Jeez. What a weird time I had from 4:00 a.m. till about 11:00 a.m. this morning. And this is totally off topic if you are looking for something about photography...

this is currently my favorite shooting combo. It's so illogical and counter-intuitive. An "ancient" camera body from the 2015 era coupled with a lens from the early 1970s. And not a "collectible" cult lens or amazing powerhouse lens. Nope. It's all just comfortable stuff that feels like the cameras I learned on but still has enough technical prowess to make decent photographs. No doubt that your mileage will vary otherwise we'd all be shooting with this combo, we'd all be married to B., We'd all swim more and we'd all complain more....

My day started around 4:20 a.m. today. The early wake-up certainly wasn't by design. I had the alarm clock set for 7 a.m. with every intention of sleeping right up to the edge of the clock's precision and then, fully rested, leaping out of bed and heading over to the pool for the early Sunday masters swim practice. Yep. That was the plan. And that's how it usually goes in my little section of paradise. But not this weekend...

One of my least favorite parts of living and working in Austin is our seeming, collective addiction to mass attendance outdoor music festivals. I love live music in concert halls, small clubs, The Continental Club on Congress Ave. Even solo works at places like The Elephant Lounge. I've seen great concerts at the Bass Recital Hall at UT and on the stages of three or four live theaters sprinkled around town. But the joy of sitting in large dusty or  (weather intruding) muddy field surrounded and hemmed in by chain link fences, being sold $12 dollar Cokes, using nasty Portable Potties strung out on the periphery of a hot field has always eluded me.

The music never has the polish of a indoor venue for many practical, acoustic reasons. And out of any crowd you'll have about 10% of people who are bad actors, or just plain obnoxious. So, at a concert with 100 people at a club you just need to deal with ten people. At a concert outdoors with 100,000 you'll need to be on guard for about 10,000 rude, surly, loud and inconsiderate people. Same 10%. Just feels a lot different when events scale up...

Our next door neighbors made the gamble to rent out their beautiful $3.25 million dollar house (currently on the market, if you are interested) for the weekend via AirBnB. Their house has multi-level pools on a well landscaped deck. Lots of bedrooms and bathrooms, and this weekend the house also had an infestation of 4 hard rocking, sociopathic couples. I had the suspicion there would be trouble when they first showed up and one woman in the group stood on the back deck, facing my house, and screamed over and over again, "This is just fucking incredible." I will give her points for the power of her voice and its range. While 150 feet away she sounded like she was right there in my backyard, standing right next to me. 

Not a big deal in the moment. Just a precursor of things to come. 

The whole group went off to sit in the dirt and damage their hearing at the concert. When they got back at 10:30 p.m. they started to party....hard. On the pool deck. Right across from my house. The yelling was prodigious. The hoots and yelps were sustained and feral and all of it prohibited by the rules laid out by AirBnB and the home owners (who had escaped to a hotel on the town's periphery). At 2 pm I'd had enough. Even with all the triple-paned windows in the world every scream and every bass note came though into my bedroom loud and clear. I texted the home owners who texted the "guests" who wound down the party at 2:30 and crawled off to sleep. (Rules from neighborhood, home owners and AirBnB: No parties, no noise after 10 pm). 

They were gone again all of Saturday. The homeowners apologized to B. and me profusely. Claimed to have made the rules "very, very clear" to the renters. "It would not happen again..." Etc. And, amazingly, the evening progressed well. The group was out on the town. All quiet even at our late bedtime. Ah, the miracle of sleep...

Until the group got back to their temporary base next door and ramped up a thumping good party back on the pool deck complete with ugly people skinny dipping, loud conversations, excited screams and whoops, and lots and lots of music from the sound system. I woke up immediately from a deep and wonderful sleep and looked at my watch. It was f-ing 4:10 a.m. in the morning. They were in a quiet, family-centric, residential neighborhood blithely tossing away any semblance of empathy or restraint and hitting it hard. 

I pulled on a pair of pants, walked over and asked/told them to turn off the music and take the noise inside. They mostly ignored me so I walked back over and texted the home owners. Again. At 4:20 in the morning. Calls were made. I assume the renters were threatened with being delisted from AirBnB. They finally shut their party down. 

But if you are like me and you get shocked awake in the middle of the night, and then have a confrontation with a bunch of drunk and disorderly "young adults" there's no way you'll ever get back to sleep. I lay in bed thinking of all the most violent chapters in "The Gray Man" series of novels by Mark Greaney. I fantasized about shooting a Javelin missile through the patio doors of the house next door. I sent another volley of texts to the homeowners instead.

