The Visual Science Lab / Kirk Tuck

Happy Valentine's Day. Go photograph someone beautiful. Now!

2012-02-14T12:26:00.001-06:00

Brock's Books in San Antonio. Long gone. Some battered, old camera with a 28mm 3.5 lens

and a roll of ISO 100 color slide film.

Falling in love. Being in love. Loving what you do. Love. I think that's why we really photograph. Until we get sidetracked by the gear and the process. I love beautiful faces. I got into taking photographs because I was dating someone who I thought was so beautiful that her face should be immortalized. Made into art. Frozen in time so I could admire it for a lifetime. My lifetime. That romance didn't last but new ones came along. And all along I recorded the things that I thought were most beautiful about my partners with my little camera.

In the early times I didn't really care about technique or cameras at all. I just wanted the images to be sharp where I wanted them to be sharp and well exposed in a way that worked for me and matched what I was trying to say. I learned just enough to make a competent photograph.

"Mastering Technique" is where the downfall begins. I'm sure it's a satanic plot to undermine the art that makes us happy. We read a magazine or talk to other photographers and we hear stuff about how our pictures can be even sharper or less grainy or more bokeh-y and we start down a path that leads us away from our objects of beauty and into a nested doll of endless intertwined details. And we never ask why our art has to conform to someone else's idea of better.

And the more we embrace the mechanical techniques the further we travel away from our original muse. The thing of beauty which we loved and wanted to share. But we convince ourselves that, in the end, we'll create much "better" work because it will be sharper and less grainy and better exposed.

But in the end it's as though we took our object of inspiration and put it under layer after layer of gauze. Each layer of technique we apply pushes the object further way from any sort of direct and emotive response on our part until it becomes merely a foil for our new infatuation with the craft.

When the devils succeed in corrupting our inner artist completely we look for subjects not because they strike a chord in our hearts but because our science brain tells us they'll make a good package on which to show off our skills at wrapping. At covering up the real gift with a new layer. "I don't care what might be in the box...." We're saying, "But look at what a good job I did with the gift-wrapping!!!"

And before we know it we're far afield from our original captivation. We're separated from what we loved by the knowledge that we can do more. Even if we never needed to do more in the first place. Our original passion is side-tracked by the promise of "just a little more control."

At some point the sheer weight of our tools and the exhausting burden of continuing to learn new ways to show off dulls us to the joy and effervescence of our original undertaking: To celebrate the object of joy we've encountered. To translate our love of beauty into something we can share.

And that kills photography for all of us. I am envious of the people I know who resisted learning more about the "how to." I am envious of the people who've found the one object of beauty in their lives that makes photography such a wonderful art. I am envious of Harry Callahan's long photographic study of his wife, Eleanor. I am envious of Henri Cartier Bresson's single minded love of capturing the world around him, unencumbered by "what's new in the bag." "What's state-of-the-art." and what might make a good foil with which to show off this new technique.

I am slow and witless and as easily led as the next photographer. And yet, today, I can look through stacks and stacks of images I've done of buildings and food and executives and models and I don't feel the slightest spark. But when I crack open a box of old black and white prints and look into the faces of the people whose beauty struck me to the point that I wanted to capture it, and the faces of the people who I love and cherish I feel flush with excitement. A thrill resonates through my heart. And I realize that this is what I should have been doing all along.

Forget stitching shit together in Photoshop. Forget crunching meaningless frames of shiny colored reflections of puddles into another HDR placemat. Forget so sharply rendered that it cuts into my iris.

Remember what it was like to love and honor the subject in front of your camera because that's all that really matters. That's where the real art lives. It's about discovering the beauty you cherish, not imitating a weak, cultural construction of beauty manufactured from clever tricks. And it's certainly not about the camera, the lights or the postprocessing.

The image you have in your mind, when you look at what it is you consider most beautiful, is... everything. Your longing to photograph was originally an attempt to preserve that precious moment of beauty and insight for yourself. Or to be able to share it for a lifetime.

Everything that came after that, the camera bags, the lenses, the super straps and the endless stream of lights and cameras, is a wedge that pushes us further away from the original truth.

Go out today and find the thing you love. The person. The son or daughter who makes you smile and brings tears of happiness to your eyes. The wife or husband who brings a feeling of warmth and belonging into your life. The friend who stood by you when you were in the hospital or deep in debt. Find your beauty and then share it with yourself. That's the miracle of photography.

That should be our assignment right now. That should be our picture of the day. Everything else is just a job.

In its purest form our photography is a celebration of love. And everyone's love is different.

Happy Valentine's Day.

A favorite from a little over a year ago. Seemed appropriate today after all the gear talk....

2012-02-13T09:00:00.000-06:00

One of my friends mentioned this over a glass of wine recently. Today seemed like a good day to repost it. I wrote it in 2010. Near the end of the year...

11.26.2010

"THE PASSION IS IN THE RISK"

Yesterday was Thanksgiving. We had a houseful of people. My parents were here and Belinda's parents, too. Nieces and nephews and new additions to the family. Belinda and I teamed up in the kitchen and put out some nice food. My mom brought some fun wine, even three bottles of my favorite white wine, Conundrum, from Caymus Vineyards. Everyone was happy and the day went smoothly. I was so proud of my kid, Ben (you've seen his photo many times....). We have a three step drop from the kitchen to the dining room and we were serving buffet style. My dad is in his 80's and walks with a cane. Ben waited until my dad filled his plate and then walked over and quietly offered to carry his plate to the table.

Most of our family lives in San Antonio and everyone headed back home in the late afternoon and early evening. Ben got invited to go surfing, down in Port Aransas, with family friends and he was gone by 6:30 pm. Once Belinda and I finished washing pots and pans and dishes we decided to watch a movie from Netflix and we settled on a mindless romantic comedy called, "When in Rome."

Near the end of the movie the female protagonist is trying to decide if she should take the risk and marry her new boyfriend. Her father threw out a line and I grabbed for a Post-It (tm) pad and a pen. It's a line that resonated with me like a bell. He said, "The Passion is in the risk."

THE PASSION IS IN THE RISK.

That's pretty much the culmination or distillation of what I've been trying to say here for the past two years. The magic dust that makes art work is the passion you bring to it. And the passion is proportional to the risk required. I've included two photographs to illustrate my point. In the top photo I'm photographing life in the Termini train station in Rome. I'm determined to get a shot of the baggage handlers. I go in head first because I know they may (and did) object and I'd only get one chance. Before I started I thought that there might be a heightened chance of confrontation. There's a certain risk in a direct, "looking into the eyes" presentation. I had to be quick with my technique. I could be embarrassed if they got pissed off and made a scene. All that stuff that goes thru your mind when you're out of your own neighborhood, out of your demographic and out of your own culture. But you move forward because you embrace that level of risk and deem it acceptable for the potential reward. That being said, this isn't my favorite photo. But each time you risk you get more comfortable with the risk and you understand that something moves you to do this thing that's beyond a staid calculus of accrual.

In the arts the passion is never truly about money. It may be about fame and with fame may come money but in reality the arts are about the passion. When I step out the door I'm looking for a photograph that makes me feel something out of the ordinary. Art is never a reaffirmation of the value of the ordinary.

The second photograph is passionless. We make these all the time. It's a quick, furtive shot that shows nothing but the back of one person and the profile of another. There's no engagement. There's little passion. And when you look at this image you tend to pass it by because it's something you've seen a hundred or a thousand times before from every photographer who shoots in the street. There's little reward because there's little risk. And without the risk there's no passion. And the passion is what gets transmitted to the viewer.

But the idea that The Passion is in the risk goes way beyond street shooting or even just the practice of the arts. In fact, I think the slow building of passion comes with taking multiple levels of risk that correspond with access to the passion. An example. If you want to create great work in any art it takes constant practice. I've used the analogy of competitive swimming as an example. If you want to be a great surgeon you have to use those brain and hand skills all the time or you get rusty. I have many friends who are doctors and when they need to have a surgical procedure done they never settle for the guy who's done a couple hundred successful procedures they search out the guy who's done thousands of successful procedures because they know that with practice comes expertise. The guy who's done 2,000 procedures has dealt with every permutation. In art parlance, he's become a "master". By the same token I don't think photographers can be at the top of their art unless they live it with the same "hands on" intensity. If they pick up the camera every once in a while they just aren't fluid enough to make great art. And it's not just knowing where the buttons are and when to push them....for a people photographer it's also about knowing how to work with people in a fluid way.

So, that means that it's almost impossible to do photography at a passionate level and still have the time and energy for a real job. And there's the risk. Freelance photography gives you the time but it also delivers risk. And if you can accept that risk and move forward even with the knowledge that you may end up hungry and poor, but you still feel compelled to move that way then you may be driven by your passion and that passion may reward you with art you can love.

Beyond that, risk also means removing yourself from a comfortable situation to an uncomfortable situation that elicits responses in a photo which in turn make it interesting to you and your wider audience.

The ultimate risk is working when you are the only audience. When you stop caring what other people think about your work and you make work that is uninflected by the subtle pressure of others. In this arena the risk of total isolation is so strong that only the most courageous passion will drive sane people forward. It's a level I've not achieved and I'm not sure I can. I have too many responsibilities. I have too much to lose to risk everything. And yet it's something I am jealous of in other photographers.

The person who finds a $100 bill on the street is just a bit richer. The person who pulls a diamond from the jaws of a pissed off, deadly dragon has a story to tell for the rest of his life. And he creates a legend.

That's what the few real artists in our lives do. They battle metaphorical dragons that come complete with real risks. They've already signed a blanket waiver with life and they're ready to strap in and take the ride. They're the test pilots and we're waiting for someone to come along and pressurize the cabin.

So. Why have I decided to work with LED lights in the last few months? Do I think the results will be technically better than what I can get with state of the art flash equipment? No. But I know the results will be different. I know that some stuff will be riskier (like subject motion and color correction) but I know that intangible and tangible differences in the way portrait subjects respond and react makes the photographs different and it's a risk with a return.

If I know how to do a technique forward and backward why do I constantly abandoned the safe techniques and try new stuff? Because the risk of maybe failing makes the process more exciting. If the risk pays off I have something that's new and maybe closer to my vision of what an image should be. If I fail I learn and I come back and try again.

If I never try then I master one technique and use it, safely, over and over again until it's so stale and old that no one ever wants to see it again and I've squandered years and years when I could have been investigating and playing and failing and succeeding and doing new stuff.

The turn over of gear is open to many interpretations but unlike most amateur practitioners I seem to go from the highest iteration of equipment to the lowest instead of the other way around. I'll start with a Canon 5Dmk2 and slide down the product scale where the risk is greater because it's more fun to work without a safety net. Buying better and better gear is a way of trying to manage risk. And managing risks is the perfect way to suck the absolute passion out of your art. Perfect risk management means sitting in a bunker with the air filters on high. But nothing moves forward that way.

Here's an odd thought. One posited by a character in Stephen Pressfield's magnificent book, The Gates of Fire, "What is the opposite of fear?" The eventual answer? "Love."

