A while back (early 2000's) I got a phone call from one of my favorite clients, the art director at Restaurant Business Magazine. When she called I usually got to shoot things like a premier chef showing off his chops while making an incredible duck recipe. We'd shoot and talk and then, after we were pretty sure we had the shot. we'd all sit down, crack a nice bottle of wine and take a crack at the duck as well. Other assignments introduced me to the brothers who own the legendary San Antonio restaurant, Mi Tierra. I even drove the six hours to Laredo once to photograph the one great chef in the region, at the time...
This assignment was different. Austin was one of the first cities in the country to ban smoking in restaurants and the gentleman in the photo above, Vic, (owner of Vic's Restaurant) was the protest hold out in the implementation of the law. Seems smokers comprised an overwhelming majority of his clientele and, according to Vic, they spent more per person than non-smokers. His basic philosophy could pretty much be distilled down to, "I don't require people to smoke. But they can if they'd like."
I packed the usual jumble of lights and stands and softboxes, and I packed a couple of Mamiya Six medium format cameras along with the trio of Mamiya Six lenses, and headed over the the "Y" at Oakhill. That's where two Texas Highways come together just west of Austin and just outside the front gate of Freescale Semiconductor's front gate.
I walked in, met Vic and looked around. Half of the restaurant was kinda cordoned off and I learned that this was where Vic practiced his second business, repairing computers.
The bar at which Vic is sitting faces a wall of windows so I immediately discarded the idea of lighting anything and instead went available light with the 75mm lens and camera on a tripod. I shot two twelve exposure rolls and ended up with just the look of defiance the magazine was looking for.
I packed the car and headed to the lab. That's how we did things back then. The next morning I picked up the MF transparency film, edited it and chunked it into a Fed Ex envelope because, that's how we did things back then.
Of all the cameras I've owned and sold I regret most selling the Mamiya Six cameras. They were absolute magic. They could make a photographer better. No matter what people say. Some times the Indian likes to shoot with a really perfect, absolutely straight arrow. Especially a magic one.
After a month of messing around with the GH2 I finally sat down and went through every word in the poorly written manual and mastered the settings on the GH2 that had confused me but which I really wanted to use for my photographs. I did a portrait assignment on location with the camera and its 14-140mm lens last week and, at ISO 160, the images were just right. (go figure).
But the big revelation to me was to set the preview to "constant" if I wanted to see real time changes in exposure, on the screen, when I changed camera parameters. I also found the "sledge hammer" settings in the film modes for sharpness, contrast and saturation. No fine tuning allowed. The jumps are big. But in Jpeg the one jump up to higher sharpness helped me zero in on what I wanted in my files. More apparent sharpness.
My lens test, on Saturday, showed me that all of these cameras and most of the lenses are pretty darn good. Even lenses from the 1960's and 1970's. You just have to eliminate operator error or operator laziness.
I ran into a large group of photographers who were doing the downtown "photo walk" thing and I was surprised to see that none of them had embraced the smaller, mirrorless cameras yet. Each participant was carrying a full sized DSLR. One person was walking around, shooting handheld with a Canon 24mm tilt/shift lens on a big Canon body. They all seemed to be having fun.
I was happy to be traveling light. Just the GH2 and the Olympus 60mm 1.5. Fast and easy.
Olympus Pen F 60mm 1.5 used at f2.8 to photograph chairs at Congress Ave. Restaurant. GH2 Jpeg.
I'm slowly getting the whole process of shooting with manual lenses on the Panasonic GH2 dialed in. First things first. You set the preview to "constant." That will show you exactly what happens, vis-a-vis color balance and exposure, when you shoot in "M." When you shoot in any other mode the GH2 ignores the constant setting and gives you what it thinks it the correct exposure. Good to know. Now I can walk around an use manual exposure and when I bring the camera to my eye, with my favorite shutter speed already set I can quickly fine tune with the aperture ring (or vice versa). The Pen F 60mm 1.5 has a lot of throw between f-stops and you can actually make adjustments in tiny increments and see them with feedback in the EVF. Perfect. And once you have the settings figured out you don't have to change anything until you shoot under different light.
Next up is the manual focusing routine. Since my adapter rings don't give me a correct infinity focus with Pen lenses I generally want to zoom in and look at the focus integrity before I shoot. I'll skip this step and squint a lot if the action is moving quickly but, in most situations like the chairs and door above, the subject isn't moving so fast that I don't have time to double check exact focus. With the camera at my eye I put the little dial that controls shutter speed and aperture. It sits on the top right of the back of the camera. You can push it straight in and it will increase the live view magnification to 8X, which is perfect for fine focusing a fast, moderate telephoto lens. One quick, slight touch on the shutter button and you're back to full frame in the EVF. Couldn't be easier and it's quicker to do than to read.
GH2 and Olympus Pen F 60mm 1.5 @ f2
My goal on today's walk was to dial in and learn the focus technique and the exposure technique forward and backward until I could do it without thinking. I worked hard on it and I think, in another few weeks, I'll have it nailed. We've talked here about time in the water so many times that I'm sure you're getting tired of hearing it but....part of good photography is being fluid with the tools in your hands. You can't let ineptitude and lack of practice rob you of opportunity.
I'll have my next practice session on Tues. night at Zach Scott Theatre when we do another dress rehearsal for a play that opens later in the week. Feels like an all m4/3rd's project to me.
While I was downtown I ran into Stephen N. An accomplished photographer. He was so skinny I hardly recognized him. He's been biking all over the place. Love the way I get a little control of DOF with the 60mm. f2.8
minimum focus distance. 60mm 1.5
For some reason I was looking for close up images this afternoon. Here a glass vase I found in a window on Guadelupe St. between 2nd and 3rd. This is as close as the 60mm will focus. I think it's adequate. And the performance is still very good, even close to wide open. And hand held.
The glass vase.
It must have been vase day for Kirk's blog because I kept running into them all over town. This one was in one of the retail shops at the bottom of the Monarch Residence Tower. I like the blue facets.
All manual. All the time. 60mm.
Love the satanic glow from the building that overlooks the Whole Foods HQ. Nice with the sky. WB set at daylight right after sunset. That makes the sky more blue saturated and accentuates the warmer lights on the buildings. You might be able to find noise if you peek "hard" but then I'll just call you a nerd and insist that your can "smooth it out" in post.
It was a wild day downtown from 4-6pm. I saw no fewer than 20 photographers out with bags over their shoulders, monopods gripped in their hands. Appears there was an organized "photo walk" happening. Looked like an engineer's convention to me. Meant in the nicest way possible. Loved seeing people out and shooting and sharing the experience. I hope that means more in the future.
The Panasonic has been officially pressed into service for a real job and it did just fine. In fact, it was easy to use and quick. The raw files were splendid. I lit the entire job with LED panels as well. It's one thing to write about them, it's an entirely different thing to put their money where your word processor is... The proof is in the pudding. Or on the web galleries.
If you don't like reading about Olympus and Panasonic stuff, don't despair. I'm sure some other shiny object will capture my attention, sooner or later....
note: I am now a member of 500px. My address is: http://500px.com/kirktuck
It would feel more like home if you would follow me there. Thanks. Lots of fun.
I'll start with a little bit of background. In the 1960's Olympus starting making cameras that used a half frame of 35mm film instead of the full frame. They called these "half frame" cameras. Most of the cameras were little compacts that were very light weight and easy to use. People who made small prints bought them to save money. And, even back then, people were trying to shove cameras into their pockets...
The half frame is really the same size as a "full frame" frame of 35mm movie film. Honest. What we consider full frame is actually "double frame." But I don't want to head down that rabbit hole right now. Having enjoyed a certain amount of success in the market the designers and dreamers at Olympus thought that there would be demand for a more sophisticated camera system that would keep the half frame film size but include some really cool things like a rotary, titanium shutter that syncs at all speeds, interchangeable lenses that are really, really good, and a mirrored reflex finder. Which made the camera a genuine "SLR." This was known as the Pen F system.
