Olympus lens tops non-existent test chart for charm and vivaciousness. Lack of omni dimensional psychic stabilization and no ponderous bulk = "deal killer?"

So, I wrote earlier today about Belinda finding the Pen FT 25mm f4.0 lens this week and giving it to me for safe keeping. I threatened that I would subject you to more building photographs as soon as I had time to get downtown. And, now, here we are. We finished our final project a bit early and I had time in the mid-afternoon to rush out into the blazing southern heat and humidity because I knew that finding out how this lens performed might be critical to someone out there. 

I parked under a shade tree at Zach Theatre and braced myself for the fiery embrace of August. My omniscient car told me it was 100° outside and warned me not to leave the air conditioned cocoon but how can I test inexpensive, fifty year old lenses for my friends and assorted readers if I'm not willing to take the life threatening risk of walking in a heat wave? Right? Right?

Here is the zesty little lens mounted on the front of the finest 

street shooting camera ever produced, the Lumix 

GX8. Never better for a hot walk.

When I exited the car my feet momentarily stuck to the pavement because the Vibram soles were melting. I realized I needed to get off the heat soaked black top and onto the cinder trail as soon as possible or my shoes would surrender to the heat, melt into the asphalt and I'd be stuck there like a bug in a roach motel, trapped and waiting to die of heat exhaustion....

I set the camera to "A" and ISO 200 and, for white balance, the like sun icon. I turned on the focus peaking and metaphorically got to work. 

Both the focusing ring on the lens and the aperture ring are the best implementations of all metal, structural and haptic engineering ever attempted on a consumer camera product. The feel of the focusing ring is so perfect that when I compared it to a $10,000 Leica lens I found myself feeling sorry for anyone who has wasted their money chasing perfection on the wrong continent.

But the real test is in the look and technical perfection of the finished files and that's where the Olympus excels. I have a special piece of software that allows me to look at images at 2000%. In the seventh photo down, the one of the bridge, there is some foliage over to the left hand, bottom part of the frame. On one of the leaves there was something which, at 400% looked like a dark spot. When I zoomed into 2000% (the equivalent of plastering a print the full height of one of the high rise buildings in one of the frames below). and I had that level of magnification engaged I could clearly see that it was a gnat on the leaf. But not just any gnat. He (yes, I checked) had a tattoo on his back that read: "Gnats Rule." And he had a piece of pollen stuck to his third left leg...

Usually modern lenses tend to fall apart when you examine images from them at 200 or 400% but not the ancient Olympus 25. No sir. And if you think my tale of advanced and astounding resolution is riveting I hesitate to tell you about the nano-acuity and sub-micron level ultra-micro-contrast. I can't really show it off here but just take my word for it; it's amazing. 

And it's all the more amazing given that it's a very small lens. But exquisitely built. I checked on the list price at the time it was on the market as a new lens and factored in fifty years of inflation (including the loss of 9% buying power against the Yen in this year alone --- thank you politicians!) and I concluded that to make and sell a lens like this masterpiece now would run somewhere between 12,000 and 43,000 USD dollars.  My math may be a little dicey but it's almost certainly in that wide ball park.

Or about 200 Yen.

I also did a bit of testing on the lens's resistance to the elements. At one point I was in the heat for so long my sweat was dripping down my arm and onto my camera like torrent of water from a garden hose. The sweat cascaded off the lens like vodka off a duck's back. Both the lens and camera were unscathed by the experience, and once I rinsed them off with a bath of warm Coca-Cola (for nurturing effect) followed by a quick immersion in highly distilled water they seemed no worse for the wear (be sure to send me your favorite camera if you want me to test it as well!!!). 

Well, that's all I can say about this particular lens. We're ramping up security and will no longer keep all the cameras and lenses on the front seat of my car with the doors unlocked and the windows rolled down. No. When people find out about this lens and find out how scarce it is we'll need to lock it in the subterranean

vault, sandbag the studio windows and post armed guards on the roof. The lens is that much of a must have for any true collector's hoard. 