Then, since sleep was elusive,  I got up, made a cup of Chamomile tea, tried to meditate about peacefulness and letting go of bad energy, and then (metaphorically) dragged myself to the first swim practice of the day at our club pool.

I usually brag here about my incredible swim performances but not today. All I can say is that rocks could swim better than me today. Two nights in a row of deeply disrupted sleep tend to take a toll. Being royally pissed off takes a toll. I moved down three lanes at practice. From pretty fast to just creeping along. It was my lamest swim workout of the year. But I consoled myself with the fact that I showed up and I finished the workout. That counts for something in my book. 

When I got home there were more profuse apologies on my text string and the owners were next door in the process of evicting their renters. I didn't have even a milli-second of second thoughts. And anyone who calls out, "NIMBY" or "Get Off my Lawn" in response can go dig a hole and sit in it and meditate on all the ways that they are way out of touch. 

Last I heard from the home owners the entire house smells of pot and cigarettes smoke. (Also forbidden by the rules). They've tallied up a couple thousand dollars of physical damage to their house. They've collected six bags of strewn about garbage. They're pretty furious as well. And they are not ancient men and women. They are right in the middle of the Gen X generation. 

This was the second weekend of the big, loud, inconvenient music festival. I hope my neighbors have learned something valuable. I hope they sell the house very quickly to a nice retired couple with very young grandchildren and no desire to leverage their own homestead for some quick cash. 

Working photographers really do need their sleep. We get absolutely feisty without it. 

Now, who do I sue? The neighbors? The renters? AirBnB? All of them? Letting this one go, I guess. The neighbors are actually pretty sweet. But....that's strike one and two....

Photo news: big purchase on the agenda tomorrow. I need to buy one or two more sandbags. It's for the outdoor video shoot on Tuesday. Might be contending with some breezes.... Big, exciting purchase. More sandbags are never enough.

 

Video Shoot Prep. Checking each piece of equipment and also trying to anticipate what could go wrong.

 

We're making video next week. We have one session that I'm worried about because I'm always worried about the sections of projects that have many moving parts. I think I've got the visual components well figured out for this two camera shoot but audio is always a weak spot for videographers. If something is going to head south on a shoot it's most likely to be audio. The roadblock of every production: audio issues. And you can multiply that by X2 if your audio system is based around wireless microphones. In fact, you can count on experiencing some glitch with wireless even if you've done this a thousand times before. 

The job is not huge and the stakes are not high. If we screw up there is the opportunity to come back and try again but since we have a person who has agreed to be on camera, doing a testimonial, I think it's best to try not to depend on those sorts of fall back strategies. I'll try my best on any shoot to make sure we get it on the first try. Not necessarily the first take. 

My basic routine, well in advance of the shoot day (because you never know when you might need to rush  an order for a replacement of something...) is to set up and check each piece of gear in the exact use it will get on the shoot. It's not enough to turn on a device and get a "welcome" screen. In my view you have to hook everything up and make test video. You have to see and hear that it will work. That it does work.

We'll be making video outside for the testimonial. The location is a walkway around a beautiful backyard swimming pool. If we had the perfect environment I would suspend a really nice hyper-cardioid (shotgun) microphone eighteen inches above the talent's head, pointed down at his mouth. But here's the deal; there is construction going on with some of the surrounding houses. It's a very affluent neighborhood and I think it's in the middle of that post pandemic re-modeling spurt. There's no way we're going to get multiple construction crews to stop working while we shoot so microphone choice becomes much more important. 

In situations like this an omni-directional lavaliere microphone is a great choice. You can position one close to the person's mouth and then the inverse square law helps you out by dropping down the volume of background noise as it gets further and further away. Also, the talent's body acts as a barrier to noise coming from behind him while a shotgun microphone has different nodes of sensitivity and a less rapid fall off. Another plus in this situation is that most of my lavaliere microphones are designed to work with wireless systems which means less set clutter (wires, extra stands, etc.) when we are actually shooting.

With all this in mind, and knowing I wanted to use the Panasonic GH6 as my "A" camera I pulled out the Pelican case with the mixers, pre-amps and wireless microphone systems and grabbed my Sennheiser wireless set and its ME2 lav microphone. I always remove the batteries for storage so I pulled out the Ziplock bag with double A batteries and filled up the transmitter and receiver. I ran the output from the receiver into the XLR/Pre-amp adapter for the Panasonic GH cameras, set up the camera as I would for the shoot, put on headphones and fired everything up.

