What's working and what's not...

 Life is always interesting. I've been playing around with a new camera and it usually doesn't happen quite this way. Usually I'll become interested in a camera because of the anticipatory buzz on the web and I'll get in touch with the camera brand's public relations company to request a test sample. Sometimes I bond instantly with a camera and sometimes it takes me a little while. Sometimes I never bond with a camera. Example? I could never get used to the Leica M8. The way it showed frame lines was a bit confusing and the impact of the shutter going off felt like a weight lifting chipmunk trapped inside the camera body throwing its weight against the side in an impassioned attempt to escape. Sometimes I'll get a camera to review and I'll think, "Why did they bother to make yet another one of these?" and I'll box it up and send it back.

There are some cameras I desperately wanted to love. The Leaf Aptus 7i comes immediately to mind. The folks at Leaf sent it along with a normal (80mm) lens and an $8,000 Schneider 180mm 2.8 lens that was so beautiful I almost cried. But the camera had it's share of failings. The battery life was almost non-existent, the AF might as well have been non-existent and the camera was ultra-kludgy to carry around and operate. When I sent it back I breathed a sigh of relief but I still have pangs of regret when I look at the several stunning files I was able to make with the system. When the stars lined up that medium format camera could be be breathtaking.

And that brings me to the Samsung NX 300. When my friend at the PR agency asked me if I wanted to test the camera I was hesitant. I thought that it was basically a copy of the Sony Nex 6 but without the grace note of an EVF. But, of course, I was wrong.

When I unboxed the camera and started playing with it I was impressed at how easy it was to learn. I intended to take it out from time to time and shoot it out of a vague sense of blogger duty but I was pretty sure I'd still spend most of my time with a Sony firmly in hand. But I was wrong. Once I took off my "water wings" (my need for an EVF at all times) and started (metaphorically) to swim along with the camera's current I found it to be an addicting little camera. Now, a week and half onward I am taking it everywhere. It's sitting on my desk waiting for my afternoon walk. It will be in the camera bag (alongside the Sony a99) for a shoot tomorrow at one of my favorite, boutique ad agencies here in town.

And I'm questioning why.

But it's really all the little stuff that I find I like. It's almost like a human designed the interface instead of a Cylon engineer hell bent on torturing earthlings. I like the deco/disco rounded amoeba shaped hand grip on the right side and I'm now fond of the files. But mostly I'm impressed by the performance of the sensor and metering. Someone just a day or two ago mentioned that the files looked a little flat from the NX300 and I thought that was quite a compliment for a consumer oriented camera. I can easily add as much contrast and saturation as I want during post production but it's hard as hell to scrape that stuff off a file when you camera starts out too over the top.

I read all kinds of crap from people who equate the big bodied cameras of yesteryear with "professional" photography. They dismiss really great image making machines like the OMD, the Fuji EX1, the whole Sony Nex line (but especially the Nex 7) as amateur "tools" just because they don't conform to the design aesthetics that had their genesis in the film days. It's also amazing to me that most people seem to think that a camera has to excel in the capture of fast moving sports to even be considered for professional work. Yes, that's about 1% of the professional market and wildly, in the minds of hobbyists, it comprises the entire big tent of paid photography.

It's all so much BS.  For decades the image makers I admired most worked with single sheet view cameras that shot at one frame per minute and focused, at times, in a couple of minutes (with some hard work and eye strain). Of course I am talking about the 4x5 and 8x10 cameras of ultra high dollar professionals like Richard Avedon and Irving Penn. And all my favorite fashion photographers who came after them were cranking film through their Hasselblads at the rate of maybe one frame per second and with slow going focus. The idea that we can't realize our unique visions with the whole continuum of mirrorless digital cameras (or even good point and shoot cameras) is patently ridiculous.

So, what have I posted below? These are images of Colin and his associate making psychedelic patterns on an overhead projector so they can record them on high res video for a stage production at the theater. I posted them because I was pretty amazed at how the NX handled the bright faces in the middle of blackness (metering) and the skin tones on a scene lit by only an overhead projector (color balance).