The camera was used by plenty of photojournalists who embraced the camera for the same reasons people are flocking to mirrorless cameras in the present: They were smaller, more discreet, easier to carry and very capable. In fact, one of the most famous photographers in the 20th century, Eugene Smith, appeared in ads for the Pen F's and shot with them on assignments. My favorite ad for the Pens is one in which Olympus showed how the whole system can fit in a shoe box.
But the reason the system had legs and sold reasonably well was the lenses. That's something Olympus has always done well. I won't go in for the standard hyperbole and suggest that they made lenses that are just as good as the current Leica M lenses but they were damn good and the half frame lenses were specifically designed for the smaller rectangle of film that the smaller cameras shot so they were optimized for higher resolution than the typical 35mm lenses of the day. It makes sense, the frames would have to be enlarged to a much greater degree in order to make the standard, black and white 8x10 inch prints that were the lingua Franca of the day.
What finally killed the Olympus half frame cameras? In a word? Color print film. Why? Because the labs begged for automated printers and those printers were never designed to deal with the odd ball size of the negatives. If people couldn't get film printed cheaply they weren't really interested. So what worked well in the days when people did their own lab work, and when labs handled each negative individually, didn't work as well in the age of automation. Too bad because it's a great little system. I should know, I have five of the Pen FT bodies and the collection of lenses in the first photo, plus some duplicates of my favorites in the Olympus equipment drawer. The one guarded by angry black Mamba snakes...
When the new, digital Pens came out I realized that the shorter lens flange to sensor dimension would make mounting lots of different lenses on the bodies a pretty straightforward deal. When I heard that adapters were already being made I jumped into the micro four thirds cameras mostly in order to breathe new, digital life into a collection of lenses that were interesting and, in some cases, a little exotic. And I have not been disappointed. But I'd never done the real test where you mount the lenses on the highest res digital camera you own and put that on a tripod with the self timer engaged and start looking at how the glass performs....wide open. And stuff like that. So I did. And I found out some interesting stuff.
Two 1,000 bulb LED lights make for a quick and simple photo set up with lots of lumens for stopping down and using the slowest ISO on the GH2. I think that's 160. The black flag to the right is serving no purpose whatsoever. It just happened to be there when I was setting up.
I chose to the Panasonic Lumix GH2 for my tests because the sensor is acknowledged, at this juncture, to be the highest res of the m4/3 tribe. It's also easy to use in a studio setting. Set preview to constant and shoot in M and you'll see each change you make to aperture, shutter speed and ISO right on the screen. Tap on the screen to increase magnification for fine focus...
Let me introduce you to the motley crew of lenses and say a little something about each one. I feel like I'm introducing family. Why am I in so little hurry to snap up the new primes coming to market? Because I think I've already got cooler ones. Take the 60mm 1.5, for example. No other company makes anything nearly as cool for the smaller cameras. Center sharpness is okay at full aperture and, like most lens designs of the time, you'll want to add some contrast to your files. These lenses are not post processing free but when done well you can squeeze really good performance out of them. When you hit f3.5 you are sharp from corner to corner and it's a very convincing sharpness. Hell yes, I use it for theatre shots. And portraits in dark and moody coffee shops and more. It uses the same lens hood at the 50mm to 90mm zoom lens. It's becoming rare and a bit costly but if you find a clean one you might want to put in on your camera and give it a spin. If you shoot portraits I can pretty much guarantee that it's a struggle your credit card will win.
Reader Note: you can click on any of the photos and they will come up much bigger in a separate window. I uploaded files that are 1200 pixels on the long edge so you might want to depend on the text for my observations about their performance.
above and just below: the 60mm 1.5
In every system there's one lens that shows up everywhere. Like the ubiquitous 50mm 1.8's for 35mm cameras. Or the 18-55mm kit zooms for APS-C cameras. In the Pen F hierarchy that lens would be the 38mm 1.8. It's small, light, fast and well corrected. This was my everyday shooter in the film days. While most of the Pen F lenses are able to be used wide open they tend to mimic standard gauss designs in that the center is sharp at or near wide open and stopping the lens down brings greater and greater corner sharpness. By f4 the lens is really good and by f8 it's as perfect as you could want it to be.
Above: think of the 38mm as the budget "system lens"
I think of the 70mm f2 as the equivalent of the standard 35mm 135mm lens. In particular, I think of mine as the 135 f2 L series of the Pens. It's not nearly as sharp as that much more modern lens, when used wide open but it sharpens up nicely one stop down and, by f4 is monster good. If flares a little in contrajour light so I try to always use it with a hood or shade the front element with my hand... It's a great "candid" shooter.
the 70mm. half the weight of the chunky 60mm.
There are really two lenses that haven't jumped through the time travel portal with the same success as the longer focal lengths. Those are the 20mm 3.5 and the 25mm 2.8. The 20mm is widest Pen F lens that ever got made and it's really nothing to write home about until you stop it down to f5.6. And alarmingly, at least with my copy, it tends to start flying apart with diffraction softening right at f11. By the time you get to f16 you'll think you forgot to focus. Which actually brings up something we need to talk about. There's a lot of focus shifting, as you stop down, in some of these lenses (especially the zoom). If you focus wide open and then stop down you may or may not have some safety with depth of field but you'll be way better off to stop down first and then focus. Which is how the older lenses work on the mirrorless camera anyhow. If you need a 20mm you might want to pass on one of these and head straight of the Panasonic. The 20mm 1.7 Panasonic may be one of the most beloved optics of the entire family m43 system...
I've gotten detailed shots from the 20mm Pen F lens but I've had to boast contrast a lot to make them work. And adding a bit of saturation won't hurt either...
Above: the 20mm 3.5. Not quite the sharpest of the flock.
Now. Someone get me a drool bib. This is one of my favorite lenses of all. The fabulous 40mm 1.4. I think of it as the high speed standard of the entire small camera universe. There was faster and very rare 42mm 1.2 but it wasn't as well corrected as the 1.4 and weighed nearly twice as much. I shot some flat stuff in the studio today which is represented below. At 1.4 it's decent. Not a lot of micro detail in the files. But one stop down brings it to parity with just about anything out there. At f2.8 it's sharper than the Canon 50mm 1.4 at 2.8 and even a little sharper, to my eye, than the Zeiss 50mm 1.4 at 2.8. When you hit f4 it's like you put a macro lens on the front of your camera. Sharp and contrasty over the whole frame. Kinda like that Olympus 45mm 1.8 they've been shopping around.....only this puppy is a two thirds of a stop faster. And it looks even better because it's black.
It's my photojournalist wannabe lens. I love it for portraits and candids and street shooting and just about anything that requires a slightly longer prime optic. The Panasonic camera seemed to swell with pride when I put this on the lens mount.
The crowning achievement of PenF lens design.
Not because it's exotic but because it's nearly
PERFECT.
Reader tip about lens adapters: I have three different adapter rings that allow me to mount Pen F lenses on the m4/3 digital cameras. All three of them will allow the lens to focus past infinity. That means that the focusing scale on the lens barrel becomes meaningless. And that reduced the lens's usability as a zone focusing "street shooter". If I had the time I'd probably figure out the positions for hyperfocal distances and mark them on the lens barrel with a red dot but.....I'm too lazy. Or I spend too much time writing. At any rate you are now warned not to trust the infinity setting on any legacy lens mounted via an adapter. Test before you set to infinity and go out for walk. Even with the wide angles. Especially with the wide angles...
And, Olympus knew how to do hoods. Nice hoods with
thumbscrews. You tighten, they stay in place.
Which brings me to a lens that is an enigma to me. The 25mm. For the longest time I thought this lens and the 20mm lens were not very good and not very sharp. Today I changed my mind. This is the first time I've put them on a tripod and then used live view to focus. My focusing skills with the smaller format are a pale ghost of my medium format focusing skills and I think it's because the finders on the Pen F cameras are old tech, very dark and the DOF of the short focal length makes everything look like it's in focus in the viewfinder (when viewed tiny) while it's not sharp if blown up.