We work through the fear that everyone feels. Fear is a very uncomfortable emotion. Most people feel fear and move away from the thing that made them feel fearful. Or they work to contain the process or action that caused the fear. Some work through the fear to feel the love. The work is the love. The process is the fear, The fear is the risk. And the risk is the thing that artists embrace. And that's what makes the best work work. Knowing that you might fail.

Someone asked me the other day if being 55 and in a field that seems to be falling apart and crashing and burning scared me. Yes. I'm as scared as I can be. But not because I won't make money. I'm scared that I won't have the time and the courage to keep going out every day and doing something that rational people don't do. Every time I go out and shoot it scares me. And every time I go out and ignore the fear I get into zone and the photos get better and better. When I stop getting scared the work falls apart.

The scariest moments for me are the days when I wake up and I've lost the determination to go out and try it all over again.....as if for the first time. When I'm working from a "playbook" of greatest hits I know that it's over. The passion is gone. It's time to stop. But the scariest thing of all is that all the inspiration and vision and passion comes from a well within. There's no way to inspiration other than to wake up and want. And to be willing to accept the risk that creates the passion. And that's why it's worth it not to copy anyone else but to create your own art and take your own risks. Because:

THE PASSION IS IN THE RISK.

The passion and the risk are different for everyone. And so are the rewards. And that's why people talk about gear instead. Because it's so hard to say why you do what you do. And it will be different for you.

added at 5:22 pm.
I never did get around to explaining why I took the image of the guys in the train station. Let me go thru that process and see if I can put it into words. We really don't have a train station here in Austin. The closest we have is an airport and it was built in the last ten years and doesn't look much different than a nice strip mall with a bunch more chairs. I have a romantic nostalgia for train travel. But even more to the point, I have a bittersweet memory of a time when travel was civilized and special and much, much less stressful. The guys in the top photo are remnants of that earlier time. It was a time in which you and and your family could travel for weeks with multiple suit cases. You would have suits and ties and nice shoes to wear to fancy restaurants. Hiking boots and heavy jackets for romps through the Alpine plains outside of Chamonix and you would have also packed some casual clothes for evenings wandering through the old neighborhoods of Rome. You'd find a nice cafe and have hot chocolate while your parents enjoyed a few glasses of wine and some savory treats.

And it was all made possible by men like these in the train stations and airports who would take care of the logistics of moving your heavy cases from the train to the to taxi's and back again. And you were pretty sure they worked for tips and they worked hard every time a train came in. They were freelancers like you are now. Somedays no one would want to pay for their help. Other days the work would be non-stop. There were no guarantees. No safety net. But it was what they knew how to do.

And slowly all these men have have faded into oblivion as wheeled totes and "carry on" only became the vogue. And now we travel with only what we can carry and we're more like overnight visitors than real travelers. But at the same time these guys were brusk and sometimes unlikeable, with a street smart cynicism that put you on your guard. And there are now no more young porters. It's a dying art. Like dye transfer or black and white darkroom printing. And it's sad when an era passes.

And they know it's only a matter of time before their knees give out and their lungs protest the decades of smoking and they won't be able to lift the heavy boxes that often replace the luxe leather suitcases and trunks. And they're pissed. And resigned. And how can I get all those emotions and all those thoughts into something as insubstantial as a photograph?

I look over and see the scene come together. They are resting on the cart, looking for customers. They are smoking. I walk closer. I've already set my Mamiya 6 camera to the exposure I think the scene offers. I bring the camera to my eye to fine tune the focus with my rangefinder. The man raises his hand and as he starts to wag his finger I click. Then I drop the camera down and gesture that I get it. I understand. I won't shoot another frame. I'll hope I have what I want and spare them the indignity of overt and obvious study. Young life swirls around them. One man smiles in a resigned way. Two others continue their conversation, oblivious of my transgression. And the man with the wagging finger follows me with his eyes, just to make sure I got the message. Yes. I did. I got the whole message.

When I develop the negative I wish I'd gotten closer. Much closer. But cropping is not the same. I wish I'd gotten closer and wider. The 55 instead of the 75. But I got what I got and I learned that my reticence to walk in closer with the wider lens is like a slap to the face and I know next time I'll take the risk or not take the photograph at all.

the holidays are upon us. I humbly submit that a good book about photography will be most welcome by the photographers on your list. Here are a few suggestions:

Re-inventing the portrait for myself.

2012-02-12T17:04:00.003-06:00

When I first learned how to do portraits I learned from a Brooks Graduate. We used at least three lights. We carefully focused a medium format camera and we worked slowly and methodically. The only job I've held as a photographic assistant was a short stay at a two generations old studio right next to the Texas state capitol building. The owners, all highly trained photographers, made their living serving two constituencies. They made official portraits of each state representative and senator for display in the capitol and for use by the state officials. These were all done in black and white. They were also the official provider of formal portraits for all the sorority girls at the University of Texas at Austin. All the portraits done by the studio were shot on 5x7 inch black and white Ektapan film and developed by hand. The images of the sorority girls were done in a style that called for the girls to be draped in a white fabric that left their shoulders bare but covered any hint of breasts.

The girls were photographed with an ancient portrait lens which obscured any skin detail and many faults. The lighting came from ancient Photogenic studio electronic flashes that we wheeled into adjustment on large, caster equipped light stands. The lights were a mix of giant beauty dishes and soft banks.

Once the girls were photographed it was my job to pull the film from the holders, transport it down to the large lab in the basement and tank develop all of it. We had a drying room just for film, with lots of taut lines and clothespins or metal clips to hang the film from. Once the film was dry I would contact print it on "printing out" paper. This was a paper that would slowly fade away with prolonged exposure to daylight. It kept the customers from keeping the proofs and not coming back for their prints.

Once an image selection was made I would print the images onto soft surfaced, Kodak Ektalure G surface paper. We used this paper because it was nice and thick and, with the G surface we could use actual lead pencils for spotting and retouching. At the end of a busy day the whole staff would sit around two tables in a sun splashed room spotting with pencils. It was a skill that made spotone-ing with brushes look simple.

My problem was that with all the soft focus and all the retouching (both on the 5x7 inch negatives and on the prints) I couldn't tell the customers apart. And I suspect that only close friends and families could really discern who was in the frame. But I learned a lot. I learned that in the old days one followed the proforma of the day and that lighting had rules....

I didn't last long because I was young and impatient and I hated the style of photography we did. And said so once too often... Ah. Reckless youth.

When I started to shoot portraits for myself I had as resources my experience with the formal studio and my training at the hands of the Brooks master photographer. A died-in-the-wool PPofA (Professional Photographers of America) stalwart. Lots of rules. Lots of "this is the way it's done." Good technical grounding but a whole different time period of aesthetics.

I experimented. I liked softer light and sharper film. I liked deeper shadows and less retouching. And I like what you could do with just two lights. One for the background and one for the person sitting in front of the camera.

For the last twenty years I've lit portraits in pretty much the same way. Usually with flash and usually with big, soft light sources.

Now, I'd like to re-invent my portraits. I want them to be more intimate and direct but I still want the light to be soft and contrasting.

Today I asked Belinda to come to the studio so I could test out the little Olympus 45mm 1.8 lens on the EP-3 camera. I set up two of the 1,000 bulb LED panels behind a four foot by four foot 3/4 stop scrim and put them over to my right. I set the camera at ISO 250 and shot at 1/125th at f2.8. And I liked everything I shot today. The Olympus shoots square if I ask it too and Lightroom 4.0 shows the file square if the camera is set that way. Belinda wanted a black and white image for a marketing piece so I made the conversion in PhotoShop's black and white adjustment panel.

I think I'll spend the rest of the year re-inventing the whole idea of portraits. Now that I can do what I want, handheld, with LED lights, with a micro four thirds camera and a really nice lens. Why not?

Another version with a little post processing for fun.

Just a few notes on some technology that I'd ignored:

I used the Olympus Pen EP3 to shoot this image.

It has a very, very fast and accurate face recognition control for autofocus.

You can even tell it which eye to focus on. Closest,

Furthest, Left or Right. It works. It's amazing.

It's accurate and it beats the hell out of

racking the lens in and out trying to get an exact

focus and then having your subject move slightly and

throw it all out of wack.

This was the most revolutionary part of my little

portrait session. I could, for all intents and purposes,

ignore the chore of focusing and be certain that the camera

would select exactly what I would have.

What a burden lifted.

Thank you, Frank.

Getting ready for the new cameras. Jockeying around with the inventory.

2012-02-12T12:15:00.002-06:00

Change is interesting and, I think, non-linear. More like two steps forward and one step back instead of a graceful and ever escalating, upward spiral. I've shot with all kinds of formats but since Olympus introduced the EP2 back in 2009 I've been drawn in the direction of smaller, lighter and more fun cameras like paparazzi are drawn to Snooki. Sometimes I over step and sometimes I under step. For a while I was three systems deep in smaller cameras. Just two systems deep if you count the Panasonic and Olympus micro four thirds cameras as one contiguous family of mini-cams. But I've been rationalizing the whole mess. I've sold off a few Canon bodies. I'm concentrating on the full frame bodies only. I've bid farewell to two fine cameras, the 60D and the 7D, so I can concentrate on thinking about the full frame lenses in a singular way. I've sold off all the EFS lenses and beefed up the fast Zeiss Primes.

Now I have the full frame Canon field covered with multiple cameras and I can consider those my "old school" professional tools. To be used for clients who like "big" and "megapixels" and big brand names. But I don't shoot with them nearly as much as I do the little cameras. In fact, if I didn't shoot as a professional I'd sell them all and just concentrate on the little cameras. More particularly, the Olympus Pens and the GH2. (Because of its combination of resolution, hot shoe, EVF and good performance, I've come to regard the GH2 as the lifeguard in the pool of m4:3.....for now).

While I'm excited, like everyone else who shoots with m4:3 Olympus cameras, about the arrival of the OM-D, I think I'm even more excited about all the cool lenses that have been introduced and are being announced. So I cleared out even more inventory of non-related systems in order to make room and generate cash to add to my stash of lenses. On friday I added the Panasonic/Leica 25mm 1.4 Summilux and the Olympus 45mm 1.8 to the mix. I was going to stretch and go for the 12mm Olympus lens but I'd like to see how the 12-50mm performs first. I'm not as interested in wide angles as I am middle and slightly long focal lengths....

I haven't taken the 45mm out of the box yet because I'm captivated by the Summilux right now. (I've shot with borrowed 45's a number of times...). I walked around and shot with the Summilux yesterday and had a blast. It spent the day attached to an EP3 and I loved it. The lens makes mechanical noise when it's just sitting there with the camera on. That's been reported by most users. I don't know what it is that makes the noise but I've decided not to care.

The focus, under every condition that I shot, is fast and accurate. The center two thirds of the image is radically sharp from wide open on down and the stuff I shot at f4 was pretty amazing. My friend, Frank, educated me about a unique feature on the EP3 that (in a moment of blind snobbery) I had overlooked. If you set the camera to enable face recognition AF you can also select which eye you'd like the camera to focus upon. The choices are: Left, Right, Closest, Furtherest. I chose "closest" because that's how I shoot portraits. I tried it over and over again yesterday and it's a great, fast way to work. I'm glad I have friends who are more open to experimenting than me. It makes the camera a much more potent portrait camera.

