Past Due Reviews. The first in a series. The Nikon D610. Executive Summary. At $1295 it's a cheap and wonderful entry to full frame photography.

#Austin  #SXSW Downtown.

 I'm writing a review here on the Nikon D610 camera. I'm writing it not because I think you should run out and buy one or because it happens to be the best in any one category (it's not) but because it's an affable camera, I enjoy shooting it and, so far, it's been generating images that look really good to me. It's already been superseded by the D750 camera which is largely the same but in some ways "better." But it remains in the Nikon product line up and the price of the camera seems to have stabilized around $1495 which I think is a good value for the quality of the sensor and the particular feel of the camera. 

I shoot with several different cameras and I have reasons for every choice. I have a Nikon D810 when I am after perfect images with unassailable resolution and dynamic range. Lately I've been shooting the Olympus EM-5 camera more often since I discovered both how much I like the black and white setting (with the green filtration) and how nice video can look in black and white when you use the image stabilization offered by that camera in the video mode. But these days I grab the D610 as my personal shooting camera for portraits and street shooting. More and more I've come to value a camera that's a nice balance rather than a tool with which to pursue "perfection." 

Let's jump into the D610 and see why I enjoy using one. 

Old School Communications. All the work and none of the fun.

The radio telephone the secret service carried on the Johnson Ranch.

Where's the screen for reading e-mail?

I am now officially booked through the end of March. It's nice thing because it represents a bit of financial security but it does play havoc with the swim schedule. I will adjust. The thing that makes being booked up different for me this year is that so much of the current (and near future) work is video or a mix of photography and video. It seems obvious that corporations are profoundly changing the way they communicate with customers. 

You can see it in the new wave of websites. The ones from the tech community don't open with a banner photograph across the top of the front page anymore, they open with a video banner instead. The video banner is nearly always a lifestyle/brand presentation of the client. One company has a video of good looking professional people walking toward the camera in a light, airy and modern airport setting. They sell software that improves customer experiences and one of their big clients is the airline industry. The video is a quick, active encapsulation of what they promise: A quick and convenient airline experience; one made better by the company's phone centric software product. At least that's the premise and the promise.

Even my theater client which we've supplied photographs to for 24 years has lately discovered the power of video content to move shows into profitability and engage their base in more active conversations around certain plays. While I'm making conventional images for the marketing of the new LBJ drama, All the Way, I recently spent three days making a combination of reportorial style still images, video interviews, video programming on locations and audio interviews. They're building a strong YouTube channel and also inserting video, wherever possible, in social media. As channels of content distribution get more splintered it seems that having more tools is always better. It's rare now, for me, to get jobs that don't have some sort of online video component (whether the client chooses to have me produce it or not...). Video is a self-contained way to present a complete story across any number of devices. From old school televisions to phones.

I met this morning with a technology client who has commissioned me to do a new video for them for an upcoming trade show. Their booth will have a number of 50 inch monitors and the video needs to do three things: 1. Tell a shorthand version of the company's story. 2. Present an overview of their products and the benefits to customers. 3. Represent the company's partners. The video needs to come in under three minutes (harder to do than a longer program) and it needs to work well with, and without audio. To do the video we need some good still images of the products in prototype. We might also need a few more images that we can pan over of their existing products. We have good, existing video of the processes and the look of the headquarters.  We'll need copywriting and some motion graphics and a big dose of editing.

The videos will run over and over again across all the 50 inch monitors on a trade show booth. The monitors are the logical replacement for large, static trade show graphics in that the video is constantly moving, can handle multiple messages in one space and captures the audience's attention for a longer period of time that a still image would. The days of handing out a brochure and a business card under a gatorfoam mounted company logo sign are quickly coming to a close....

Nothing Beats a Road Trip.

school house on the Johnson Ranch

We saddled up mid-morning, all caffeinated and happy, and headed due west on a road trip to Johnson City and beyond. It was a cold, crisp Friday morning last week. Well, cold by central Texas Standards. The temperature where gloves aren't exactly necessary but sure feel nice.