Today I put this lens on the GH2 and focused at 8x magnification and shot test shots. And I like them. There's good detail everywhere. It's not going to replace a fast focusing and bright lens like the Leica/Lumix 25mm 1.4 but it's very well done and, when stopped down to 5.6 it does a very nice job with subjects that give you enough time to check focus. Sad about the lack of true infinity on the adapter rings because it's a focal length that would lend itself to zone focusing and shooting from the hip.
the 25mm 2.8. Beautifully made.
And now revealed to actually be sharp.
Which brings me to the longest half frame lens in my collection, the 150mm f4. If you play the equivalent game this optic gives you the same angle of view on m4/3 as a 300mm on a full frame film or digital camera. This is another lens that never really satisfied me until I put it on the EP2. With the benefit of adjustable (by focal length) image stabilization I was able to hold it still enough for distance shots to discover that it is really well corrected and sharp. One reader of a previous post about this lens pointed out what might be veiling glare but I think it's really just the lower contrast of a design from the late 1960's when a lower contrast lens with good sharpness was actually a benefit to people who shot black and white film in contrasty situations. You could always add contrast in the darkroom with graded papers or multi-grade papers but you couldn't bring back blown highlights or blocked shadows.
It was an epiphany to actually put the lens on a tripod and do the two second self time as a release mechanism. The magnification works against hand holding. Especially on the GH2 which doesn't have IS in the body. If used correctly I find the lens to be quite good wide open and at its best when used at 5.6. With a judicious boost of contrast and a moderate dose of saturation in your favorite post processing program you'll have snappy photos with some nice compression. And it works well as a long lens for video. As long as you're on the sticks.... A big benefit, vis-a-vis full frame, is that it's 1/3 the size and weight of the bigger format's equivalent.
Go long. And pack light.
I like the 300 f4. Especially now that I know
the sharpness issues were really just
my lazy technique.
Back in the late 1960's zoom lenses were really just a novelty and most of them (with the exception of the Nikkor 80-200 f4.5) were unsharp and unsatisfying. But this lens from Olympus is pretty good. Not nearly as good as the single focal length lenses above but head and shoulders above most of the dreck that was available way back then. I wasn't old enough to shoot back then but I used the older zooms when I was on a budget in the earlier times of my amateur career as a photographer.
The focal length is not long, is corresponds to about 100mm to 180mm's but it seems just right for a guy who likes to do classical portraiture. While it's not stunningly sharp at 3.5 it's pretty nice by the time you get to f5.6. And.....it's a constant aperture zoom. Nothing changes as you change focal lengths. It's not a true parafocal zoom. It does shift focus as you zoom which means you'll want to refocus every time you shift focal lengths. If you press it into service for video you'll find that it shifts the image a lot as you focus. The way to use this lens is to line up your shot and lock in your parameters, then shoot your scene and move on. I wouldn't try to follow focus with this one.
An early telephoto zoom that acquits itself nicely at
f5.6. And it's less than a quarter the volume of
a Canon 70-200mm L lens. This one I could
carry all day long....
While I'm not going to review it because I never really use it I also have a 2x converter for the system.
I haven't been able to suspend my belief that
older teleconverters suck so I've only tried this
once, on the 150 and handheld. If it's not sharp or
if it is sharp, how would I know? I'll try it sooner or later
and let you know.
40mm wide open.
40mm at f4
60mm wide open.
60mm at f3.5
70mm wide open
70mm at f4
20.
24.
38.
40.
60.
70.
50 on the zoom.
60 on the zoom
70 on the zoom
90 on the zoom wide open
90 on the zoom at 5.6
150mm.
20
60
70
90 on the zoom
150.
Physical Construction: The Olympus Pen F lenses are made in the way we've come to expect products from the height of the industrial age to have been made. Knurled metal barrel that are designed to offer just the right friction for your fingers, with areas of small indents alternating with big scallops to provide the sense that you'll always have a great grip. The lenses are small but dense and feel as though they are made to last a photographer's lifetime. And the proof is in the pudding. Several of the lenses I have trace their origin back to around 1968. And they were well used. But the focusing rings are still smooth and sure in operation, the spring back for the auto aperture is still free of drag and the mounting rings look brand new. Even the stop down button and the locking buttons are made of well crafted and robust metal. If there is plastic anywhere on any of the lenses I've not been able to find it.
If Panasonic and/or Olympus introduces focus peaking in their next generation of cameras I'll be in heaven and will probably put off buying the current, popular primes for a long time.
Recommendations. Of the lenses I've listed, most, beside the 38mm's, are going to be too expensive to be practical purchases. Both Panasonic and Olympus have better performing (and easier to focus) wide angle and wide/normal lenses than the 20mm and 25mm. The sweet spot for me would be the 40mm 1.4, the 60mm 1.5 and the 70mm f2. All are wonderful lenses that are competitive with just about anything you'll find today ( provided that the glass is in good shape and not fogged in the least).
If I had to choose just one it would be the 60mm 1.5. It's physically beautiful on the camera and the view through the EVF, or even on the rear screen, of the GH2 is wonderful. With one touch of a button I'm able to fine focus at 8x and, one stop down the lens doesn't miss a beat. A far cry from the slow kit lenses that most of us suffer with.
Since I own the 40 and the 60 Pen F lenses I've put off buying the 45mm 1.8. But I keep seeing images that impress me. If I do buy one it will be because I have become to lazy to manually focus my 60. But for now, I'll persevere.
So why do I write this when probably no more than a few handfuls of people have any interest in MF lenses for mirrorless cameras? Because the Pen F lenses deserve some recognition. They set a standard in their days that's taken forty years to be re-invented. And that's very cool.
Thanks for reading.
Below, the full sized, 4000+ pixel test of the 60mm at f3.5. Jpeg (8 quality) sharpened. click it and see.
It’s hard to believe that Camera Dojo has been going for five years now. When it started there were not a whole lot of sites out there with good information, tutorials, and product reviews, today there are literally hundreds. I may not post content as much as some people but I have tried to always have good quality material that is as unbiased as possible with the only goal being to help people take better photographs.
Originally called L7 Foto (the L and 7 looking like an open box for ‘think outside the box) and renamed Camera Dojo in 2008 since so many people had issues with the F instead of PH.
I think I really innovated the photography podcast with almost 100 conversations with industry leaders. The first iteration of the podcast was completely unscripted and was never a simple Q&A session. After a hiatus to try to figure out how to re-invent the show, the GoCast was created with just myself as I drive to and from clients, shoots, or other locations sharing my thoughts on a particular topic.
In November of 2010 we launched Blackbelt Lighting Products as a sister site to Camera Dojo to sell good quality lighting equipment at the best prices we could. Blackbelt Lighting grew from just two products to a complete lineup in a very short period of time and continues to evolve and grow.
Looking back, I think I have done a pretty good job of keeping the content fresh, relative, and educational while striving to be as interesting and entertaining as possible. Over the years it has not been the love of the site, a competitive issue, and certainly not money that has kept Camera Dojo alive…it has been the readers. The emails I receive from some of you that something I said or wrote made a huge difference for you, that it changed your photography, or helped your business. Just knowing that I have made even a small difference in some people’s lives has meant everything to me and I very much appreciate hearing from everyone that has ever written in.
Now on to you…what would you like to see? What type of content do you need? Camera Dojo was not intended to be all about me spouting whatever I felt like every week. It has always, and will continue to be driven by the needs and requirements of its readers so let me know what you would like. Feel free to comment below or shoot me an email.
I want to thank all of you for being here, supporting the website, and giving me feedback. I also have to thank all of the sponsors who have graciously given of equipment, resources, and time to help me create content for you. Please support the sponsors of the site as they are some of the best companies in the industry and I couldn’t have done what I have done without them.
