Trailing lens reviews. The Sigma 60mm f2.8 DC DN Art. Nice.....

If you own a small sensor camera, be it a micro four thirds or an APS-C Sony mirrorless, you might seriously consider picking up one of the absolutely cute and very high performance 60mm f2.8 DC DN lenses that Sigma has been making for a number of years now. This is the third time I've owned this lens. I first bought the early version that fit on the m4:3 cameras but it left in a purge on my way toward the Sony system. One of the first lenses I bought for the Sony a6300 (a high performance imaging camera with a huge deficit of handling comfort) was the Sony version of the same lens. And once I migrated back to the m4:3 system late last year it was a lens I quickly searched out.

Here's why: It's small, light, cheap, fun to look at and.....it delivers wonderful and pristine optical performance even when used at its widest aperture. It has a wonderful combination of bite and realism. It's capable of high resolution with high contrast and, one of my favorite lens test sites, Lenstip.com, raves about the overall imaging performance of the lens -- across all the systems for which it is available.

For people who need wide angle lenses because they just can't make up their minds about what needs to be included in their photos and what needs to be excluded from their photos it might be a little long (focal length, not physical dimension...). But, if you like to isolate subjects and have definitive ideas about cropping the focal length is very good on the m4:3 cameras (equivalent to a 120mm on a 35mm, full frame camera) and perfect on an APS-C camera (90mm equivalent).

It also has the added benefit of being able to focus quite closely as you can see below. While it won't take the place of a good macro lens it will let you cut out a lot of extraneous clutter while maintaining high sharpness. My impression about the quality of its out of focus areas is that they are some and smooth and very desirable. (See image just below).

The lens comes with a hood and a small case and is around $240. While the f2.8 aperture may seem inadequate for some low light uses the two advantages bestowed by the limited f-stop are: It's fully sharp and usable wide open and it's comfortably small and portable. 

I consider it one of the great bargains available for all of the cropped sensor systems. You should rush out and buy one right away. If it doesn't fit on your full frame Canon or Nikon DSLR camera (it doesn't) then this gives you the perfect excuse to finally get rid of that old clunker and step into the wonderful world of smaller and more capable mirror-free camera systems from Sony (APS-C), Olympus and Panasonic.

I figure that any lens worth owning three times over is a lens you'll probably want to try.

Format Agnostic Photography. In defense of almost all sensor sizes.

Image from Eeyore's Birthday Party, 2017. ©2017 Kirk Tuck.

I've been playing with the Nikon D2Xs for the last few days---in between shooting real stuff with my GH5 cameras--- and today was no different. I decided to continue my sentimental reattachment to big, fat, old school cameras by venturing out with the Nikon and a 50mm f1.8, just to see how it might affect my image making process. My head was filled with optimistic memories of my original time with the D2Xs and I was out to see if my good memories were more a result of that camera being about as good as you could get at that point in history, and my ability to accommodate its foibles, or, if it was really a wonderful photo instrument.

The body is certainly more solid than the mirrorless Sony cameras I had been shooting with until recently but the GH5 cameras give up nothing to the Nikon in that regard.

I decided to park at ZACH Theatre, which is just across the river from downtown proper. I would walk across the small campus and head over to my usual walking route via the pedestrian bridge. Since I was at the theatre at the right time I followed the groups of people as they entered the lobby in anticipation of the afternoon matinee of, "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Park in the Night Time."

I stopped in to see who might be playing piano in the lobby bar and to take a look around to see if the life-size posters marketing the upcoming shows had been put up yet. I always like to see how my work is used and how it looks in print. Especially large print.

There are four new, life-size, printed posters up. Two are from the same shoot. That was an assignment I did using the RX10iii and the Panasonic FZ2500. One image is for "Beauty and the Beast" --- it's an elegant photograph of Leslie Anne Leal as "Belle" holding a red rose out in front of her gold dress. She, of course, looks adorable but the surprise is just how good the image looks, technically,  from as close as a three or four feet away. The colors are right on the money and the details are crisp without looking crunchy. Uncropped, the entire frame would be about 4x6 feet. I thought it was a pretty convincing result from a camera with a sensor the size of a thumbnail. I was almost certain it was made with the Sony but I went back and checked and saw that it was done with the Panasonic.