In the car were the photographer/video guy, the dramaturg/researcher and the public relations person from Zach Theatre. Coming along behind us in a pick-up truck was the theater's artistic director and our actor. Our mission was to research LBJ in order to make the upcoming play more insightful and faithful to the real personality of our former president. 

I was juggling two jobs, something working journalists seem to have been pushed into in recent years. Over one shoulder I had a Nikon D810 all rigged up for shooting video, with a microphone in the hotshoe and a giant loupe clamped to the rear LCD screen. There was an extra battery in my left pocket and the 64 gigabyte card in slot #1 gave me confidence that I'd be able to shoot for hours. 

My relationship with microphones is dicey. I understand them, have had success in the studio and on controlled locations with them but there's something about "run and gun" work in quick changing environments that always leaves me feeling that I've got the wrong tool on at the wrong time on the wrong camera. I started with a small shotgun mic but it sounded to noisy and I didn't have a dead cat wind sock for it so I tossed it back into the bag and grabbed a Rode NTG2. I had the "dead cat" but if I'm anywhere beyond about two feet from someone speaking I can never get enough gain out of that microphone. I ended up sticking an older Rode StereoMic on the hotshoe and it seemed like the best compromise of the three. I would have used wireless lavalieres but the cast of characters ebbed and flowed and grew and I only have two microphones. I'd no sooner mic one person than they would probably walk off while someone brand new would come into the group and toss out that perfect quote... Damn. Sound out in the wilderness can be challenging.

Over the other shoulder I had a Nikon D7100 with an all purpose zoom on it. When I got too frustrated with audio chaos I would let the D810 drop over my shoulder, grab the 7100 and do what I know how to do best---just take photos. Just as I have a love/hate relationship with most microphones I also have a love/hate relationship with Nikon's 18-140mm everything kit lens. On the plus side the range is great, the center sharpness is more than adequate and the VR works like a champ. On the down side the corners are softer than Brie cheese and the in camera distortion correction uses too much of the edge of the frames to do its work. That 18mm quickly becomes more like a 22 or 23mm instead. But the combination of good reach, adequate sharpness and killer stabilization keeps me using it for stuff that happens without a script or a plan.

Hat in LBJ's childhood home.

When we're doing jobs for clients I like using the raw files on the D7100 but I use them on this camera like a modern version of a Jpeg. By that I mean that I've got the camera set to shoot 12 bit raws which are also compressed. And since the menu gives me a choice between lossless compression and compression I'm going to assume that the compressed file is on the edge of being visibly less able than the other option. But this compromise buys me two things: I get to cram about a third more images on a memory card, and, I still get to dial in color temperature, sharpening and the like after the fact in post processing without destroying file info.

Traveling out of town means we get to sample new food in new restaurants. We took the National Park Service Ranger's advice and ate at the 290 Diner in Johnson City. Lovely people. Good food. I wish I had ordered after the P.R. lady. She got a BLT and then had the diner add a fried egg to it. It looked delicious and the bacon was so wonderful looking that it bordered on food porn. 

One of the fringe benefits of a group trip like this is someone else driving. I got to sit in the front passenger seat and stare out the window like a puppy. And if it was boring outside I could close my eyes behind my hipster sunglasses and no one would know I wasn't paying attention or being earnest.

The trip from Austin takes about 45 minutes (assuming you don't want to go at rush hour...) and it takes one through some really pretty Hill Country. You go past the turn off for Pedernales State Park and there are at least two Dairy Queen restaurants between here and there. Johnson City is very small. They are maybe 1800 people who live there but the population might swell to 2,000 during the weekdays as people come in from all around to work at the Pedernales Electrical Cooperative and at the restaurants. Very different from the million + people who live in the Austin area (11th most populous city in the U.S.) and the twenty million who seem to be trying to drive here most weekdays...

I always find the low population density calming...

