Is "visual note-taking" the same thing as photography?

sometimes I take images of things because I want to remember how the subject looked and how it was presented to me in real life. I want the visual note so I can incorporate it into the things that I write about. The images become reminders for me and at the same time they seem to me to be quixotic and serial segments of life in the real world. A concept in seeing the flow of modern life as it exists now. In the moment. In this instance. It will all change next week. Next year. Tomorrow. 

This will be a memory that provides a context when I think back about this particular period of time. 

It may not be relevant to anyone else. But should that matter?

The Uncomfortable Purgatory of being on the wrong side of new gear announcements.

Life in the trenches of visual content creation can be messy and uncomfortable. But few things are more uncomfortable than finally making the decision, after several months of research and exploration, to buy the state-of-the-art camera body only to have a newer, quicker, brighter and more appropriate, upgraded version announced while your acquisition is in transit to you.

It just happened to all the people who waited for a month or so to read all the reviews and actually handled the Sony A7R2. When that camera was delivered less than two months ago the internet was on fire with hyperbole. That camera currently sits on top of the DXO charts for best overall still image quality while the video sites waxed euphoric about its wonderful, 4K in camera, video quality. With a generous nod to both its improved usability and also its graceful handling of high ISO settings. The only issue was one for videographers to grapple with, and that is potential overheating while using the in-camera 4K video settings. Apparently the problem is easily resolved by writing files to an external digital recorder. So, in sum: The best image quality of any current (non-medium format) consumer camera on the market today coupled with what might be the best 4k video solution for under $4,000.

What's not to like?

Welllllll. Here's the flip side of deal. While the A7R2 may be the best thing since sliced bread for still photographers who work with discipline and determination (i.e.: Not a Sports Camera!!!) most video aficionados would have preferred a camera that uses the full format for 4K while the A7R2 does a bit of a crop in. It's at its best when used in the "Super 35" crop. It also lacks the latest Log profile for video. And just last week Sony dropped an anvil on the feet of the early adapting video guys (the ones who threw down for the A7R2...) by announcing the imminent arrival of the replacement to the video-drool-worthy, A7S. That was a camera that brought a full frame, 12 megapixel sensor to market that was totally optimized for video. And is still the current king of low noise, high quality performance video. The current model (the A7S) can't record 4K video internally and it lacks in-body image stabilization but it's still the one to beat in the Sony line-up. At least it was until just last week...

The newly announced A7S-2 delivered the same great 12 megapixel, large sensel size, low noise dominance but now it uses much faster processors, records uncropped 4K video in-body and has the new and highly improved, 5 axis, in body image stabilization as well as the latest Log profiles. And it's about $300 cheaper than the much higher resolution (perfect for still photographers who like big hard drives....) A7R2. And the A7R2 was only the reigning champ for all of two months in the video world....

Why should we at VSL care? Well, I guess we really don't care that much in this situation. It's not like we're entirely video centric but the same thing seems to happen all the time on our side of the fence as well. We just get comfy with the Nikon D800 and the D810 comes along. The dust and oil problem of the D600 gets fixed in the D610 and we buy a couple only to have the somewhat superior D750 arrive hot on the heels of our purchase.

The products become obsolete so quickly now, or at least that's the way we've been trained to think about the process. The reality is that the Olympus E1 in the image above is still a highly usable camera IF you are still using it as you did when you bought it a decade ago. Portraits for websites? Small prints? Street art? It's a wonderful camera for all of that.

And the A7R2 is still the best big image camera on the market (well, we'll see when we fire up the comparison with the D810--- processing might count for something...) and that didn't change with the new arrival of the A7S-2. While some of the video features might be nice to have the difference in ISO performance will be of only mild interest to people who use the cameras for commercial production and the difference in frame crops is really kind of marginal.

The shutter in the A7R2 is rated for 500,000 shots. That's years of useful life for even a heavy duty shooter. We ought to look at its productive life in that measure and not by the features that are introduced on other cameras, after the fact. I gauge the useful like of the A7R2 as about 3 to 4 years of working production. Emotionally its useful life might be measured in weeks IF you are only keeping score of the features.

