How to shoot?

And that's a wrap.  I didn't even need to ask someone to hand the actor a towel.  It was in his hand five seconds after the rain shut off...


This is the final camera POV.  You can see the two umbrella augmented monolights on either side of the curtain screen.  If you look directly up from the actor you'll see the two spots that are lighting the square grass prop and the actor.  Just to the outside edge of each umbrella you'll see banks of three blue gelled lights that edge light our subject.

Thanks to all the people at Zach Scott Theatre who made this moment and thousands of other magic moments happen.

(this post was edited at 7:47 pm to reflect my changing mood.)

Here's a great post from TOP:  http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2011/12/the-problem-with-perfection.html

I know that page views and individual visitors are different but it's a metric that means some people read some things that I wrote over 50,000 times today. That flat out amazes me. Thanks for being part of the discussion.

That's a lot of coffee...

You would think that, with the earth shattering performance numbers presented by DXO, that the Nikon D800 would be monopolizing the photographic conversation across the web-o-sphere but that's clearly not the case.  The camera of the season is the Olympus OMD.  But, in a disconnect, the cameras most existing professionals will use from now until the near future will be traditional, full frame cameras.  To be more precise, the overwhelming majority of existing professionals will buy and use the Canon 5Dmk3 and the Nikon D800 and it's because they have already bought into a commercial paradigm that is too scary for them to turn away from. And because they are not risk takers.

For the last decade the drumbeat of common knowledge has been to embrace two camera features:  One is the lure of full frame that came from not being able to buy cost effective full frame cameras from Canon until 2007 and not being able to buy any full frame camera at all from Nikon until the introduction of the D3 in 2009.  The other "must have" feature has always been massive resolution.  The more the better.  But crucially, for those with their noses pressed hardest to the paradigm, over 20 megapixels.

The reasons for this selection process are many but I suspect it goes back to the idea that being part of the pack is safer than wondering through the savanna alone. It also paid off in producing images that were high enough quality to pass the test for most clients, be they magazines, ad agencies or direct to businesses.  But part of the appeal is what always makes the Bell Curve relevant = most purchasers are not early adopters, are not on the cutting edge and seek the tried and true solution, vetted by the more adventurous. If they bought a Canon 5Dmk2 a year or two ago they would be able to tell clients that they were shooting with "an industry standard."

A current selection from the big two buys them the same cover.  So why all the noise about the Olympus?  I think that people have, for years, understood that it was possible to reduce the size, weight and costs of camera systems with new technology.  Nikon and Canon had lots of legacy lenses in the pipeline and a leadership position in large sensors so it didn't make sense for them to embrace new lens mounts and new camera sizing.  Olympus tried to compete with their four thirds cameras but their dependence on a moving mirror technology meant that the cameras couldn't be reduced in size enough to make a difference when viewed next to their competitors.

By removing the mirror altogether Olympus could now make (in the micro four thirds space) a line of cameras based around a much smaller lens mount.  That meant the cameras could be much smaller too. And the actual lenses.

The first few iterations were aimed in the right direction but issues abounded.  Especially for professionals.  The lack of a built in eye level finder meant sacrificing the hot shoe in exchange for viewfinder usability.  The focusing was too slow.  The response of the cameras was slow for professional work.  And the sensor they were using in the EP1, EP2 and even in the EP3 didn't perform at the level of the their APS-C competitors.

The demand for a small camera was clearly there.  At least for a huge number of non-professionals who didn't need big bodies to impress clients, giant lenses for sports magazine work, or the safety of the herd mentality.  The ones who would embrace a great, small camera system were the same ones who restlessly rotated between Panasonic LX-5's,  Canon G12's, Leica X1's and a series of small interchangeable lens cameras from Olympus, Panasonic, Sony and Samsung.  They were all looking for the same thing:  A cost effective package that, when used well, would create the same kind of results, on paper or on screen,  they were getting from a Canon 7D or a Nikon D7000 but in a smaller package with much smaller lenses.

Last year was a turning point for the micro four thirds systems.  Part of the momentum in their direction was created by the introduction of four new lenses that the segment desperately needed.
The Olympus 12mm 2.0 and 45mm 1.8 added critical focal lengths and lens speeds the market had been asking for.  The 25mm 1.4 added the normal lens mastery (hello HCB) that had been missing and the announcement of the 70mm f1.8 by Olympus signalled that they were committed to making serious camera equipment again.  Deep breath.

