Nostalgia for the good old days....of early digital.

This is not so much a walk through remembrance gardens as it is a quick salute to one old war horse of a camera.  My Kodak DCS 760's last battery bit the dust.  It holds enough charge to get off maybe ten or fifteen images before shutting down altogether.  I've made no secret through the years that this is my favorite digital camera for all the same reason I've always talked about here.  I doesn't have an extensive menu of choices.  It was built to be a RAW only camera and Jpeg capability was added later via a firmware upgrade.  There are very few user settings to work with.  There's no "dynamic range enhancement" feature because the camera already kicked butt when it came to dynamic range.

There's only two focus modes and while you can set single and continuous for frame rates you'll only get 1.5 fps as your fastest throughput.  There are no "sports modes".   There's no "vivid"  or "landscape" setting.  The body is based on Nikon's venerable F5 and the whole thing is a nearly five pound block of metal.  The screen on the back is miserable.  It pushes you to double check what you're doing with a good light meter.  And, even in their prime of life, the batteries sucked and the camera sucked down batteries.

So why do I love this camera?  Well,  it's the same reason any photographer should love any camera:  The files look so nice.   So very, very nice.  Even today I love the look I get from this camera.  It's enough to make me plug in the A/C adapter and get busy.  When I look back over the last ten years at all the digital cameras I've owned this one consistently gave me images and campaigns that looked different and better.  Almost magical.   In fact, one of the things that attracted me to the first generation of  Olympus professional cameras (as exemplified by the E1's that I still own.....) was the look of the files from the Kodak sensors.  So different from the other solutions on the market.

Yes,  I've been using PhotoShop for decades.  I can probably emulate the look with enough post processing but the point is that the art just squirted out of this camera with reckless abandon.

The shot above was part of a series for the Austin Lyric Opera.  We shot it with a Nikon 105 DC lens nearly wide open.  It was lit with a six by six foot screen to the left of frame, very close in and slightly over the top of Meredith.  The main light source was a 1,000 watt Profoto ProTungsten, continuous halogen light.  The background (nearly 60 feet away) was lit with a single 300 watt DeSisti spotlight.  I used an 80B filter on the camera to bring up the blue spectrum and avoid blue channel noise in the file.

The image was processed in Kodak's Photo Desk software and then tweaked in PhotoShop.

I had other cameras available to me at the time but I chose this one because it matched my vision of the palette I wanted for this job.  Too often we buy one camera or one system then shoehorn everything into that one set of tools.  And it's not always an optimum choice.  The painfully high res camera may not always be the ultimate choice.  One system may have lens strengths in one area by not another.  Your mood may change.  Even now,  with all the feedback I've gotten over buying some Canon gear it's good to remember that I shoot with more than that one system.

Granted, it's easier to shoot with the cleanest, highest res LCD's as guides.  It's nice to have great high ISO performance.  But I still keep two different Kodak cameras around for their unique color and file contrast.  I keep a Sony R1 around because it love that lens for outdoor stuff.  I love the Pen series from Olympus for its feel and its gorgeous jpegs (and good movie mode) and I still keep a drawer full of Rollei SLR MF film cameras when I want real black and white and not just the canned SilverFX  looks. (I'm sure I'll hear from SilverFX fans so I'll just say that they're really good.  They're not Tri-X on Seagull warmtone or Ilfobrom Gallerie).

I'm not writing this to suggest that you rush out and buy old cameras.  Or even new cameras.  I wouldn't have brought it up at all if I hadn't just put together a portfolio full of portraits and lifestyle shots and spent the better part of a month selecting and printing images.  I assumed that the old Kodak images would fall apart compared to some of the newer stuff I'd been shooting on the Canon 5D2 but it just wasn't the case.  When it comes to portraits it's a whole different ballgame than technical subjects with lots of detail and sharp edges.  At 13 by 19 it all looked technically good.  And that included images from the 6 megapixel Kodak, a ten megapixel Olympus, some Nikon D2x files, some Canon files and even an entry from the Leaf AFi7 system (39 megapixels).  They all coexisted just fine in one book.