Now, as Ming would say, "Please enjoy this curated gallery. Because curation is all about curating. And having things curated. And writing the word, "curate." A lot. But I bet he doesn't have his mitts on the Pen FT 25mm f4.0 yet. So there. I guess I should also mention that I have a pristine copy of the 25mm f2.8 as well. But that lens isn't nearly as exciting. It's 99% perfect while the f4.0 rings the bell. No wonder people stopped designing new optics decades ago and started to concentrate on just making all lenses bigger, fatter, heavier and more expensive. Give the people what they want!

Click through to see the mesmerizing photos writ larger.

Back to work. Having fun. And very much appreciating the flexibility and sheer file quality of the Panasonic Lumix S1R cameras. And lenses.

Ben assists at our Luminex shoot. 

Upholding the tradition of "standing in."

*

I'm having a blast getting back to work. We've been shooting product at our client's H.Q. and we've basically got a building all to ourselves since so many people are currently working from home. I enlisted number one (and only) son, Ben to assist me since I knew there were many moving parts to the shoot and his experience and attention to detail would save my butt from my own complacent laziness.  Here are some random observations from the first two days of a three day project: 

Since I am now swimming earlier in the morning than any time since college I did not have to skip my masters swim workout to make the schedule work. I was in the pool at 5:58 a.m. and in the client's offices with my assistant in tow at 8:55. Nice to be wide awake when starting a new project...

The first day of shooting was all about making images of products on a white background. Every photo of every product we shot this way will have the background dropped out to white. We set up a white seamless paper sweep across a heavy duty, wheeled table and the put shiny white boards under the products. The shiny laminate surface reflects a lot of light and we can move things around without worrying about tearing the background paper. 

All the machines we photographed are used in medical testing or chemical testing and are current state of the art. If I remember correctly the machine in the image just above costs something like $150,000. It's about the size of my microwave oven... Armed with this knowledge we used extra caution handling the products since one drop would be....expensive. 

Ben and I arrived at the client's place around 9 a.m. and dragged a hefty cart full of gear down a long hall to a room normally used by the in-house media crew to shoot videos and grab content on the fly. They're all working remotely now so we made ourselves right at home. I had Ben set up a couple of 3x3 foot softboxes on Godox LED lights and then we hung a third fixture on a boom arm directly over the products, shining the light through a 4x4 foot Chimera diffusion panel. This was our basic set up but with every product there were tweaks, and minor re-lighting through the day. 

The client requested that we shoot tethered, which I don't do often, but since we were so happy to have a project to do we readily complied. I downloaded the latest copy of Lumix Tether onto a very recent MacBook Pro. The camera tethers via a USB C 3.1 connection and we hooked the camera and laptop via a sturdy, ten foot long cable. I followed the recommended start-up procedure, Set the USB control for "tethering" on the camera and have had a solid connection for the last two eight hour days. A bonus, beyond nearly total control of the camera is that the laptop charges the battery when the camera isn't shooting. We ended the first day with the same battery we started with; still at 94% charge. I was very pleased to find the transfers from camera to computer were rock solid and speedy; even when moving 340 megabyte high res raw files. 

Each product got photographed from three angles. One frame from about 20 degrees to the side, one frame straight on and on frame from 20 degrees on the opposite side. There are always two challenges when shooting products like the ones we encountered yesterday. The first challenge is in getting everything in focus. We had to make sure that the front logos were sharp and there was structural integrity to the back end of the device. 

To do this I made good use of the manual focus clutch in the Panasonic 24-70mm f2.8 lens. I set it to manual and enabled focus peaking. My methodology was to start focusing from the front to the rear of the product and watch until the focus peaking indicators just started to thin out on the front. That meant I'd gone as far as I could in terms of distributing focus to the rear without losing focus on the front. The old rule of thumb that I learned years ago (and which may not be scientifically accurate...) is that focus extends one third in front and two thirds behind the actual plane of actual focus. It seems to work that way. 