Just a bit further across the lobby was a photograph of an actor in the character of the artist, George Seurat, for the upcoming production of Stephen Sondheim's play, "Sunday in the Park with George." This poster was printed the same size as the Beauty and the Beast poster but it started life as a file in a Sony A7R-ii. While the file was different there were few clues (probably only apparent to me) that the images were shot with different cameras. The posters are classic point-of-puchase-style collateral and they are designed and produced to be seen up close. I will say one thing for consistent practice of technique and that is that you have a much better chance of the final color matching across projects and from various cameras.... if you do the technical stuff by the numbers.

The final image I looked at was from one of our earlier marketing shoots for the current main stage production; The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Park at Night Time. I made those photographs using dim stage lighting and a couple of battery powered LED panels with the Panasonic GH5 and its friend, the Olympus 12-100mm f4.0 Pro series lens. While it was done in a different overall style from the other two posters, and it was presented as a horizontal (a pick-up from the advertising campaign) it still maintained the same overall look and feel of the other two posters.

Seeing this work, across three formats, presented in the same space and for the same client, was a very interesting experience. If I had seen only the Beauty and the Beast poster alone I would have worried that it might suffer by comparison with posters made with other format size cameras and I would have beaten myself up for allowing my own hubris to move me into selecting what many would characterize as the "wrong camera" for this kind of work. Same with the GH5 generated poster. But seeing them all in the same space and being able to approach each of them at the same viewing distance I was impressed to see just how well the smaller formats actually performed.

The realization that the camera is less important to the overall process than things like good (and ample) lighting, the use of a nice tripod, good technical approaches to white balance and exposure, and a good stage-side manner all seem to me to be much more important than the sensor dimensions of the imaging device.

All of this took the wind out of my sails as far as my imagined appreciation for the vintage Nikon camera went. I decided to continue the walk anyway and trudged on making only five or six unimaginative and boring photographs (which I will not share). That's fine with me. Not every day can be successful for photography. But the walk was much needed. I was looking forward to this morning's swim practice but when we'd gotten about 45 minutes into it we got lots of thunder and meteorological excitement ( one swimmer said, "I didn't see any thunder...") and we had to clear the pool a half an hour early. Nothing worse than a truncated swim practice after a long and emotionally draining week. A couple hours of walking, with or without a camera, is a great way to clear out the cobwebs and get back into a good groove.

Thinking of returning the camera and continuing my concentration on the micro-four-thirds cameras and the marvelous range of lenses available for them. Seems like a more fun way to make photographs.

FINALLY !!!! My video of Stephanie Busing for ZACH Theatre is back up and public. Good thing too, I was running out of stuff to write....

Continuing to test the limits of fast lenses on small sensors. A new discipline which may require me to purchase some additional Olympus Pro lenses.

I've got two jobs fighting each other to get in the queue for uploads. We photographed the show at Esther's Follies (a crazy, topical comedy and magic theater) and ended up with 1133 images. I delivered enormous and detailed Jpeg files yesterday via memory stick but my typical practice is to also upload finished jobs (in Jpeg form) to Smugmug.com for safekeeping. If a client eventually loses the memory stick, didn't back up the files and is desperate for a particular photo, I can send them to the gallery where they can identify the photo and download it. A good and neat solution for a busy photo business that can't spend time running down a request for an old image that starts with, "You know, it's that image of Bob. He about medium height. Brownish hair. Medium weight. I think he was wearing a dark suit.... but it's the one where he is smiling....I can't remember if it was from the event in 2010 or 2013..."

At any rate, hot on the heels of delivering the Esther's Follies work, but before I could start the upload process, I had to zoom over to Zach Theatre to photograph a rehearsal of "Good Night Moon" for their marketing. I just finished post processing the take and, since we now deliver to ZACH almost entirely via FTP, I'm uploading 833 files to them. Fun when jobs get stacked up like airplanes over big airports.

I'm heading down to San Antonio for a memorial service. I'll be back this evening and then back down to SA tomorrow to have lunch with my dad. Weekends are becoming busier than the work week. Lots of excitement this week! Two big assignments to shoot on location for a huge radiology practice. I'll be working with my favorite assistant, Amy Smith, and my favorite camera, Mr. Panasonic GH5. Maybe that rogue-ish Nikon will make a small, guest appearance; just to confuse the fanboys on either side....