So what is in store for The Dojo? You have seen some articles lately relating to video, so look for that to be a big influencer not just on the content, but also in how the content is going to be presented. In 2012 we are going to launch some completely new concepts in photography education, maybe some of the ideas will work, maybe some won’t, but I have never been the type of person to not try something for fear it won’t work. In the end, it will be you, the Camera Dojo audience that will decide what works and what doesn’t. Maybe some of the ideas will need to be tweaked to work properly, but rest assured, I will continue to strive to provide the best content I possibly can and make it as entertaining as possible,
We were ready to be impressed by this one from Nikon. It had gotten such good previous press. And there are things we like about it but let's get the less positive stuff out of the way first. This camera is not digital. It only takes physical film but it does operate in a semi-open system architecture. You can use any brand of spooled, perforated 35mm film, available from a wide (but ever diminishing) circle of suppliers.
We were horrified to find that instead of a bad, dim, dark rear LCD screen that requires the viewer to keep his or her eye centered behind it to see it properly, Nikon have left the screen off altogether. We'll presume that this was an attempt to keep manufacturing costs down but...we at VSL feel like that's just one step too far. Of course, LCD's may not have been available at the time of design but surely they could have put a little cathode ray tube back there, just to, you know, preview stuff.
Which brings us to our next criticism. No Menus. None? Nope. Astounding. I fiddled with the damn thing for nearly an hour, trying to find a way to auto bracket or to fine tune exposure. I couldn't even find a color space setting. Now that's primitive. In frustration I sent the camera to our fully equipped and space age lab for further analysis. Within days they had researched, poked and prodded and found the source of the design defect. In a word: battery. The camera maker had forgotten to include a battery in the package. Or a place to put a battery. It was all so mysterious.
We did some more research and consulted with a very, very old photographer (over 40!!!!) and he let us know that this Nikon F body was actually designed that way. He showed us how to read a meter that lives outside the camera (but be careful, you'll have to choose a film first) and how to set the few controls available. And we were off and running. Kinda.
We stepped outdoors, put a slight pressure on the shutter button and ..... nada. No focusing. Defective lens? Not according to our consultant. The lenses were meant to be focused by hand, like the Zeiss lenses currently on the market. We tried turning the lens barrel, as instructed, and were rewarded with improved focus. But even though we looked everywhere we were unable to find the diopter. With our eyes and that old screen we'd be lucky to get 50% of the stuff we shoot in focus, and that's outside in good light!
The buffer in the camera is pitiful. No matter how much time we waited between shots the camera would always stop at 36 frames and not budge. At one point we even left it "on" overnight to see if the buffer would clear but, no. And it's apparently WORM (write once, read many) technology because once you've hit the buffer you actually have to introduce new memory. And that's not cheap.
The top shutter speed is a dismal 1/1000th of a second and the shortest timed exposure is 1 second.
Here's our executive summary:
While we were anxious to buy into the hype surrounding this camera we knew at the outset that we'd been sold a "pig in a poke." When attempting to first load "film" memory in the camera the entire bottom fell off. Right onto the ground. The camera lacks even the barest degree of customization ability and it shoots only as quickly as you can push a lever 120 degrees with your thumb.
On the other hand, the non-battery lasted forever and the lens was fast, sharp and well corrected. Our recommendation? If you're into fast shooting, extreme sports, quick work, total control or.... just about any metric you can imagine then this camera is definitely not for you. So, how are they positioning it in the market? Would you believe they are trying to position it for professionals? Our prediction? They'll need a lot of marketing (and just the right kind) if they are going to make any head way with this one.
See our gallery of 4x6 inch prints on the refrigerator....
Here are the specs:
Big.
Heavy.
Slow.
Construction: Metal on metal and more metal. With metal. Everywhere.
Positives: We were unable to destroy it in any fashion. We even used it to chock the wheels of a large school bus on a perilous incline. We liked the noise it makes when we push the button.
Stayed tuned. Next month we'll be reviewing the Canonet QL17. Camera, Icon or Ruse?
There were a few misconceptions (and a LOT of questions) that popped up in the comments after I wrote about ditching the D4 for a used Phase One camera and back.
Videos, answers to Q's and some specific things that convinced me to make the jump, inside. Read more »
Was life easier back in the days when you just had to be good at your job?
Is protection from rank piracy really that difficult to conceive?
Notice: Edited at 3:14 on 1/19/2012 to include a counterpoint. Please read.
"Like most things in life the internet is a trade-off. A compromise. We give up some privacy in return for "connectedness." We give up some traditional protections of ownership to be able to conversely grab stuff that we want "with no consequences." At least that's the way it seems. I'm profoundly disturbed by what's happening in regard to laws that protect intellectual property and content versus the "need" to freely steal whatever we want, whenever and wherever we want it, but I might be sitting on a different side of the table than most people. You see, I write books and I create photographs that have value and which can be sold to people for actual 20th century style money. But my paradigm works only if most people play by the rules. And it seems, more and more, that they don't." (end of original content).
I wrote a long column about how the SOPA and PIPA laws would be better than nothing for content creators. I was wrong. I've been taken to school by dozens of bright and impassioned people who understand the technical aspects of the web in far greater detail than me. I have also had phone calls from two IP lawyers who are personal friends who calmly talked me through the pros and cons of what I was thinking and what I had written. Not to mention my photographer peers who just waded right in with no gloves on...
I was wrong. I decided to take down what I had written this morning and leave up the thoughtful examples that one of our readers sent to me, by way of e-mail. I have come to agree that "the ends don't always justify the means."
I want to thank everyone for their patience and politeness in this, very rare, instance in which I was obviously thinking incorrectly. I am glad, with my new knowledge and guidance, that the legislation got killed. Chastened by my own lack of depth. And fearful that my attorney friends will send me big invoices (which I will not pay since I did not solicit their advice...). I am truly gratified to have such compassionate and thoughtful friends as readers of the blog.
Now I'll just get back to writing about photography. Seriously, Thanks.
Counterpoint by a long time reader of VSL. For balance.
How about an alternate point of view from one of our well informed readers? Okay. I've redacted his name and contact info at his request.
"I am big fan of your blog about photography and read each post. Even
calling me a hobbyist photographer would be generous, yet your writing
about the issues surrounding professional photography always engage
and inform me. That is why I was so dismayed to see you defend
SOPA/PIPA in your recent blog posting. You see, while I might be a
hobbyist photographer, I am expert on the internet and specifically
software on the internet. I have been working in that sphere for 16
years and can assure you my opposition (and most peoples opposition)
to SOPA/PIPA is not due to our desire to make all content "free".
Rather, I am a strong proponent of copyright and IP protection, but I
am strong opponent of poorly written laws that are both technically
and legally idiotic.
From a technical perspective, the very idea of "foreign" vs "domestic"
website is ludicrous and impossible to define. For instance,
blogspot.com (which I'm sure you recognize) is hosted via google using
data centers around the globe. A person in Belgium accessing your
website maybe accessing that data via a data center in Brussels,
Chicago, or both and would never know the difference. You are the
person uploading content to this website yet you have no ability to
know if your website is "foreign" or "domestic' and neither does a
judge, google who hosts your site, or anyone visiting it.
Let me give you an example of the kind of use case that us in the
technology business are so worried about:
1. You, disgusted with Google over their stance on SOPA/PIPA, decide
to leave the freely available blogspot hosting service, and recreate
your website as is (without the blogger header) by using your own ISP,
which you pay for.
2. You want to be able to provide the same level of service as your
previous blog (ads for your books, speedy loading, rss feeds), so you
pay your ISP for a content network, and search engine optimization,
and you take your new site live. (thus making it a foreign site)
3. Further, now that you have all this infrastructure, you decide to
start selling your books yourself through your site, and get a
contract with a payment processor and create a little web store.
4. Everything is going swimmingly, you have easily paid for your
infrastructure and more!
5. On your website you post a link to another website that contains
public domain photographs.
6. That website then posts a copyrighted photograph. (You are now
facilitating infringement)
7. A competitor of yours files a SOPA "private right of action"
against your site and gets a ruling in their favor (without your
presence or defense).
8. Your competitor can now cause your amazon ads and payment processor
to stop doing business with you, destroying your new found revenue
stream, and you have no recourse to fix this problem. Further, even
if you prove that you didn't infringe copyright, your competitor is
immune from civil action for invoking this law.
Notice in that use case, never did you actually violate any copyright.
