A few rehearsal images from the production of "In The Heights" at Zach Theatre. Some from the RX10iii and some from the FZ2500.

On Sunday and Tues. evenings I headed over to the Topfer stage at Zach Theatre to try and capture the look and feel of the big, new production; In The Heights. On Sunday I went outfitted with only the Panasonic fz2500 while my shoot on Tues. involved a few shots with a Sony A7Riii (which went back into the bag in short order), the Sony RX10iii (the lion's share of the Tues. images), and a collection of images using the Panasonic G85 with the kit 12-60mm and also an ancient Pen-FT Olympus 50-90mm zoom (that was just flat out fun...). 

Here's what I ended up with: 

The Story I glossed over about the real reason to use the Panasonic fz2500 for video instead of my Sony A series cameras or, even, the RX10's.

I can't believe I've been so dense. It was right under my nose all the time. The one critical set of capabilities that makes the fz2500/2000 such an incredible bargain for video shooters hellbent on getting maximum quality at a low price point. It's all about the clean HDMI out.

Let me explain. The Sony a7x's and RX10's are great cameras for shooting video if you are intent on using them only to capture video to internal SD cards. Just like the fz2500 they write really nice (albeit compressed) files directly to internal cards but in order to do so they limit the color information to 4:2:0 and the they limit the bit depth to 8 bits. Within these constraints they do a very good job. But the differences emerge when one hooks up an external field recorder and sends a pre-compressed signal out the HDMI connection to a waiting SSD drive. The fastest SD cards can sustain a write time of a little over 120 mbs but if you want higher bit depths and richer color spaces you'll need sustained write times closer to 200 mbs. And that's exactly what field recorders give you.

But, if you hook up an Atomos (or other brand) field recorder to one of the Sony cameras you gain only greater bit depth and not a change from 4:2:0 to 4:2:2 color information. With the Panasonic fz2500 you gain 10 bit, 4:2:2 color even at UHD video, at 24 fps and 30 fps. This is crazy good. And the field recorders allow you to take the clean HDMI signal and write ProRes files to the SSD card which means there's no need to transcode when ingesting the files into your editing program.

What does the change from 8 bit to 10 bit buy you? Better tonal separation and less banding in uniform color areas within a frame. That means less banding in blue skies and more realistic tonal shifts within a frame.

What does the change from 4:2:0 to 4:2:2 buy you? You are getting more color samples to work with which gives you more color accuracy and richer color in your files. It means the files are easier to work with and edit because there is more information to work with. It's a big step up.

I was really busy doing projects when I bought the Panasonic and I'm sure I must have read about this capability somewhere but... when you have your head down in projects you are loathe to change directions or workflow because the unknown or untried is...scary. Now I am paying attention and I'm delighted to investigate just how big a change the use of an external recorder will be for my video work.

I'm trying to decide which recorder will work best for the fz2500 so if you have any information, experience or opinions I would love to hear them. Right now the Atomos Ninja Fire seems to be the right choice but I'll wait to hear from some of my smart readers.

Realizing the potential I have sitting in this camera in front of me on my desk is like unwrapping an new present. Now to acquire the external recorder and start testing.

Video really is a deep dark rabbit hole. Bring a flash light.

Hey! Sony! Unlock 10bit in the RX10iii and I'll put you on my Christmas card list...

The Strange Saga of the Sony a9, and other random thoughts on an unexpectedly open Friday.

I'll start with the Sony a9. Right off the bat you have to know that I have only held one for a brief time but I have read just about everything written about this camera so far on the web. I am certain that it's a wonderful camera for a very, very small subsection of photographers who have very special needs for their very particular kind of work. As I understand it the a9 is Sony's statement about what constitutes a really great, mirrorless sports camera. It's optimized for fast, fast, fast.

It's probably the fastest focusing of all the full frame Sony camera and it may be faster than the a6500. It has an incredibly deep raw buffer. And they made the battery twice as powerful as the long running npw50 that's used in just about every other serious Sony camera.