I showed the book yesterday at a design firm called Pentagram.  The designer I showed the book to stopped and savored the four images from the Austin Lyric Opera series.  I included a variation of the one above.  To her, the look outweighed any sort of technical differences.  It might have been a different ballgame if I'd been showing landscapes or big production ad shots.  But for portraits.  I think I was right a year ago.  The Kodak's were a milestone.

Note:  I wrote this last Summer.  And I'm reposting it today because I was able to get brand new batteries for the DCS 760 and so I've been shooting with it again.  It's wonderful.  It's also written as an argument for people who want to hold my feet to the fire for not sticking with one brand, one style, one way of being a photographer.  Photography is a celebration of diversity and evolving ideas and techniques.  Not a hobby embedded in the amber of "best practices."  That's great for doctors and engineers but nonsense for artists and visual communicators....

A brief, one sided conversation about lens testing and reality....

Testing lenses by shooting targets and graphing the resolution line pairs is interesting, compelling and.....silly.  Most high speed lenses don't do "great corners".  And in either image above the ability to have great performance in the corners is beyond meaningless.

To read the DXO reviews of Canon's fast primes you would think they were all designed by morons who couldn't make sharp glass if they broke it into little shards.  But very few lenses are really computed with intention of being flat field, macro lenses.

Gear is fun but it's what we do with it that counts.

 Kirk and the clients.  I'm praying hard that the carefully feathered umbrellas deliver photons to the back of the room.  Love the ladder.

I just wrote a review about the Olympus EPL2 and I'll admit it was fun to get back all the comments.  It was even more fun to get nearly 20,000 viewers in three days!  But concentrating on gear reviews sends a skewed message to readers who are beginning their journey in photography or for people who are contemplating leaving the warm safety and security of "real" jobs to try their hand at freelance photography.  I think everyone would love to believe that, by investing in the right camera and a magic lens, they would be able to enjoy success in the wild and woolly field of "professional" photography.  I wish it were true.  I've already spent tens of thousands of dollars on gear....I should be a millionaire by now.....I'll have to check with my CFO, maybe I already am.....but I doubt it.

As the antidote to the "big" review I thought I'd dissect the shoot done Monday after I posted the blog (yesterday) and came down from the fun of mass communications to the reality of the business on the ground.  Is that okay with you?

I had an assignment to photograph for one of the best clients I've worked with in a while.  They are a large medical practice here in Austin.  Their practice has nearly ten locations and almost 100 employees. Monday was the day of their annual meeting and they held it at a giant, local restaurant.  My job was to shoot candid shots of the meeting, set up, direct and shoot a group shot of 100 people and then reset on the fly and shoot seven different groups from the different offices with anywhere from 10 to 20 people in the groups.  Sounds easy, right?

Let's do the dissection.

The group shot was going to take place in a large room with a stage.  The lights would have to be at least twelve feet in the air, as far back from the front row as possible with 60 inch umbrellas to soften the light, and they'd have to be feathered just right to keep to much of light off the front row and put just enough light on the back row.  That also meant we'd need a lot more power than I'd be able to get out of conventional shoe mount flashes (sorry Strobist disciples...).  But the lights would have to be set up in a public area with traffic.

The smaller group shots could be done in the same area but with a canvas background and they'd have to be done right after the main group shot so we'd have to be quick because we had dozens and dozens of people waiting and we were between them and their unofficial happy hour.

I also needed a camera that would reliably handle the candid shots I also needed to take in the main meeting room.  And it was a bit of a nightmare in there, with light coming in from floor to ceiling, west facing window on one side of the room and a darkened area with a projector on the other.

So I just showed up and we shot, right?  Nope.

The main photo would commemorate the 40th anniversary of the practice so we were determined to do this job absolutely correctly.  That started with a scouting trip to the location a week out from the event.  Yes, we charge for that.  The client and I went thru every step of the upcoming meeting and we mapped out how we would handle the group, how they would be arranged, who would be sitting and who would be standing.  We worked with the venue to ascertain when we could have access to the room and what we needed in terms of seating, graphics on a large screen in the back of the room, and where to load in gear.