If you think this is far fetched, it is because you have not worked
in the internet technology world. I can assure you that actions very
similar to this are already happening under the similarly bad, yet
less poorly written DMCA. The same coalition came out (with less
effective protesting) against that bill because of how easy it would
be to abuse and how poorly it understood the technical problems it
faced. Nearly every complaint brought against the DMCA before it
passed have come true.
That is why we are fighting SOPA/PIPA so hard now. It isn't because
we want content creators (you do realize that software people are
content creators as well?) to be digital sharecroppers making money
for google without compensation. It is because these laws end up being
the weapons that litigious companies use to blackmail small technology
companies and small content creators. They hinder content creation
and technical innovation, all to support large content companies that
do little advance the actual content creators or the American people
as a whole.
Thank you,"
My day of mourning for the passing of Kodak.
Kodak filed for bankruptcy today. I suppose it was inevitable given their track record of dis-innovation over the last decade. But I come here today not to bury Kodak but to praise them. They were the iPhone of their day, bringing quick and pain-free imaging to the masses while making glorious products for the Olympian gods of the photography of their time.
When the company emerges from bankruptcy they'll be not much more than a high end supplier of big inkjet machines that make printed brochures and prints from photos. I guess they don't get that the next big revolution is to finally, truly go "paperless." Paperless was one of the early promises of digital. It's just taken a bit longer to get there than we thought. And Kodak is charging right into.....the paper market. Inkjets spewing on paper at a time when even my generation is flowing to the screen and the cloud.
Ah well. At least we'll have fond memories of Instamatic Cameras on 1960's family vacations. Our first tentative steps as baby photographers with Tri-X and D-76. Our first flirtations with color via Kodachrome. Our self assured steps into business with large and medium format Ektachromes. And even our "step off the cliffs" into digital with the DCS series of cameras.
I'll never forget the darkness and quiet as I rolled countless rolls of 35mm film onto unforgiving metal reels for development. I'll always savor the memory of a gorgeous face looking back at me from the black and white magic of an Ektalure print in the development tray. A tray filled with Dektol.
Likewise, I won't forget their enormous financial and ethical support of the efforts of the ASMP and the PPof A to train, educate and guide generations of professional photographers into profitable businesses. I won't forget the free film they gave me for a trip to Rome or the samples of new products they routinely handed out for our use.
I won't forget the things I learned in the books they published. From my Kodak Photo Data Guide with incredibly valuable (to film and large format photographers) charts and graphs for using filters, computing reciprocity, calculating depth of field and so much more. I remember when the Kodak Photo Data Guide was a bible among practitioners young and old. The same with the Darkroom Data Guide with it's matrix of times and temperatures and developer dilutions.
They were the software and firmware and back end of all our businesses. And they rarely let us down or allowed a bad product to hit the market. Not a lot of "rev 1.99's"
Kodak made Rochester, N.Y. not only a nice place to live (by all accounts) but also a cultural hub and a locus for all things photographic. They gave back. To photographers and Photography. And I think we all need to be thankful for the incredible foundation they built upon which we stand today.
Who will step up and take their place in the digital age?
Was life easier back in the days when you just had to be good at your job?
Is protection from rank piracy really that difficult to conceive?
Notice: Edited at 3:14 on 1/19/2012 to include a counterpoint. Please read.
"Like most things in life the internet is a trade-off. A compromise. We give up some privacy in return for "connectedness." We give up some traditional protections of ownership to be able to conversely grab stuff that we want "with no consequences." At least that's the way it seems. I'm profoundly disturbed by what's happening in regard to laws that protect intellectual property and content versus the "need" to freely steal whatever we want, whenever and wherever we want it, but I might be sitting on a different side of the table than most people. You see, I write books and I create photographs that have value and which can be sold to people for actual 20th century style money. But my paradigm works only if most people play by the rules. And it seems, more and more, that they don't." (end of original content).
I wrote a long column about how the SOPA and PIPA laws would be better than nothing for content creators. I was wrong. I've been taken to school by dozens of bright and impassioned people who understand the technical aspects of the web in far greater detail than me. I have also had phone calls from two IP lawyers who are personal friends who calmly talked me through the pros and cons of what I was thinking and what I had written. Not to mention my photographer peers who just waded right in with no gloves on...
I was wrong. I decided to take down what I had written this morning and leave up the thoughtful examples that one of our readers sent to me, by way of e-mail. I have come to agree that "the ends don't always justify the means."
I want to thank everyone for their patience and politeness in this, very rare, instance in which I was obviously thinking incorrectly. I am glad, with my new knowledge and guidance, that the legislation got killed. Chastened by my own lack of depth. And fearful that my attorney friends will send me big invoices (which I will not pay since I did not solicit their advice...). I am truly gratified to have such compassionate and thoughtful friends as readers of the blog.
Now I'll just get back to writing about photography. Seriously, Thanks.
Counterpoint by a long time reader of VSL. For balance.
How about an alternate point of view from one of our well informed readers? Okay. I've redacted his name and contact info at his request.
"I am big fan of your blog about photography and read each post. Even
calling me a hobbyist photographer would be generous, yet your writing
about the issues surrounding professional photography always engage
and inform me. That is why I was so dismayed to see you defend
SOPA/PIPA in your recent blog posting. You see, while I might be a
hobbyist photographer, I am expert on the internet and specifically
software on the internet. I have been working in that sphere for 16
years and can assure you my opposition (and most peoples opposition)
to SOPA/PIPA is not due to our desire to make all content "free".
Rather, I am a strong proponent of copyright and IP protection, but I
am strong opponent of poorly written laws that are both technically
and legally idiotic.
From a technical perspective, the very idea of "foreign" vs "domestic"
website is ludicrous and impossible to define. For instance,
blogspot.com (which I'm sure you recognize) is hosted via google using
data centers around the globe. A person in Belgium accessing your
website maybe accessing that data via a data center in Brussels,
Chicago, or both and would never know the difference. You are the
person uploading content to this website yet you have no ability to
know if your website is "foreign" or "domestic' and neither does a
judge, google who hosts your site, or anyone visiting it.
Let me give you an example of the kind of use case that us in the
technology business are so worried about:
1. You, disgusted with Google over their stance on SOPA/PIPA, decide
to leave the freely available blogspot hosting service, and recreate
your website as is (without the blogger header) by using your own ISP,
which you pay for.
2. You want to be able to provide the same level of service as your
previous blog (ads for your books, speedy loading, rss feeds), so you
pay your ISP for a content network, and search engine optimization,
and you take your new site live. (thus making it a foreign site)
3. Further, now that you have all this infrastructure, you decide to
start selling your books yourself through your site, and get a
contract with a payment processor and create a little web store.
4. Everything is going swimmingly, you have easily paid for your
infrastructure and more!
5. On your website you post a link to another website that contains
public domain photographs.
6. That website then posts a copyrighted photograph. (You are now
facilitating infringement)
7. A competitor of yours files a SOPA "private right of action"
against your site and gets a ruling in their favor (without your
presence or defense).
8. Your competitor can now cause your amazon ads and payment processor
to stop doing business with you, destroying your new found revenue
stream, and you have no recourse to fix this problem. Further, even
if you prove that you didn't infringe copyright, your competitor is
immune from civil action for invoking this law.
Notice in that use case, never did you actually violate any copyright.
If you think this is far fetched, it is because you have not worked
in the internet technology world. I can assure you that actions very
similar to this are already happening under the similarly bad, yet
less poorly written DMCA. The same coalition came out (with less
effective protesting) against that bill because of how easy it would
be to abuse and how poorly it understood the technical problems it
faced. Nearly every complaint brought against the DMCA before it
passed have come true.
That is why we are fighting SOPA/PIPA so hard now. It isn't because
we want content creators (you do realize that software people are
content creators as well?) to be digital sharecroppers making money
for google without compensation. It is because these laws end up being
the weapons that litigious companies use to blackmail small technology
companies and small content creators. They hinder content creation
and technical innovation, all to support large content companies that
do little advance the actual content creators or the American people
as a whole.