Additional plus points are: low noise at 1600 ISO and pretty darn good image stabilization.  Does this mean I am now in love with yet another camera system? Whoa, slow down there, dude. I like it. It's really good. But it's one member of a rich community of new cameras that seem to deliver great results in spite of not following camera design dogma. My respect is for the whole category of mirrorless, EVF enhanced cameras. So there.

Life is like a rocket. Only the pictures show us the parts we forgot or glossed over on our way to somewhere else.

Kirk And Belinda 1988.

Somewhere in the mid 1980's I just gave up and kept the gray seamless background paper permanently set up in my studio. It seemed like every day there was someone I knew who I wanted to photograph. Part of it was my enthusiasm for making portraits but I'm convinced that an equal part had to do with the fact that we were so much younger and nearly all of our circle of friends and acquaintances were young and beautiful and living with health and vigor. Every image was a "best case" scenario of what it meant to be alive and affluent in the bosom of youth culture.

Now (with the exception of Belinda and my swimming, running, triathlon-ing, marathoning, competitive biking friends) everyone around us has grown older and larger. Entropy is circling over us like Texas Buzzards over roadkill. When I put my friends in front of a camera I see that one eye droops more than the other, that the bags under those eyes are more obvious and less fashonable than those of Louis Vuitton; that, through some quirk of human construction chins have become more plentiful and, that everyone seems to occupy more and more of the frame...

C'est la vie. I'm certain that twenty years from now the portraits I'm making of my friends right now will seem filled with sprightly and agile people....by comparison. I imagine that I'll cherish my own image at 57 far more than I'll look forward to seeing how I fare at 87.

I'm re-committing myself to an ongoing documentation of everyone around me. I'm bringing them into the solemn confines of the studio and aiming lights at them and I'm documenting the war wounds of everyday travail as well as the hard won trophies of accomplishment that shine in their eyes. I'm discovering a new topology that's more interesting than hard abs and air brushed complexions. I'm discovering real people with real stories. And they've done their "time in the water." They are now full fledged sharks. Who knew that raw experience could be so intoxicating?

This is a project I can do for the rest of my life.

Couple of food shots from Thurs. At the Austin Food Bloggers Event.

I like to photograph food almost as much as I like eating it. I was wandering around the city when I stumbled into this event. I vaguely remember having been invited but who can keep a social calendar totally straight these days?

I didn't have the right gear with me but I thought I'd just browse all the different food booths and see what was being offered. The top is a tomato and fruit salad and I love the way booth geography and time of day conspired to give me some nice backlighting. The same with the wafers, flowers and fruit. I only wish I'd gotten to their booth before the small flowers started to wilt.

There's something magical about having the Whole Foods Headquarters and flagship store in the center of Austin. Something is always happening there and I am rewarded again and again when I bring along my camera. (If you are a sport or BIF shooter your mileage will vary....badly). On this particular day I chose to make Whole Foods my mid walk destination. I was happy to savor their air conditioning after walking for a couple miles in the afternoon heat. When I cooled down enough I walked around the store, just looking at stuff. The wine department was sampling two really nice Pinot Grigios and a white Bordeaux (which was wonderful and refreshing). I also asked the barman at the adjacent bar if I could taste the claret I'd seen displayed all over the store. I could. I did. And I made a note to come back the next day and buy a case.

On my way out of the store I saw a sign announcing free yoga every Wednesday evening in June, out on the second floor plaza. I sent a note to Belinda about that. As I got a cup of water and washed my hands at the hand sanitizer I ran into three different clients. We chatted and all promised each other to have lunch. Walking and business intermixed; the ultimate in social efficiency. It was just after my networking encounter that I noticed the sign for the Austin Food Bloggers Event and headed upstairs. One could sample a dozen different wines, a handful of local craft beers and small tastes of food from many of the city's popular caterers and restaurants.