Too much depth of field in the image just above.... Darn Rokinon 50mm f1.2. But look at the nice sharpness right in the middle.

Are you guys following Michael Johnston's "The Online Photographer"? I may change my mind a lot when it comes to buying cameras but it looks like Mike is having issues deciding on which ones to buy. Look at what he's selected. What great camera is he missing?

Given his stated use parameters (earlier columns) what would you suggest?

The black backpack is packed. I'm heading down to Sixth St. in Austin, Texas to photograph the show at Esther's Follies.

From a "Wendy Davis" skit a few years back.

Esther's Follies is a live theater that's been dishing up satiric political humor, topical celebrity craziness and magic acts for as long as I can remember. For years I've been trundling down there with a box full of studio flashes to make marketing images for them before and after rehearsals. Last year we changed gears a bit and decided to shoot an actual show from within the audience; just to see what we got. 

As usual, I overshot and we ended up with over a thousand images. Some of them pretty decent. A handful really good. It was a good idea and so earlier in the week I got an e-mail requesting a new round of "action" photographs. There are some caveats....

The stage is smaller than the one's I shoot on a couple times a month at Zach Theatre and the lighting isn't quite state of the art. The audience is a paying audience and, since there is a full bar in the lobby, they can sometimes be.... unpredictable. This is a situation that calls for a silent shutter and the ability to scope out a location where I will be surrounded by happy and cooperative people. 

I'm taking two cameras and four lenses. I anticipate doing the entire show with the Olympus 40-140mm f2.8 Pro lens and the Olympus 12-100mm f4.0 Pro lens but I am bringing along the Panasonic 25mm f1.7 and the 42.5mm f1.7 just in case. Sometimes the magic act uses lower light levels. I might have time to switch to the 42.5 to capture that but we'll see. There's no intermission, the program is fast and furious, and I don't have the advantage of having seen this particular show in advance. 

I'll be using the GH5's in their silent/electronic shutter mode. Everything will be, by necessity, handheld. The theater still uses tungsten stage lights so my WB selection will be a straightforward 3,000K but I'll hedge my bets by setting the camera to make raw files. 

At least I know what I'll be doing tomorrow morning after swim practice; I'll be post processing a ton of live theater files. I only hope I can get them done by 2pm because I have another theater shoot tomorrow afternoon. 

It's 3 p.m. at Zach Theatre. Another dress rehearsal for another play on one of the smaller stages. But those files might have to wait until Sunday for their author's meticulous attention. I've got a solemn family event in San Antonio to attend on Saturday.

I like the m4:3 system because everything I need fits into one convenient backpack. I never know where I'll find parking in downtown Austin so it's good to have a comfortable way to carry the tools of the trade. 

Have you had one of those months when all the work seems to be crammed into the last ten days of the month? That's the way it feels to me.

Well, time to head downtown. I want to get there before the theater fills up. My one regret? No dogs allowed in the theater. Studio Dog will just have to sit this one out. 

"Forgive me fellow photographers for I have sinned and fallen short. I confess to having used the latest rev. of Portrait Professional software to help in the retouching of my portraits today. My process is now artistically impure."

Yesterday I was looking at a folder filled with files that needed to be retouched. They were all portraits and most of them were shot against the same gray background and with the same lighting. I confess to being severely unmotivated to go in to each file and meticulously work on skin tone, brightening eyes, cleaning up teeth, getting the skin to look nice and all the rest.

I remembered that I'd used Portrait Professional in the past. One iteration from 2011 and one from 2014, but I'd found both of them, at the defaults, were too heavy handed and obvious. I sighed and made coffee. Then I took another stab at creating multiple layers, smoothing skin via masking and blending the uneven skin tones of middle-aged men who spend too much time golfing.

In a moment of bore-stration (boredom and frustration) I clicked on Anthropic's website to see what, if any, changes had been made to their software package. It turns out that they've fine-tuned and automated a bunch more stuff, including automatic masking for backgrounds, and a panel of controls for picture-wide brightness, contrast, saturation, brightness, clarity, etc. With a much enlarged range of controls it seemed to me that one might be able to do most of the retouching necessary for many portrait files without ever firing up an Adobe product in anger.