When the OM-D hit it became an instant hit (back-ordered everywhere) because of three critical features:  A set of lenses people wanted, at one third the size of similar lenses for traditional digital cameras.  Very fast and sure autofocus.  And the image quality that the market had been demanding.  The camera now achieves and image quality at parity with it's similarly priced competitors. And that is it's most compelling new feature.  Parity.

The market wanted the size reduction.  The market wanted the cool lenses.  The market wanted fast and sure autofocusing.  But they were not willing to give up perceived image quality of existing cameras in exchange for the benefits of the size and weight reduction.  When Olympus removed IQ barriers all of the other features were unleashed to become market drivers.

While people can argue the relative merits of OVF versus EVF for as long as they have breath, the tipping point for the entire mirrorless catagory is the adaptation of high quality EVFs.  It is so for Sony, Panasonic and Olympus. And, as the fastest growing category of serious cameras it will drive EVFs into the other segments of the market at a much greater speed. The EVF makes all the cameras all terrain photo tools.  From high sun to no light.

The OMD is nicely designed and feels good in the hand.  The finder works well but it is not this camera per se, that is moving the market, rather it is the confluence of technology, the desire to physically downsize systems and the desire to lower costs that make the camera an important mile stone.

Another aspect that is rarely mentioned is the relatively open standard of the lens mount.  Something that is not currently lost on Canon users.  I've read statements by quite a number who would like to get into the Nikon system in order to leverage their perception that the performance of the new D800 is a must have for their market niche.  The barrier is the need to totally exchange all of their Canon lenses for Nikon lenses.  They will lose money.  And, sadly, when Canon comes out with their 54 megapixel, full frame camera in a year or two the same users will lose money switching back.  If you limit your system choices to variants in the micro four thirds segment you can freely invest in bodies from different makers and still use the lenses you've selected.  And, for the most part, they will be lenses optimized for the sensor size.

The reality as I see it is this:  Most of the cameras on the market right now, that have recent sensors of 16 megapixels and more, will do a good job creating the files we need for most of our uses.  In web advertising, most print, all newspaper, high res monitor display, etc. the 12 megapixel cameras dating back to the Nikon D2X are all perfectly capable.  The newest cameras offer lower high ISO noise.  Fees are flattening for most professional work.  It could be because people's approach to photography is pretty much homogeneously aligned.  (and that is not necessarily a dig at the capabilities of the photographers as so much work is driven by client desires, comprehensive layouts and expectations.)  It could be because of market forces.  But clients now understand, perhaps better than their suppliers, that tour de force photo tool inventory isn't nearly as important as it once was and, that by any measure  even the less expensive tools are of such high quality today that, practically, they are interchangeable.

Once professional photographers catch up they will return to the time honored marketing tradition of selling their personal vision instead of their technical inventory.  At that point they'll consider the same cameras that their hobbyist counterparts are embracing today.  And for all the same reasons.

It's good to remember that in the age of the Nikon F2 and the Canon F1 that the most popular professional photographer tool was the Nikon FM or the Canon AE-1.  Both were small, light and capable. Neither were originally aimed at professionals but were quickly adopted for many of the same reasons m4:3rds is in ascendency today:  Smaller, lighter, easier to use, cheaper and just as good image quality.

The Olympus is selling like hot cakes not because it is so good (and it is a very good camera) but because it represents a tipping point into a sea change of camera buying by most serious amateur photographers.  The fact that it has been anointed by no less than DPR is a testimony both to the camera and also to the prescience of the uber-marketers that the dam has indeed broken for a whole category and that the lines between camera types are being erased.

If you can't imagine them prying your hands off your "full sized" body or your eye from your optical viewfinder, and you can't imagine not hearing the clickty clack of your mirror banging around as you shoot photographs then you may be the newest iteration of all those people who, in the early part of this century, were still resisting any experimentation with digital imaging and  predicting that it would be years at least, and maybe decades, before digital technology would be as good as film......

The OM-D is the lighting rod.  It's the shot over the bow that says this (the sector)  is both good enough and, in many ways, better.  The real alternative?  Big ass medium format.  But that's a whole nother blog.

The traditional, big DSLR?  Quickly becoming the Firebird Trans Am of an older generation.  Wearing their Members Only jackets and revving up their engines... While the world drives by in a Prius.  Or, are you still using your Motorola Brick cellphone instead of an iPhone?