That's when I ran into entrepreneur, John, who is now working with CookingPlanet.com. We caught up for twenty minutes and were surprised how elegantly our recent food experiences complimented each other and how much our businesses might need each other. Oh my gosh, more hot walk networking!! Then I looked at my watch and realized I'd have to hustle to get back to my car and get home. Belinda was planning a 7:30 pm dinner and I try never to be late.

It was then that I realized I'd committed a rookie error in attaching my NX 300 camera strap. I'd left out one step in the over and under process and I was seconds and a few Planck units of gravity away from a classic disaster (the kind that was rampant in the early days of the Black Rapid straps) wherein the camera and strap divorce and the little brick of optics and semiconductors gets permanently bricked by its sudden deceleration upon interfacing with the surface of the sidewalk... With a combination of brute luck and shaky skills I was able to catch the camera just milliseconds before impact and I was able to do so without spilling any wine from the little plastic cup I was holding in my right hand. Good, clean living.

I made it back to my car and headed west, into the setting sun. My camera and I had done good work, gotten good exercise and I had undone all the good effects of the exercise with an abundance of curiosity at the food stalls. Ah well. That's the way some walks go.

Some more images from my new "test" camera, the Samsung NX300, and a few thoughts about the state of cameras.

The Lamar Bridge.

 Looking East from the Pfluger Pedestrian Bridge.

Looking North on the Pfluger Pedestrian Bridge.

The intake for the old (decommissioned) power plant.

The curvy side of the Pfluger Pedestrian Bridge.

The old Power Plant with downtown Austin in the background.

I shot the images above yesterday afternoon as part of a nice, hot walk from Barton Springs Pool to the downtown Whole Foods store. I used a small, nimble camera with a fairly big (APS-C) sensor, and an inexpensive kit lens. I wound up using the same camera in a dark theater this afternoon. My friend, Colin, and his friend, Noel Gaulin found an overhead projector, some food dyes and other paraphenalia and they were doing pyschedelic, kinetic art (which they were recording to video on a Panasonic AF100) to be used enormously large for an upcoming play about Janis Joplin that will be staged at Zach Theatre. I was there and decided, in an impromptu way, that we should also have a behind the scenes video about some of the lengths to which our technical staff goes to in order to make great looking  live shows.

This little exercise in the dark showed me just how far camera technology has come. The camera was able to automatically correctly expose for the two faces surrounded by total darkness. Walls painted matte black darkness. The camera's image stabilization worked as well as the in-body stabilization in my Sony's and the focus stayed locked on while I moved.

All of this got me thinking about the nature of the business of photography and the rather rude intersection of camera design and art. We can lie through our teeth and talk about how important top notch cameras are or we can admit that just about every camera over $500 in the market place today can be pressed into professional service to make great images, the primary target for which is now the web.  There are still many situations where a long, fast, telephoto lens is critical and there are probably an equal number of situations where a good ultra-wide angle is a an imperative tool, but the camera bodies themselves have been, across the board, ready for prime time for years now.

The mirrorless cameras don't focus as quickly as DSLRs but when they do focus they are more accurate. It's just the nature of focusing on the same chip that also records the images. The metering on mirrorless cameras seems more accurate than the metering on entry level DSLRs as well. And for me the grace note is that every mirrorless camera is also a permanent live view camera, and that means every image gets pre-chimped, which makes the feedback flow of seeing and image correction much more fluid. 

I know it's generational and I know it's because I wear reading glasses now, but I wish every mirrorless camera....oh, what the hell!?...every camera came standard with an EVF. I really like the files I'm getting out of this little camera (NX 300) very much I just wish I could hold it up to my eye like a real camera without having to resort to a loupe for comfort and convenience. To my kid? No big deal. To me....hmmm.

20 really good megapixels on a sensor with wonderful color goes a long way to make up for a feature set that's one check box off for me...more later.

Canoes were hot property at Barton Springs yesterday.

Barton Springs Canoe Rental. Samsung NX300.