Thank you,"
My day of mourning for the passing of Kodak.
Kodak filed for bankruptcy today. I suppose it was inevitable given their track record of dis-innovation over the last decade. But I come here today not to bury Kodak but to praise them. They were the iPhone of their day, bringing quick and pain-free imaging to the masses while making glorious products for the Olympian gods of the photography of their time.
When the company emerges from bankruptcy they'll be not much more than a high end supplier of big inkjet machines that make printed brochures and prints from photos. I guess they don't get that the next big revolution is to finally, truly go "paperless." Paperless was one of the early promises of digital. It's just taken a bit longer to get there than we thought. And Kodak is charging right into.....the paper market. Inkjets spewing on paper at a time when even my generation is flowing to the screen and the cloud.
Ah well. At least we'll have fond memories of Instamatic Cameras on 1960's family vacations. Our first tentative steps as baby photographers with Tri-X and D-76. Our first flirtations with color via Kodachrome. Our self assured steps into business with large and medium format Ektachromes. And even our "step off the cliffs" into digital with the DCS series of cameras.
I'll never forget the darkness and quiet as I rolled countless rolls of 35mm film onto unforgiving metal reels for development. I'll always savor the memory of a gorgeous face looking back at me from the black and white magic of an Ektalure print in the development tray. A tray filled with Dektol.
Likewise, I won't forget their enormous financial and ethical support of the efforts of the ASMP and the PPof A to train, educate and guide generations of professional photographers into profitable businesses. I won't forget the free film they gave me for a trip to Rome or the samples of new products they routinely handed out for our use.
I won't forget the things I learned in the books they published. From my Kodak Photo Data Guide with incredibly valuable (to film and large format photographers) charts and graphs for using filters, computing reciprocity, calculating depth of field and so much more. I remember when the Kodak Photo Data Guide was a bible among practitioners young and old. The same with the Darkroom Data Guide with it's matrix of times and temperatures and developer dilutions.
They were the software and firmware and back end of all our businesses. And they rarely let us down or allowed a bad product to hit the market. Not a lot of "rev 1.99's"
Kodak made Rochester, N.Y. not only a nice place to live (by all accounts) but also a cultural hub and a locus for all things photographic. They gave back. To photographers and Photography. And I think we all need to be thankful for the incredible foundation they built upon which we stand today.
Who will step up and take their place in the digital age?
On the day when just about every photographer over 30 pauses to consider Kodak's filing for bankruptcy, a poignant video. The once-dominant company obviously knew it was already in trouble at this point, but still came out swinging in a refreshing appeal to the future.
Considering this was made in 2006 (and how quickly things have happened since) the video was pretty darn prescient. In the end, all of these things did happen. Just without the need for Kodak.
Everywhere I turn there are work boxes full of old negatives and transparencies. Most for clients who've been bought out, gone bankrupt or changed ownership. Like dental records of dead people.
At some point it's good to disentangle the emotional cabling wrapped around our ankles before it pulls us under for good.
If you're anything like me you get attached to the processes that you master. I once took pride in knowing all 17,000 keystroke commands for WordStar, the first really mainstream word processing software for early IBM personal computers. I was sad when faster, better, more streamlined word processors hit the market because I had come to romanticize all the time I'd spent being conversant with the foibles of the older program. I mistakenly thought that the early skill set had value outside the actual writing. (The main lesson for me today.)
In the film days we saved everything. We saved the slides and the contact sheets and the negatives and transparencies in all sizes. Over time that's an efficient way to fill up filing cabinets. In those days businesses seemed to have a corporate memory and were interested in their achievements and milestones. They liked the idea of having a visual historic record of their growth and success. They understood adaptive reuse. But now businesses change hands like playing cards and they spin off and recreate themselves with amazing alacrity. Executives don't add value through decades of service, now they leverage a quarter and move on. The value of the photographic records of their oblique and tangential orbits have become as devalued as Kodak stock.
When images had a physical manifestation we valued them as "objects" in addition to their stored visual information. Negatives could be a thing of beauty in a of themselves. But now we've become pragmatic. Now mental and physical space comes at a premium. And the lure of the old creates its own pools of amber and tar that serve, if we're not careful, to anchor us into a position that's a losing proposition: the reminders of how we did stuff in the old days. You know, ten years ago.
I'm grappling with a sea change. I'm convinced that everything we knew about showing portfolios has changed profoundly. That all the information spewing from photographic marketing consultants is as dated as MySpace. Until recently I was right there with them. I believed that we needed a printed book. I believed that we needed to show our 20 most powerful images. And I believed that screen based portfolios were a sidekick, an adjunct or a watered down appetizer for the real deal: Hand made prints in fanciful and tragically expensive bindings.
Several things are changing my mind. When I visit with designers and art directors they always default to the screen. When I hand someone an electronic tablet with a portfolio on it they succumb to their addiction and wipe thru every image in the portfolio...and then they ask for more. They tell me they like to see work electronically more than they like to see work on paper. It's a sea change. It's seismic. But consider this, the new generation of art buyers and art directors, marketing directors and managers has, effectively, grown up with the screen, learned on the screen and earned on the screen. Print is something....extra that gets done.
Why the disconnection between what consultants and old guys tell us and what's happening on the ground for 95% of the photographers I know? Easy, the consultants go for the biggest pay off. They work with the folks who are aiming with all their might at the biggest ad agencies with the biggest accounts. And it takes time for the art buyers and art directors to work their way up the kerning ladder to get into the position to accept visits from reps and recommended talent. By the time they get there they've been trained by each other and their predecessors to think of the "print book" as the "gold standard." And that may be the reality for the "one percent" of advertising people. But the vast majority, especially those under 40 (ten times more so for the people under thirty) the screen is the thing. Show on a screen and you speak in their language. There's an immediate connection to the relevant work they do. E-mail blasts, banner ads, websites, video and the whole social fabric of modern life.
So, I practiced with a Kindle Fire and today I'm heading to the Apple store to buy the iPad I put off buying for some reason that seems irrelevant now. This whole line of thought came to me as I was searching the archives to see what else I might want to stuff into the portfolio I'd be building electronically this week. And it dawned on me that some much of the studio had become a monument to the way we did things in the past, and the jobs of the past.
I've pulled out thirty pounds of old film and paper from filing cabinets and job boxes. It's headed out to the trash. I think if I can winnow out thirty pounds a day for a few days I'll have unfettered the part of my brain that hand been tasked with keeping a mental inventory of everything physically photographic and where it lived and I'll be able to re-task those parts of my brain to re-enter now.
I've also been peeling off older cameras and lenses. Not the hallowed stuff that I just can't seem to detach from but the clutter that builds up over time when you convince yourself that you need a back up for your back up camera. Those sorts of things.
With every pound of film shed and every box of last year's photo miracle machines that heads out the door I feel lighter and less encumbered. Less set on making old tools work for new jobs. Less set in my ways and more open to change on many levels.
I have two friends who are around my age and both of them, several years ago embarked on the search for the holy grail of print portfolios. Their searches brought them to master "giclee" (fancy inkjet) printers who printed on thick, archival papers. They printed large and they printed really well. And then they bound the images in custom-made leather books. Almost Medieval in their grandeur, detail and mass. The pages sewn into the spines in the greatest tradition of book making. And they wound up with multi-thousand dollar art pieces that are, in fact, prints stuck in amber. Unchanging and unchangeable.
Sorry. Not for me. I'm going after the fat part of the market that changes all the time.
I'm using different cameras. I'm breaking the video rules I never really liked. In short, I'm trying to translate the way I've looked at stuff into a modern idiom that works. And the declining costs are like getting a "do over."
Unloading stuff is like getting permission to start over. And starting over is just what the economy always seems to be doing. I like the idea of showing up at a meeting with less than a square foot of electronics and being able to show off multiple and quickly configurable portfolios. I guess not all aspects of change are so horrendous. While I sometimes pine for film I'm equally aware that the back end is.....a pain in the ass, for commercial production.
Funny that getting rid of a few negatives and chrome would trigger so many other changes.