I walked my usual weekend route and passed by the Littlefield building as the clouds and the light shifted. The metering was on the money and the lens rendered a very crispy file. As you probably know, I shot with Leica M and Leica R cameras for nearly the entire decade of the 1990's and I love the look of the Leica lenses. While the Panasonic lens is a design by Leica with all the construction done in Japan it still seems to have some of the Leica DNA. The files have more "weight" to them and there seems to be more contrast between tones. I've only shot several hundred frames with the lens and only on a 12 megapixel camera but what I see is very, very good. I'm sorry I waited so long to get this lens.

I know the nuance is largely lost to the vagaries and insults of web presentation but this simple shot of flowers is a telling example of what the fast prime lenses are all about. The focus on the flowers is as sharp as I could ask for. At 100% on the screen the range of tones within the purple of the flower is richly variated. And the background goes out of focus in a smooth and visually pleasing way.

But here I must be truthful and say that while the Pan/Leica lens is great it's not leaps and bounds better than some of my older Pen lenses (except at it's widest aperture). So why did I shell out for this modern version? After spending a few years zooming in and out to check manual focus I was ready to capitulate and go with some auto focusing options. In fact, in a circular way, it was the EP3 that drove me there. The autofocus is so good it was a shame not to use it.

You can preach to me till you're blue in the face about the need to have super deluxe, noise free, high ISO's but I'll preach right back to you that it's more important to have high ISO if you hobble yourself with 2.8 and slower zoom lenses. The image above was shot at ISO 640 in very, very low light. The fast aperture obviates the need to crank up the amplifiers and bang away at the files. I'm not necessarily a Luddite. I do use a Canon 5Dmk2 from time to time but the whole noise thing seems over blown to me. Give me a fast lens, a fun camera and some in-body stabilization and I'll be a happy camper in most situations that are bright enough for old eyes to see in. Your mileage will vary, profoundly. Test your own technique before accepting mine.

I photographed this little tableau at the W Hotel. I used an ISO of 1250, at f4 and hand-held the camera at a quarter of a second. I love the fact that anything I stick in front of an EP3 automatically gets image stabilization. I can hardly wait to test the stabilization in the OM-D.

So, if I'm so amazed by the 25 Pan/Leica why did I also buy the 45mm 1.8 Olympus lens? Why not? It's a great focal length for the kind of portraits I like to do. I've shot with it and found it good. Judging from work I've seen my friends produce with it the lens is probably as sharp wide open as the 25mm and it helps me fantasize about a time in the near future when I am able to shoot everything I want with just a bag full of m4:3 cameras and lenses.

I'm photographing some portraits with the 45mm this afternoon and throughout the week. I'm sure I'll have something to say about it in short order.

It's kind of funny. I've been reading across the web this week about famous photographers who are making a transition in the opposite direction. They are rushing to embrace the promise of medium format digital cameras. Zack Arias has written a long blog entry about how amazed and impressed he is with the file quality of his new medium format camera. David Hobby recently revealed his adoption of medium format as well. Even my friend, Paul, has joined the exclusive club with the latest Hasselblad MF.

Several of my newer readers wrote to me directly asking me when I was going to "dip my toe" into the MF waters and see what it was all about. They assumed that medium format was a very new category and a fast growing one for professionals. Well, I guess my answer is: Been there, done that. Box checked.

Back in 2008 and 2009 I was asked to extensively test and review three different medium format cameras over the course of the year. I spent "quality time" squeezing the best performance out of each camera, exploring their proprietary raw files and dealing with their quirks. Here's what I wrote at the time:

http://www.imaginginfo.com/print/Studio-Photography/Leaf-AFi-7/3$4159

http://www.imaginginfo.com/print/Studio-Photography/Mamiya-DL28/3$5017

http://www.imaginginfo.com/print/Studio-Photography/An-Enhanced-Medium-Format-Digital-Camera-/3$4670

If you read through the reviews please keep in mind that, at the time of the reviews we were just starting to see announcements for 21 megapixel cameras from Canon and that Nikon had not year dropped anything bigger than 12 megapixels on the markets. At the time 12 megapixels was considered a good standard for professional cameras. It was a different time.

I'm happy to see the prices on the current MF cameras start to drop. I think the benefit is not in endless resolution but in the size of the sensor and its relationship to focal length. The benefit for portrait shooters has always been the use of a longer focal length for the same angle of view, with its attendant faster drop off of depth of field. It's a look that's hard to duplicate. If you are rushing to the big cameras just for the resolution then you've missed the train already. But these camera sensors are still smaller than the 6c6 cm of the old, film Hasselblads.

I'll be happy to sit on the sidelines and watch everyone embrace the new cameras in an attempt to differentiate themselves from the middle of the photographic Bell Curve. If it works and puts more clients in their corral then more power to them. But as Buckaroo Bonzai said, "Wherever you go, there you are."

The week ahead should be fun. I can hardly wait to see which company announces what this week. It's just part of the continuing process of re-inventing photography....

This is an image from a 40 Megapixel Phase One back. Is there a difference? What is it? How would you describe it?

The Fifth Book Has Finally, Officially Landed at Amazon.com. Finally.

2012-02-10T10:37:00.000-06:00

LED Lighting. Kirk's Fifth Book.

Of all the changes that technology's brought to photography one of the most interesting to me is how it's changed the way we light things. The tools are transforming the vision of a generation. Cameras with faster ISOs require less light but the light you do bring to the table is so much more controllable and easy to use than ever before. While most still photographers use flash in some form I'm pretty certain that the future will call for more use of continuous light and more flexibility in choosing our tools.

I started using LEDs when Canon and Nikon and Olympus and Sony started putting really cool video capabilities in their cameras. I wanted to see if I could open up some profitable markets for myself by adding video to the product mix I offer my clients. While I'm not setting the world on fire with video, the simple interviews and web videos I've done put an extra $10,000+ in my accounts last year. Not big money but if we work hard on improving every step I'm sure we can make those numbers grow, year by year.

So I got my first set of LED lights to augment available light with video but on the way to becoming the next Steven Spielberg I noticed that I was attracted to using the LEDs, more and more, for still life work where the WYSIWYG nature of continuous lighting made my shoot more efficient and productive. Now I had a reason to jump in and learn with both feet. So I bought more and bigger panels. In effect, I slid into LED lighting the way you slide into a hot bath....just a toe at a time and then finally, the commitment, and the plunge.

Now, a year and a half later, I've used the LEDs to light executive portraits, twilight portraits, complex (for me) food shoots, studio shoots with actors for Zachary Scott Theater, and some really fun and fast moving corporate reportage. A few days ago I was asked to photograph some books in a three dimensional sort of way. A few years back I would have been reaching for the electronic flash monolights and I'd start the "chimping" process. I'd be setting up soft boxes and umbrellas and blah, blah, blah.

With my bigger LED panels I just flipped the switch to "on," lined up the shot on the live view screen of my camera, set the aperture I knew I'd need to cover the book with sharp focus, adjusted the shutter speed until the live histogram looked correct and then tripped the shutter. A quick, magnified look at the file and I was on to the next set up. Color? Perfect. Just using AWB. Perfect? I finished in two hours what had taken me, in past "flash centric" shoots, perhaps four or five hours.

In the book I've written about choosing the right LEDs. About the accessories that seem to work best for me working with the lights. About using them for my favorite subject: Portraits. There are over 250 images that illustrate every point. The book is 160 pages long as is the culmination of a year and a half of research and "real world" use. And then six long months of writing a re-writing.

I hope you'll take a chance and add this book to your library of photographic books. I'll continue to update my knowledge base about LEDs and what's changing in the market place and share that information here. What every writer in this day and age needs is the support of his audience. In a way the books pay for and are the prime impetus for writing this blog. Every book sold gives me time to explore, write and shoot more.

thank you.

Canon Designers Fail Again. My Overdue Review on a "Retro" Product.

2012-02-09T20:43:00.004-06:00

When will all this retro nonsense stop?

I watched the Nikon rollout of the D800 a few days ago and it reminded me that Canon is on the ropes. For good. Oh sure. They're the biggest camera company in the galaxy (right now), design and produce their own incredible sensors, and just a few years ago the Nikon users were jumping in droves to get the white lenses, the super video, the full frame, the high ISO. But now everything has changed and there's no such thing as continual "leapfrogging." Canon is doomed. DOOMED !!! We all know it. And I think I found the genesis of their hideous decline. Someone asked me to review this camera (above) and I was shocked with the primitive feature set. I know it must be a current camera because it's so........retro.

It's called a Canonet QL17. How cutesy. It sports a prime 40mm lens with a fast, 1.7 f-stop but that's just about where the feature set ends....

Well, here's my review: The damn thing is unusable. Let's go down the list of unredeemable flaws. To start with, all that satiny metal finish is way too retro-ly conspicuous. I've applied ample stealth tape in an attempt to tone down this grasping, faux modern design aesthetic as best I can.

The lens is FIXED. Not that it was broken but, I've learned now that any camera with a fixed lens is inferior to an interchangeable lens camera. And zooms are best of all. Who can do any kind of work without a fisheye and an extreme telephoto? Read no further. I'll warn you off right now. This is not a birding camera. Unless you relish the idea of tiny birds hidden in the recesses of your frames. Dots, really. There's no reach at all. The lens is just a 40mm and that's on full frame !!!!

But I just found out that the "full frame" imager is the same as the one used in the Nikon F full frame that we reviewed earlier. It's not re-usable. It's WORO. Which means "write once, read once." They used a sensor called "film." It's very noisy over ISO 400, and the camera doesn't have a lot of post processing tools built in. In fact, it has none. It's a very expensive way to run a camera. But it's offset by having a MSRP of $149.95, new.

Continuing with the flaws you would have to add the lack of autofocus. See the little knob just to the right of the lens in the photo above? You pull that up or down to effect focus. And the confirmation that you're doing a damn bit of good in the pursuit of focus is in a little window you look through. Apparently this is a "rangefinder" camera. Like that other retro copy, the Leica M9. Come on, if you need the retro styling just get a Fuji X-100. That's the real retro deal.

This camera may be one of the very few in the world without a menu. In fact, there's no electronic interface I could find. You wiggle the stick for focus. You watch fuzzy yellow blocks come together for focus and while I think there used to be a meter in the camera but the designers chose a battery that didn't "jump the shark" into the 21st century. So your meter is all mental. Kind of an "Abundance Metering" philosophy. If you "think" good exposure then surely you will manifest good exposure.

The camera has a limited range of shutter speeds and those are only available in full stops. Wanna shoot outside? I don't think so. The top shutter speed is 1/500th and God knows you can't do anything with that. And get this.....the slowest shutter speed is 1/4th of a second. Jeez. No star trails here.

There is a bulb setting and a self-timer but my test camera's self timer was obviously defective. It buzzed like a savage honey bee every time I tried to use it. Notice the steel and alloy construction. Sadly it adds a lot of weight to what should have been a lightweight camera. Don't those designers know about the joy of plastic?

Speaking of hopelessly retro, get a load of this. It's a PC terminal for a sync cord. And it's a "dumb terminal" not an interactive connection. All it's good for is triggering flashes. And, you guessed it, Canon "cheaped out" and didn't include any provision for "smart flash." (Although they do have a provision for a primitive "guide number" flash.) Could they be more painfully retro?