But here's the deal: Most photographers (who are not specifically sports photographers) tend to value image quality above speed. If we're spending real money and taking our time to shoot with purpose and passion we're generally trying to maximize the image quality of our work above all other parameters. In this regard the a9, when compared to the A7rii is a step backward on the quality timeline. It has lower resolution, much lower dynamic range and less ability to finely separate color tones. Why then all the interest in a camera that's 50% more cost? Why have Sony absolutely inundated the web-o-sphere with millions and millions of social influencers all touting this camera as the alpha and the omega of modern cameras?

Here is why I am profoundly uninterested in the a9, won't buy one and won't be "testing" one "in the real world" or anyplace else:

1. This camera is too expensive for the quality of file it generates.

2. This camera is optimized for speed over quality.

3. This camera is two steps backwards for anyone who values the ability to create video and stills with one picture taking machine.

4. Stories are emerging from many quarters about overheating issues with the camera (and one would think after dealing with the marketing splatter from overheating A7 series cameras and A6x00 series cameras Sony would have learned something...and implemented some way of dealing with heat..).

5. The sheer volume of people vying to review/dissect/promote this camera on social media makes me NOT interested in a big way.

6. Lloyd Chambers was first to bat with revelations about serious noise banding in shadows when pushing the shadows --- even at ISO 100!!!

The outright flogging and shilling of this camera has become downright embarrassing and, I think, counterproductive.

I would guess Sony is trying to build a two year cycle of momentum using the a9 as proof of execution in the sports camera niche in order to prepare the battlefield for the release of a much better camera 18 months from now to showcase at the Olympics. (is it true that viewship at ESPN has dropped by over 30% in the last two years? Will we still even want "sports cameras" by then?). The goal must be to have enough photographers sporting Sony gear and logos at the games that they are finally taken seriously by the new gathering community which will give them credibility and a certain glow (halo) with consumers in general. The ultimate goal being the snatching of additional market share from Nikon. And Nikon seems to be making it easy for them.

I think the a9 is the ultimate consumer-beta'd R&D camera. As the blog sites, websites and social media sites of all flavor relentlessly flog the a9 a certain number of buyers will hear the siren wail of marketing and part with an enormous sum of money in order to get a camera that will mostly be used by people who have photo interests similar to yours and mine; we'll use it to take walking around photographs, family images, headshots, product shots, real estate shots, concert shots, food shots and all the regular and routine things we do with our cameras 90% of the time. In that same span of time the people who buy the camera will do two things. They will decide that the image quality of the a7Rii, or the combination of price and image quality of the a7ii, would have been preferable to the a9 for them and, secondly, they'll be guinea pigs for Sony's engineers; finding and reporting on glitch after glitch so Sony can fix everything and put a great product out in time for the games in 2020.

It's hard not to believe that Sony stumbled onto some key methods of controlling and inspiring the legions of camera reviewers and have done what most marketers do when they suddenly realize they have a potent consumer driver in their hands; they turn up the marketing knob to 11 and go massively overboard. But like any other gimmick the public will soon tire of it and the intensity of the repeated assaults on the city walls of the consumer mind will result in rebellion, revolt, cynicism and other brakes to the a9 onslaught.

The very idea that many, many photographers desperately need to create work at 20 fps is just ludicrous. I'll take the insanely detailed of the A7Rii's sensor and its almost unrivaled dynamic range any day of the week, and I suspect that you would too.

The camera to watch, in my opinion, is the Panasonic GH5. That's a remarkable piece of gear by any measure.

Sony, me dost thinks thou market too hard. A little subtlety (any restraint at all) would be appreciated.

Just look what the inane repetition of the a9 mantra has done to DP Review's credibility...

Another video project sees the light of day. One man movie making on location in Oklahoma City.

https://youtu.be/WjbztDHqJuY

I'm happy to see that my client has posted our most recent project on their YouTube channel. (See the link above). This assignment was one of those fast breaking projects that takes advantage of my skills both as a photographer and as a video producer. I worked with a crew of one. Me. And I worked inside a very tight time constraint; I had a little over half a day to shoot interior and exterior video b-roll, an in-depth, two camera interview, and a large collection of corresponding still images. I lit with available light, LEDs and also flash; and worked out of one big case, a light stand case, and a backpack full of cameras that can fit under the seat in front of me on most airlines. With good packing you can move quicker and that means you can get more content. That helps later on when you are desperate for some good cutaways...