If I could not extend the focus enough to cover from the front to the rear adequately I would move the camera further away from the subject and try again. The reduction in magnification or increase in camera to subject distance meant I would end up with a more generous depth of field. And having the camera tethered to a laptop with a Retina screen I was able to punch in and double check that I'd gotten both front and rear parts in good focus. 

If I felt that we were using too small a portion of the frame to get the resolution I wanted to deliver I would switch from the single, 47.5 megapixel size file to the 180 megapixel, high-res setting which worked flawlessly. In that mode, with really good lenses, I could compose with an object taking up only a third of the overall frame and still delivery at or close to a 45+ megapixel file. Checking the files later on a 27 inch 5K screen I was impressed by the sheer amount of detail in the files! It's a great way to work on subjects that don't move. Felt a little like the old days of using a view camera. 

I tested my methods last week in anticipation of this week's jobs and one of the things I was (needlessly) concerned about was whether I would be able to use the f16 setting on the 24-70mm Lumix S-Pro lens or if the dreaded scourge of diffraction would mar the results. I'm happy to report that I spent the entirety of the first day shooting with the lens locked at f16 and didn't see any degradation of crispness or detail in the final files. The multi-shot, high res files were especially crispy and had good "bite."

The second challenge in photographing products on white is to ensure a good, three dimensional feel to the products. Stuff shot in white tents seems far too flat and it's impossible to deal with combinations of reflective and non-reflective surfaces. I like my product shots to have exposure differences between the three visible planes so that the really seem to have depth. It's difficult to do if you have to get a pure white background in the camera but we really don't have to worry as much about that as we used to. PhotoShop's selection tools have improved tremendously and we've had great luck starting with the quick selection tool, then making adjustments in the "mask and refine" menu which allows for meticulous masking of parts that don't select flawlessly on automatic. Once we've selected and masked as perfectly as we can hitting the return key gives us a file in layers with the background nicely masked out. 

The trick is to make all your color corrections and transforms, or perspective corrections, before you get to the selection stage. Otherwise you'll kill your mask if you make post selection changes that change the image boundaries. Especially when you go to fix keystoning...

On the second day we worked in a large lab with a product manager and a scientist who agree to model the clinical use of the devices we were featuring. I thought we might use the existing light in the lab (fluorescent lights up at ceiling level) for general fill and then augment with some frontal light but when we started setting up I realized that then fluorescent tubes being used were impossible to match with exterior light from the windows and, even if we closed the blinds on the wall of windows, the flo fixtures had an odd and inconsistent combination of tubes. Some almost wildly green and others with heavy yellow spikes. Since color accuracy of logos and finishes on the products was critical, and my own desire to produce very pleasing flesh tones equally critical, I opted to kill all of the interior lights and relight the room with a collection of LED lights. We used three large, Aputure Lightstorm LS-1 panels bouncing off the ceiling for general fill and the supplemented with four Godox SL60Ws in either 3x3 foot soft boxes or pushed through round diffusers. I like the overall control of using diffuser panels but I hate having to use two light stands per light/diffuser combination and should probably just use all four of the SL60Ws in boxes. 

The difference in shots required a change in approach from the day before. When shooting product we had the camera locked down and always used f16, along with low ISOs and very slow (1 second) shutter speeds. Triggering the camera with Lumix Tether, and using the electronic shutter in the S1R, meant that we never worried about camera shake, even with multi-shot, high res set-ups. But with the clinician going through the process of using each analytic machine it was more important to show accurate process. We were also matching a prior shoot on which the art director wanted to play with shallow depth of field. 

While I kept my camera glued to the tripod I raised the ISO to 1,000 and started working at f2.8 or f3.5 along with shutter speeds in the 1/125th to 1/160th of a second range. It's exactly what the client was lookin for. And here I have to praise all of the lenses I ended up using for the "live action." 