Note: Dear Technically oriented readers: Yes. I would have to be living under a rock not to have heard the rumors that Apple will be launching a new iPad three the minute I buy an iPad two. That's the way technology seems to go. If the iPad two+portfolio produces one typical job I'll gladly line up for the next one.
Notes on the using the Kindle Fire: I've actually been showing work, albeit informally, on the Kindle Fire and the screen is very good. The two issues that may or may not constrain using one as a portfolio platform is the dearth of good portfolio presentation programs. But for $200 it may be just what you need to show an ever changing book on a budget. Or if you just hate all things Apple.
Notes on throwing stuff away: I'm spending time editing through the piles. I'm saving the best frame from 100 on most old jobs but some are so old and so boring that they just have to go....
Final note for the morning: The comments are on but that doesn't mean you must use them. If you do, please be nice. I'll try to do the same when I come over and comment on your blogs...
Ad shot from the 1990's. A Quick and clean revisiting of White Background Lighting Techniques from the film days. (ie: before you could just cut stuff out in PhotoShop).
If there's one subject that comes up again and again on lighting forums it is: "What is the correct way to light and prep for a white drop out background?" Time and time again the bold rush in to suggest everything from blasting the background with one huge flash to shooting against black and just cutting it out with Gimp Tools XP10. But there is actually a method that used to be taught in all the photo schools or learned at the feet of the guys who did it before you. And it made sense back then.
I thought I'd put this up for three reasons: I like the image of the skater. I was playing with the pen tool I've had for ten years and remembered how much I like to scrawl things across photos. And finally, a younger photographer, who will have to do many, many of these kinds of shots asked me to.
In the shot above I'm starting by rolling out a nine foot wide seamless backdrop of Super White paper. I roll it so that the front end (right behind the skater) is at least 12 feet from the plane of the hanging paper in the far background. This allows me put an even light on all of the background but leaves me enough room to scrim the background light off the skater with black panels.
I'm using five lights on the background. There are two flash heads on either side of the set and all four of them have white umbrellas with black backings on them. They are aimed at the opposite sides of the seamless so the light feathers across the surface. I've also added a center light, high up to both clean up the middle of the background and also provide additional light (via careful feathering) to the paper that's spread across the floor behind our model. I always attempt to light the backgrounds so that every surface that shows to the camera is within a 1/3 stop of everything else. Having too much light in a spot is just as bad as not having enough when you don't have the luxury of hands-on post processing.
In front of the background paper I've placed four sturdy milk carton holders to elevate my model's platform. I've placed a stout piece of plywood under the shiny, white Pleixglas for support. Having the platform raised means that, at the angle I want to shoot my dancer and the focal length I'll use, I'm actually seeing the far end of the white paper at her foot level instead of the part of the paper nearest the camera. This is pure white and gives me a great reflection back on the shiny plexiglas surface which works to obliterate detail and go as white as possible. It also gives me a nice reflection of the skater's blades and shoes right in front of her.
The one boom arm you see coming into the frame on the left hand side is tightly secured to a solid tether and it there so the skater can reach out and steady herself if she starts to lose her balance.
I'm using a large (54 by 72 inch) Chimera softbox from about 45 degrees to the left, in front of the skater and just far enough away so that it won't show in camera. The only other source of illumination is a white fill reflector from the opposite side.
I meter (with an incident meter) the background and get a reading. In this case it was probably f11 and 1/3 stops. I then meter while adjusting the distance of the softbox to the model until I get a reading that's one third of a stop darker on the model. In this way I am assured that the background will go pure white but I'm equally assured that the least amount of light will spill forward from the background lighting to contaminate (and lower the contrast of) the model at the front of the set. In this situation all we left for the color separator was to clean up the area around the model's feet.
Even in the zenith of our digital days I can think of several reasons (all lighting and lens oriented) to maintain the same lighting practice. Less spill means less veiling flare. And, as I've written, less unwanted contamination on the subject. The even-ness of the background means that, even though you will be using the selection tool in Photoshop you'll have less issues to deal with and will spend less time with "refine edge." Finally, if you get used to doing it correctly you'll see that it also works just as well for video. And it's easier than "green screening" everything and fixing it all up in post...
I won't get into the argument about "incident meter versus reflected" or exactly how to hold your light meter. I think that's too personal to talk about on a public blog. And I do think you'll figure out your own technique. After all, you can see the results right away now. But can you see 1/3 stop above white, on your camera's histogram? Meters are still relevant.
We took the day off today. Back tomorrow to discuss portfolios for the new age of screen dominance. Maybe.
I shot the original ad for the LumiQuest Soft Box III back in 2008, using a pre-production sample. I love that light mod, and use it all of the time.
So when Quest Couch asked me to shoot a second version for the bigger LTp and left the subject matter up to me, I eagerly started looking for a subject. Read more »
Thank your lucky stars you weren't hanging around with me today because my photographic mojo was on vacation. Missing in inaction. Everything I pointed my camera at just kind of oozed into blah. And all the PhotoShop in the world won't save it.
Saturday was a nice day in Austin and I went out with the Panasonic GH2 and the kit 14-140 lens to walk around, snap a few photos of a seventy degree day in the middle of January, and to buy some kale. I'm pretty happy with the performance of the GH2 and the long zoom. It's not the world's sharpest lens at it's longest focal length but I give it the benefit of the doubt since I've alway handheld it and depended on the magic powers of the image stabilization.
The wide angle on the 14-140 is good but it does have some geometric distortion. If you use it for interior scenes with straight walls you will become familiar with "lens correction".
But I guess I've gotten bored with my usual route in downtown. When I woke up this morning I had a craving to shoot somewhere different. And, with the weather outside looking pretty darn nice I hopped in my car with two camera systems (the Nikon V1 and the GH2) and headed to San Antonio to shoot in their downtown. Alas, the photo-gods were against me every step of the way...
Saturday afternoon in Austin. Love the long reach of the 14-140. Nice compression effects, too.
I left the Austin city limits, heading south, around 10:45am and within twenty minutes the sky starting turning an abysmal, gray, gravy sort of color and then all the saturation drained out of everything and the light levels began to droop. By the time I hit the street in front of the Emily Morgan hotel, about three blocks from the Alamo, I started seeing sketchy patches of light rain. Nothing sexy or foreboding about the clouds. No picturesque drama, just a gray flannel funk that seemed to suck the visual life out of everything.
I started out with the GH2 and the 14-140 and stuck everything else in a little, sling bag. There were the usual families in front of the Alamo. But even though I made the pilgrimage I just couldn't pull the trigger on another cynical shot of a another little group of social outliers posing in front of the shrine to Texas' freedom while the designated photographer in their girthy group gingerly held the smartphone up and fiddled and fiddled.
I did stumble across these guys but I cheated and actually asked them if I could snap a few pics.
Nikon V1 with the 30-110mm.
Some days you go out and the universe throws gold in front of your Nikon or Canon or Olympus. But other days it's like the universe pokes you in the eye and puts a mental soft focus filter on even your best lens. You have at least two choices. You can keep moving and keep looking or you can pack it in and head to the closest bar/coffee shop/place to take a nap. After driving for an hour I just didn't have the good graces to shove the gear back in the bag, lick my blocked artist wounds and crawl back behind the wheel.
I kept walking and headed down Commerce toward the Mercado.
I did come across this big T-rex which reminded me that I've been hearing T-Rex "Bang a Gong" (or various cover versions) all week long on the radio. Will the current ruling generation spend the rest of their lives mining the meager treasures of my generation? (Kidding, of course. I never tire of hearing instrumental versions of Beatles' tunes in every elevator...).
Chair at Marti's next to the Alameda Museum.
Usually, in the middle of a three day weekend, the Mercado is crawling with tourists and locals and conjunto bands and vendors. It's almost always a patchwork of the interesting and eccentric. Today the crowds were sparse and the gray sky acted like a giant tourist repellant. The usual crowds were in Mi Tierra Restaurant but it was one of those days when I found no pleasure shooting fish in a barrel and only paid homage to the historic restuarant by shooting some images of the altar inside the front door and some sybaritic, sweet delicacies in the dessert cases that run forty feet wide across the lobby.