Finally, everyone I know has asked if I have an OMD, if I have one on order, if I'm getting one from somewhere.  And if not, when?  The reality is that while I like the camera just fine and would love to own one I'm intrigued by rumors of a new Panasonic GH3.  I'm still having fun with the Sony's and I'm in no rush.  It's all fun.

Additional reading: http://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2012/01/its-new-year-im-playing-with-new-camera.html

Sony a77 camera. ISO 50. Hasselblad 80mm Zeiss Planar lens.  f4.  Click on the image to enlarge.

If you plan to get one I'm recommending the black body because it looks so stealthy with the Leica 25mm mounted on the front.  It also looks really good with the black battery grip attached. More advice?  If you don't already have a collection of Pen or Pan lenses then forego the kit lens and select the 12mm Olympus, the 25mm Leica/Panasonic and the 45mm 1.8.  You'll have the important bases covered and the whole kit will weigh less than a Canon 24-105mm L lens (without body attached!!!).  If you want to branch out you'll find a good mix of lenses between Olympus, Panasonic, Leica and Sigma. Not to mention the millions of other brand lenses you can press into service with the right adapter.  It's an amazing leap forward for Olympus.  Did I mention how much I liked the EVF?  Oh?  I did?  Okay.

Sometimes beautiful people zoom into and out of your field of vision very, very quickly. Few things are as frustrating to a photographer as missing a good shot of a beautiful stranger.  Mostly I miss things because I don't anticipate events very well.  Sometimes I miss a shot because mycamera wasn't ready.  It was turned off, or "asleep" or the lens was capped.  Sometimes I miss shots because the camera's exposure settings aren't set right.

I was holding my camera in my right hand when I saw this beautiful person in my extreme peripheral vision.  She had slowed down at the intersection to check for cars.  I brought my camera to my eye while giving the shutter button a nudge.  The camera sprung into action, I framed as she accelerated by, I manually focused and snapped one shot.  And then she was gone.

I usually don't chimp much.  This time I was anxious to see if I'd gotten anything. This was my frame (above).

When I'm out shooting I don't turn my camera off. Ever. I turn my cameras off when I get into my car to go home.  That's why I usually carry an extra battery when I head out.

I never use a lens cap when I'm walking around.  Why put barriers in the way of getting a good shot?  I put my lens caps back onto my lenses when I get into my car to go home.

If I'm shooting in manual exposure I try to keep tabs on changing light and keep my camera operationally current. Then, if something cool happens I have a better chance of being ready.

If I'm using a manual focusing lens I tend to pre-focus the lens for the kind of work I'll anticipate doing.  As I was walking I had the focus preset for around fifteen feet.  When I brought the camera to my eye I only had to fine tune the focus. Not start from scratch.

I'm not that sharp and my reflexes have slowed down so I need to give myself every advantage in situations where things crop up quickly.  My camera is only faster than me if I don't handcuff it with my own bad habits.

This was taken on Saturday.  Shot with the Hasselblad 80mm Planar lens.  Aperture f4.  ISO 50.  I was able to get good focus by using the focus peaking feature in my camera.  Sometimes you get lucky.  Most of the time you make your own luck.

I know, I know.  You tried a tiny little battery powered LED panel a few years ago and it didn't put out enough light and the light it did put out needed to be color corrected.  That means they'll never, ever change and you'll never have to consider LED lights ever again. Ever.  Cause nothing ever changes.

Sadly, reality is about to intrude into your lighting world view.  I was researching new products from notable manufacturers and I've found that there are a number of new LED lights that are just now hitting the market and they've all crested the 91+ CRI threshold.  That means they are getting close to pure daylight rendering in imaging applications.  One of the companies I watch is Lowel.  They've been making lights for still photographers, movie makers and videographers for decades.  Their founder, Ross Lowel,  wrote a great book on lighting called, Matters of Light and Depth, which I've read through so often the pages are raw. (He was a cinema lighting pro).

Lowell jumped into the LED market with a small panel that blended lights between tungsten and daylight just a couple of years ago.  It's called a Lowel Blender.  It's a small light that mainly used camera mounted by electronic news gathering, ENG (read: video) guys but also, increasingly, by cinematographers.  It's metal, tough as nails and bright for the size.  Turn a dial to go from 3200K to Daylight, or anywhere in between.