We shot most of the clinical shots three ways. Using a 20mm f1.4 Sigma Art lens we comped the shots for a dramatic effect. The camera was close enough to the products and clinician to render them large in the shots while making background details drop away. I think of these as "establishing" shots. The client loved the forced perspective that the wide angle yields. I was impressed by the clean look of the 20mm when used at 2.8 or 4.0. 

Next we shifted to the 35mm f1.4 Sigma Art lens for a normally composed clinician and product shot that made the large room look "accurate" while putting some emphasis on the foreground. These are probably the shots that will get everyday use and we ended up stopping down the camera to around f4.5 - 5.6 just to make sure the clinician and machine were sharp where we needed them to be. 

Finally, we put the Sigma 85mm f1.4 Art lens on the camera to capture tight, detail shots of the model loading capsules into the machine or interfacing with the software on the machines. I used apertures around f2.8 to f4.0 to get good detail on the core of the action but also to help the backgrounds blur into beautiful goo. 

Upon inspection back in the office I observed that each lens delivered superb results. I am always impressed with the images I've been able to get from the 85mm f1.4 but in this instance it was the 20mm f1.4 that made me do a double-take. In concert with the in-camera corrections the 20mm at f2.8+ is sharp everywhere and even across the frame. It's actually the first wide angle that's pushed me to appreciate wider angles than I'm used to. 

No question that I would happily buy all three of these Sigma lenses again. All three were easy to manually focus and worked very well with the camera's focus peaking feature. In fact, the combination of lenses that are super sharp near their widest aputures, along with accurate focus peaking is changing the way I approach this kind of slow and thoughtful advertising shooting. 

I love the S1R as an advertising/studio/high res camera but like other brands of cameras, when working with raw files, the review display isn't as high res as I'd like. Once you get beyond 4X on the review there's no more real detail to see. I use the camera now in the Raw+Jpeg Standard/Medium Res because having generated an attendant Jpeg file means I can punch in to 16X and see real detail

One thing that surprised me when using the camera tethered is battery use! I brought five extra batteries along with the idea that with the camera always on and tethered I'd be going through batteries on an almost hourly basis. But that was based on using previous cameras on older USB connections. And cameras that were not designed to be charged via USB.

When I checked the battery on the tethered camera at the one hour mark I was surprised to see the battery gauge reading 96%. With a USB-C 3.1 Gen 2 cable the laptop provides continuous recharge of the battery at all times except during the actual exposure. Sweet. The connection with the laptop just obviated the need to carry around $500 worth of batteries and a charger....

I wasn't expecting that. And, at the end of the day I checked the battery again (same battery we started with about eight hours earlier) and it was hovering around 94% charged. Ripples of applause for everyone who's every had to juggle batteries and recharging during shoots. 

The stand out performer among lenses for this project is the 24-70mm f2.8 Lumix S-Pro. The manual clutch is heaven to work with. The lens is critically sharp at both ends of the focal length range AND the aperture range. When I bought it I had a lot of second thoughts about its ultimate value for its $2,200 price tag. Especially so since I was aware that Sigma was going to have a similar spec'd lens out just a few weeks later. 

I have to say that one could continue with a successful career as a videographer and/or a photographer with just this one lens combined with the equally amazing 70-200mm f4.0. They make a perfect pair. I can hardly wait to get back to shooting live theater again. These lenses will be front and center. 

A few random notes about the rest of the shoot (non-camera related): 

If you find a client that shows up on the first day bringing hot breakfast sandwiches and fresh coffee for you hold onto them. Our client delivered non-stop, premium craft service throughout the shoot and that's only typical on shoots where the CEO will be involved or the client's boss will be on set. We had neither a CEO  nor a higher up and, nevertheless, Ben and I got the "royal" treatment. 

When you have products to shoot for photographs that will be featured on large tradeshow graphics or high res presentation screens you need to be very careful not to handle them with your bare hands because the oils from your hands will require so much cleaning in order to not show up. I left product positioning and cleaning to Ben and he wore either latex or set gloves whenever he was moving or "posing" a product. He also wiped them down and carefully inspected them for dust, etc. Alcohol and towels at the ready. 