There's always a sale going on for previous customers so I plunked down my $29 for the upgrade, loaded the app and took a look around. It was un-buggy this time. No support needed.

Portrait Professional automatically finds the important features on a face and, after asking you if the subject is female, male or a child, it automatically makes a series of corrections which include skin smoothing, face sculpting, and general (but this time much more subtle) image flattery.

I pre-processed my selected raw files in Lightroom CC Classic, matching exposures and colors. I exported the resulting files as 8-bit Tiffs (raws not welcome in PortraitPro...standard edition) and tossed them in a folder. Then, one by one, I loaded them and let the program do its stuff. All but 2 of 21 files were imminently usable without any further intervention. The two questionable files were of a fellow with lots of freckles --- always a judgement call.

I'll estimate that the program saved me about an hour and a half of repetitive work today and also provided (probably) better consistency between skin tones than I would have gotten working in my manual, hands on method.

For the $29 upgrade I felt like I'd just secured another bargain. Wow. First a cheap D2XS and now a cheap software upgrade. The week is looking up for me... It's Portrait Professional 17. No link here, that's what Google is for.....when they aren't busy spying on us all.

The depth of field is so thin on my m4:3 camera that I'm having trouble getting everything in focus....

micro four-thirds camera with Sigma 30mm lens....

I never seem to have this "problem" with my iPhone....

It is impossible to do professional work with cameras having less than 12 megapixels of resolution. We all know that. Just impossible. It never happened. Ever.

Kodak DCS 760C. 6 megapixels

Sony R1. 10 megapixels

Kodak SLR/n. 14 megapixels. Shot in the 6 MP mode.

Kodak DCS 760C. 6 Megapixels.

Fuji S5. 6 megapixels.

Kodak DCS 760C. 6 megapixels.

Fuji S3. 6 megapixels. (Shot in 2006, still in use by client).

Kodak DCS SLR/n at 9 megapixels in square crop.

Kodak DCS 760C. 6 Megapixels.

Kodak DCS 760C. 6 Megapixels.

Kodak DCS 760C. 6 Megapixels.

Kodak DCS 760C. 6 Megapixels.

Kodak DCS 760C. 6 Megapixels.

Kodak SLR/n. 6 megapixel mode.

Canon 1D mk2. 8 Megapixels.

Nikon D700. 12 Megapixels.

Nikon D700. 12 Megapixels.

Nikon D700. 12 Megapixels.

Nikon D700. 12 Megapixels.

Kodak DCS 760C. 6 megapixels. 

Re-learning the joys of a "Beater" camera. Who cares if it gets wet? Exploring the urban landscape with a twelve year old camera...

I wasn't sure what to expect when I twisted a 55mm macro lens onto the front of my newly acquired, ancient D2XS camera and steered my car toward the my familiar stomping grounds. If the mainstream photo press (incuding bloggers, v-loggers, gear review sites and more) are to be believed then any camera older than a year is so fraught with technical deficiencies that it's mostly unusable for any photographic work more demanding than a quick social media post but I wanted to see for myself just how atrocious the files might look --- especially since I've had the opportunity to use much more modern cameras, like the Sony A7Rii and A7Riii as well as the Nikon D810. I was prepared for devastating disappointment. 

As I left my car a light rain started falling but I decided to believe all the reviews I'd read in the distant past and left the camera and lens exposed to the elements to see if all the talk about "weather resistance" was bogus or an actual thing. By the time I'd walked the first mile a steady rain was being propelled toward me and my unprotected camera by a zippy north wind. Every once in a while I'd brush the accumulated water off the camera with my gloved hand and wipe my glasses clean with the front of my sweatshirt. 

It was a dim and contrast deficient day. At ISO 200, using the lens at f4.0 and f2.8 the shutter speed mostly hovered around 1/125th. Sometimes higher, sometimes lower. The rain and cold were good disincentives for sidewalk traffic so downtown looked a bit deserted. A few brave food trailer operators were open for business but as I walked by there wasn't a customer in sight. 

So, what did I find out about the decrepit and obsolete camera during and after my two hour long, outdoor adventure? 

Well, first of all, I have to give credit to the camera and lens for not giving up the ghost because of the rain. Neither of them seemed worse for wear and when I removed the lens back at the studio there was no sign of water intrusion into the camera body or into the workings of the lens. 