From the back of the camera I set appropriate levels and then walked around to the front of the camera to do some vocal mic tests. I quickly noticed that quick movements and certain positions for the transmitter caused loud, static encrusted "hits" so I started trouble shooting. 

I pulled the transmitter cable out of the pre-amp/XLR adapter and plugged in a shotgun microphone. It worked perfectly and with no hits. That's what I expected from a hard-wired mic system. That ruled out everything from the XLR box thru the camera, including the headphones. Next I replaced the cable that goes from the radio receiver to the XLR adapter. Still had the hits when I powered back up. 

I reached into the case and pulled out another lav mic and replaced the first one. Still problems. At that point I was starting to worry that I had something going wrong with the wireless components but decided to do a system re-sync. It's pretty easy to set a new frequency pair for both the transmitter and the receiver and... BINGO; problem solved. Something somewhere was interfering with the wireless transmissions in my environment. 

I went through the same exercise with the back-up set of wireless gear and it was good to go as well. 

While I want to use the wireless lavalieres I will also bring along a small collection of super-cardioid and hyper-cardioid mics that can be hardwired and boomed, just in case....  Because?  Gremlins. Better remember to pack fifty feet or so of XLR cables...

Next up I tested the GH6 set to 4K, 60p, 422, 10 bit with the profile set to V-Log and a monitor LUT applied. I shot footage outside, in a sunlit environment and with a one stop diffuser over head. I used the luminance spot meter in the camera to set exact exposure using a gray test target. Then I brought the "footage" back into the studio and opened it in Final Cut Pro X, applied the same LUT to the imported files and looked carefully at the waveforms and vector scope. All good. 

Next step is to repeat all the steps with the B camera which will be the Panasonic GH5ii. When it tests out as well as the GH6 I'll breathe a sigh of relief and move on to testing my lighting.

We'll replace all the batteries with fresh stock the night before the shoot and say a little prayer to the photo gods. 

But there are other steps to successful projects, regardless of size. 

One week ago I met with the client at the shoot location to do an in-depth scouting and to identify all the potential B roll at the location. It took a couple hours but now we're on the same page when it comes to setting up the talent and getting shots to assist in and out of the primary shots. 

Yesterday I met again with the client to go over content. It's not a scripted testimonial, per se, but I wanted to go over what answers we were looking for and how best to construct the questions to get the optimal answers. We spent several hours distilling down our talking points and the direction we need to give the client but I think that's time well spent if it reduces the amount of delay and backtracking it takes to do the actual interviews. 

I'm sending the meeting notes to the client's assistant this morning for further feedback. 

The final thing on my list of stuff I must do or must acquire before the shoot is to go to the camera store and buy two more 25 pound sand bags. One for every light stand or C-Stand on the set. Because you can never be too careful. Especially when working around a body of water. 

If I have time this afternoon I'll test the audio with a Rode lav mic, the Sennheisers and also several microphones from a Saramonic system. I'll let my ears decide which one I like best and that's the one we'll use. There's always one more thing to do before every video production. Not doing it just makes more headaches for me down the road.

A trivial feature until you want it. Then it's pretty darn cool... (Caution: Leica oriented...).

 One thing I dislike about nearly all the "focus-by-wire" lenses out on the market is the inability of the user to set the lens to a specific distance without having to bring the camera to your eye, focus it, lock focus and then wait for your subject to be in the optimal spot. Especially frustrating when it comes to street shooting or discreet photography where pre-focusing on a certain distance can be very effective. 

Remember the days of manual focus lenses? They had distance scales on them, long focus throws, and detailed depth of field scales. You could set your 24mm lens to something like ten feet, set your aperture to f11 and be sure of getting good sharpness from 7.94 feet to 18.04 feet. Or somewhere in the very close ballpark. 

Not so with all the enormously expensive and oversized lenses we now have offered to us for our modern cameras. Big use-ability steps backwards at many turns. At least for people who like to zone focus, pre-focus or use the idea of hyper-focal distance setting. 