Ben and the client also worked as a good team when it came to pulling heavy and expensive products out of their boxes or shipping containers and then staging them for me. I could spend the time I would have wasted if I had been working on my own to fine tune lighting and make sure I stayed on top of the photo process. 

Make sure you and your client agree on the importance of taking breaks during the day. We generally work until lunch. We get another couple of hours of work done after lunch but everyone seems to hit a low energy point around 3 pm. That's when we send out to Starbucks (the only good game around in this industrial part of town...) for cold brew or blended drinks, loaded with caffeine. I stick with brewed, hot coffee out of habit. Ben switches to cold brew in the afternoons and our model favored a blended Frappacino.  After a half hour break in the afternoon we can soldier on through the end of the work day.

A nice aspect of working in a highly secured facility is being able to leave all our lighting gear and grip gear on site each night instead of having to pack up and move it all out. I take the cameras, lenses and computer home out of habit but not having to cart other stuff in and out is a real time saver. 

There's a bit more of the job to get done today and then we're out. Next week I start shooting our video content for Zach Theatre. It's a longer term project with lots and lots of big personalities and I can't wait. 

It's nice to feel productive again. I have to be really honest here. I always think of myself as being in good shape, in terms of physical endurance and energy, but the last two days kicked my butt. Yes, I still got up and swam hard but it's been months since I followed up a hard swim with a long, tightly scheduled advertising shoot and I could tell that I was mentally out of practice. Having to focus on one task for the better part of nine hours is exhausting if you haven't been in "training." 

After the first day I was in "evening zombie" mode. I barely had the energy to speak during dinner and hit the bed at 9 p.m., which is almost unheard of around our house full of night owls. I faired a little better yesterday and I'm getting used to it today. 

More adventures to come. 

Final note: A surprise gift.

When Belinda and I got engaged I didn't think it was "fair" for her to get a diamond engagement ring if I didn't get something in return (looking back that was way too transactional...but I might have been kidding at the time). She agreed and surprised me with a mint condition, black Pen FT camera and an assortment of near perfect lenses.

She bought a Pen FT and a lens for herself as well. She long since handed me the second Pen FT and switched to using conventional digital cameras for most things. 

When I got home from the job yesterday I went to her office to check in. We talked about news of the day and fam business and then she said she had been cleaning out a closet and found something. It was a pristine 25mm f4.0 Pen FT lens; the one she'd gotten for her Pen FT. It had been hiding in the closet for nearly twenty years. She wondered if I'd like to have it...

Of course. 

And, yes. You will probably see some downtown building shots from that lens sooner than you think. 

I have the weekend off. I think I'll sleep in. It's been a while since I tried that. 

So, one big, one medium and two small jobs this week. Seems auspicious.

It was a luxurious day to take a leisurely and comfortable walk with a small camera.

There's something both whimsical and practical about taking a small, discreet and convenient camera along with you when you walk. I've done it both ways; I've hauled around promethian cameras that weighed too much and were complex to operate, and I've walked with the more sybaritic protocol of having a camera along that was just good enough, but weightless to carry. And if your goal is a walk with exuberance and relaxation then the smaller camera is definitely the right choice. If you are in one of those moods where you feel compelled to be a tortured artist then no one is going to talk you out of packing the big gear. 

I woke up late today. I had the most restful sleep I can remember in ages. I didn't rush over coffee and breakfast but I took it outside, on the back patio, away from my laptop and all the news of the day. Only the sound of birds and wind through trees. When I laced my shoes I knew it was going to be one of those walks where you feel like you have endless energy and no pressing schedule to rush you back to the shackles of commerce. 

I went out with nothing special in mind and came back with exactly the same balance. Nothing I photographed was revelatory, nothing sublime. Just a quick snap here and there to commemorate the idea that the walk itself is the treasure. Not whatever might come out of the camera. 

I'm not sure why but I felt relaxed, rich, strong and curious. What a great blend to motivate just the right kind of walk. 