And I'm sure you saw this coming...No LCD screen. No way to preview or review your images. It's almost like this camera is "capture averse."

This unit may represent an older part of Canon's line but it's an example of the company's obvious misdirection. If they had launched products like this in the 1970's do you think they'd even still be in business today?

I'm waiting for an improved, eighty five megapixel verison with auto Hipstergram, auto HDR, auto Compose and auto Banter. And, if Canon ever dumps the tired ass retro thing and comes into this century of camera design, let them know that I'm waiting for a red one. Fire Engine Red.

In All Seriousness...The Canonet QL17 was my first real camera and was a constant companion for years. I finally retired it to a place of honor in the equipment drawer when I bought my first Leica M3 with a 50mm Summicron. The Canonet went with me to Paris back in 1978 and many of my favorite images came from that little, wonderful box. It loaded quickly (hence the QL) and it gave me easy to print Tri-X negatives, roll after roll. It was small, unobtrusive and quick to use. The meter was acceptable but we took advantage of a useful tool, provided by Kodak, when we wanted fast and accurate exposure setting advice. Every roll of Kodak film came packaged with a sheet of paper, and on that sheet was a little set of illustrations showing different light sources and recommended settings. We'd tape the little paper strip onto the bottom of the camera, under Scotch tape, for quick reference. And it worked better than matrix metering nearly every time.

The fast (and sharp) lens and vibration free leaf shutter (flash sync to 1/500th), in concert with ISO 400 film, let me shoot with impunity in low light. The rangefinder never front or back focused and was equally good in bright or dim light. Your battery could go completely dead and all you would lose is the metering. In all it was an incredibly condensed and compressed tool for shooting real life. If you find one in good shape for a good price you might consider snapping it up. It's a good intro camera for people who've never had the pleasure of using real film.

A time out from the new product mania.

2012-02-08T19:22:00.001-06:00

I finished shooting a box full of books for one of my clients who publishes books about real estate and I was looking for something to cleanse my "visual palette." I found this old Kodak folding camera that my mom sent me. Apparently, it's been living in my parent's closet for a few decades. It came from a relative's collection many years ago.

I cleaned it off and put it on one of my tripods and then thought about lighting. I set up a different lighting design than I had ever tried before. I placed a big, 1,000 LED light panel (the cheap, Chinese variants) on either side of the camera and used the barn doors to keep spill light off the gray wall that was, maybe, five feet behind the camera. The LED panels were pretty close. You can see the placement in the image below. I expected the chrome parts to burn out and the dark areas to be noisy but it didn't turn out that way. Even though the camera sits directly between the two lights I thought the overall effect was dramatic and pleasing. I shot the set-up with a Panasonic GH2 and the 14-140mm lens. When I opened the raw file in Lightroom I was delighted. There wasn't much post processing to be done.

My favorite aspect of the shot on top, and even more so in the middle frame (above) is the way the light falls off as it goes down the tripod legs. I'm equally happy with the way the light falls off so quickly to the background that the wall goes black. And, at ISO 160, I'm not seeing any noise in the shadows. It's really nice performance for an inexpensive little system. Once I finished shooting this I wrapped up everything and went into the house to have dinner with the family. I can't decide which of the two above images I like the best. The camera alone is nice and clean but the second image resonates with my inner photo nerd. I wish I'd done the shot earlier because it would have made a nice addition to my book. I'm anxious to try the same kind of lighting in a portrait set up so I can get that same rapid fall off.

Today was totally insane. We had nearly 20,000 pageviews of my Olympus OM-D introduction. This followed yesterday's big, web wide announcement of the Nikon D800. The lure of the new cameras was palpable. There was clearly credit card adrenaline in the air. But when I looked at the new stuff I had a sense of having been there so many times before. I'm starting to feel like Pavlov's sad little dog because I find myself drooling at the internet signal that tells me that new camera dog food is heading to my bowl.

In both instances the camera makers are moving their respective balls forward. The Nikon may be the camera that pushes the medium format either off a cliff or into making a price competitive product for people who want or need a really large sensor. It will certainly be strong bait for people who want the best you can get (conditionally--meaning: the best for under $5,000). The promise of a 30+ megapixel camera is tons of detail and smooth tonality. It may be overkill but that remains to be seen.... Wait a month and Canon will, no doubt, debut their answering salvo and the race will be on to lock down customers. It's pretty much an easy sell. Lots of dots and lots of good numbers for a pretty affordable price. If you're an aspiring pro this is the kind of camera that popular wisdom will lead you to.

The Olympus OM-D is the magic camera enthusiasts have been waiting for. It's small and sexy and by all accounts it's going to be a very, very good picture taker. But what is the real appeal of this whole micro four thirds niche? Do you get it? Can I explain it? I'll try...

First of all, it's no longer "cool" to carry around huge cameras and lenses over your shoulders anymore as you go about day to day life. It's kind of the equivalent of dragging around a huge laptop just to be able to cruise the web and read your e-mail at your favorite local coffee shop. Get a tablet. Save some table real estate.

At the heart of it the appeal of the small, mirrorless cameras in general is that for all intents and purposes the image quality of these cameras is more than adequate for 95% of the kind of shooting and sharing that 95% of the people who are ardent photographers, want to do. Really. We might be shackled by nostalgia into thinking that only a "full sized" camera will work for us because "our" needs are specialized. But really, if you aren't shooting a job or assignment you're probably sharing most of your photo output on someone's computer screen.

I did another job today for the "book" client. The first time we shot together I shot all the books with a full frame, "professional" camera and a dedicated macro lens. But the client's only use for the images was as illustrations on their website and as product illustration on Amazon.com. I'd be shocked if they were used any larger than 800 pixels on a side. Today we shot the same kind of stuff on the Panasonic GH2 and, after I finished dropping out the backgrounds and doing my post processing, the images were equivalent to the earlier full frame shots. The one difference I noticed in the actual shooting was that the increased DOF for the same angle of view meant that I didn't struggle to keep the product in focus at the cost of the effects of diffraction. Oh, and the live view was much easier to use. Oh, and the touchscreen was pretty cool for moving the AF sensor cursor around. I guess my point is that while huge print sizes and ultimate quality are still the provence of the biggest camera sensor you can get it's not a binary equation for all photography.

The users of the m4:3 cameras that I know have all graduated from bigger cameras. They are looking for great image performance in a package that's a good companion. Small, easy to pack, light enough to carry for a full day and not in your face. Having graduated from the mainstream they seem to have left behind the idea that the camera itself conveys some level of competence to the photographer. Now they just practice their craft for the joy of practicing their craft.

The other thing that seems attractive about m4:3rds is a side effect of the lack of the mirror. The lens mount flange to sensor distance is much smaller and that means that every lens designed for longer sensor-to-flange or flange-to-film plane distances can, with an adapter, be mounted for use on these cameras. That appeals to the experimenter, the do-it-yourselfer, and the glass epicureans who understand that all lenses have their own personalities and styles. People routinely mount everything from long, fast Nikon telephotos to jewel-like Leica M lenses.

But now the m4:3's have come of age. Both Olympus and Panasonic have started revving up the optical workshops and they've been introducing cutting edge prime lenses than can be designed to be optically better than lenses hobbled by having to clear a mirror. A big gap between the lens and the sensor means that lens designers have to use retrofocus designs that are a compromise. The new lenses made for the smaller format can be optimized for better wide open performance, better sharpness and higher contrast.

I think the graduates get that. Maybe not the exact engineering but surely the idea that the lenses, even though small, are heavy hitters. And they return really superb images.

Smaller, lighter, cheaper, designed for the hand, fully implemented EVFs and lots of other intangibles. What's not to like?

Do I want one of the new OM-D's? You bet. Do I need it? Not for a second. I'm still happy with the Olympus EP2, spoiled by the EP3 and well satisfied with the workmanlike GH2. Can we shoot jobs with these? Of course. Look to the destination. Heading to the web? Perfect. Prints up to 20 inches? No problem. Super impressive to clients? Nope. But that's a whole other story.

I'm not preaching for a total takeover of the market by mini-cameras. I think there's a place for everything. And I'm sure lots of other pros will be able to make the case for big Canons and Nikons and that may be true for them. But the market isn't homogenous. I think it's smarter to choose a camera that's fun and facile rather than following any of the herds and buying a camera that's just right for someone else.

Hope you're having fun. There's never been a better time to enjoy photography. Just don't let the obsession with gear ruin your fun...

Olympus Fans Rejoice !!! The OM-D is real. And it might be awesome.

2012-02-07T20:01:00.006-06:00

It'll be here in April and it's just what everyone said they wanted in

an Olympus mirrorless camera. Really.

The Olympus faithful (myself included) have waiting a long time for this one to hit the market and it looks like we'll get the m4:3rds machine we wanted from Olympus afterall. I loved the EP2 and the EP3 but in each introduction I shook my head at the lack of insight into professional and advanced amateur usage patterns on the part of Olympus. I've been very, very clear that no pro in his/her right mind would buy a camera that didn't have an EVF. And the VF-2 EVF attachment is a good tool. But dammit, if you wanted to use the EVF on the EP2 and the EP3 you used up the hot shoe and the only two way terminal on the camera. Wanna use the VF-2? Then you can't use a hot shoe mounted flash. Wanna use a outboard microphone to do good sound with your video? Not is you need to use the VF-2. It drove me nuts.

We were also starting to chafe under the constraints of the 12 megapixel sensor. And if I had a quarter for every time I heard the Olympus fans decry the lack of weather sealing on the Pens I'd be driving a Bentley.

The ultimate wish list looked something like this:

1. Built in, high quality, fast refresh EVF

2. 16 Megapixel Sensor (preferably one that could be used in various aspect ratios without cutting into the pixel count. Like the one in the Panasonic GH2 (which is very, very good....).

(2/9 edit: I asked, point blank if the sensor was usable in different aspect ratios without cropping. The official Olympus source said, "yes." However, no one is infallible and many, many on the web are of the opinion that my question was misunderstood or incorrectly answered. If you're only criteria for buying or pre-ordering the camera is the sensor particulars you owe it to yourself to check this before buying. I'll try to get further information from Olympus about this. You've been cautioned!)

3. Weatherproof and dust proof.

4. Super fast AF. Like, fastest in the world, fast.

5. Fun to handle for small and large hands.

6. Bigger battery capacity than the Pens.

So, the wraps are off as of 9:01 EST February 7, 2012 and now it's time to unwrap the little metaphorical jewelry box and see what we actually got. Will there be crying and weeping and ritual tearing of clothes or will there be joy among the steadfast?

Weather proof. Whether proof.

I'd say raucous celebration is in order because, by the look of the specifications, we got everything we asked for. (Note: I haven't handled the camera yet. I did get a complete walk through from the tech folks at Olympus USA. I will test a full production version in the near future.)

If you want the executive brief it goes something like this. Back in the 1970's Olympus introduced a line of very compact and very elegantly designed 35mm cameras. People were ready for a new size of camera that didn't weigh a ton and handle like a brick. The OM-1 and OM-2 cameras were wildly successful. And many of the lenses supplied for those cameras became legends because of their optical performance. Now Olympus is doing the same with digital. This is a direct backlash at all the bloated "professional" bodies and systems on the market. A small but powerful game changer.