I'm not sure how Sony, Fuji, Canon or Nikon deal with this but there is a nice solution for Leica SL, SL2 and SL2-S users. If they are using L system lenses on their cameras and they set their lens to manual focus then a half press on the shutter brings up a nice graphic on the camera's top screen. If you've set the aperture to a specific f-stop as you turn the lens focusing ring the display will read out the exact focused distance, the focus behind the point of sharpest focus that will still be acceptable (back), and the distance at which the system will still be in focus in front of the camera (front). 

I tested this feature out again today. It works with native Leica SL lenses, Panasonic L mount lenses and Sigma L mount lenses. I don't know if other camera makers offer the same feature or something similar but for people who like to, want to, or have to manually focus anything less is a deal-killer. Yep. Deal-Killer. 

This isn't "new tech." In the M Leica world this sort of necessary and helpful information was right there on the lens for immediate visual access. And in fairness it was on all camera makers' manual focus lenses back in the day. The disconnection started with AF systems and got progressively worse in the digital age. 

Sure, Fuji and Sigma make lenses with manual aperture rings but few of them have marked distance scales and even fewer have depth of field marketings for the most used apertures. Panasonic and Olympus and Fuji make a few lenses with clutches that put the lens into a fully manual mode with hard stops at both ends of the scale and good distance and depth of field scales. That's the way to handle it on the lens side of the equation. 

But for all the other lenses the Leica SL, introduced in 2015, set the standard for this kind of usability feature. 

Not trying to be a brand champion here but I will say it's a feature I can see all kinds of use for in practice. Especially with the wider lenses. 

The perfect reason to buy a $7000 Leica SL2 body? Maybe not quite. But if you are locked into a system that doesn't have this feature, or something similar, you might consider banding together with other like minded users and starting a letter writing campaign. It might just work.

Added: A decent article about hyperfocal distance measuring and implementation.... https://www.bhphotovideo.com/explora/photography/tips-and-solutions/calculating-hyperfocal-distance-in-photography

Part of being engaged in photography, for me, is seeing really wonderful work. Seeing it printed and well displayed. So, let's talk about a show I saw yesterday.

 

The HRC promotes their shows in part with these larger than life

posters. There are smaller posters hung on nightstands nearby as well. 

The Humanities Research Center at the UT Austin campus has one of the largest collections of photography in the world. It houses the Magnum Photo print archive which my friend Will and I did a video about ten years ago. It's the location where I first met Elliott Erwitt and  then spent an afternoon with him in downtown Austin. It was my favorite place to take small groups of students to explore master works by 19th and 20th century photographers. On one visit there I ran into Arthur Meyerson. On another visit Magnum Photographer,  Eli Reed. Suffice it to say that it is, in some ways, ground zero for art photography in our city. The core of the collection was contributed by photo historian, Helmut Gernsheim: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmut_Gernsheim 

I hadn't been to the galleries in a while but I noticed in an email that the ground floor gallery (the big one) was going to have a showing of Laura Wilson's portrait of writers and I knew I had to see this. Laura Wilson first landed on my photography radar back when Richard Avedon was working on his grand opus, "In the American West." Laura Wilson had been hired to help produce the photographs. Not as in produce the actual prints but as in: figure out the locations with the most potential, arrange the endless road trip travel with Avedon and his assistants. Help pull people/strangers into the project as subjects and so much more. She also documented the project, photographically, over the course of six years and...if that wasn't enough....she also wrote the text for Avedon's resulting book. There is a book she wrote and photographed for about Avedon's process and journey west that is, in itself, a very interesting look at how art gets made. My copy or her book is dog-eared. Re-read at least a dozen times.  What I did not know at the time was how she was connected and that she was also a wonderful photographer in her own right.

Her specialty has always been portraiture. I was blown away when I looked at her bio here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Wilson_(photographer) Her book on the Hutterites of Montana was well received by the arts community and was probably one of the reasons she was hired for the Avedon project. But enough about Avedon. I'm here to praise Wilson's amazing work.

She's spent a large part of her career photographing internationally renown writers. Novelists, poets and playwrights. The work being shown at the HRC is all black and white (except for a small wall by way of a collage) and printed large....  and well. The space in the HRC is enormous and so each section of the show is well lit and well hung and viewers have ample space to step back and understand how expansive it is. When I walked into the gallery yesterday around 2 pm I was the only visitor. I had the whole show to myself. It was amazing and I felt privileged to see the work absolutely unencumbered by the presence of anyone else. Not even a guard or a docent.