A detail of the altar in the foyer of Mi Tierra Restaurant. If you've read the blog for a while you might remember me talking about Mi Tierra for its giant wall mural depicting San Antonio history. Or the oil painting of Bill Clinton in jogging clothes. Or the altar to Mexican-American music legend, Selena.
The GH2 seems to handle higher ISO's just fine. There's a fine, black pattern of noise when you examine a file closely but none of the multi-colored speckled splotches that we used to see in previous generations of noisy cameras. The files seem to cling to their normal saturation as the ISO's climb.
GH2 Raw files are fun and easy to color correct.
The Mercado left me cold and frustrated. No matter how I looked at it I couldn't attach the leads to the art battery and jump-start any sort of creative vision. I turned around and headed back east, this time going down Houston St. I'm always happy to see the box office at the Majestic theater and I spent some time trying to get it to sing to my camera but the performance was perfunctory. No magic transferred. No talent welled up like blood in a fresh wound. Nothing.
I usually love the way this structure looks. The colors are so rich and tangy. But today the grey sky reached in under the overhang, snuck around the marquee and just pulled and pulled at the chromatic joy that usually flows off the columns and ornamentation like delicious visual nectar. The light was already failing by four and its dreary decline kept driving my little camera to higher and higher ISOs. With each click up the scale a little bit of the character of the scene dissolved into the monotone froth. The people in the street were mostly small families playing "tourists in their own town" and they seemed off limits to me today. Misplaced compassion or just a lack of mercenary inertia.
In desperation I even tried 16:9 but it's like the wires between my brain and my eyes were disconnected.
When the battery in my GH2 finally died (after 462 shots) I decided to make a big course correction. I buzzed by the Alamo one more time, on my way back to my car, and then headed up Broadway for a total change of pace. I went to the San Antonio Museum, paid my eight bucks and headed in. The featured show was about 5,000 years of Chinese jade. I left all the other stuff in the car and grabbed the Nikon V1 with my favorite optic for that system, the 30-110mm and started walking through the galleries. I would have done it on roller skates if I could have...
I'm not sure why but I still find the files I'm getting from the V1 to be very visually compelling. The camera, lens and IS system handled the low, tungsten light beautifully, with very little intervention from me. I don't remember exactly but I'm pretty sure this is ISO 800, wide open at 1/15th of a second and it seems tack sharp and relatively noiseless to me.
The museum was as sparsely peopled as the streets but that was fine with me. I was there to re-charge my batteries; soaking in the feeling of continuity and creativity across time and culture. And it seemed to work. At least being in the middle of the art took the edge off my frustration at my own frailty.
I loved this detail of the Hindu god, Vishnu, who had four heads that faced in all directions, until Shiva chopped one off.
I came to the conclusion that even if art is permanent (and the jury is waaaay out on digital photography) the nature of the artist, over time, is to sink into anonymity and dissolve into the collective of his or her cultural and context. Maybe that was the message the cosmos was trying to text me today..
But, like a child, I was quickly sidetracked by the pretty colors bouncing off the ceiling of this walkway between two buildings and the repeated diagonal pattern of the struts and I forgot to worry about my own implicit mortality for the time being.
I love the visual pattern of standing in a gallery, looking into a gallery that looks into a gallery.
Nikon V1 with 30-110.
Detail of a large and disturbing mural by a photo/artist/genius named Daniel Lee.
I almost missed this show (the Daniel Lee: Manimal show) since it was wedged in between a gallery of decorative arts and a gallery dedicated to Pre-Columbian earth goddess figurines, and I've seen enough Pre-Columbian earth goddess figurines to satisfy even Claude Levi-Strauss. I have struggled to wade through, From Honey to Ashes, more than a few times.... But the show that struck me had nothing to do with CLS.
It was a show of highly manipulated photographic images by Chinese born artist, Daniel Lee. Here's a link: http://www.daniellee.com/ This particular show was part of his "Manimal" series and, seen in the flesh, it was stunning, disturbing and convincingly done. That sparked me right up and I spent a good half hour really absorbing the two dozen large pieces of his on display. The above is a portion of a very large C-print (think four feet by at least 12 feet.) It's a riveting and cynical allusion to a number of classical paintings and reminded me of a twisted interpretation of european religious paintings from the 14-16th centuries.
Having finally connected with something provoking I felt justified in heading home. The gray dived from 18% to 90% as only a winter afternoon light can and, even though it wasn't cold, the oppression of the short and parsimonious scraps of spiceless daylight was palpable. I welcomed the stingy sunset and sat back on my battered fabric car seat and listened to an old Moody Blues album as the three laned ribbon of IH35 stretched out in front of me, the hum of the tires interrupted from time to time by the little round disks placed on the edges of the lane to keep drivers awake.
What did I learn today? That sometimes you have off days and, while you probably won't know it until you suffer through them, you'd probably be best served dropping the cameras back in the bag and raking leaves or baking bread instead. I learned that walking is almost always pleasurable, even when you are in a creative funk. On the way back home I learned that Whataburger now offers whole wheat buns for their hamburgers and that jalapeños are delicious when combined with pickle slices.
I learned that more coffee does not make one see things in a more creative or visually interesting way.
I think I've come to grips with why I love the Nikon V1 so much. When I use it I preset it to "A" and leave the aperture set at the widest setting. I put the camera into the auto ISO 100-800 setting. AWB. And the only thing I manipulate is the +/- exposure compensation. It's really become my ultimate "point and shoot" camera and I don't have to think when I use it.
The GH2 is capable of so much fine tuning that the potential creates an impetus to meddle and control. And I always feel like there's just one more thing I should set. While both cameras are capable of very good images the GH2 is less transparent during the process of taking a photograph while the Nikon V1 is becoming more and more transparent. It's no wonder photographers who've taken the leap love the V1. It gives them permission to take a vacation from total control. And sometimes we need that.
I came into Austin just in time to have home made minestrone with the family and to savor a glass of red wine. Then I walked into my office to look at today's photographs. I was disappointed but not defeated. I think it's instructive to feel the world and my mind push back. Next time out I won't take making fun images for granted.
Dear Nikon, Please come out with an 18mm f2.0 lens for the Series One cameras tomorrow. I swear I'll buy at least one. KT
Finally, since I mentioned Claude Levi Strauss I have to toss out one of my favorite quotes attributed to him: "I have never known so much naive conviction allied to greater intellectual poverty." I've never found the actual usage but I love the phrase. I think of it whenever I read something particularly passionate and totally uninformed on one of the photographic forums...
The best part about facing the oncoming winter in Maryland is knowing I am gonna bail for a week of 80-degree days in Dubai at Gulf Photo Plus. It's my favorite annual photo event of all, and the only teaching gig I am planning for the whole year.
Heisler's coming back. Dave Burnett is coming. Martin Prihoda, too. And of course many of the regulars will be there. On top of that, I'm especially excited to be teaching a completely different set of classes this year. Read more »
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It’s hard to believe that Camera Dojo has been going for five years now. When it started there were not a whole lot of sites out there with good information, tutorials, and product reviews, today there are literally hundreds. I may not post content as much as some people but I have tried to always have good quality material that is as unbiased as possible with the only goal being to help people take better photographs.
Originally called L7 Foto (the L and 7 looking like an open box for ‘think outside the box) and renamed Camera Dojo in 2008 since so many people had issues with the F instead of PH.
I think I really innovated the photography podcast with almost 100 conversations with industry leaders. The first iteration of the podcast was completely unscripted and was never a simple Q&A session. After a hiatus to try to figure out how to re-invent the show, the GoCast was created with just myself as I drive to and from clients, shoots, or other locations sharing my thoughts on a particular topic.
In November of 2010 we launched Blackbelt Lighting Products as a sister site to Camera Dojo to sell good quality lighting equipment at the best prices we could. Blackbelt Lighting grew from just two products to a complete lineup in a very short period of time and continues to evolve and grow.