When packaged with a new generation of high performance prime lenses it is a system that offers a good and creative alternative to a market crowded with "me too" APS-C DSLR camera variants. The mirrorless systems are useful, easy to handle and fully capable of giving professional results. The market is shifting.

According to Olympus the EVF is the same spec as the VF2 and that's good news for me because I think the VF-2 is one of the best EVF's I've used. And this one is built in. Right there in the pentaprism hump, just like the photogods always intended. And that leaves the hotshoe free for all the wonderful gadgets we've got stuffed into our bags. That includes remote triggers for flashes, bigger flashes for PR events, the stereo microphone adapter (which allows me to use a Rode StereoMic right there in the hot shoe for video work. Yippee!). Finally, happily. I'll be able to use this camera with my studio flash equipment and still have unfettered access to the eye level finder.

Camera with slave flash attached.

The folks at Olympus don't make it a habit to divulge the provenance of the sensors they use. I guess it's supposed to be a trade secret. So I asked a few probing questions. As you can see from the specs the sensor is 16 megapixels. I wanted to know if, similar to the Panasonic sensor in the GH2, you could use other aspect ratios such as 16:9 and 3:2 without losing resolution. The answer I got was "yes." All but the 1:1 aspect ratio. If this is true (and I have no reason not to believe it) this will make me happy. (See my "caveat emptor" above.)

I'd take a chrome version if they gave me one. If I pay for it then it has to be black. YMMV.

The AF is supposed to be the fastest in the world. For now. While I wasn't blown away by the speed of the EP2 AF I found it to be workable and very accurate. Indeed, the accuracy of the AF is a great selling point for all of the mirrorless cameras using CD-AF (contrast detection autofocus). The EP3 was a huge step forward and works well for me in all but the darkest and lowest contrast situations. In normal light it's right there with its Canon and Nikon peers. If the OM-D is even faster then they've done some wild engineering. Along with fast AF there's something we haven't tasted yet in m4:3rds and that's fast frame rates. The OM-D will do 9 fps at full res. The only catch is that you lock focus with frame one. There's no continuous AF with your blistering frame rate. If you want C-AF you'll need to drop down to 4.1 fps and turn off IS. With all the stuff implemented you'll still get a respectable 3 fps. All of this is based on using their MSC lenses.

With the 12-50 you've got a 24-100 equivalent and the who set up is spit proof.

My cameras have always had weatherproof capabilities, including all my Pens. It costs a dollar. It's called Ziploc(tm) Plastic Bags. When it's wet outside you put the bag over your camera. It's impervious to moisture.... But for everyone who needs the real thing this camera is the real deal. They sent along an image showing all of the gasket points in red but I'd rather look at the exterior body stuff. So, the OM-D is dustproof and splashproof and generally weatherproof. But as with the pro cameras from every manufacturer, all the camera body weatherproofing in the world isn't going to help completely unless the lens and lens mounts are also weatherproof. The newly announced 12-50m zoom fits the bill and there are several other lenses that are coming soon that will boast full weatherproofing. The one many people with no doubt lust after will be the 60mm 2.8 macro. A quick note: According to my Olympus source that lens will also have a control on the barrel that will control the rendering of out of focus areas as well as full macro capability. Sounds like an all purpose portrait lens to me.

I know most of you aren't really interested in video but I am so I'm just going to take a moment and talk a few specs for the other video ready people out there. From all indications this will be a great little movie camera. The sensor is just the right size and the throughput is there. The specs indicate full HD (1920 by 1080) at 60 fps. You also have the choice of .MOV and .AVI. Whatever your editing set up one of those choices should work for you. The camera will go for 29 minutes if you have enough memory stuffed in. Why else do I think the camera is ready for good video? Well, you've got the EVF for full sun. You've got a movable, ample LCD panel on the back with lots of real estate and you've got the ability to connect external microphones. With the m4:3 lens mount and zillions of great manual focus and specialty lenses to choose from you should be able to get pretty much exactly what you need.

Add a battery grip and you'll also have long run times.

Ah......yes....there's a battery grip. You'll be able to cram two batteries into the mix for twice as much service time between recharges and yes, the batteries for the OM-D are different from the Pen batteries. They are bigger than the BLS-x batteries but not as big as the BLM-x batteries used in the bigger E series 4:3 cameras. The grip also gives people with bigger hands a lot more real estate to hold on to. And it duplicates some function controls from the body. But it does make the camera bigger. Not sure where I stand on accessory grips but we'll just have to play with one and see.

The movable screen on the back makes the camera thicker than an EP3. Take off the screen (don't!!!!) and it's just about the same size.

It's hard to tell from the images here because there's no scale for comparison but I've seen images of the camera next to the E-5 and the E-620 and it's much, much smaller than either of those cameras. It looks to be about 1/3 the cubic volume of an E-5.

Thank you for the built in EVF. This makes it a "real" camera.

The offset to the right leaves room for an auto eye sensor. Bring the camera up to your eye and it automatically switches to from LCD to EVF.

No Flash in the guts.

Olympus giveth and Olympus taketh away. There is NO built in flash. That will make some people happy and some people sad. But it's pretty hard to get everything else you wantrd in a small and lightweight camera without compromising a feature or two. I'm guessing the camera will ship with the little pixie flash you see in the hot shoe above. I have one like this that arrived in the studio bundled with the little Pen EPM and it works as well as any built in ever did and gives you the option to bounce it off the ceiling.

While you're crying in your beer over the lack of yet another weak built-in flash let's switch gears and look at two other things that sparked me right up. One is a brand new implementation of image stabilization. In the first systems to hit the market the gyros and computer chips would detect motion in two directions: Up and down, and side to side. The latest implementation from Olympus detects and remediates motion and shake from five axis. That even includes rotational tremor. Coupling this with much faster processing basically means that it should be the market leader for IS for the moment at least. And BIG PLUS !!!!! Now you can see the effect of the image stabilization in the finder or on the LCD while you are shooting. That was the one remaining advantage of in-lens image stabilization. It was nice to be able to see the effect you were getting. Now you get that and you maintain the ability to bring IS to every lens you put on the front of the camera. AF or not. Got a Nikon lens from 1962? If you can get it on the right adapter you've just turned it into an image stabilized "optic."

The screen. OLED, of course.

So, where are we? We've got a small, stylish camera. Built like an alloy brick. With a full 16 megapixel sensor (just like we demanded). Maybe the sensor will even do the "no-cost-cropping-to-your-favorite- aspect-ratio" trick. If you really love the camera and you've mounted a weatherproof lens to it you can take it into the shower with you. Or out in the rain. It's built on a metal alloy body shell. The hi-res EVF is built in. The ports are available for all of our toys. What else could there be?

Well. There's a new 3D file format and a couple of new art filters. And there are some actually cool filters for video production. But really, isn't this every single thing we asked for in a new camera? I'd say it is. But the proof will be in the shooting. The camera is very scarce right now but it's slated to ship in April. I pushed hard to get a test copy before the intro but I got the polite, parental, "we'll see what we can do." If the camera just does what the spec sheet says I think most of us will be pretty happy.

Got remote control if you want it...

A note or two about the new flash. It works with a small Olympus remote if you want to use it off the camera. It will also be controllable by the built in flash in the EP3. If you are into run and gun movie making the flash also has a built in, LED video light. Only powerful enough to focus with and brighten a nearby subject's eyes. The OM-D syncs at a respectable 1/250th of a second and with a small controller flash or unit will control all the previous "R" series Olympus flashes. I personally will continue my practice of sticking a Flash Waves radio trigger in the shoe and using whatever flash I want, in manual mode. Or a convenient LED panel.

For the vampires among us let's sink out teeth into a few specs. The technical guys at Olympus were very excited about the low light capabilities of the camera sensor and file output. We didn't go into detail in our fact finding interview but the camera is capable of being set to ISO's of up to 25,000. I'm an ISO cynic and I'm going to say that I'll be happy if 3200 is pretty clean. Time will tell. But I think more and more of us are becoming aware of the role of computer processing in the production of "clean" files and the OM-D is using a new iteration of processors. They'd have to be to get the frames per second rates they've achieved in still mode and the frame rates in HD video that they're touting. I have high hopes that the high ISO performance is great. Not because I'll really make much use of it but I know any perceived shortcomings in ISO will be a source of endless and emotional discussion across the web.

I like Olympus bodies but lenses are what they are really all about.

Olympus did some really right stuff in 2011. And I think they're getting ready to build on their success. The launch of the 12mm and the 45mm lenses was invigorating; both for the company and for their "installed customer base." (Us.) Now, in concert with lenses from Panasonic, we're on the cusp of having a full system of pro caliber optics. The rumors you've heard about the 75 mm 1.8 and the 60 Macro are true. They'll be along, if all goes according to plan, some time in the fourth quarter of this year. And by all measures these lenses should be stunning. I own a Pen 70mm f2 lens from the late 1960's or early 1970's and I can tell you that it's really good. Just imagine what fifty years of research and development can buy us. Add a few more well thought out primes and some longer lenses and you're in the sweet spot of a system that can do just about anything. And that includes shooting professionally. With this camera the system has come of age. I've got my fingers crossed that it's as good in the hand as it is on paper. Amazing how far m4:3 has come in such a short amount of time.

Now. On another subject that's somewhat related: What's going on with the original "e" series of 4:3 cameras and lenses? I asked that question directly. The answer I got is that they are not throwing in the towel. They have, "product under development." There you go, Frank.

The new lens mount adapter will bring weatherproof performance to the 4:3 lenses. And, with new firmward updates I would expect the AF performance to get better and better.

The grip is a mixed blessing. You'll get more to hold on to. More to grip when shooting verticals. More battery power. But the camera gets bigger and starts to look.....bigger.

At this point I think Olympus can take a deep breath, accept a few pats on the back, and then get to work rolling out these improvements all down the line. I can hardly wait for an EPL-5 with the same sensor and the same IS. Hello Canon and Nikon ! Are you guys paying attention?

Getting back to work. The part I hate.

2012-02-07T10:28:00.000-06:00

Canon 5D mk2. 20mm f2.8

I love sitting here writing blogs. I get to talk about anything I want and I get to "discuss" with those who disagree. I love walking around the city on a brisk day, the wind pushing against my ski jacket and making me squint a bit. The feel of a familiar camera in my hands. I love having a leisurely lunch with Belinda, or one of my friends. I love the reticent thrill of jumping into the water in the outdoor pool at 7 in the morning while a bold north wind tickles my bare skin. I love those dark mornings when temperatures in the 30's bring a frothy cloud of steam just above the surface of the pool. And I love the warm glow of the water with the pool lights lit and the sky still purple and deep blue. I love the bite of a good cup of coffee and the richness of an afternoon cappuccino. I love checks that come in the mail. On time. And I love curling up on the couch with my dog and a good book.