Yesterday morning was busy, busy but after a decent lunch with my first assistant for the summer and some monotonous paper work in the office I made two phone calls I had been dreading and then I packed up my new little camera and went off to Zilker Park. I parked the ultra-high performance Honda CR-V in front of Barton Springs Pool and took off for a grand walk through our downtown park.

After an almost ritualistic nod to the rogue swimmers who swim and frolic for free in the spillway downstream from the actual pool I walked on to the canoe rental stand. It was a hot afternoon, school is out for nearly everyone and the place to be was in the water or on the water. I liked the repeating form of the canoes (above) but I knew when I shot the frame that I'd want to see it in black and white. Sharp, snappy, contrasty black and white.

I am getting comfortable with my new, casual shooting system, the Samsung NX300. I have the kit lens which is an 18-55mm, and I have my Hoodman loupe for those times when the surrounding light is too bright to make composing naked fun. I have two or three things to say about the new camera. First off the files seem archly neutral in the "standard" jpeg setting. By that I mean the colors are very neutral and almost unsaturated in comparison to other consumer-targeted cameras. The same with the contrast range. I find myself tweaking up the contrast by 10% or so in post but when I do so I find that I nearly always like the rendition of skin tones in the more neutral settings. The other thing I notice is that the Samsung does a great job making files look very sharp on my monitor. Not sizzly sharp like you see on a lot of websites but detailed and micro detailed. In fact, the sharpening works so well for me that when I try to add sharpness it nearly always makes the images seem brittle and overdone.

I hadn't paid much attention to Samsung until now. I didn't have an opinion about their cameras and I never used on before but I will say this: Sony and Olympus should rush to Samsung, do some industrial espionage and find out who is producing their online owner's manuals and who is programming their camera GUI and menu system and then kidnap them, pay them cajole them and beg them to do the same for their cameras. I've learned the Nex menus and I'm good with the image quality and the hand/camera interface but it really shouldn't take weeks to feel comfortable with a menu. Two days, tops, for an experienced shooter. With the Samsung NX 300 I looked through the online manual once and I've never looked back. Nor have I been unable to quickly find and change any parameter. I don't know if that's the make it or break it for any camera choice but it's a comfortable way to present and leverage whatever benefits your camera might have.....

I will also say that the implementation of the touch screen is very good and the screen is mostly responsive. I prefer buttons but I know a whole generation of photographers who are being raised on iPhones will find it an almost transparent accommodation to their current system interface.

I read in one of the forums yesterday that I am being short changed by only having the kit lens but I disagree. I happen to be a big fan of kit lenses. I was happy when my Sony a58 came with a new and improved kit lens and I've made good use of it. I think if more people spent time really working on their fundamentals they'd see that the choice of lens and the quality of the lens might be, in most situations, the least of their photographic handicaps....

Why black and white canoes when there a beautiful people out in the world waiting to be photographed? Well, when I was in fifth grade I went to a YMCA summer camp and we had an overnight canoe trip. I took a number of black and white photos with an old, zone focusing Argus A-3 camera. At some point on the return voyage my canoe tipped over and many of my possessions, like my sleeping bag, my clothes and my fresh copy of the first Marvel comic book to feature the Fantastic Four, slowly settled to the bottom of the lake but the camera miraculously found it's way to my right hand and emerged unscathed as I treaded water. I tossed it into another canoe and then worked with my camp councilor to right my dodgy craft. The film went to the drugstore after camp and six or seven images of canoes, among some badly done images of marshmallow roasting, found their way back into my hands as 3.5 by 5 inch, deckle edged, black and white prints. It was an exciting time and the canoes triggered some memory ripple of a simpler time somehow faintly connected to photography. And there I am.

 Canoe 2. Samsung NX 300. Converted to black and white in Aperture.

Ben and I go out on an early assignment.

Early. At the Pool.