Two interesting additions to the story. First, Wilson has some famous children. Luke, Owen and Andrew Wilson. Owen is one of my absolute favorite movie actors. He credits being constantly a subject for his mom's photography as a small child for his comfort now in front of movie cameras. ( loved him as "Hansel" in Ben Stiller's great movie: Zoolander).

A second addition to this story is a Six Degrees of Separation coincidence. I noticed on one of the placards next to an beautiful print of a Scottish writer Wilson mentioned that the writer cooked dinner for her and her photographic assistant. The assistant was a fellow named, Matt Lankes. He's a native Austinite and I have worked with him from time to time. He used to be one of the best of the best photo assistants before he moved on and became a very superb portrait photographer in his own right. He was the still photographer for Richard Linklater's movie, "Boyhood" and the stills from that movie are incredible. 

Matt assisted me on the day I photographed former president, Bill Clinton for Dell, Inc. He's not only a great photographer but apparently an excellent soccer player as well. He reached out to let me know that he accompanied Laura Wilson on a large number of shoots the photos from which ended up in this show. 

One can look at images on the web or in books but it is a completely different experience to see works printed exactly as the artist intended, in sizes big enough to make an impact and to allow deep exploration even by older audience members like me who need to look through the top part of my bifocals to see large prints in their entirety and then look through the bottoms of the glasses to see the detail. Yeah, I should try no line bifocals again.... sigh.

I suggest anyone interested in photography who lives within 100 miles of Austin to make a day trip of Laura Wilson's wonderful show. If you are flashy wealthy then by all means hop on that plane from wherever and comes see the show. It's pretty darn wonderful. 

One of a half dozen long walls covered with portraits of writers.

Writer, Zadie Smith. 

My favorites from the show are these images of Carlos Fuentes. 

He is one of Mexico's greatest writers. I love that each artist is shown not only

in a formal portrait but also in his or her environment in a series of detail images. 

The formal portrait of Fuentes is amazingly well done. (The little blue dot just

about his head in the forma portrait isn't part of the print; it's a reflection of a gallery light). 

blog note: 

I want to thank everyone for responding to my short, casual survey.

I love writing about photography. I just need to get better about ignoring 

distractions and such. I'm certain I'm still having trouble dealing with the  

trauma of the international pandemic which totally changed my art and business, 

and now the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Next week I'll get around to worrying about the stock market.... 

I ask for your patience. I've been afflicted throughout adulthood with 

acute anxiety and all of its attendant issues; one of which is being too reactive 

to criticism. I'm working on it. That's all I can promise.

Taking a casual poll of y'all blog readers...

 What do you like about the VSL blog?

What do you dislike about the VSL blog?

What content is useful for you?

Would ceasing the blog affect you in any way?

What would be the best way to improve the blog without entailing even a tiny shred of more work on my part?

Do you think the changing nature of photography has made the blog and its content worker irrelevant?

Do you think photography has become irrelevant?

Do you like the gear reviews?

Do you really hate the posts about swimming/lifestyle/etc.?

Are articles about how Kirk handles jobs/projects/assignments still useful to you?

How much notice would you like to get if the executive decision is made to discontinue this blog?

How would you feel about a new blog that contains only new images and relevant captions?

What would be the best way to keep in touch if a decision was made to discontinue the blog?

Where do you get your photo information?

That's about it. I'm feeling like the blog is getting stale. It's been a twelve year project and I've written something like 6,000 posts, put up tens of thousands of images, and suffered through 60,000 comments (many good but a ample percentage of well intended but unhappy ones...). I'm not sure what I've been spending my time on still has value. The blog is not and has not been a source of income for me. 

I've polled all sorts of clients (the people who do continue to line my pockets) and not a single one of them is a reader of the blog. Most were blissfully unaware of its existence. 

I'm in an actual quandary because I know I get emotionally attached to stuff like this even beyond any utility or positive affects. If I were rational I probably would have pulled the plug long ago but, in my defense, I thought people might still want something to read during the pandemic lock-downs. 

Let me know as honestly as you'd like....what would you do? And how would you do it?

Kirk

Fine-tuning the vacation system. Looking forward to days of sightseeing and photography.

Before every vacation....oh, who do I think I'm kidding?....before every job, road trip, day out to the park I am plagued by having to decide which camera and lens(es) I'm going to select to take along with me. I am loathe to sell off stuff anymore even when it becomes clear to me that I've lost interest in it because I have a miserable track record of then missing what I've sent away only to have my resolve weaken, and in some cases even buying a new copy of the very thing I disposed of earlier. It's not a good way to build systems or keep a tight grip on money. But it does seem to be a pattern. 