Should be fun when the older stuff starts to hit the used market. Sony is currently constructing a market filled with slightly used bargains. Better to look with happiness on the plethora of cheaply available, and good, back up cameras rather than to curse being T-boned by inevitable progress. ..

Just a few thoughts. 

A Sunday Review of a Classic. The Olympus Pen FT 70mm f2.0.

Every once in a while it's nice to see which direction everyone is breathlessly running in and then walk calmly in the opposite direction. Sometimes that's how I feel about lenses. Everyone is chasing the ultimate in sharpness and high performance across the field of view but I don't know to what end. And I'm pretty sure that the people chasing perfection aren't really certain of why they want the uber lenses for anything more than an additional validation that their gear is not the weak link in their chain. Validation via gear has a long history and I imagine that very few of us who started adult life as technical types are immune to the lure of measurable superiority; no matter what we have been coached to say. I am not immune. I'm in awe of the Sigma 50mm Art lens but I'm totally aware that it's not adding anything much to the mix. That would come after I grab the tripod and lock the mirrors up, etc. 

But I'm not ready for the silly dalliance of a Holga camera right now, either. When I get into a mood that makes me talk about lenses and photo enthusiasts so dismissively I know it's time to go for a nice walk with an old classic. It always seems to blur the lines between good and useful; between art and science.

I grabbed one of my old favorites from the Olympus drawer today. It's a rattly, scarred sample of the ancient 70mm f2.0 lens that was made for Olympus's line of half frame cameras. The family of cameras were called Pens. The top of the line, interchangeable lens, single reflex camera body was the Pen FT. It was most cool in the black enamel version. 

The 70mm used six optical elements in five groups and is very compact with a 43mm front filter ring.

When I used it on previous iterations of the new, digital Pen cameras I led myself into believing that the lens wasn't the sharpest lens in the line up and also suffered from low contrast. My appraisal today is changed by the addition of the EM5.2 and it's elegant focus peaking, along with my new regard for technique; specifically, shielding the front element of the lens from stray light. (How fun it is that I get to learn the same lessons over and over again, decade by decade).

I am certain that the current, 75mm f1.8 Olympus lens for the OMD cameras is a much better performer on the test bench and under controlled conditions but it in no way obviates the value of the rest of the lenses available for the micro four thirds cameras. I have found that if one shoots the older lenses with care, and with a nod to their provenance and old age, one can get very good results indeed. 

The early part of the 1970s will not be remembered for the amazing front surface multicasting technologies of lens making. We are somewhat spoiled now with lenses bathed in nano crystal multi-coating and other rare, advertising spawned coating formulas. It's almost hard to make a modern lens flare like a mad bastard short of shining very bright lights directly into the front elements. Not so with lenses from the time machine. But that doesn't make these lenses unusable it merely means that we have to use the techniques that were in place in that time period to interdict the nastiness of flare causing "glancing light." 

Here's the simple tutorial: Keep direct light and bounced light off the front element of the lens. Always. This means one should use a lens hood but one should also try to block even more light with one's hands or a black card. Doing this defeats veiling flare and gives you back the true contrast that the lens is capable of delivering. So does this mean that the lens can never be used with a light source in the frame? The answer to that depends on whether you are intent on measuring the symptoms of veiling flare or whether you are nostalgic for some fun flare that might add something to your overall image. 

I also advise taking filter off the front of the lens because these nearly always do more harm than good and add two more air glass interfaces to the optical mix. Clear filters rarely are.

My second secret to getting good performance from older classics is to use them at their optimal f-stops. We modern photographers seem to be in love with the idea of shooting with the apertures of our lenses wide open. We like the mystical properties of images in which the majority of the frame is blurred to the point of unrecognizability. But the art and craft wasn't always this way. Most fast lenses made in the days of manual focus were given speedy apertures to enhance one's ability to focus accurately. And looking through the dark and uncertain viewfinder of the Pen FT cameras makes one an instant believer in fast apertures with their attendant shallow depth of field which makes images snap into and out of focus in a very obvious way. 