The engineers at Lowel bided their time until the LED bulb makers started supplying the markets with higher accuracy bulbs.  Their new Prime(tm) line are all rated at 91 CRI (Color Rendering Index) which is a gold standard for professionals in a number of imaging fields.  Here's the webpage for their Prime(tm) panels: http://www.lowel.com/prime/

In one fell swoop the folks at Lowel have vacated the one niggling problem with the previous generation of under $2,000 panels, the tendency to have color spikes or a color cast that photographers needed to correct for best results.  The lights are available as either tungsten fixtures of daylight fixtures and feature a 50 degree light spread angle.  The chassis are all metal and have a functional yoke system for adjusting them around one axis.

The lights are available as 200 bulb fixtures or 400 bulb fixtures.

The interesting thing to me is how the improvements came about. I don't mean the engineering but the marketing that drove the engineering.  We creative people think that we drive the industries that we buy from but apparently nothing could be further from the truth.  When I spoke to a product manager at Lowel I guessed that movie and video professionals demanded better performance and that led to the development of more color correct LEDs.  The real story comes  from the retail sector.  Apparently major retailers found out that higher CRI lights made products look much, much better than the typical mixed store lighting.  They're the ones who started demanding better and better color performance.  It started in the higher end retailers and it's relentlessly trickling down into the mainstream, big box stores.  It's all about retail sales.

Humans like to see colors clearly and cleanly and marketing tests showed increased wallet response from consumers under improved light sources.  We benefit from the big store's massive retail buying power. But Lowel isn't the only manufacturer who will incorporate the new technology.  I'm sure that current bulbs with lower CRIs will be phased out as economies of scale come into play and the new bulbs will become an industry standard.  Give the science guys five more years and every LED will approach 100 CRI.  Except my own custom LEDs.  They're 110 CRI. (just kidding, the scale only goes to 100).

You can find out more about LED lights and applying LED lighting to still photography, here:  The Ultimate LED book for photographers. 

http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/blog_index.html/the_online_photographer/blog_index.html

It's a fairly long article about why I use EVFs and why I think they will be the future of camera designs going forward.  You might as well get to know them.....

 But you've got to have the "skull and cross bones" strap.  That makes it all official.

I'm posting this because it's interesting and germaine to our recent discussions about art.  Ooops.  ART.


http://www.aphotoeditor.com/2012/05/07/you-dont-always-get-art-but-we-still-need-more-of-it/

Have a read and see what you think...

I'm pretty sure that most of my European and Asian readers did not.  But in Texas the various full sized Chevrolet sedans, like the Impala, the Belair and the Biscayne were all over the place.  We had a brown, four door Biscayne that eventually became the car my older brother and I were allowed to drive in high school.  After my junior year in high school I worked a Summer job so I could buy my own car.  It was a normal thing for boys to do in Texas in the early 1970's.  I made just enough money to buy a 1965 Buick Wildcat with an enormous V8 engine and an equally big set of bench seats.  If you were my height you could comfortably sleep in the backseat.  And on the occasions, when vast numbers of my fellow high school students flocked to the Texas Gulf Coast for vacations and long weekends I often did, choosing to spend what would have been "motel money" for food and fireworks.  I fondly remember the bottle rocket battles on the beach.  Always fun...until (according to someone's mom) someone gets their eyeball shot out.

We'd finish school on Friday afternoon, skip swim practice, fill up our tanks with thirty-two cents per gallon premium gas, try to cadge $20 of spending money from our indulgent parents and then head south with a pair of surf shorts and a couple of T-shirts.  We brought our flip-flops so we could go into the Whataburger restaurant in Port Aransas.  We'd live on burgers and Cokes.  Some of the kids would live on beer.

After spending the weekend slathering our half naked bodies (and the bodies of our wonderful girlfriends) with Johnson and Johnson baby oil---to promote tanning, and eating trash, and trying to look cool and getting stung by little jelly fish we'd wait until the last ray of sun bounced off the water and then get back in our cars and head back to San Antonio Sunday night.  We'd be cranking the Moody Blues or Jethro Tull or Led Zeppelin on our cassette players and drive 80 miles per hour with the window all down so we could feel the warm, salt air wrap all sticky around us.  We were American kids from comfortable families. It seemed like it would be this way forever....