Can't get away from the pool and wouldn't want to if I could. Usually, at 7 am, I am over there in lane three or four trying to keep up with the other people in my masters program and the boy pictured above is out running with his cross country team, but this week is the down week after school lets out and we needed to shoot this project so I convinced Ben to assist me for the morning shoot.

We were commissioned to make individual photographs of the Rollingwood Waves Summer League swimmers and then do four big group shots of the different age groups. By the end of the morning we'd photographed 85 swimmers and the aforementioned groups and we were ready for iced tea and a couple of Las Palomas Restaurant combination plates.

We always like to show the pool in the background so we set up beside the pool deck, under a high canopy that would block most of the direct sun. My lighting was simple: I used an 1100 watt second Elinchrom Ranger RX AS power pack and one head. The head fired into a 28 inch Fotodiox beauty dish modified with a white diffusion cover. The metal reflector never seems to have the kinds of problems with wind that umbrellas or softboxes have and the light was between hard and soft. Mostly perfect for young swimmers.

I set up the light for each swimmer so that the bottom of the beauty dish was slightly above their chin line and that made for flattering illumination all the way around. The only technical aspect was to keep the look of the background (pool in full sun and pool with cloud cover) the same with changes in cloud cover and sunlight. Nice thing about cameras that pre-chimp is that it's so easy to see the background change. With an OVF your eye makes instant accommodations but no so (at least for me) with the EVF. It shows me the background getting lighter or darker in a very real way.  I adjusted the shutter speed of the camera to compensate.

Ben assisted me by handling the paperwork and the payment from parents. We're primitive on these shoots. The parents fill out the name of their kid on a sheet of paper and we have the kid hold up the sheet for the first shot, zoom in and make sure we capture a face and a name so that I have a clear identification of the child when I do post processing and order prints. Silly simple. A constant reference.

Also, Ben is better than I am at turning down  any unreasonable requests or parent drama (of which there was none).

I used a Sony a99 camera with an older, Minolta 24-85mm 3.5 to 4.5 zoom lens. Why? I like it just fine and the focal length range is just right. The flash was triggered by a set of FlashWaves radio triggers. I used the camera at it's 10 megapixel, highest quality Jpeg setting. The biggest prints will be the 5x7 inch group shots and the main lighting was unerringly consistent so it really wouldn't have made any sense to shoot RAW or even bigger. How much more time do you want to spend in post? How many pixels do you want to throw away?

We wrapped around noon and headed off to our favorite, neighborhood Mexican food restaurant and settled in for a nice meal. Another job, another notch on the tripod leg. 

Hello readers. I hear you loud and clear. You are not interested in hearing about video. We'll try to keep it to a minimum. Really.

 This is NOT a grab frame from a video...

Putting the marketing construct to the test...Making photographs and video in the same session.

Equipped for fast moving work.

Things move fast when your intentions are linear and well defined. I've been working on a marketing message for hybrid creative content and I believe I know where most of my mid-tier corporate clients are sticking their feet in and testing the waters. They want video interviews and short programming for their websites and associated web marketing and they want still images to compliment or introduce the video. My message is very succinct and direct: I can help you get both halves of the equation with one set up and one appointment. We can set up lighting that works well for both video and still imaging. We can provide big, rich digital still images at very high resolution and we can turn right around, at the flick of dial and give you juicy, 1080p, 60fps video with great sound. We set up one set of lights and use them for everything. We set up one camera and get you the kind of stylistic and visual continuity that wasn't even possible just four or five years ago.

The still and video images can be intercut or dissolved between with none of the obvious technical disconnections (different depth of field, different color renderings, etc.) that come from using a big sensor still camera and a smaller sensor video camera. If we can capture it all on one sensor I just makes sense that the imagery will match up. And that's important when your message needs to be able to go back and forth from still to motion, seamlessly.

We are currently using large, fluorescent light banks, modified by cinema-style flags, diffusers and nets to create lighting that works well for either medium. By using weaker diffusers we can add additional snap to the video and by adding more diffusion we can create softer transitions for still imaging which can be more easily enhanced in post production.

matching impedance is a lovely thing.