Lately I seem to be operating with more logic and resolve. I've been very good about dividing my photographic gear into three discrete categories. They are: video tools, work tools and personal tools. These categories reflect, for the most part, how I end up using the various cameras I am lucky enough to have held onto. 

The video cameras are represented by my micro four thirds cameras. Specifically three Panasonic camera bodies: The G9, the GH5ii and the GH6. In my mind their highest and best use is for video production. They have tremendous powers of stabilization, the lenses available for them are great and well suited for shooting video and two of the three represent the state of the art when it comes to codec and format choices. Adding in the audio interface and the great slo-mo abilities and, for commercial work, they tick all the boxes. 

The video system is supported by a bunch of good lenses. In fact, one of my favorites is the Leica 42.5mm f1.2 lens, the results of which are represented here in the blog post. There are several Pro Olympus zooms as well as the Leica 12-60mm zoom and the Leica 25mm f1.4 (fixed after publishing. Thanks Helmut). Since all three cameras can run on the same batteries and take the same lenses it's a great closed system with good back-up resources. It's the system I'll shoot with for my upcoming testimonial video project.

The work system includes the cameras I use for corporate portraits, still life shots of products, lifestyle and environmental images. My main cameras in this "work" system are the Leica SLs and the SL2 but I also press the Lumix S5 and the Sigma fp into service from time to time within the same compartment. I have ample lenses to support this format and use profiles as well. 

And then we come to the personal tools which I'll also couch as the "vacation system." In this category I've pretty much landed (at last) on the most recently discontinued system; the Leica CL. But in this regard ( APS-C ) I've always been conflicted about lenses. Recently I've dumped every single lens I've bought over the last year or so for this system and have rebuilt the inventory from scratch. I tossed all the manual focus lenses, all the weird and slow optics and all the stuff that was redundant. I finished my last acquisition for the system today. Now the whole of my "play" cameras fit in one smallish bag. 

Today's purchase was the 16mm f1.4 which is the full frame equivalent on a CL of a 24mm lens. Something that's wasn't my highest priority but then again, I am learning to love the wider angles more as time goes on... I blame my smartphone's wide camera lens...

The system now consists of two black Leica CL cameras and four lenses. All the lenses come from the Sigma Contemporary product line and include: the 16mm f1.4, the 30mm f1.4 and the 56mm f1.4. The fourth lens is a "convenience" lens and it's the 18-50mm f2.8. When I pack for a vacation I'm planning to take the two bodies and the three primes. All the prime lenses are quite fast and all are optically very, very good. Lately I've had very good luck with all of the Contemporary Sigma lenses I've purchased, regardless of format.

I thought I could get by with the zoom for the wide end of the range but having all three primes with the same fast apertures is a keen draw. All the primes are relatively light. The 56mm is counter-intuitively the lightest and the smallest but all deliver very nice images. While I like the little zoom I like the three primes just a bit more. Since the system is for fun and self-directed creative work I don't need or want to add a flash to the system. I'd rather have grainier files or files that are a bit less perfectly sharp. 

It seems comfortable to have the systems sorted by their strengths. Fewer decisions to make from mode to mode. The nice thing about the "work" and the "personal" systems is that all the lenses are also interchangeable between the cameras. I can add and subtract to or from each system as needed. 

All of the images above and below were shot yesterday with the (fabulous) Panasonic G9 and the 42.5mm f1.2 lens. I tried to shoot everything around f2.0 but caved in when I felt I needed more depth of field. I used the D. Monochrome L profile and shot the photos as Jpegs. 

All good here. 

  Weird to see brown, fallen leaves, a la Autumn, when it's still 95° outside....

Found an old hat in the closet yesterday. Thought I'd wear it for a while.

Giving the bucket hats a rest until I head to Vancouver. I hear they are all

the rage in Canada.

Gearing up a bit for a video project on the calendar a couple weeks from now...

 

I used to put stuff off till the last minute. If I knew a video shoot was coming up I figured I could get around to gearing up or replacing older and damaged gear the week before the engagement and we'd be in good shape. Then came the "supply chain" issues. You know, as in you've got cash money to buy a car but there are no cars to buy? Or you've finally decided to order that new camera only to find it's back-ordered, stuck in transit, etc. and you just can't have it now. Bummer. And sometimes it affects jobs you've agreed to do. You might have to give up on using a certain microphone or lens and try to make do with something less.