Anyway, the job was fun. I just followed people around and tried to catch interesting conversations about LBJ and if that didn't work I tried to make pretty pictures. One thing I came to realize is how poorly configured DSLRs are for long bouts of handheld video taping and how unprepared I was to hold a camera of that bulk still and vibrationless for more than a few minutes at a time. I came to love my tripod and hate the times when I had to handhold the rig---example: shooting in a moving car!

While the three point hold with the Loupe as the third point goes a long way to stability I'll never understand how anyone anywhere can hold a camera of that weight and size out at arm's length to view the naked screen and have any expectation of stability. I know I could never do it, no matter how much I might practice.

After grappling with the D810 for a while I realized that one of the features and flaws of shooting video with a big-ass, full frame camera is that one had a very limited depth of field. Great for those narrow depth of field shot of the half naked beauty rising from a nap on a gloriously lit set but sheer hell when trying to keep multiple people in reasonable focus without always having to shoot wide. 

At a certain point I gave up the much better video image quality of the D810 and switched over to shooting video with the D7100 I'd brought along for still shooting. The smaller frame, using the same aperture on the 18-140mm got me a happier number of in focus shots. One of the unsung benefits of using the M4:3 cameras as video cameras, at least in these kinds of situations, is the forgiving nature of more ample depth of field for the same angles of view. All in all this kind of work would either drive me back to using the GH4 or EM5-2 all the time or maybe even buying a dedicated video camera with a nicer form factor. There's a time and a place for shallow depth of field and equally there is a time and a place for deep focus. It's so much fun learning and re-learning on the job. 

Telephone in LBJ's childhood home.

I was happy to shoot video and photos but happier still to be part of a small, road trip community. We stopped at an isolated McDonald's for coffee. We zoomed around LBJ's ranch in a Lincoln. We heard amazing stories and we say some beautiful ranch country. And then, best of all, someone else did the driving back home. As I dragged my gear back to the car I thought about my usual litmus test for projects and their fun quotient: would I want to do it again? The answer for Friday would be: Yes.

Wash basin in LBJ's childhood home. 

If you come to Austin for SXSW and you are disappointed 

at the highly diluted nature of the festival and the 

massive crowds of similar people you might want to 

rent a car and head out to Johnson City.

It may be a good cure of overweaning hipsterism.

A quick advertising note: Craftsy is offering a bunch of course at up to 50% off. It's a good way to learn new stuff. You might want to browse their photo offerings. I'll be looking at the cooking classes.....   Here's the link!

The benefits of simplicity. A street photographer's zen.

Lisbon, Portugal.

When we work with fully manual cameras that have no meters, no autofocusing mechanism and no zoom lenses we tend to work more quickly because we aren't slowed down by having to make choice after choice at the time of shooting. 

When I shot with a Leica M4 and a 50mm lens I followed the same routine when I was outside. I would Scotch tape a Kodak exposure guide (small slip of paper with pictograms on it) to the bottom of the camera. I would walk outside and judge the light, then I would look at the guide to decide the right exposure setting. I would set it on the camera and it would stay set until I noticed that the light had changed. 

I liked working at f5.6 or f8.0 apertures on the 50mm when I worked with Tri-X because in any light short of full sun I could use those apertures and work within the limitations of the camera's 1/1,000th of second top shutter speed. I would preset a hyperfocal distance that would cover the usual subject and if needed would fine tune depending on the distance from my camera to the subject. 

With the camera set this way taking a good picture was as easy as seeing the subject, raising the camera to the eye and then pushing the shutter button. No thought. No second thoughts. 

Once the moment is captured we might try to fine tune. It is usually futile as the clearest seeing of the image seems to be the moment of recognition. 

Auto focus introduces conscious thinking. Everything from deciding on the focus points to confirming focus. None of it is instantaneous. None of it is reflexive. It's different. Ah well.

A quick advertising note: Craftsy is offering a bunch of course at up to 50% off. It's a good way to learn new stuff. You might want to browse their photo offerings. I'll be looking at the cooking classes.....   Here's the link!