I decided I'd do the shot with two big umbrella lights so the night before the shoot I put two Profoto Acute 600b battery packs on the chargers after running a "set up and fire" test on both systems.  I wanted both system batteries charged and ready to go.  I also charged several extra batteries for the Canon 5Dmk2's I selected for the project.    Before I hit the rack I made a thorough list of everything I would need for the next day.  The next morning I went to early swim practice (7 am) so I'd have ample time to pack and organize.

I packed a collapsible ladder, two complete Profoto 600b systems  (six hundred watt seconds each, one head each) two sixty inch softlighter umbrellas.  Three twelve foot Manfrotto stands.  I brought along a Manfrotto Magic Arm and camera plate which I attached, in lieu of a tripod, to the top of the ladder with a Super Clamp.  That gave me a solid and stable shooting platform.  I packed two Canon 5Dmk2's and both a 24-105mm L zoom and the same complement of wide angle and telephoto prime lenses as back up.  I also brought a Sekonic 758 flash meter and a set of background stands.  I brought a laptop with the graphic for the background screen loaded on it and also the logo on a disk.  The final cargo that went into the Element was four twenty pound sand bags.

I was scheduled to arrive at the location at noon but, of course, I got there at 11:30.  You never know about traffic.  My assistant, Amy, arrived at 11:45 for a noon call.  She shares my view about traffic.  We had a brief discussion with my client and we decided that we really would like to have a white background behind the groups to make it easier to drop out the individual office shots.  I sent Amy on the one hour round trip to retrieve said background from the studio.  No sweat.  The giant group shot would happen at three and the smaller groups, the ones we needed the background for, would be after that.

Before Amy left we loaded the cases, ladder and other materiel onto our cart and dragged it in the and unloaded it.  I did as much as I could in terms of setting up but the room wouldn't really be fully available to us until two o'clock.  I grabbed a camera, set the ISO to 2500 and headed into the main meeting room for candid shots.  I love shooting events.  You have a temporary license to get close in and shoot people without feeling self conscious.

When Amy returned we set up our main lights for the big group.  We put forty pounds of sandbags on each of the two stands and also used the strobe boxes as ballasts.  Using the Profoto's at their full 600 watts per unit, bouncing into the 60 inch umbrellas, I was able to set an exposure of f11.5 throughout the room at full power, based on an ISO of 320.  And that's an ISO I know to be optimum with the 5D cameras.  Once we were set and we measured every row with an incident flash meter I double checked that the radio slaves were banging and that every component had fresh batteries.  I attached  our other camera to the top of the ladder with the Magic Arm and locked in a  good composition.  Then I went back to shooting candids as Amy stood guard over the set up.

Right at 3pm the meeting broke and the people flowed into my shooting space light the rushing tide.  If you are shy and retiring this is not the kind of job you'll want to tackle.  I needed to get 100 people into position quickly so I could make this shot work before the crowd lost it's positive energy.  I can get very loud.  And I did.  We moved all the people into position and then dealt with the stragglers.  I got onto the ladder and fine tuned the crowd from the shooting position.  Amy's job was to make sure both boxes were firing and nothing technically failed.  My job was to get people to focus their energy to the front of the room and not blink, scratch, nervously joke with the person next to them, etc. until we had a couple fo perfect shots in the can.

I chose the battery powered Profotos because I've shot big groups before and the last thing I wanted to do was to string long extension cords across the crowded floor and take the chance that someone would trip over one and bring the whole shoot to a quick and liability laden halt.  But the tradeoff is that at full power they take four or five seconds to recycle.  That's where the photographer's playful banter comes in handy.

Before I announced the successful end of the big shot I made sure to remind the people in the smaller groups that they would need to stay close by while Amy and I added a background and reset our lights.  We moved a white background onto the shooting stage and then manhandled the sandbagged lights into  new positions.  The background was up, the lights positioned and powered down a bit in less than three minutes.  Amy stood in for the meter reading and then I called the first group in.  Two minutes and ten exposures later we were on to the next.  We kept up the pace and within twenty minutes all the groups had been shot and kidded around with.