With lenses of this vintage I always expect that they will hit their peak of performance two stops down from their widest, marked aperture. On this lens that would be f4.0. I would expect the "envelope" of best performance to extend from f4.0 to about f8.0 where the dreaded and feared diffraction effect would take over. While this would be the range of optimal performance there is nothing to say that you can't use the lens wide open at f2.0. I've done it many times. I can see a difference but many times getting an image and being able to handhold and image is more important than the theoretical advantages of the "envelope."  On a sunny day like today I was able to keep the camera at in it's optimum ISO performance "Ziplock Baggie" of performance which is 200. I was also able to use f5.6 to f8.0 for almost every shot, but I did include several examples of the camera shot at f2.0 just to show you the effect and let you judge the "ruinous degradation" for yourself. 

A view of Lamar and 12th Street, just a mile west of the State Capitol, from 

a friendly parking garage roof.

My walk took hours today because I made a big, circuitous loop and stopped a lot just to relax and stare at the life in front of me without having the camera in front of my face all the time. At the beginning of my walk I felt jittery and anxious though I'm not sure why. Could be the ambiguity of general social progress, the indecision that is the one unchanging aspect of my business life, or my loneliness self-imposed by my selfish need to spend time lost in thought. Whatever the cause sitting on a bench at the graffiti park did me a world of good. So did the quart bottle of Gatorade I bought from a food truck vendor who'd set up shop on the adjacent street. But my moments of quiet disquieting reflection led me to the wall above and it proved to be a good test of the lens's color depth, contrast and sharpness when used relatively close.

I climbed up the dangerous, loose soil path on the right side of the wall so I could savor the view of the center of Texas from a high perch. This gave me a chance to show off the rendering of the lens at infinity. Or there about. All the while I counted my blessings at having a camera with such a nice EVF, complete with focus peaking. Being able to accurately focus the lens where you want it to be focused is the third leg of the stool of high quality imaging (we covered the other two parameters above).

The image above suffered at my hands. I forgot to "shield" the lens from the light from the sun which was bouncing everywhere on top of the hill. When I came back to my monkish office and looked at the work on the monitor it was obvious that flare was working its evil on my rendition of Tag-ish Intensity so I did the unthinkable... I went for the "deHazing" slider in Lightroom and let it do its voodoo work.  Now the wall is represented as I saw it...

This just about sums up the generational gap in camera use. The guy on the left with his cargo shorts and phone versus the older gentleman on the right with a "real" camera and his camp cargo shorts. 

click into this one if you want to see how sharp and convincing the 70mm lens can be if you use it correctly. You have to give me credit for getting it right once, okay?

I love the 140mm equivalent focal length of the 70mm when used on the OMD cameras. 

Fun sometimes to stand back and shot tight.

F2.0

My walk took me into the JW Marriott on Second Street and Congress Ave. Nice bathrooms and a Starbucks on the second floor. But in the public spaces on the fourth floor is a little alcove and I've always admired the way the light strikes the drapes there in the afternoon. Do you know of a place where the light is always lush and tempered and welcoming? You should hang out there and read a book. But back to the subject at hand----I decide to shoot this one at f2.0 (it could have been 2.8, it doesn't show up in the Exif info...) and to my mind it's pretty well defined and workable. I guess I won't fear shooting at the wide aperture now that I know we can hit good focus with the newer cameras.  The image below is also part of the wide open (or nearly wide open) test. You can zoom into the original file and see tons of detail in the draping. 

I finished my walk reluctantly. I was really getting into the meditative quality of just putting one foot in front of the other and scanning the landscape as I moved forward. After the stop at the JW Marriott (Second largest in the world according to the Austin rumor mill) I stopped being interested in the camera and the lens and started to become more interested in the look of the people on the street and the way they were moving through the space. I stuck the camera on my left shoulder and forgot about it for half an hour as I wended my way back to the car and drove back into the western hills to my house. It's always interesting to take the time to go out and walk and be by yourself. It's fun to do so without feeling that you necessarily need to be productive in that moment of time either. 