When I got back to the house I was hot and sweating. I tossed the camera on the desk in my office and walked into the north yard. I tossed my sweat soaked shirt onto the edge of the old wooden bench, kicked off my shoes and socks and stood under the cool water of the garden hose. Cool. Refreshing. Calming. I left my clothes in the sun to dry.

I spent the afternoon reading "The Wind in the Willows." Ben made a fine curry dish for dinner. Belinda smiled at me and touched my shoulder just so. For just right now, in this moment, everything is right with my world. Let me stop for a moment and really appreciate that. 

So, that's what gratitude feels like...

A few thoughts on the newest hysteria: cameras overheating while shooting esoteric video.

Many years ago I was a still photographer on a movie set here in Austin. I worked around a large crew of people and we basically just overwhelmed locations when we came to film. This was during the days of only film cinematography; no digital. It was a hot Summer and most of the production was done in evenings and at night. Most of the day time work was spent doing the interior scenes that were part of the project. 

But after reading some current/new camera reviews and watching people pontificate about the "horrors" of an 8K consumer camera having the temerity to overheat, I remembered going with the crew to a location out on Hwy. 290 West, just outside of Austin, to film a scene with a couple of train cars in the background. We went at midday. 

The lighting crew had been on site for hours, setting up 18K lights and various huge diffusion scrims as balance lights for the ultra-bright Texas sun (pre- any air pollution). Once the camera crew and the director arrived the DP, the director and the AC roughed in the angle of view and camera position for the first shot and then quickly retreated to an air conditioned RV while people further down the pay scale got to work. The first thing the crew did was position the camera, figure out the framing and then erect a open sided tent over the camera to shield both the camera and the operators (camera op + focus puller) from the direct sun. 

Then they set up the director's station and put a tent up over that. 

I thought the tent over the camera, to block the radiant heat of the sun, was solely for the comfort of the camera crew. As a working photographer no one up to that point had ever thought of putting up some shade for me while I was working on a shot but --- I've planned for it on every exterior shot since...

So, in some downtime I teased the camera crew about the tent. They were not amused. They slowly and carefully explained to me that movie film gets degraded by heat. Heat from anything. It's like slow motion mayonnaise in direct sun. It will eventually have color shifts and increased grain and other junk happen. And if the film gets damaged nothing else matters. A great take is meaningless. Brilliant acting is wasted. Etc. 

Since the movie film, when attached to a big cinema camera, is in a black metal film magazine, you can imagine that the interior temps of that black box skyrockets if you leave it out in the sun. A simple method of reducing the temperatures by a minimum of 20 degrees (as compared with direct sunlight) is to always keep the gear and the film in the shade. Even if you have to make shade.

When the Red series of cinema cameras came out movie production made its real move into digital. I got to shoot stills on some motion projects (mostly TV commercials) where Red cameras were the primary digital camera used on the project. Those camera, which fully outfitted cost somewhere in the $50,000 range ( lens additional ) would all overheat. If it was Summer then the cameras were overheating. The large sensors and the high bit rates pretty much guaranteed it.

And these are cameras that have built-in cooling fans. The data throughput heated up these 4K and 5K cameras like little toaster ovens. And the first line of defense was to always, ALWAYS  keep them out of the direct sun. Some D.P.s and camera crews kept their Reds in big coolers till it was time to shoot. Others figured out clever ways to attach ice packs around the cameras. Several very famous directors, who loved the look they could get out of the raw movie files, demanded that the productions working on their movies rent two or three Red cameras so that when one overheated they could cycle the second one in. And then the third. 

But the first line of defense was a tent over the top. If the shot was a moving shot on a dolly the grips would devise an articulated arm and some clamps and position foam core or some other white board to ride along over the top of the camera. For shade. I know I'm beating a dead horse here but the message is: motion cameras hate direct sun. Movie cameras hate direct sun. So, by extension........ Canon R5 cameras, when used to shoot high bit rate motion.....hate direct sun. 