At this juncture I'll mention what you can obviously see in the photographs of me on the ladder.  I am wearing a suit and a tie and a pressed dress shirt.  (I did take my jacket off to unload the car......)
Why?  Because we, as photographers, always moan about money and budgets and the fact that people don't take what we do seriously.  Well, it's hardly a surprise when so many of our "profession"  dress like roadies or starving artists or musicians that people think our reward is our "artistic" satisfaction and our alternative lifestyles.  The suit (or coat and tie)  reassures my marketing directors that we mean business and, for most people we photograph, it means we operate in the same strata as the people who run the companies they work for .

I work as an equal with my clients.  Not as an employee.  And most of the people who actually sign the checks dress professionally and, whether it's a conscious decision or not, the way you dress is a clue about where you are in the pecking order.  Asking for top fees?  Dress like it!

I shook hands with the partners and officers and then Amy and I packed up our gear and wheeled it back out to the noble Honda Element.  We got back to the studio and broke everything out of the travel cases, made sure we didn't leave any crucial elements behind, and then stuck the battery powered strobe packs and camera batteries on the chargers.

After Amy left I sat at the computer and ingested all of the files by category, backed them up to a second drive and started editing.  By dinner I'd done a quick but good edit and I started the file conversion to web gallery small jpeg files.  After dinner I started uploads to two different galleries and the went about checking and packing all the gear I would need for the next day's shoot.  A totally different shoot.  This one on location at one of the practice's offices.  I did NOT wear a suit for that one.  I wore a dark grey sport coat, white button down and a slim, burgundy tie.  And the client was better dressed than I.

Once the client chooses images for the website and ads I'll spend some time working with my retoucher so she knows what the client and I want, and then, upon delivery,  I'll make one more set of back up files  and get my billing out the door.  And that's the anatomy of yesterday's shoot.

Did stuff go wrong?  You bet.  I left the studio without my wallet.  Amy got it for me when she went back for the background.  I wish the room had been bigger so I could have shot from further back, etc, etc.  But it all went pretty much according to plan and that's what good clients pay for.  Dress up.  Tomorrow should be your "A" game.

Kirk on a ladder trying to levitate the crowd.

After Monday's shoot, and all the wrap up and post production, I clicked off the lights and headed for home.  All of fifteen steps away.  I said goodnight to Ben and, as Belinda worked on designing a website for one of her clients I cracked open the laptop that's dedicated to writing books and got back to work on the fifth book.  The due date is fast approaching.  By 2 am the house was quiet, I'd hit my 2000 word goal and I crept off to bed.  In five hours I'd be back in the pool, and then doing some variation of this day all over again.

Olympus EPL2. Final Installment. Kirk's Definitive Opinion.

When I head out the door to shoot I usually have a Pen camera configured like this.

The VF-2 electronic finder is not an optional accessory to me.  It should be part of every package.

It's  small, light and unobtrusive.  Perfect for the street.

This is a fun camera.  But before we get to the meat of the matter I'd like to lay down a few ground rules and make a few disclosures.  Everything I write here is my opinion.  You may disagree with me but I won't post your comment unless you disagree in a courteous and helpful way.  I may profess undying love for this camera and, if I do so, please understand that it's the passion of the moment and next month a new camera may come along that I love more.  This is not a marriage, it's a fun job that changes quicker than a model at a runway show.  When I make a declarative statement I generally mean that this is how something applies to ME.  Not to everyone.

Ergonomics.  When you read through this keep in mind that I'm five feet, eight inches tall and have medium sized hands.  If the camera feels just right to me it probably won't matter to you if you are six foot, six inches tall and have hands like big baseball gloves.  Go to a store and handle it yourself if you know your build falls outside the general norm.  Some people like big cameras and some like small cameras.  If you are considering the EPL2 I hope you've sorted yourself into the second category.

A word about payola and full disclosure.  What did I hope to get out of writing this review besides a little ego boost and the chance to decide whether or not I want to buy one of these before everyone else? Well......I want Olympus to give me a Porsche and it's okay if they put their logo on the back bumper.  As long as the logo type is no bigger than twelve points.  In the real world the best that I can hope for is Olympus to give me a hearty handshake, perhaps a mousepad or a pen and the vague promise to let me review something in the future.  I'll have this camera and lens boxed up and back in the Federal Express to them this coming Friday.  Ultimately I hope you'll like the writing and be predisposed to buy a book or two of mine in the future.