Another Sunday nearly gone and another week just ahead. I'm always happy to wake up and get going each morning. I always remember the old Japanese idea: One Step Forward and Everything is Darkness. Meaning, I think, that we can't know what awaits so we should live well in the moment. 

Even if that does mean using older lenses. 

Sometime on Monday (if my calculations are correct and Google's data honest) the VSL blog will reach what I once thought was an unreachable milestone. We will enjoy our 20,000,000 page view. 

I'll break in to let you know when we achieve it. If you are reading this on a feed go directly to the site and click through once again so we can get to our goal honestly and quickly. thanks. KT

A Quick Look at an EVITA Rehearsal. Two dance shots.

Yesterday I photographed parts of a rehearsal for the musical play, Evita, at Zach Theatre. I knew two things about the rehearsal hall: It's spread out so I'd need a lens with some reach, and, it's dark and has mixed light syndrome so I needed a camera and lens combination that could do a good job in meager light. 

I chose the Nikon D750 as my primary shooting camera because of its very, very good low light performance. I set the camera to 3200 ISO, used auto WB and shot in compressed raw. I wasn't concerned with overall image quality and would have been happy shooting in Jpeg but every angle had a different mix of bad fluorescent light and late (blue) afternoon light and I was pretty sure I'd want to have the ability to correct this in post. 

I don't have a fancy, new Nikon 70-200G VR SOB lens. At one point in time I tested a lot of the older Nikon lenses in that focal length against the predecessor to the newest version and I found the older ones to have more of a certain character I liked and also found them (especially the 80-200mm versions) to be sharper as the focal lengths got longer. When I switched back to Nikon I searched out older lenses until I found a good, cheap copy of the 80-200mm f2.8 push/pull lens, which I am happy to shoot wide open. Stopped down to f3.5 (as it was above) it's nicely sharp ---- especially when I hit focus correctly. 

I compensate for the lack of in lens VR by sticking the whole camera and lens assembly on a stout and wondrous monopod; which also gives me a respite from the ravages of gravity. The Berlebach monopod takes the weight of the camera and lens combination leaving me just to stabilize the horizontal motions. I think it's a good trade off as there sometimes seems to be some sharpness robbery with VR engaged. My method gets me down to reliable shutter speeds of around 1/60th of a second but of course at around 1/125th of a second subject motion generally enters the equation and there's not much you can do to correct that! Image stabilization isn't the magic bullet for every situation. Sometimes a faster shutter speed has more

Did you see this video we made five years ago about the Magnum Collection at the HRC?

The video may not be perfect but the content is interesting to me. David Coleman does a great job explaining the importance of this transaction and the role of the Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin...

The Magnum Photo Collection from Kirk Tuck on Vimeo.
An interview with Harry Ransom Center curator of photography , David Coleman, about the Magnum Photo Collection which the Harry Ransom Center will be working with for the next five years. David talks about the contents and significance of this collection which includes some of the most important journalistic photographs of the twentieth century.

I did this video with my friend Will van Overbeek. We had a blast.

At Home Making Cinnamon Rolls and Coffee. Nice to relax.

Self portrait with Berlebach monopod+Nikon D750+Ancient 80-200mm 2.8 Lens.

It's fun to go on assignments out of town. You meet new people, learn new and interesting things and generally get outside your normal patterns. But it's nice to come home and relax. I relaxed yesterday by going (several times) to a rehearsal of EVITA at Zach Theatre and shooting whatever I wanted to. And that included a self-portrait shot into the mirror that runs a hundred feet across one side of the rehearsal studio. 

For the last year I've had success in sending files to clients via WeTransfer and before that I used DropBox (which has a kludgy interface). I recently discovered that Smugmug.com will allow people who pay for their professional level of service to upload almost unlimited jpeg files and allow clients to download .Zip folders full of images. 

