 2nd St.

Thursday. Walk and Look. 

A shoot with two cameras.

From "Hairspray." 

(The image above is a fun one from the archives and has nothing to do with the written content of this post). 

We're trying to keep all client engagements short and sweet. To that end I spend time setting up the studio well ahead of time so no one is waiting around. This morning we were photographing one person on a white background. I chose to light with LED fixtures because we followed the "main course," portrait photographs, with a short series of video captures. The continuous lighting worked both ways.

While it's easy and possible to switch a couple menu settings on the Lumix S1 camera and go from photographing to filming (?. We need some new words here that don't use film analogies) when you are working quickly it's even better to have two identical cameras and set each one up to shoot a specific type of file. I shot the photos  in raw and in the "natural" setting, with a few tweaks. I shot the video in 10 bit 4:2:2 .mov files at 4K and used the flat setting, with a few tweaks. The video camera was preset for shutter speed, aperture and ISO so all we had to do in the switch over was swap cameras on the tripod. Nothing to overlook in the heat of the moment. 

It's a good way to work. If we were back in leisure times it wouldn't have been a big deal at all to use one camera for both and to take a break between the two parts of the session to make sure the settings were exactly right. But now time seems more critical.

I shot the video in a fairly high light environment and I used the 24-105mm f4.0 lens on the S1 with the V-log upgrade loaded (it offers other capabilities besides V-Log) and I used the face detection mode in the AF settings. The camera and lens locked in like an armadillo on a grub. There isn't a second in five minutes of video where the camera loses focus lock or hunts. 

Later in the afternoon the advertising agency/client got an online gallery with 310 color corrected Jpegs and a WeTransfer.com file transfer of 1.3 GB of 4K video. Now we're just waiting for photo selections. Once I get them I'll retouch the images and drop out the backgrounds to provide Tiff files with layer masks. Everything we shot will eventually go to the web.

Camera news. 

My videographer buddy texted me this afternoon to let me know he was pre-ordering the Sony A7SIII from B&H photo. I was amused. Only a week ago he was all ready to spring for a Canon C300 mk3.
I can't fault his choice (yet) since we haven't seen any reviewers do a deep dive on the Sony camera yet. And he does have a complete selection of the best Sony lenses. But I'm gun shy about Sony cameras right now. There always seems to be an undisclosed weak spot. It will be interesting to see if they've finally delivered a flawless video camera. They have gotten a lot of stuff right this time: starting with the menus...

After using my S1 for today's video I have no current camera lust. There's not much out there I really feel like buying. I'm sure that will change. I'm sure I'll let you know. But I can assure you it won't be a Canon M5 or a Sony A7Smk3. Just not in the mood...

There is one cinema lens I wouldn't mind having but I won't mention it for fear the price will go up before I commit.

Hope you are safe, happy and have decided not to send your e-mail to me that starts out with: "You Should...."