But there's one aspect of being a photographer that I hate more than anything. It's the marketing. Plain and simple. In a one person business there's nothing worse than having to continually sell yourself. In fact, all the things I listed above are just ways I procrastinate about dealing with the big elephant in the room. The fear of actually trying to engage new clients. Think about how lucky the marketing people are at companies with products. They have something real and substantial to sell. It may not be the best product in the world but a good salesperson will find a convincing combination of selling propositions that makes even a mediocre product sellable, at a price point.

On the other hand, a freelance photographer is selling himself. He can point to previous work and a track record but the product he'll produce for the future client hasn't been created yet. And the future client will have to take a leap of faith that his choice of photographer will be able to pull off making just the right image in just the right time frame. At some level we're in the business of making (and hopefully keeping) promises. And that's a tough sell.

We can point to a track record but imaging is a moving target and just because you could do sharp and perfect yesterday doesn't mean it's relevant to the distressed and retro aesthetic today. I could talk about decades of experience but that's a two edged sword as it instantly puts me into an age group that's anathema in today's markets. I could trot out my books and talk about my industry expertise but that muddies the waters. Then, instead of being someone's "go to" photographer, I send the mixed message that my business is about writing and publishing and marketing that product. The bottom line is that I have to show the work I've done and I have to present myself in a way that makes people want to work with me.

And that's scary. Have you ever tried picking up the phone and telling a stranger just how great you are while at the same time trying to convey that you're just one of the guys and you'd love to work with his team and have a jolly time talking about an assignment over a cold beer? It's tricky. Really.

So I've done my New Year's procrastination. I've worked on the mailing list. I've had my designer design some 5.5 by 8.5 inch four color over four color postcards, with an image that's proven to be popular. I've sent out some e-mail blasts with links to some custom galleries. But now it's time to do the real work. The heavy lifting of my business. It's time to strap on my most congenial personality and start making the cold calls.

Reality? No one makes it in this business without venturing into the real physical world and shaking hands with the people who control the assignments and write the checks. You have to meet them. You have to show them your stuff. You have to show them that you'll be good to work with. None of the other stuff really has the horsepower to close the deals and push people to commit.

So, I've loaded up the iPad with various portfolios that I can conjure up at the drop of a hat. I've had my designer create a nice "leave behind" piece. Now it's time to stop writing this blog. Drop into my comfortable chair. Strap on the earphones and microphone attachment to my phone and start dialing.
Notes in front of me on my screen. Deep breath. One more sip of coffee and then.....it's game on.

Cool, futuristic lobby.

2012-02-06T19:11:00.001-06:00

Canon 5Dmk2, 20mm Canon EF lens. Available light.

I think I've posted this image before but I came across it today and it reminded me how much photography could be done with simple tools. Earlier in my career this would have been shot on 4x5 inch sheet film but with careful metering and a few clicks of the transform tool in PhotoShop I am very happy with this rendition. The only hold over from the earlier days is the need for a stout tripod.

Some people decorate with flair. I really enjoyed being in this space.

Sliders. Not the little burgers you get at the bar. But a bar with a slider and a camera on top.

2012-02-06T17:35:00.002-06:00

I've been playing around with "new" video lately and that seems to call for lots of shots with sliders. Sliders are basically rail systems that allow you to do controlled camera moves parallel to a subject. A couple days ago I did a slider shot of my desk. It's different from a pan. Look: http://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2012/02/yesterday-was-about-marketing-and-fine.html

I saw some really cool video, shot on location in Egypt, and I immediately wanted a slider. And then I started researching and checking prices. A decent rig started at $600 and went up from there. I decided I'd wait for the proverbial "big project" before I started dropping big money all over the place. And then my home science brain kicked in and I started thinking about ways to do it myself. One afternoon I stumbled over a supplier called, "Igus" on Amazon.com. This is how their product is described: DryLin® W16-A Linear Motion System for Camera Sliders. The price, delivered, was right at $150. I took a chance.

A few days later I got this long, incredibly well machined rail and a carriage assembly that runs on teflon coated Delrin wheels. The top of the carriage is a solid block of 1/4 inch aluminum. I grabbed a pair of goggles and the electric drill. I taped off all the wheel areas and drilled a 3/8ths inch hole right through the center of the square aluminum block with my titanium drill bit. Really. Very macho.

The rail has drilled holes every six inches or so which would allow you to mount legs or some other method of securing the whole system but I prefer to use Super Clamps and light stands. A clamp on each stand seems to work fine. The stands I'm showing in the top and bottom images are way too small. If the stands aren't strong enough you'll get a lot of wiggle and jiggle. Not what you want in your shots.

Now, when I use the rail, I mount it between two short Century Stands and that seems to do the trick. There's no play in the system. Just for added assurance I drop a twenty pound sandbag over the highest leg of each C-Stand. That makes for a rigid foundation.

In the illustrations here I have a Manfrotto ballhead mounted on the rig. It's fine for sweeping a camera back and forth in a straight line but sometimes I like to pan in the opposite direction of the slide or tilt up or down during a slide and I'd like to do it smoothly. For those uses, out comes the Manfrotto 501 HDV fluid head tripod. The leveler ball doesn't fit on the base but that's okay because I usually make sure the rig is level, from side to side, before we start shooting.

What do I use to level the whole thing? Well, I've just figured out a good use for my iPhone. It's called "Level-O-graphy." You can download a cheap as free app that turns your iPhone into a level. And it works pretty well. Also works as a plumb line. I whip out the phone, randomly do a couple of Hysteriagrams, and then switch to level-headed mode and blaze away. Distracting though, when your level rings...

I seem to have Super Clamps scattered all over the studio so they were also cheap as free and they do a great job of holding the rig in place. They break down quickly when were finished doing our Spielberg imitations.... JJ Abrahms would be proud.

So, the image below is pretty much all there is to it. With big enough support stands you ought to be able to use just about any camera but I've found that the larger the camera the better. The increased mass is easier to stop and start and move easily and, since it has its own inertia, a bigger camera tends to stay in motion more smoothly. That's it. If you want to play with sliders then just make one. When the big bucks roll in there will always be time to go for the fancy ones.

Revisiting, "Oh My God, That's Sharp!!!!"

2012-02-04T20:30:00.003-06:00

I've been fooling around with lots of different cameras over the past few years. I guess I've been looking for the Holy Grail of cameras. We all seem to want something small and light, fast and sleek and almost infinitely flexible. And, most of us (myself included) are drawn like moths to the newest and trendiest of inventions. I know we're looking for a magic bullet that will make our photo work shine.

But I've learned a lot over the past two weeks. I learned that I can be wrong in a blog and it's okay to change my mind. I learned that most people are interested and kind and patient and I re-learned that the world seems to keep assholes around for balance. But mostly I learned that we spend a lot of time spinning our wheels reading stuff like this and trying to divine some meaning in it all that probably isn't there. We (myself included) tend to think that photo bloggers are exceptional photographers. In a recent forum someone mentioned my 500px gallery and suggested people take a gander. Started a skirmish as one person jumped in to say he found nothing exceptional about my work. The battle was on as people friendly to me took umbrage and pushed back. But the happy or sad truth is that I'm not better a photographer than hundreds of thousands of people all over the world. In fact, you may be much better than me. But it doesn't matter. And I don't care.

The real secret of photo bloggers is that we (tend to) write well (otherwise people wouldn't bother to read) and we're early gear adopters and we seem to be able to tap into what's hot in the market. And that may be because we are, for the most part, the same demographic as you. We're photo entertainment more than photo education. If it's fun to read and you get something out of it, who's to judge?

But to make the jump from "a fun read" to "great photographer" is a daring and foolhardy leap.

I like little cameras and, if you read the blog you know that I'm partial to the Olympus m4:3 cameras for a number of reasons. I have a happy history with their previous PEN products, I've made a good number of images I like with the current cameras and they are easy on the shoulder. But the blog drives me to extremes. A few popular articles about the m4:3 cameras and the "good blog ratings" drive me to write more and more about them. Perhaps a subconscious desire to "own" the subject. To grab mindshare.

But it makes me blind to all the other great stuff out there. So today I left all the trendy, tiny cameras at home and went out with the camera that I reach for almost every time I head out the door for a paying job, where I'll have time to use a tripod or tether my camera and use studio lights.

I picked up my heavy, boring, bad menu, bad LCD screen, Canon 1DS Mk2.

I also put the Zeiss lenses in the drawer and stuffed the "L" lenses in there with them. The lens I took out with me today is one I don't talk much about but use all the time. I haven't really mentioned it because it's not sexy. It's not "L-ish" and it's not German or even faux German. It's a Tamron 90mm f2.8 macro lens that I bought used for about $300. A really nice focal length for me and as sharp and easy to use as it was cheap to buy and boring to talk about. It's a lens I can use wide open at f2.8 but it spends most of its time in the sweet spot around f5.6. So, a little walk today

with a heavy, ancient camera and an inflexible, cheap lens.

Why?

Because at ISO 100 and a decent, hand holdable shutter speed, files from this combo remind me just how good and sharp and detailed files from professional digital cameras can be. I own a Canon 5D Mk2 but for my money the older 1DS mk2 is better at ISO 100 and 200. Much better. In fact, I like the files better than just about any other digital camera I've shot.

They (Canon) seem to have gotten that one just right.

So, today wasn't a manic day dedicated to shooting stuff to share with you on the blog. It was a return to my old walk around downtown, shooting my old favorite sites. Watching the clear, winter sunlight play across the buildings and remembering what it's like to shoot with a camera, not because it's cool but because it works like you expect a camera to work. Not a scathing denouement of Pens or Panasonics or Fujis or anything else. Just me shooting with a comfortable, old favorite.

I had no intention of writing a blog today. But I liked the images in an amateur way, not a professional way. And I wanted to share them because I liked all of their technical qualities. And it seemed fresh to me. I've written some blogs recently that people misinterpreted as depressing or negative or hopeless about photography, but nothing could be further from the truth. In each article I suggested that the old way of doing the business of photography is dying. But I also suggest, with great certainty, that the business of photographers will be re-invented and eventually thrive. I just don't know what the new paradigm looks like and even though I write a popular blog I don't have any more insight than you do about what will happen next. But I'm generally happy, thrilled to be along for the ride and still confident about putting a kid through college with my creative businesses.

Both shooting and writing and consulting.

It's hard to write a blog that works for professionals and hobbyists at the same time. There are bound to be conflicts. I'll say truthful stuff that I think other pros need to have a dialogue about. Some hobbyists think, when I talk about the "death of the existing photo business", that I'm talking about the end of all photography and that's just silly. Photography is the most popular hobby in the entire world......next to jabbering away on cellphones..... You have to pay attention and understand when I'm talking in general and when I'm making a point about what we do on the commercial side of the coin.

When I got back to the studio I downloaded the raw files and looked at them in Adobe Bridge. I chose the ones on this blog and added a bit of contrast and a little bit of saturation. The files from the 1 series cameras from Canon are, by default, a bit flat. Perhaps more room for post processing....

I was very pleased at the high sharpness. In fact, there's even some moiré on a few windows of the Frost Tower which tells me that the balance of the anti-aliasing filter is just right. Does this mean I'm abandoning the smaller cameras? No. But I'm trying to find a better balance than all or nothing. Maybe pursue the middle path. Some people look to me for an "expert" opinion about cameras and lenses; I am anything but. All I know is what I see and what I feel and how the files will work for the things for which I want to use them. That's it. Collectively, this group knows far more.