Those are the memories that flooded into my brain when I walked into a Cinco de Mayo festival on 2nd Street yesterday and came face to face with a beautifully restored Chevy Impala.  One look at the tail lights and I was humming the Beach Boys, Good Vibrations, all over again.

I saved a telling memory of my high school vacation history in one snap of the shutter.  I'll print this one and put it next to my desk to remind me that there's always something more fun to do than work.

Tech notes: Sony a77 camera.  ISO 50.  Big and Meaty Jpeg setting. Hasselblad 80mm Zeiss Planar lens at f4 with the Fotodiox adapter.  Post processed in SnapSeed for a bit more "structure."

"Catch a wave and you're sitting on top of the world."

Austin Texas Portrait Photographer.

I like the juxtaposition of the wide shot of the alley way with the building in the background in the top shot and the close up arrangement of flowers and beads in the bottom shot.  I wasn't away of the vertical blue in each shot until I edited the images later.

These were taken within minutes of each other downtown at the Pecan Street Festival this afternoon.  In each case I used a Sony a77 camera, liberally "pre-chimping" and using the same 35mm 1.8 Sony DT lens.  Nothing was planned.  It's all happenstance.

Funny thing happened on the way to educating our country.  We lost track of how important history is and we lost sight of what it really means to be educated. Somewhere along the line we decided, as a culture, that the only really important thing was to have a career and get a job and make money and be comfortable.  In order to do this most efficiently we took our universities, which previously had subscribed to a mandate that good education meant well rounded education, and turned them into big trade schools. Mostly for the benefit of big business.

Each "discipline" narrowed down its focus to transmit only the rawest and coarsest base competencies.  Engineering students learned their math and physical sciences but lost the institutional mandate that required what used to be considered basics.  Things like literature and a foreign language became roadkill for the sciences.  Business majors never see the inside of a philosophy or art history classroom on their rush to riches.  Our forefathers knew that it was in our society's best interest that people understand the value of good novels and poems, become civilized by appreciating important and time tested music and also to understand the arc of art history and art in general.

It has been said that "Art tells us what it is to be human."  And I would say that any society that doesn't value it's art will soon cease to be creative, cease to produce truly creative products and will live a meaner existence. To not know history is to be doomed to endlessly repeat it.

Many people flock to photography and practice it as a hobby or a business but so few of them know anything about the history of the art.  Or the history of its technology.  Without knowing the rich past of photography we have no base line to understand its arc and its depth.  And we're left with a generation of photographers who are re-interpreting the same wheel in the same (concurrent) time period, over and over and over again.

No wonder people are fascinated with Instagrams and Hipstergrams.  It's just a recycling of Polaroid SX-70 manipulations and Polaroid transfers.  Most of the current practitioners weren't old enough to have been around for the first iteration but its aesthetic has been kept alive by advertising references and rehashes for decades.  Would the new iterations be anywhere near as popular if the people doing it now knew that their parents and grandparents did the same thing, analog style, so many years ago?  Probably not.  They would shun it and perhaps go in a new direction.  They might seek new ways to speak with their cameras instead of copying stuff that their aunt did when she was their age.  ( And, by the way, Ben Lowy's work is interesting because of the content, and context, not the trendy presentation.....)

Would the photographers who think they are being cool by taking images with their tiny cellphone cameras be surprised to see a portfolio of Helmut Newton's fashion work done on a beach with a 110 (mini-film) interchangeable lens camera from Pentax back in the 1970's?  It was primitive and the film was primitive so it was all about the talent of the photographer.  Would people be as impressed by Chase Jarvis's oh so kinetic Ninja shoot if they had already seen the work of Phillipe Halsman's Jumpology from (gulp) the early 1960's?  Would they be amazed by the Photoshop work of hundreds of thousands of worker bees if they had spent time looking at paintings by Salvatore Dali or even Brueghel's Tower of Babel ?

And who doesn't understand that our modern ideals of beauty were invented and presented by painters Botticelli and Michaelangelo and especially Leonardo Da Vinci?  And that no one has created a more beautiful three dimensional work in all of human time than Bernini's Apollo and Daphne?

Our rush to decimate all of the non-essentials of learning in exchange for training will eventually destroy our entire culture because it takes away the reasons and rationales for all of the hard work we, as a culture engage in;  to be captivated, enchanted and mesmerized by art and music and poetry, romance and all the things we do because we love them, not because they bolster some bottom line.  How do you put a financial value on falling in love with the lines of a poem?