Another happy benefit might be that you click thru a link to Amazon and buy something.  If you click thru from my blog I'll get a small amount of money and you'll pay no more or less.  But for all intents and purposes I'm putting this out there for free and that's the extent of my disclosures.  I make the bulk of my income from photography assignments and I can't think of very many clients who come here to read about the latest cameras.  I wish.  So enjoy.  Let's get started.

I passed on the EP1 camera, the first of the new Pens, for one reason:  No electronic or optical viewfinder, and no provision to add an electronic one on.  I've spent decades looking through viewfinders and I can't get used to using a rear screen as a focusing and compositional tool unless the whole deal is locked down on a tripod and I've got a loupe with me to block out the surrounding light.  I bought the EP2 because it had the EVF and it was very beautiful.  Of all the Pen cameras it feels the best in my hand, and, truthfully, it's the one I like to shoot with the most.  Here's the rub:  While the EP2 is the best designed and has the right heft the EPL1 obviously has a better sensor implementation.  It's sharper and cleaner (in the image files) than the EP1 or the EP2 and it was priced so well I couldn't help myself.....I snapped one up.  And less than a year later, along comes the EPL2.  Styling that looks more like the EP2 but performance like the EPL1.  Throw in a better screen and........?

Well.  Let's start at the top and go thru this step by step.  First of all, what is the EPL2?  It's the latest distillation of what Olympus has learned from making this family of cameras.  The camera is one of the family of Micro Four Thirds cameras which use a sensor that is about 20% smaller than an APS-C sized sensor used in a Canon Rebel or 60D.  Sounds scary but the sensor is six times bigger than the sensors in cameras like the Canon G 12 and the Lumix LX-5 from Panasonic.

The smaller sensor means that the lenses have different angles of view relative to what fussy old timers are used to from the 35mm days.  Ostensibly, smaller lenses are easier to design and manufacture so that should mean good glass at a lower cost.


Why did Olympus create the Four Thirds and then the micro Four Thirds standards?  Because in the early days of sensor design and manufacture it was ruinously expensive to make bigger sensors because the failure rate in manufacturing was so high.  The catering analogy is caviar.  You might get some on your deviled eggs or on your sushi but the unit cost would break a restaurant if they decided to chunk a few ounces on every plate.  A bigger sensor is still more expensive and it still requires bigger optics but now we have choices again.  Just like the film days we can choose a day in day out format that works well for everything that will go into electronic media ( the smaller than 35mm frame size) or we can choose cameras with sensors that are the same size as a frame of 35mm film and now more or less take the place of the medium format cameras of the film era, or we can take the bitter and frightening plunge and grab for all the gusto of a medium format digital system (for around the price of a nice car) and have the ultimate in resolution and dynamic range.  80 megapixels anyone?

But the thing that attracts me to smaller cameras is

Olympus EPL2: Is the video good? Do we care? Do you care?

If you want to see it bigger (full res but with compression artifacts around the edges....go here: http://gallery.me.com/kirktuck#100264

I can hear it now.  A certain percentage of readers will grouse about "having to pay" for video they'll never use.  And I get the sentiment but the reality is that the inclusion of a tiny, crappy microphone and an extra button probably added about $2.50 (USD) to your total camera purchase price so you might just want to get over it.  The rest of you have heard the call from Canon shills like Vince LaForet and you're thinking you might just want to see what all the fuss is about.  Bottom line?  The EPL2 is a nice, clean video platform.  I'd hate to have to sit thru stuff that was made handheld but if you put it on a tripod it's nice and clean, and sharp.

I almost hate to get into this but........it's not full on HD.  It's 720.  That means the frame is 1280 by 720 pixels.  Full bore ultimate HD is 1920 by 1080.  Will it make a difference in the final product?  Yes and no.  My use for video coming out of these cameras is for interviews and programming that will be part of websites and blogs.  A typical commercial use would be a medical practice where a physician walks you thru a procedure that you might have scheduled.  The highest imbedded res is probably going to the be one in this embedded video which is something like 640 by 360 pixels.  That means that when we shoot at the highest res we're always going to throw some pixels out.  Anecdotally, I've heard that Disney used a bunch of EPL1's as second unit cams in a feature film and that noise had to be added to the video frames and they had to be downsampled as well because the video looked better than the first unit film.......