I have a movie camera called a Sigma fp. It doesn't overheat. It was designed not to overheat. But when I use it for advertising stills or to shoot video clips out in the sun I bring a C-Stand, a side arm, a couple clamps and a 60 inch diameter white umbrella. The umbrella gets positioned over the camera and lens. If I can swing it I steal some shade from the rig for me as well. The Sigma fp was also designed with a big external heat sink and a non-moving (no mechanical image stabilization) sensor. But I would still put it under an umbrella or a tent if I was shooting in full sun. 

Will's spicy BBQ sauce. 

Many V-Loggers and reviewers have been critical of Canon for making a camera that can shoot 8K but when doing so might overheat. Commenters are already trumpeting the "deal-killer" words. You would have thought Canon put out a camera on which the lenses randomly fall off without warning. The same people who wouldn't be dumb enough to leave a fish sandwich with extra mayonnaise, or sushi, out in a plastic Baggie™ in sun for two hours before eating it are expecting a camera with tech forward features to fair much better. 

Here's an interesting workaround for all the people who are mortified by an 8K camera overheating in full sun: Try blocking direct infra-red light from hitting any part of the camera. Seriously. Then, do what all the Black Magic, Sigma fp and other professional owners do when they need to shoot higher spec video settings which heat up their cameras --- use an external digital recorder, like an Atomos, and benefit from not writing to the card in the camera (which takes more processing power, which generates more heat). If possible, power the camera from an external power supply so the battery and everything around it in the camera doesn't heat up. 

I don't really have an opinion about whether or not people need to shoot 8K video but I do know that they should be smart about doing so if they really need or want to do it. If 8K is mission critical then so is shade, an external recorder and some common sense. You can buy a car that will go 140 mph at red line. And you can drive it flat out with the air conditioning on full. I can more or less guarantee you that if you choose to drive that way in Texas on an August afternoon your engine will reach it's limits sooner than you think and you'll have a lot more to worry about than waiting for your consumer camera to cool down enough to work again. Just a thought. 

I've shot video with Sonys that overheat. The one that was most abused but never shut down, or even flashed a warning, was the RX10-3. I never had a Nikon D810 shut down either. But I when I was shooting those cameras we were using the smallish codecs provided by Sony and Nikon. Not a fire hose high, and complex data stream.

I lent a camera to a writer once. He ran afoul of a homeless person he was no doubt badgering for a photo and the camera went sailing high into the air, stopping only when it impacted with an asphalt road. The camera was totaled. The writer was huffy. He suggested that camera makers should build sturdier cameras if they wanted to call their cameras "professional."

No one ever lent him a camera again. 

From everything I've heard from the more rational camera users I know the R5 is an extremely good photography camera and goes (at least) toe-to-toe with the likes of the Panasonic S1R or the Sony A7R4. If you use it properly you can get some amazingly good video files from it as well. But once you veer off into esoterica you have to understand that limitations apply. You have to leverage what the camera can do with mindful use strategies and good set engineering. 

Otherwise you're just red-lining your gear to see where the break points are. And you're the one who will ultimately suffer. 

I'd love to have a Canon R5 and the 24-105mm RF zoom. I bet it's incredible. I'd shoot video with it too. But I'd first educate myself about the best ways to make it all work. Sad that people are so....unwilling to learn. 

Tent. Tent everything. Walking on the surface of Mercury? Be sure to bring a metallized umbrella to hold over yourself and protect you from the sun. Oh, and make sure your Nikes don't melt....

Does anyone remember when computer chips overheated and IBM started making machines with liquid cooling? Really. Even Apple had a model with liquid cooled chips. I liked mine. It kept my feet warm in the winter..... but the fan noise was still bad.

I predict (tongue in cheek) that all hybrid, mirrorless cameras will come with liquid cooled sensors and built-in fans in two years or less. And I predict that Tether Tools will have a $300 white umbrella that attaches over your camera in the next month or so. And I predict a company in China will have pretty much the same thing a couple months later for a lot less money. 

Stay cool. That goes for your cameras too!!!

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...