Photography is interesting today in that we are constantly obsessed by the availability and constitution of the tools. We spend all of our time on the equipment and none of it learning the stories and legends and motivations of the guiding lights and historical figures of our own art and craft. We know nothing of the great works and the struggles against all odds that produced them.  We say "good capture" to the weekend warrior who goes on a photo walk and takes a sharp picture of a cat but we've never learned of the struggles of the Civil War photographers (Matthew Brady: Sketchbooks of the Civil War)  who had to coat glass plates in the field for film and then make sharp images with long exposures on cameras that weighed over 50 pounds and had no functional controls.  People made exposures then by uncapping a lens, counting down and estimating exposure times and then recapping the lens.  The chemicals that made the final images were often times toxic and deadly and yet, the artists were still able to make images that would shame all but the greatest photographers of our current time; if we could distill our current masters from the vast fields of chaff....

Are we so smug and spoiled and narcissistic that we can't value the history and the past glory of our own craft?  We are so busy honoring our current "teachers"  that we can't even see around them to the incredible contributions that came before.

I wrote a book on lighting with small flashes.  It sold well.  People were ready to hear the message.  David Hobby preached the same message on his website.  And the vast majority of our customers and followers wrongly give us credit for "inventing" small flash photography or, in David's case, Strobism.  But the reality is that our work, for the most part is a shallow scoop into the work done by a person who was there before us named, Jon Falk.  He wrote a book back in the 1980's called Adventures in Location Lighting and he let us in on the secrets of using radio triggers, optical triggers, external battery packs, minimalist light stands, all kinds of flash modifications and much more.  He was an amazing source of information about all this stuff. (Thanks Jon!!!).

And I have no doubt that his knowledge was built on the information and inspiration that came from the generation just ahead of him.  And then all the way back to Dr. Harold Edgerton.

The primary difference is this:  His generation invented stuff to be able to say what it was they wanted to say. They had a mission.  It was to get a certain style of image.  Now the mission is to play with the gear. When is the last time someone told you about a subject they were intent on capturing in a new way?  And when did they tell you about their new lens/camera/flash?

Let's save the creative spirit of photography by learning what's come before us and let's see how the styles we leverage were created.  The same ones we build on today.  By knowing the past we can prevent spinning our wheels by reinventing them over and over again.  By studying the history of photography and the history of art we'll all benefit by being able to create new work that inspires a new generation.  Otherwise, to use a musical analogy, we'll just be stuck in the same elevator listening to the same Muzak version of Hey Jude  by the Beatles, over and over and over again until we die or photography becomes so stale and self referential that it dies.

So, you went to school and you got the job and you're financially successful.  Now plow some of that capital back into some important continuing education:  Dig deep into art and art history and you'll be rewarded beyond your dreams.  You'll actually learn how we fit into the rich and endless swirl of history instead of just watching "what's cool right now" being recycled on the web.

If you're going to tell me that you copy all of the current stuff in your own work as some sort of learning process I'll tell you that you're copying the wrong stuff.  Go for the classics.  That's where the magic is.  And the chicks will dig you more...

So many people work so hard only to come to the realization that they didn't make time during their working lives for the things that make us part of the human continuum.  The shared joy of our art and culture.  That's why so many older people take up painting, photography and expansive learning.  Easier to do it all along.  And, like compound interest, more valuable.

This is my 1,000th Published Post.  And it was finished at 9:30 pm on Weds., May 2nd 2012.


my favorite post: http://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2011/11/meaning-of-life-is-to-make-life.html

A similar post, suggested by a reader:
http://intertheory.org/bargain.htm

The panels cost me about $160 dollars each, require no electrical cords, don't need to be triggered by anything and can change output color temperature with the twist of a knob.  But this wouldn't have worked nearly so well for me if there hadn't been huge advances in digital cameras in the last couple of years. Clean files at 800-1600 ISO mean I can integrate my LED lights with existing lights and still get exposures with enough f-stop and shutter speed to stop the slow action I usually shoot.

The next big thing that synergistically moved the ball forward for me was the introduction of high quality, electronic viewfinders.  If you still think you'll never use one then you are already becoming one of those lunatic curmudgeons who rant and rave about cellphones not being real cameras.....(Hmmmm.)