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The physical ins and outs of shooting video footage and making the camera move. It's so much harder than it looks to me. Yikes! Occupational Therapy Learning Curve. OTLC.

This image has nothing to do with this particular blog post.

It's an image from Lisbon in the late 1990's.

I liked the tile on the side of the building.

Leica M6. 50mm Summicron. 

I got hired by a photographer for today. He was shooting the installation of an art project at an airport and needed someone to provide video documentation of the installation as well. The installed art work is hundreds of feet long and covers two expanses (two walls) of a great room. We had control of the location from 10am until 2pm. There was "hard stop" at 2 pm because an arriving international flight would disgorge passengers who needed to transit through "our" space. 

The best way to show the installation on video was to move across the length of the art. Fortunately we had a floor that was smooth as glass and a large cart with soft wheels and a true bearing. My most important shots were done by placing a stout tripod on the top of the cart, loading the cart with ballast to give it more inertia and then practicing my pacing. I'd line up the shot and then use the joins on the floor to stay on the right path, perpendicular to the wall.  When I first started planning the video portion of the project I was thinking "wheel chair" as a quick and inexpensive alternative to laying a couple hundred feet of dolly track but the cart was even better.

We needed a fun opening shot and a perfectly placed escalator allowed me to descend into the room and into the art in a very visually fun way. Through experimentation I found that the best way for me to hold a camera very steadily on moving stairs is to use a loupe/finder over the rear screen and have a three points of contact strategy. The three points being my left hand, my right hand and my forehead/eye socket.  I also engaged the vibration reduction on the lens I was shooting. 

We tried using a slider but the room's volume and dimensions, as well as the placement of the art in relationship to the lighting, really necessitated using longer lenses from further back. There's not enough relative movement in some long lens shots to get the feeling of movement across to the reader in any convincing way using a slide movement. If we'd needed to shoot close and wide it would have been a different story. 

Some of the best shots of the day were a result of just finding the right vantage points for good side to side pans. We had the usual hurdles like mid-room pillars and non-removable signage but we can make short work of those by using some judicious dissolves to and from the b-roll I shot. Panning is much less a technical consideration than it is a matter of coordination and lots of practice. I haven't done it enough to get perfect pans every time so I need to do lots of takes and work all the time on my technique. I can only imagine that the guys who are really good at getting pans at just the right speed and smoothness must practice for months and years before getting their technique just right. No workshop shortcuts available...

Like most brain functions combined with hand functions it takes practice making the two work together. Pans can be unforgivingly obvious when they aren't done in a skillful way. I'd like to think a better quality ($$$) fluid head will make my panning moves much better but I can already see that there's no magic bullet. Some stuff just has to be gotten to straight through before it really works. My big hope is that perfect panning is not another one of those things that takes ten thousand hours to accomplish. 

I do know that the pans worked better when I used one hand on the camera and one hand on the tripod arm. I know now that it's easier to do a fast pan than a slow pan and it's almost impossible to do a really good very slow pan; at least for me.

I've learned in previous projects just how useful detail footage and shots from other angles are when editing. If a part of one pan goes bumpy it's always possible to cut away to a different angle and then cut back when my overall performance improves somewhere in the original shot. 

I'm back in the studio now and looking at footage. It doesn't look bad. I know enough to know that I don't know enough and don't have enough practice yet to be good. But I can, at this juncture, get stuff that's serviceable. Studio dog is in the studio basket with her PolarTec bathrobe (and inadvertent "gift" from me) right next to the little radiator heater. She is subtly trying to tell me to wrap up this blog because we're falling behind on the schedule. The schedule goes like this: Retouch a couple of headshots, play fetch. Retouch a couple of headshots, play fetch. Retouch a couple of headshots, play fetch. Retouch a couple of headshots, play fetch. Retouch a couple of headshots, play fetch. Retouch a couple of headshots, play fetch.........