So, how is all this working out? Well, we've done two hybrid shoots nearly back to back with the most recent one taking place yesterday morning. One of the large medical practices (think: over 100 physicians) is investigating an app which can scan an image on a print advertisement and then delivery a targeted video directly to your phone or other mobile device. Their idea? Click on the doctor in an ad and go straight to a video that dissolves from the still into a full on video of the doctor giving the positive talking points about the practice. Seems interesting since everyone has a smart phone now.  They asked me to come over and provide both halves of the equation for two different subjects. 

When I first arrived we were scheduled into a big meeting space but the air conditioning was so loud that it almost drowned out the noise from the ice machine! We steered the cart down the hall to a smaller, much quieter conference room and set up there. 

I like to be at a shooting location about an hour before our first subject is scheduled to walk in. It gives me time to set up lighting and backgrounds and test all the system. 

I lit the set up with two identical fluorescent lights (four bulbs each) as the main and fill lights. I used one with a two stop diffuser for the fill light and one with a 3/4 stop diffuser as the main light. Big, bright and soft. I lit the gray, seamless background with a small, two bulb, bank, and added a very subtle backlight with a Fiilex P360 LED fixture. We were shooting at ISO 160, f4 at 1/50th of a second (1080p at 24 fps). I set up a Rode NTG 2 microphone on a microphone stand and plugged it into my Beachtek mixer which acts as a transformer to match impedance between the microphone output and the camera's microphone input. I monitored the sound with closed back headphones and it was gorgeous.

This is the Rokinon Cinema style 35mm f1.5 lens. It's great. We used its big brother,

the 85mm 1.5 for yesterday's project.

I worked by getting my portrait done first. This allowed the art director and I to fine tune the image. Once we had a good portrait on the memory card I switched over to video mode and we worked to match the expression and placement of our subject as well as we could and we starting rolling on the first part of the scripted presentation. The idea was to be close so we could bring the video out of the still via a dissolve.

When I got back to the studio office I pulled the large, RAW still portraits off the memory card and processed them in Aperture. I tossed away about half the images for each subject so my client wouldn't have to wade through half closed eyes, weird grins and the typical stuff portrait subjects come up with as they struggle with the self-conscious selves in front of the camera. Once I edited and color corrected the "keepers" I exported the files as mid-sized jpegs and uploaded them to Smugmug, into a private web gallery so the client could browse through and select the keeper from each subject. I'll take each selected file and make all kinds of tonal corrections, and retouch blemishes and skin issues via either PhotoShop or Portrait Professional 11. Or both.

Once the gallery was sent off I got to work on the video footage. Now, I'm not the editor for this project but I do believe in providing good quality footage and, just as in still imaging, there's a lot you can do to fine tune a file in post production. I use the first clip for each subject to build a series of corrections which I can then stamp on all similar clips. I use Final Cut Pro X and I do scoped corrections for exposure, saturation and color. I want snappy and open but with a good, black base.

I turn over the corrected footage and the original camera files on a DVD to the client with notes about what I did for the corrected footage. It's delivered in Pro Res 422 and the files can be large.

I know we photographers get carried away in praising our tools from time to time but I really do want to share just how great the a99 is for shooting video. From the focus peaking to the real time audio level control just about everything on the a99 is optimized to help me create good, solid video products.

The client was very pleased with both halves of the project and we talked about doing one or two of these a month for the near future. Our previous project was for a high tech manufacturer's website video and, while there isn't ongoing work there they were very enthusiastic about the idea of only having to sit in front of the camera once in order to accomplish two very different (but very similar) tasks. 

I am continuing to promote this kind of hybrid approach to content creation. Once we've got it wired in I'll start on phase X, the writing of the scripts... but I'm having so much fun learning to do this stuff step by step.

(Note: We don't normally use a microphone on camera but did it here for the sake of the photograph. We'll use the photograph, taken with the new Samsung NX300, for some of our direct print marketing.)