I became aware of the fluidity of lighting and shooting with the this combination of tools in mid-shoot yesterday when I found myself looking through the finder of a Sony a77 and watching the color of a light source change as I twisted the knob on the back of a light unit.  I watched the scene and the light source get closer and closer to the same color temperature and then----they merged.  No iterative testing.  No hysterics.  Just dialing in the matching color temperature as though we'd always been doing it this way.  That's an amazing transformation.

People are writing about the Nikon D800 as a game changer because it does high resolution files and good dynamic range but we've got to admit that we've had access to that in medium format digital cameras for years.  But cameras with high enough quality EVFs to judge color are real game changers in the literal sense because now we can do stuff that we never used to do before with cameras.  We can dial in exposures and color temperatures and effects in real time.

One feature I'm starting to use more and more often (though not in the candy/clown way that we think of with this technique) is in camera HDR.  I'm using it to open up shadow areas in scenes so I only have to add small amounts of fill light.  I know that this is something many cameras now feature but it's amazingly useful in commercial shoots.  And, with my eye pressed to the finder it's easy to see just what the camera has done and whether I like it or not.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  I wanted to talk about my new workflow so that's where I'm heading.....

I packed up to shoot some "editorial/corporate PR" at a restaurant on Monday.  Had it been an advertising shoot we'd have gone there when the restaurant was closed to the public and we'd have cleaned and styled and lit and tested and gotten all sorts of advertising agency approvals.  But in PR and editorial, especially if the location is not the client, you go when it's convenient for the people at the location and you shoot around the edges so you don't run off customers or inconvenience the staff.  I knew I didn't want to run electrical cables and have flashes going off so I packed just two Fotodiox AS 312 (two tone) LED panels, some lightweight light stands and a shoot thru umbrella.  That was it for the lighting.  Except for the big Sony flash that lives/hibernates in the big black Domke camera bag...

When I got to the location I checked in with the manager who gave me carte blanche. I shot some images in each of the dining rooms to start with.  I would set my Sony a77 on a sturdy tripod, line up my shot with the built in, two axis level and then shoot with the HDR engaged at a low level.  Most times the dynamic range was perfect but once or twice I needed just a bit more fill light in the shadows so I would put an  LED panel up high on a stand and dial it up (quantity) just so I didn't cast any additional shadows and then I'd dial in color temperatures (between 3200 and 5600K) while looking thru the finder to see when the colors matched.  Once they matched I shot.  I rarely did more than two images of any one scene because......why?

Since I was working with a tripod I could do all of the shots that didn't include people at ISO's like 50, 64,80 and 100.  The files (currently embargoed) are flawlessly smooth, detailed and sharp.  I think the HDR process works somewhat like another setting called Multi Shot Noise Reduction in that it stacks the frames and kicks out the noise components (which are random).  However it works it delivers ultra-clean files.  All of these images were shot as Jpegs which meant that the camera did the processing to straighten out the barrel distortion and vignetting of the 16-50mm lens, automatically.

After I shot all the stuff without people I ventured into the kitchen to shoot the important shots for the clients.  There was light from florescent fixtures with three different kinds of tubes and some light from skylights overhead.  It didn't bother me.  I rolled up the ISO to 1600 because I'd be shooting a cook,  and set up two of my LED panels for effective fill light in the darker corners and the background.  Then I did a custom white balance in the area of the kitchen that was important for the shot.  I knew that if I blew it I could color correct areas of the outlying quadrants in Lightroom or Photoshop.  I couldn't use the HDR setting because of possible movements but I was able to use the camera's DRO or dynamic range optimiser to bring up the shadow areas, albeit with a bit more noise.

After I shot some exteriors, with and without HDR, and with or without some flash fill, I headed home to post process and recharge my batteries and the batteries in my lights and cameras for a shoot that would start the first thing, next day.

Post processing goes like this for me:  Ingest images from card to Lightroom 4.1. Before ingestion but on the import page I do a rough edit and dump anything I don't like.  If the client doesn't see it they never know it existed.  During the ingestion I add the job name to the front of each file and have the program copy the files onto two different hard drives.  Instant critical short term back up.
Once ingested and previews rendered I sit down and do a vicious, take no prisoners edit.