This video is a story about Steve G. who was shot in the leg in a hunting accident decades ago. As a result of the accident he lost his left leg; just under his knee. He was recently fitted with a new prosthetic product from my client and, well..... click on the video to hear Steve's impressions.

On this project I made extensive use of the Sony RX10iii. Every time I do a project with this camera I learn new things to like about it. On this project I used a new set of parameters in one of my Picture Profiles settings. It's a set of parameters from Andrew Reid who runs the site, EosHD.com. With this profile engaged I felt like I could get easy-to-use and edit files right out of camera without having to resort to using S-Log.

I used the RX10iii for every part of the video except for the black and white segments of the interview. That "B" camera was a Sony A7rii with the new 85mm on the front. All of the still images from the shoot (including the ones I used in the video) were also from the A7rii.

I used a Rode NTG-4+ microphone running into a pre-amplifier and then directly into the RX10iii for Steve's audio. The ability to ride levels with a physical knob on the pre-amplifier was a good thing. No menu diving (or function button diving) needed to get to the audio level controls!

One thing I've been doing on all of our healthcare projects is to shoot all the footage I can in 4K and to bring the 4K footage into the editing timeline in 4K, along with smaller proxy files which I use for the actual editing process. The higher resolution is great for those times when a client would like for you to zoom in during the edit and crop out something in the background. It's comforting to know that you can crop in and lose 2/3rds of the frame and still match the resolution of HD. The final output, as specified by the client, is HD in H.264.

The times I shoot with HD instead are the times when I am shooting handheld and either I am moving, or the subject is moving, or both. I drop to HD because the five axis image stabilization built into the RX10iii is more effective at quelling camera movement at that setting. I get smoother footage that way. I guess I could just shoot everything in 4K and do my image stabilization in post production but it's hard, when shooting really quickly, and not to a script, to anticipate in advance how tight or loose you might need your crops to be. Shooting a nice composition in the finder means I'll be more apt to use the resulting shots.

Our shooting day generated print ad content, a video, and social media content for our client in an extremely cost effective way. As usual, the editing is like taking a workshop for future shooting. You learn just how much you screwed up when you try putting everything together in post...

One sad note for me is the fact that most people will only see the video as a (highly) compressed HD file on YouTube. I spun out a version for myself using ProRes 4:2:2 HQ as the codec and when I watch this on a 60 inch, 4K TV I am blown away by the jaw dropping differences in sharpness, detail, tonality etc. It kinda feels like those days in photography when you made a great shot on a 4x5 inch transparency (big ass slide film) and later saw the resulting ad in newsprint. Kind of anti-climatic; especially when you've had a chance to see the original.

I give it a year, maybe two, and then we'll all have enough bandwidth at home and in our offices to watch stuff on YouTube and Vimeo with larger files and more pixels. Won't that be fun?

Two Samples from the Sony 85mm f1.8 FE Lens on an A7ii.

The lens is really good. Well worth the asking price. How's that for a short review?

Working at 1000 ISO with the Panasonic fz2500 at Tech Rehearsal. Nailing Focus Makes Your Lens Look Sharper.

I love shooting stage productions. Yesterday evening the folks at Zach had a technical rehearsal for an upcoming production of "In the Heights." I wanted to attend and scout the show so I could be more effective when I come back to shoot the dress rehearsal this Tues. evening; and it was a good opportunity to give the Panasonic fz2500 another good test to see if the focusing workaround I learned from my friend, Frank, was working as we both hoped (and expected) it would.

When I bought the camera and made some initial tests I got the same soft results that the people at DP Review got when they tested the camera but one of my colleagues owns the same camera and was able to pull stunning images out of it so, unlike the folks at DPR who chalked up the issue to a less than stellar lens design I was not willing to toss the blame to Leica and move on without a little deeper dive. I kept testing because I had done some images earlier, both with and without AF, and was able in some circumstances, to achieve results from the Panasonic lens that were very much on par with the gold standard lens; the Sony RX10iii/Zeiss zoom. 