I looked at the footage pretty carefully in FCP and I think it's sharp and pretty much noise free at ISO 400.  If you are shooting with the intention of creating programming for HD television you might be aiming a bit high using this camera as a production tool since everything else in the chain, including some connecting cables, is probably going to cost more.

Here are my gripes about shooting "movies" with this camera:

1.  It's easiest to view, compose and focus with the VF-2 finder in place....BUT....with the VF-2 finder in the one accessory slot you won't be able to plug in the external microphone adapter.  The solution is to do what everyone does with the DSLR's,  use the back LCD with a Zacuto or Hoodman finder strapped on and keep the port ready for external mic'ing.

2.  You don't get a lot of video configuration choices in video.  You can choose standard SD footage at 640 by 480 or HD at 1280 by 720.  Both settings lock you into shooting 30 fps.  Would I like more?  Sure.  How about 24 fps or 60 fps to help with slow motion effects?  But it keeps things simple.

The only other choice is microphone on or off.  I'd just leave it set to "on", that way I'll never forget.

3.  It's too light.  This is a silly gripe and it's one I could level at just about any of the small cameras on the market.  The lens and body are just to light to hold steady if you are shooting hand held.  One cup of coffee will separate the men from the SteadiCam rig.....  But that's a trade off of all hand held cameras.  If it's not shoulder mount it's only as good as your jangling nervous system.

But here's what I like about it:

1.  Olympus actually thought about how we'd use the camera and gave us a microphone port.  That's pretty darn cool.  It's true that you'll need to buy and adapter to accept the 1/8 stereo plug and interface with the proprietary plug but it's not expensive.  Once you've got that piece the sky is the limit for microphones.  I get good results from the middle priced Rode microphones intended for amateur video production.  My favorite is their Stereo VideoMic.  It runs on 9V batteries, it's what Ben and I used to do sound for this video and, with the supplied "dead cat" windscreen, it even looks professional.  I like the way it sounds but I wouldn't be too quick to judge it from my room's acoustics:  It's kind of "bouncy and bright" in here.

2.  It's easy to focus the lens between takes and even during takes a half squeeze on the shutter button will drive the lens to re-focus and, in my experience, quickly and accurately.

3.  The combination of the camera, the new 40-150mm zoom and the mic adapter is so light and small there is never an excuse to be without a capable video camera.

4.  It's really so cheap that you don't need to fret if you are doing commercial work and the client wants to put the camera somewhere dangerous (strapped to a car, or under a moving car, bolted to a skateboard or in a shooting war).  You break it and you can always get another one.  If you don't make a living with your cameras then it might be better to not hot glue it to a helmet and go bungie jumping......

5.  The image, within the constraints of the format, is very, very good.  And the sound is as decent as whatever microphone you stick out there (and how good your mic'ing techniques are.....).

6.  With inexpensive adapters you can use the complete line of Olympus E lenses or with a Nikon or Leica adapter you can use maybe 60 or 70 years worth of legacy lenses on the front of the camera.  Want a nice, compressed shot with lots and lots of "bokeh"?  I'm sure you can find an old Nikon 300 2.8 that will do the trick quite nicely.

The camera is not the limiting factor for most video projects and it certainly won't be for this unit either.  What you'll really need as you polish your "reel" for commercial success is a good script, good story boards, good direction, good lighting design, good acting and good sound engineering.  The Olympus just makes the actual shooting easier...

So, would I buy the EPL2 just for it's video chops?  No, probably not.  Unless I was on a low budget and I could make movies without expectant clients hovering around.  Would EPL2 movies be as good as movies from all the other under $1,000 cameras out there?  Yep.  The only place you'll see a difference is on the shots that require high ISO.  It lags at least a stop behind the Canon 7D and two stops behind the Canon 5D2.  But isn't that why we have lights?  Finally, is it a step up from the EPL1 for video?  Well, the LCD screen is nicer but the image quality seems about the same.  So....not really.

That's it for the video part of the review.  The review of the actual camera comes Monday.  Stay tuned.
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