The two important controls on the camera; the exposure metering and the focusing screen passed all my tests. The meter seemed to accurately nail every situation I threw at it while the screen had enough bite to it to allow me to manually focus the lens, at wider apertures, with no front or back focused images. I didn't really test the camera's ability to do white balance as I used the "cloudy" preset and also because I used the raw file format. 

During the course of my soggy walk I shot about 150 images and chimped a little bit but the battery indicator didn't budge from 100%. After years of using Sony's dwarfish batteries I'd forgotten just how efficient the old DSLR cameras are with batteries; and also how big the batteries in the old pro cameras were. 

The camera is hefty but as I'm generally only carrying one body, one lens and my favorite credit card (for necessary coffee and potential, emergency camera equipment purchases...) it was hardly overwhelming or overly burdensome.

The most pleasant part of the adventure was my triumphant return home with a still functional camera. I rarely subject my cameras to a couple hours of rain without some sort of protection since I actually buy my own cameras and can't just return them to a promoter or P.R. person with a shrug...

I plugged in a USB3 card reader and ingested the files I liked into Lightroom. Of course I was expecting them to be an unholy mess. I mean, really, the camera's sensor score didn't even top 60 on the DXO site!!! But surprise, surprise! The files were nice and rich. Detailed and sharp. Color neutral and tonally virtuous. It's almost like I shot everything with a current APS-C camera. 

While I didn't test it today I am sure that modern cameras will outperform this old professional tool as soon as the ISO starts to rise. But, to my eye, keeping the camera between 100 and 320 ISO means getting files that rival current higher end tools in everything but sheer resolution. 

This revelation, that ancient top-of-the-line cameras can be as effective (in a smaller operational envelope) as current cameras is dangerous. Dangerous for me and, I think, dangerous to the camera makers. 

The danger to me is that my wily brain will now start to fabricate reasons to buy alternate lenses so I can "explore the vast potential of old tech..." I'm already unearthing stuff from the cabinets that I overlooked in the last giant Nikon purge. I'm already scrubbing through the Precision-Camera.com website, looking for locally available bargain glass (after all, if the old cameras are this good how might the older lenses fair?).

The danger to camera makers might be an wider awakening to the idea that (other than lower high ISO noise) not much has really fundamentally changed in camera I.Q. over the last five or seven or ten years and maybe it makes more sense for cash strapped, potential professionals to mine the junk yards of the retail camera world to find that cast-offs from that coterie of buyers who have an insatiable need for the newest and greatest stuff. 

As someone who until recently made most of my income taking portraits the thought had crossed my mind that a couple of these old D2XS cameras and some select older glass would be more than adequate for just about any real business need. And would be available for a song... I'd miss things like eye detection AF, and, of course all the art modes but if push came to shove you could make the old stuff work for just about anything the newer cameras can do. Need bigger files? There's a menu item in PhotoShop for that...... For now I think I'll just be happy with the new toy and stop wasting money on these kinds of nostalgic adventures....... But I did happen to see a copy of my very first Nikon interchangeable lens digital camera on a used shelf. It was a D100 for about $95. I wonder how that one is holding up?

A camera buyer's antidote for keeping up with the Joneses. Get a $5495 digital camera for only $250. I'm reviewing mine.

If you're tired of the equipment rat race and frustrated with the demands of trying to stay "current" in the fast moving world of cameras you might be ready to step off the ever accelerating, new introduction carrousel and try an alternate method of assuaging your deep hunger for acquiring cameras. It came to me just a day or so ago as I was sitting around trying to "decide" which camera I "needed" to get next. I've been shooting with Panasonic GH5's and have been very happy with them but then Panasonic went and introduced two new models and the lust for a new camera welled up strong and quick like blood from a fresh knife wound.

I read the same bubbly reviews in the style that I recently decried. I watched poorly done videos of other peoples' renditions of creative spec sheet reading.  I looked in my check register, trying to see where the cash might come from to pay for my obsessive compulsive need for the latest and greatest in camera gear. And then I hit the wall...

It dawned on me that I've been engaged in the new gear dance for well over a decade now and have precious little to show for it. We had a good time deducting the wretched excess from our taxes and we had many a good discussion about the merits of various new models while saluting photography with frosty and salty margaritas but it's hard not to feel