I noticed that the AF square on the back screen seemed to shift left every time I shot with the camera. Frank's workaround was to create a custom AF pattern, restricting the pattern only to the very center focusing point. Once I did this the camera seemed to nail focus on everything I pointed it towards. And once I got it focused properly the resulting files were sharp and detailed; and to be honest I prefer the overall tonality of the Panasonic files over that of the Sony RX10 files (which are not bad by any standard...).

The production lighting of the show I was shooting last night was contrasty and lit to a lower level than the last few shows I've shot there. To the eye it was a lighting design that created a wonderful sense of twilight ambiance and drama but to the camera it was --- a challenge. 

I locked in ISO at 1,000 and set the camera to manual exposure. I worked with the lens either wide open or very, very close to it for the entire evening. That's a great test since most lenses are sharper a couple of stops down. I would not have the luxury of being able to work in the sweet spot of the optical design of the lens but that was fine with me because this is a test based on the real way I shoot some projects. If a camera lens can deliver at a wide open aperture it passes at least one of my tests. 

I shot 1300+ files last night and editing them down to about 700 this morning. In order to partially compensate for the contrasty stage lighting I had to make a few adjustments, both in the camera and in post production. In the camera (shooting raw) I set the highlight/shadow control to plus 1 in the shadows and minus 1 in the highlights. When I brought the files into Lightroom I used the shadow slider at +50 to get the background of the set design to read and used -15 on the highlight slider to tone down white shirts and various highlights. I also pulled up the blacks to +8. With any sensor that's a recipe for noise but probably more so with a smaller, one inch type sensor. I hit the noise reduction menu and dialed in +15 on the luminance slider, +61 on the detail slider and kept the contrast at zero. 

If you chimp at 100% you'll still see noise but looking at the images in the sizes we intended to use them they look pretty darn good. 

I am very satisfied with the AF I got last night. There were only a handful of images that didn't make the cut for reasons of unsharpness and I suspect a lot of that was me being less than compulsive about getting the focusing indicator in the correct position. 

I hope Panasonic comes out with a firmware fix that makes AF less horsey for those of us who just want to quickly designate an AF point and keep it there. Otherwise? High marks from me for the camera based on images for last night.

An interesting possible solution to the overheating problems many find in Sony's A7X series of cameras.

While the Sony A7 series of cameras brings many great features to the table there are two "flaws" to the camera for many people. The first one is almost universally mentioned; the small batteries don't come close to matching the stamina of the much larger batteries in cameras like DSLR Nikons, Canons and the mirror-free battery champ = the Panasonic GH4. The second, more egregious failing of the series is the tendency for them to overheat; especially when shooting 4K video.

In the first instance there is a cheap and relatively efficient workaround; just buy some extra, third party batteries like the Wasabi Power models. Keep a couple extra in your saddlebag and you're good to go for the day. Unless you are shooting video and then you might want to consider increasing the size of that saddlebag... But, if you stock up on batteries you won't be caught short with a non-working camera.

The second fault is much more vexing for a working photographer, or for any photographer that expects reliable camera operation, and that's the tendency for the cameras to overheat. Once that overheat indicator becomes visible

The agony of video editing is the fact that there's always something somewhere that could be improved.

I've been working sporadically for well over a week on editing down a 4 minutes and 8 second video project for a corporate client. I haven't spent every hour of every day on it but I've put in way, way more time than I estimated. It's not because there is so much work to do that makes it an amazing black hole process, rather it's the reality that no matter how clean the original material and no matter how meticulous you were at recording sound and getting good video there are always details that can be further finessed.

I've spent the last two hours trying to eradicate a rustle noise from the moment at which our interviewee crossed his arms and created a quick rustling noise with his shirt. I didn't notice it on the first ten passes but on a final review, with the volume turned way up I could hear it plain as day.

After skimming the audio with the timeline stretched all the way out I found the audible culprit and also found that it stretched across two clips. I detached both audio tracks from their video tracks and started blading around the area in order to get just enough of the noise but not so much as to grab part of the dialog. There was a lot of trial and error involved. I watched the waveforms to see just how tightly I could make the cuts. I tried version after version until I got