Finally, let's talk about what I want out of this blog. I've tried to be very transparent. I write the blog because I'm interested in photography and I like adding to the dialogue. I write the blog because I like to write. But truthfully, I write the blog because I hope that people will like the way I write and buy one or more of my five books on photography. When I stepped away from the blog last Fall many, many loyal readers posted asking what they could do to help. Some suggested adding a paypal "gift button" while others suggested making it a subscription site. A few people sent unsolicited donations. (Thank you). But the reality is that I hope that once a year you'll take advantage of the very inexpensive pricing at Amazon.com and take a chance on one of my books.

Right now I'm suggesting the LED book. It's a very current topic. I think I did a very good job presenting an overview of how photographers might best buy and use LED lights and there are hundreds of photographs as examples. If you do photography as a business it would seem that a book about lighting would be tax deductible (check with your accountant). If you do photography as a avocation/hobby/joyous art form/distraction from cold hard reality, etc. it would most probably be the absolute cheapest photo specific expenditure you would make in all of 2012.

Buying one of the books means I get a royalty from the sale. Buying the book through the link below means I'm get a small percentage of the sale from Amazon, which will cost you nothing. It's one of the ways I support my family and this blog. There is no membership fee here and no one is required to buy anything.

Reading is fundamental.

From Last Week. Not last decade.

2012-02-04T14:57:00.003-06:00

Panasonic GH2. Elinchrom monolight into Photek Softlighter 2-60" with diffuser.

Amanda is one of our swim coaches. She agreed to sit for a portrait. She's an amazing swimmer with a perfect butterfly stroke. She also has tremendous energy. I'm busy writing and shooting. I'll be back to the blog soon.

On vacation till next week sometime.

2012-02-02T23:14:00.000-06:00

Coffee Break. A long coffee break.

A quick post. Staying flexible.

2012-02-01T14:57:00.002-06:00

I was pretty flip (cynical, sarcastic, dismissive, etc) about the effects I was getting with Snapseed when I last wrote about my adventures in post processing. But today I had a mini-lecture from a great swim coach about the need for enhanced flexibility if we intend to keep swimming butterfly into our middle ages... (wry smiley face implied...). Then I looked up at my analog bulletin board and saw the quote from creativity consultant, Ian Summers, which reads, "Grow or Die." And I thought I should sober up and take a hint from the converging messages I'm getting from the universe.

When I was printing traditional black and white prints (in the darkroom) I had dozens of little tricks to make a print pop or sing or look sexy. I had a Pictrol which is a little contraption you stick under the enlarging lens to soften the corners in an artistic way. The blurred spilled light also enhanced the black tones around the edges. Of course we would burn and dodge but we also stole a technique from 1940's Richard Avedon in which you place very thin tracing paper in contact with the print during printing. You could also do it selectively. Just in areas. The parts that touched the paper were sharper than the parts that didn't. Primitive darkroom "tilt-shift" technique?

We selected paper for effect. And we did full contact, radical toning. With selenium, sepia, gold and even coffee (which never worked as well). And for a while we did lots of art on the print with transparent Mashall's oil paints.

So why the burr under my saddle about modern post processing? Can't imagine it would be anything but jealousy in not having discovered it first, followed by curmudgeon tendencies. So I'm coming clean. I actually like playing around with this stuff and I've been re-working some recent images to re-interpret how I used to print. After all, the Snapseed generation had to find their inspiration somewhere. Right?

If you are bored with your photo work right now you might want to change processing. The water's fine. Jump on in.

edit/addition feb. 2: An interesting article from www.luminous-landscape.com about the "RULES OF PHOTOGRAPHY." http://www.luminous-landscape.com/essays/rules_of_the_game.shtml A fun read, in light of our continuing discussions here.

Are you working too much? Are you going crazy? This is an oft requested post from about a year ago. I'm not saying you're "bad."

2012-02-01T13:33:00.003-06:00

2.20.2011

Working 24/7 and slowly going insane? Join the club? No Thanks!

I was rather shocked when I listened to a person from a company that makes all kinds of electronic products the other day. She made the pitch to me that her company helped stressed out, over-worked moms by making products (like phones and tablets) that would allow a frenetic mom to "disconnect from her office" and be able to "take her work along with her" so that she could be present for her children's activities. From what I could understand this person believed in the 1990's mantra of "multi-tasking" which has been so thoroughly discredited by psychologists and process experts over the last decade.

The idea was that, between tweets, urgent e-mails, progress reports and modifications to mission critical spreadsheets, the newly unfettered mom would be able to look up from the screen and instantly enter into her child's world just at the moment when Sally hit the game winning home run or when Poindexter cinched the national Spelling Bee with the correct spelling of "Delusional".

The more grievous idea I came away with is that now it's no longer good enough to give a company a stress and anxiety filled 50 or 60 hours of your week. No. The new norm is total ownership. The excuse is that now so many people in finance, tech and commodities work in a world market and they must be accessible to their counterparts in Malaysia, must not miss the opening bell in Berlin or Kerplakistan, must be electronically present for those important clients in Kathmandu....

I have a sneaky feeling that chronic unemployment is not caused by a lack of jobs but that many jobs are being handled by one person. The manically compulsive super workers are stealing more than their fair share of jobs. And they are training their companies to expect "work till you drop" dedication that trades health, family life, hobbies, community involvement and the basic richness of existence for quarter by quarter profitability. And here's the kicker: Those super employees aren't being compensated for doing the work of three, they're giving their employers undeserved charity.

In the self employed world we read books on negotiation. We learn that you never give up something without getting something in return. That's the foundation of good negotiation. And as self employed people we never work for free (unless we are donating our time, services, goods to a needy and beneficial cause.) But that's exactly what the super workers of today are doing. They are giving it away for free. And, of course, their companies are encouraging them.

It's time we took a good long look at the American work ethic and got rational. The unions got it right back in the coal mine strikes and the meat packers collective bargaining days: Forty hours a week is the most you can work in a reliable and sustainable way. And by that I mean being able to preserve your personal dignity, your physical health and the health of your family and relationships.

If you are routinely working 60 or 70 hours a week and you don't OWN the company you work for (and, in my mind, even if you do) you might consider that you are your own "scab" and you are in some ways responsible for the downward spiral of the American dream. That spreadsheet WILL wait until monday. Your real life can't always be on hold. If it needs to be done over the weekend your company needs to hire a weekend shift.

So, this is a photo oriented blog, why the hell am I talking about workplace issues? Because from time to time I write columns that talk about some of the outrageous schedules I work. But the difference is that my projects stop and start and there's lots of in between time for rest and rejuvenation. Joy and pleasure. Family dinners together and weekends puttering around helping Ben with homework and Belinda with some gardening. Couch time with a novel. If a freelancer in a struggling industry can do this and keep his head above water then so can the valuable employees of all sorts of companies.

The electronics that we seem addicted to are also a secret weapon that helps bosses (and clients) suck more and more from their people by blurring the lines between what is and what isn't work. The cellphone is not referred to as "An Electronic Leash" without good reason.

It's all about setting limits. Isn't that what we tell our children?

The shot above is of Belinda in Montego Bay, Jamaica. The way I negotiated a series of projects in the Islands was to work for a week, for my usual rate, and then go back later with Belinda for a second week of vacation and downtime. No phones, no internet, no emergencies in Patagonia. The vacation opportunity defrayed the travel time and longer working days of the actual project.

Shot with a Rollei medium format camera on Tri-X film at a place called "The Pork Pit." Really good pulled pork. A quiet week by the sea.

Added half an hour later: I read this on Kim Critchfield's FB page and loved it. I sent a copy to Ben and to a friend who needed to read it. I'll post this on my wall, just to the side of my computer.

One evening a Cherokee elder told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people.

He said, "My son, the battle is between the two 'wolves' that live inside us all.

...

One is Unhappiness or Evil - It is anger, jealousy, fear, regret, greed, arrogance, sorrow, self-pity, resentment, inferiority, false pride, superiority, weakness and ego.

The other is Happiness or Good - It is joy, love, hope, serenity, benevolence, peace, empathy, kindness, generosity, truth, humility, faith, strength and compassion."

The grandson thought about it for a while and then asked his grandfather, "Which wolf wins?"

The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed." - Cherokee Elder

Yesterday was about marketing. And fine tuning.

2012-02-01T13:01:00.004-06:00

Untitled from Kirk Tuck & Will van Overbeek on Vimeo.

This is just a test of the Nikon V1 video at 720, 60fps. I looked at the top of my desk (as opposed to my "desktop") and figured it would make a cooperative subject. I put together a DIY slider using a rail assembly from a company called, Igus. There was a Manfrotto ballhead on top of the slider carriage. I lit the desktop, and the old Kodak camera, with two 1,000 LED panels. I was looking for noise and artifacts. The stuff looked pretty good in FCPX.

I keep getting more intrigued with video. I had a sales meeting with a client yesterday and it's one of the few meetings I've done so far with the iPad2 as my presentation tool. The ability to go from still portfolios to video with the touch of a finger was eye-opening for me. With a print portfolio I was always careful not show to much. Conventional wisdom said 20 to 40 nice prints.

I bought a program called Portfolio for iPad and arranged my work into six different categories. Each category has its own icon and incorporates its own images. Each category had anywhere from 25 to 40 images. With the iPad in the client's hands he controls the pace of the show and the amount of images he wants to see. It was fun to watch how addictive the screen is. The client went through every image. And all the videos (six).

I had also loaded a smaller portfolio, just for him, of images that I'd done various levels of post processing to. I wanted to make sure he understood that we could overlay these effects to just about any image we create for him. I labeled this gallery: (His Name)'s Portfolio. It took only minutes the night before to create the custom gallery of test images. It would have required sending out for prints in my older style of showing.

His take away at the end: "I have to be honest with you. I much prefer seeing work on a screen than in a print book."

It was a successful marketing foray. It got me back into his sphere of attention and hopefully, onto his "A" list of suppliers. I left him with a copy of my new LED book as a leave behind. I figure that, with over 300 of my photos in one place it's got to be a better leave behind piece than my competitors...

I will say this for progress: Carrying around an iPad beats the hell out of carrying around my 16x20 inch portfolio book (yes, I know, yours is 11x14 and it's just right and I should consider........).

Best of all, we used the calendar function on the iPad2 to book a lunch this Friday. I still remember what a crusty, old marketing guy told me decades ago about a clients: "Lunch em or lose em."

If anyone wants details on the "slider" let me know and I'll throw together a quick blog post.

An interesting article about lighting. With an interesting conclusion.

2012-01-31T12:33:00.001-06:00

This article is from Michael Reichman's amazing, Luminous Landscape site. A treasure trove for people interested in medium format digital. The article is a short history of lighting culminating with a very interesting conclusion that involves LED lighting.

It's from 2010.

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/techniques/the_next_chapter_in_photographic_lighting.shtml

Hard work is hard. Everything changes.

2012-01-31T11:26:00.002-06:00

The sky behind this construction person was there. It's been enhanced but it wasn't dropped in.