We committed to do a testimonial video in about a week and a half and I decided to get ahead of the disappointment wave and make sure I had the stuff I needed to do the job well, in hand and ready to go. It's been a while since I did an interview-style video assignment. I knew I had enough camera gear, lenses, mixers, and tripods to outfit a small film production company but I'm always extra sensitive to audio gear. I like what I like to work with and hate having to sub in unfamiliar products in a pinch. 

I remembered loaning one of my favorite lav microphones to a friend who accidentally trashed my Sennheiser MKE II Gold Omni microphone. He paid me for it and I forgot all about it because with Covid raging we just weren't doing many new interviews. There was no pressing need to replace that microphone in the moment. I also remember that the last time we did a big interview intensive project (nearly a week of shooting) I lost a couple of tiny "dead cat" windscreens for my collection of lavaliere microphones and a couple was all I had. So, in fact, I was down to zero micro dead cats.

Back when I was teaching classes in commercial photography at the University of Texas College of Fine Arts I remember telling students time and time again that a professional shows up ready. Ready with gear. Ready with a plan. Ready with extra gear in case something goes wrong. My students probably thought I was nuts but I was trying to save them from failure. And it's been a work habit ever since. 

Before I started down the long road to photography I was more interested in audio gear. At one point in my life I wanted to go into electrical engineering in order to design amplifiers, pre-amps, high fidelity wireless systems, etc. It was a fun hobby but I could see, after a couple of internships with big semi-conductor companies, that the reality of that kind of work was much different from my fantasy of it. Big companies all expect one to show up on a regular basis and actually get work done. They expect results. The best dodge I could find instead was advertising and then photography. But I never lost my interest in audio equipment and I'm generally always appreciative of good engineering. 

So, when I head out the door to do video I feel pretty confident about the camera work but I'm always much more concerned about the quality of the audio we need to get. In my mind, and in my experience, great audio is always the most important component of a video project. You might have great footage of beautiful stuff but if you are including interviews and the sound is funky you lost the game. 

I bought two sets of Sennheiser EW 100 wireless microphone systems back in 2012. That was ten years ago. I bought them because at the time they were the reputable standard. Not as luxe as the Lectrosonic gear but still good, solid gear for the kinds of productions I do. I'm usually just using one set and keeping the second set handy as a redundant back-up. On a shoot I'll have both pairs set up identically so that if one unexpectedly dies I can quickly replace them without having to re-calibrate, set levels and pair them again while a client is waiting for me.

I've used the EW 100s extensively over the last ten years. They are reliable and consistent. Each set came with a Sennheiser MK 2 mic. I later bought the upgraded MKE II versions which are sonically supposed to be "better" but I think the originals are 95% there already. Certainly good enough for spoken word interviews. But I went ahead today and ordered another of the  MKE II Gold version and also a packet of "furrys" for the lavalieres. We're going to be filming outside and I want to be ready to step in and dress up the mics with little furry objects to kill the wind noise; if necessary. (These are not really made from dead cats. They are generally synthetic fabric fuzzy constructions that kill wind noise...).

Today was test day. I tested both pairs of receivers and transmitters and matched them all to the same pairing frequencies. I tested the microphones and both sets of headphones (weak link is almost always the cords) and made sure I have ample supplies of Eneloop Pro double "A" batteries ready to go.  I tested the gear on all three of the cameras I have in mind to shoot with. So far so good. 

The new microphone and replacement furrys are in stock and shipping. They'll be here a week ahead of the project date. Looks like we're good to go here. 

I also wanted to talk about one of the things I like about my Sennheiser wireless mic gear: I love that both units take standard, widely available, double "A" batteries. This is one area in which I do not like built-in, non-removable, rechargeable, proprietary batteries. If you screw up on charging them you can't easily fix your faux pas in the field. They are remorseless. Those proprietary batteries live to screw with you. If conventional, removable batteries decide to give up the ghost it's an easy and quick replacement. And the gear is set up to show an accurate battery level with conventional batteries. Built ins? You're on your own....

So, robust gear. Easy to work with. Easy to set up. Easy to get power. Industry standard. I know the Rode Go's and the DJI's are much cheaper but I also don't think wireless mics are based on such ever changing and cutting edge technology that the new models are important to keep chasing down. I'll stick with these until such a day as when I can justify a set of Lectrosonics and a bunch of Countryman microphones. Till then, do a sound check and watch your levels....