I sent 8.5 gigabytes of files to my recent client, of our Houston project, and I sent another 1,385 images, or about 10 gigabytes, to the art director at Zach Theatre last night. The links that Smugmug generates are active for two weeks but the images remain in my "Smugmug Cloud" for as long as I pay for the service. So far, I think it's a very effective way to move a lot of files around the country. 

After having shot with the Nikon D810 for a good portion of the week, and with the Olympus EM5.2 for the remainder of the week I am happy with both systems and am having a rare period in which I have absolutely no camera "gear lust" of which to speak or write about. My friend and sometimes collaborator, James Webb, is getting a new Sony A7R2 camera tomorrow and I'm sure he'll allow me a few test shots. I have in mind shooting that camera side by side with the big Nikon and comparing the resulting files. It should be an interesting comparison.

But for now I'm heading back into the house to make sure my cinnamon rolls don't burn.....

Edited a bit later: The cinnamon rolls were great and we decided to make scrambled eggs with cheese to go with them. Extra long walk through downtown this Sunday....

Another addition: Just did a quick check and am surprised to find that I have 140,000  images up on Smugmug.com. Nearly 178 gigabytes of stuff going back to 2006. No stumbles. 

Behind the Scenes at Zach Theatre. A first day's sampling...

I had fun in Houston last week. We got lots and lots of good work done and I was happy with my images as I uploaded 8.4 gigabytes of high res files to Smugmug.com in order to send them to my client. Smugmug now allows it's pro users to upload and transfer big folders full of images and it's very easy to do. Yay! The only downside of my Houston high tech/bio-medical assignment was having to drive home at rush hour in a torrential rain storm --- but I can hardly blame that on a client, right?

Just before I left town to go on that photography spree I started a project for Zach Theatre here in Austin. We (me, the marketing team and the in-house graphic designer) wanted to do an extensive behind the scenes reportage to show all the hard work that goes into a show. We always see the actors, and sometimes the band or orchestra, but there is always a large crew that builds the sets, makes the props, designs the audio and the stage lighting, creates costumes, does make-up and supports the actors. We wanted to be able to share a visual story about that side of the theatre. People seem to be very interested in out of the ordinary careers...

I'm using the Olympus cameras for this project. Why? Because I love photographs that look like the one just above and just below and it seems that the Olympus OMD EM5.2 and I work well together to get images like this. On Tues. I used a hand full of lenses and one body. Everything fit in one small, brown Domke camera bag. I leaned heavily on the Panasonic 42.5 f1.8 and also the Sigma 60mm f2.8 but the Pana/Leica 25mm Summilux and the 12-35mm f2.8 zoom also got some camera time. This kind of project is fun because it is all enterprise. No tight schedule and no big shot list. We discussed what we wanted to see and established a future date for a deadline and, for the most part, the Theatre just lets me roam around and shoot. 

I've given up worrying about ISO and noise for this project. I am happy to shoot at ISO 200 and equally happy to shoot at ISO 3200, if that's what it takes to get an image. I'm shooting raw and am also amazed at what a good job these cameras do in hitting correct white balance without my constant  supervision. It's amazing how far small sensor cameras have come and how close the overall image quality is to my D810 (matching maximum image sizes = native pixels). 

If you can't do good work with the current generation of m4:3 cameras you need to work on your chops, not your camera inventory.

I am happy to be back in Austin and had a marvelous swim in the crystal clear water of the Western Hills Athletic Club's pool this morning. Our masters coach, Kristen, was good at motivating us to crank out some yards while still having a great time. 

I'm heading back to the theater now for a different project. A behind the scenes look at the rehearsal for our upcoming show, EVITA. I was there earlier this afternoon with the principal actors but this evening well have the entire cast together and I think we can get some great ensemble shots. 

But I'm rationing my time. I'm giving them a couple of hours and then Belinda and I are heading over to Cantine for some wonderful food and wine. The reward for the "tough" life of a working photographer.