I'm usually as resistant to change as anyone else I know. You find stuff that works and you try to stay in that groove until something pushes you out. I'm coming to grips with the idea that post production isn't just a way to fix stuff we didn't get right in the shooting, it's also a way to finish out your illustrative vision. Maybe a path to completing what you had in your head when you were out shooting but what can't be done by camera alone.

There was a time when, by necessity, most everything was done in camera. At some point in the 1980's or the 1990's the art of photography starting to diverge along two pathways. One path was litered with the saints of documentary photography and its religion called on followers not to crop, not to heavily burn and dodge and never to change the contents of a photograph with retouching, air brushing or other methods. And it was good. And these people were called, "photojournalists."

The second pathway was engendered by the relentless needs of the marketplace. Here anything you could imagine could, with time and budget, be done. This was the land of top technicians and people with visions that couldn't be easily realized with regular, in-camera techniques. This has become the land of post-processing. In the past it was the land of air-brushing. Nothing in the photograph could be taken as "truth" but it sure did look cool. These people were imaginative. And what they do we called, "Photo-illustration."

I was always in the first camp. Henri-Cartier Bresson implied, to an entire generation of photographers, that only pussies needed to crop. Real men saw the composition in the decisive moment and leapt upon it like panthers. Generations of magazine picture editors forbade radical color changes because they would not be objective. Never mind filter effects or added grain. Anything that broke down the presumed objectivity of an image was forbidden. And this was not just the provence of journalists. The most powerful advertising icons, from the Herb Ritts/Calvin Klein underwear ads to the "Marlboro Man" ads to Bert Sterns Smirnoff ads were all done in this manner. As are many ad images even to this day. Sure, we retouched the frazzled edges but we didn't light em up.

PhotoShop changed everything for professionals and the ardent. And now programs like Snapseed* are changing it all for everyone else. It's everywhere. The unspoken mantra is that a photograph is not ready for viewing until it's been dipped in the magic pool of post production. Every image. Every time.

I used to fight stuff like this. I used to make impassioned arguments that photography should remain "pure" but I've given up. This change feels permanent. When we came to a cultural conclusion that, if all the stuff coming off a camera sensor is already filtered, manipulated and color tweaked by firmware and software then wasn't it already "retouched" for all intents and purposes? If you shot jpeg and you liked your files with a little extra sharpening and more saturation and you set your camera that way weren't you already toeing over the line of strict objectivity?

But it was all just an academic construct in the first place. After all, even in the early days of color you could choose between the palettes of Kodachrome and Ektachrome and even Scotchcolor. You choice of film speeds could buy you some extra grain and so one.

It's always tiring to tilt against windmills. I'm tired of trying to bail out the Titanic with a small plastic bucket. And I'm equally tired of trying to catch a two edged sword with no handle. From now on anything goes. Everything goes. If it sells better with a coat of psychedelic paint spilled on it then who am I to question the marketplace?

I've written my last column disparaging HDR. If you like it, more power to you. I'm taking a psuedo-intellectual sabbatical from taste. I'm working my maximum Zen and trying to live in the land of "no judgement."

We'll see how that works out. I'm off to figure out how to automate Snapseed so I can churn my whole catalog of images through the "grunge" filter. With enough grunge and tilt n shift I may even be able to pass myself off as one of the crowd.

*Snapseed is an app that was developed for use on the the iPhone or iPad which would allow you to tweak you images with contrast, color, sat and sharpness corrections but it also enables you to apply filters to create trendy looking images. You can control the effects and combine them. It's $20. Now they make a version for the desktop. I've taken the plunge, stopped lighting or even trying very hard during the shooting process, confident that I can just "auto-grunge" any of my images to save it. You can too.

Snapseed for the Mac Desktop. Is it art? No. Is it fun. Sometimes.

2012-01-30T22:00:00.004-06:00

When used as a quick contrast, brightness, contrast, etc. and sharpening tool, Snapseed works about as well as iPhoto or any of a large number of simple image tools you'll find on the web. The magic is supposed to happen with the filters. They have names like "Grunge" and "Drama" and "Vintage" and "Tilt and Shift." They do most of the trendy stuff you'll see on the web. I gave it a spin this evening. While it's fun and makes stuff look different it's canned so eventually the effects will get old. That shouldn't keep you from having fun. Afterall, it's only $20.

I'll run the effects by the art directors who deserve them.

But once you've found a cute model. Found a cute dress. Gotten her on the floor with her legs in the air, you've really done all the hard work. Why give a boxed software effect all the credit?

I'll keep it. But like cheap alcohol I'll use it sparingly.

Roman Food. Roman Chef.

2012-01-30T20:20:00.005-06:00

The morning market at the Campo di Fiori, Rome, Italy.

The man in the image above was/is one of the partners who owned a wonderful, little restaurant in Rome called, al Grappolo d' Oro. If rumor is to be believed, it was at a table there that the famous song, "Volare" was written. I was led to the restaurant on the recommendation of a native Roman back in 1985 or 1986 and I've returned for a meal on every trip since. When my friend, Paul, and I shot in Rome in 1995 we ate there twice in one week. And that's says volumes in a "food city" like Rome. I haven't been in a few years so I can't vouch for much now but I will always remember how fun it was to watch Carlo arrive at the Campo di Fiori market one day and carefully hand select the produce his restaurant would serve later that day.

He was, of course, a regular of the market and knew everyone there by name.

I was walking around the small piazzo with a Mamiya Six in hand. I recognized him from one of my recent visits to his restaurant. I took two frames and then walked off to see new things. I ate at his restaurant again that night.

Walking through the markets in old towns is really nice. There's a comfortable rhythm that feels organic and right. The good ones dispay food with style but without too much flash. I'm hungry. I think I'll wander into the house and see what's for dinner.

These are medium format color negatives that were scanned at low res with an Epson V500 Photo. With a little practice it does a good job with color negatives and even black and white negatives. The images were taken with a Mamiya Six medium format camera and its normal, 75mm lens. The images are nothing special to anyone but me. I remember now the cool breeze of a cloudy day, the smell of the fresh fish and the vivid red of the strawberries like the day I took the images.

An Afternoon at the Theater with the Nikon V1.

2012-01-29T18:51:00.002-06:00

I was supposed to shoot a dress rehearsal for an incredible musical, last Tues. night. I had to call in sick. We missed the chance to do a dress rehearsal shoot during a rehearsal. Tues. was the last night without an audience in the house. So, today I attended the afternoon matinee and sat in a seat that sits a little bit away from surrounding seats, on the side of the center section. I wasn't able to move around the stage the way I usually do but we really needed the marketing images so this was our option.

Not wanting to distract my fellow show-goers I opted to use the Nikon V1. I turned off the backscreen, put a little smack of black tape over the green status light and set the shutter to its electronic setting. Once I turned off the sound, that camera was ultra-stealthy. Silent. Small (compared to my 5d2 or 1DSx) and unobtrusive. I brought all three of the civilian lenses but I shot exclusively with the 30-110.

These are mostly shot at ISO 3200, out of necessity, and are SOOC Jpegs. Shot in Jpeg.

Just put here as a real world thing. Take em or leave em.

Sometimes we just take a photograph because it feels right.

2012-01-29T18:19:00.000-06:00

The intersection of my dining room

wall and the floor.

We love to talk about gear so much it's easy to forget how important it is, every once in a while, to just put down the test chart mindset and look around at the world. I was under the weather last week so when I got bored I puttered around the house and looked at what the insides looked like in the middle of the day. I like the way the reflections from the sun on the tiles cast cool swirls into the middle tone shadows on the wall. But I also liked the strong shadows on either side.

Deep, Rich Color.

2012-01-29T12:52:00.001-06:00

Chair at Marti's in the Mercado, San Antonio. Cloudy day. Panasonic GH2.

"THE SQUARE IS EVERYTHING !!!" Wait, that's not what I said......

2012-01-29T11:22:00.004-06:00

Even in moments of quiet reading I am still haunted by the square.

I thought, and Michael Johnston thought, that I'd written a pretty clear and straightforward article for his "The Online Photographer" web magazine, yesterday. If you haven't read it, here's a synopsis:

In the film days photographers had many different aspect ratios to choose from. When digital destroyed film camera making we had most of our choices removed. We were mostly relegated to shooting with a 3:2 ratio in professional, 35mm style cameras, and a 4:3 ratio in "amateur" or "point and shoot" cameras. I made the argument that it's hard for some people to compose in formats they don't enjoy and, I expressed happiness and relief that electronic viewfinders have allowed camera makers to bring back the choice of seeing, framing and shooting in multiple image ratios. I also professed my personal attraction to the square, or 1:1 ratio while calling on people to experiment and find the ratio that was right for them.

Most people got the basic ideas just fine and either agreed or disagreed. But there were two camps that mystified me. And one of the camps highlighted to me how differently people's brains are wired from mine.

One group must have read too quickly or, perhaps had been multi-tasking at the time, but they came away with the idea that the whole of the article was a fierce defense of the square and a damnation of every other combination of geometric borders. Even though calm and patient editor, Mr. Johnston, posted several comments reminding them that the whole point of the article was, "Freedom of Aspect Ratio Choice."

But the group that disturbed me, and perhaps only because their thoughts seemed industrial, analytic, mathematical and process oriented while mine are not, was the camp that insisted that the whole idea that a camera need have a set aspect ratio was "absurd". I, we, everyone, should be able to look at a scene, figure out exactly what the future use of the image will be, capture it with sufficient space around it and then unerringly crop it just so in post production. Done, neat, finished. No muss, no fuss.

I imagine their universe is one of tight order and high cleanliness. Every decision perfunctory and binary.

I can't imagine that people don't understand the friction and momentum that tools create in a creative process. No matter what format camera you select there are two forces at work. One is the way you like to compose (your inertia) and the other is the implicit idea, perhaps very sub-conscious for some but not for others, that perhaps you should take the boundaries of the supplied finder into consideration as you try to decide what to include and what to leave out. (There must be a reason they made the finder this way. Right?). Even if you are a square guy and you know you want to crop square in the end, having to include more areas than you want, wrapped in configurations you're not comfortable with, means having to constantly choose and evaluate more parameters than you need. It's all wrapped up in the tyranny of choice.

I think artists (and we'll entertain the conceit that photographers count too...) establish formalist restrictions for themselves in order to cut down on an infinite number of choices, to remove paralysis, to help them get started. An amorphous or "hostile" frame is one that pushes on a photographer an infinite number of choices by dint of having to "float" some intended, future composition, unanchored in a framework that doesn't conform to character of the artist's intention. It's a fight from the start. The choice of a camera with a friendly aspect ratio helps one concentrate on timing and what to include. The form has already been chosen. It's like making a mathematical equation less complex. Less time consuming. Removing variables helps us narrow down with greater speed and certainty. Then again, it could just be the way my brain works and everyone is wired differently.

I don't care if you like or don't like squares but I don't understand why people think their choice of tools is meaningless to the empowerment of their best vision.

I had a funny thought, just now. People talked about cropping to the subject matter. But in all the years and years that people experimented and made art with Polaroid SX-70 images I never saw examples of cropped ones. Never. Nor have I seen Holga or Diana images cropped. What to make of that?

Just a few thoughts after reading the paper and drinking coffe on a bright, Sunday morning.