Then I color correct and contrast correct in small batches.  If the job is small I also use gradients, retouching tools and whatever else the image needs.  If it's large I wait until the client picks the keepers to fine tune files.  Once I've made sure they all look very acceptable I output all the files as smaller jpegs and then upload them all to a password protected gallery on Smugmug.  I've used Smugmug since 2006 and currently have over 120,000 smaller (2000 pixel wide) files on their servers.  I send the client the link and the password and then I crank out an invoice.  Some get mailed and some get e-mailed.  Clients who are prone to losing invoices get both as well as a follow up e-mail...

When they make selections I do the necessary retouching and send them an additional bill for the post-processing and any additional totals for usage of additional images.  Then I sit around on my yacht and wait for quick payment.

The day after I shot at the restaurant I was engaged to shoot for a company that has a series of medical labs sprinkled all over Austin.  They do all kinds of tests including MRI's, CT Scans, PET Scans and other kinds of imaging.  Working with a great art director from their internal marketing department we spent a full day setting up shots with doctors, technicians and mock patients.  Most of the photos incorporated a million dollar+ machine in the shot.  Since time is money when it comes to high value, high investment diagnostic machines part of our brief was to be in and out of each location pretty darn quickly.

When I first started working for this company we'd come in and do the shots using electronic flashes. Usually monolights on big stands.  A typical location would require several lights with softboxes for the main lighting and then several smaller lights to put illumination on the backgrounds.  We'd set up and break down the gear at each location because it wasn't safe for the patients and staff to have us lurching down the narrow hallways with three foot by four foot softboxes on eight pound monolights on top of big lightstands with cords and extension cables in tow.

As soon as the digital cameras got better with low light we moved to replicate what we were getting from the big lights with a set of smaller, battery powered lights like Nikon SB-800's and the like.  We switched from predominantly using soft boxes to using more umbrellas because they were so much quicker to set up and take down.  I like the ones with black backing so I can control the spill light when I need to.

Now we're almost entirely using small, battery powered LED lights for a number of reasons. (Which I'll discuss below).

Our modus operandi for yesterday was to go into a room, figure out the action, line up a good shot, figure out the prevailing light, figure out if it needed to be improved, filled or transformed and then move in our small light panels and even out the lighting landscape.  We'd shoot fifteen or twenty shots and then try another angle and then another.  Three workable angles for each set up was pretty much the norm.  Then the lights would come down and into an Airport Security Think Tank roller, camera and tripod under one arm and off to the next location.

The downside of using the LEDs is the relative inability to freeze fast action (and that means anything that can't be reasonable halted by a 1/90th of a second shutter speed.  The second downside is that if you are going to shoot into a window there's not enough power to match sunlight, even through darkened glass.  Finally, the way to use LED's is to augment existing light instead of totally nuking the ambient light and replacing it with all new light.  Flash is not always practical when you have to show screen information and what not, and match illumination levels.

But the upsides are, for me, pretty compelling.  The lights are small, light and easy to place.  The fact that they don't flash is actually a big positive thing for me.  I'm working in what we'd call "practical" locations.  Real workplaces with loads and loads of non-professional talents.  I've come to understand that the flash of a flash is like a signal that something out of the ordinary routine is happening.  The flash attracts people like moths to a flame.  Everyone sees the flashes going off and they cruise on by to see what's happening.  Very disruptive.  And even more disruptive for the amateur talents who are already nervous and had to be cajoled into being in the shot.

And flashes make every gawker into a stand up humorist.  "Don't break the camera with that face of yours!!!!"  "Action!!!"  "What are you guys doing? Making a movie?"  With continuous lighting there's no repeating signal that says, over and over again, "Action over here. Come look."  Don't discount what a powerful time savings this is.  No one is really interested in anything that doesn't flash.  The camera isn't compelling.  The set up isn't compelling and that weak light on a stick is nothing much to write home about.  Can you hear it around the dinner table?  "Someone came into the office to take a photograph today.  The lights just stood there.  They weren't very bright.  They didn't flash."  Not a compelling story.

It's a lot easier than trying to keep your talent from being self-conscious as his or her work mates walk by to thrown in their two cents worth.  Another good thing about continuous light is that lack of anticipatory blinking that seems to happen with light sensitive people in front of the camera.

The second thing that's good, not just about LEDs but about all continuous lighting is that you can see all the little reflections and "gotchas" that are so hard to find when your flash is firing at 1/1500th of a second.  Really.

So, the combination of the Sony EVF and the Fotodiox variable color temperature LED panels helped me move through two projects more quickly that I could have done in the flash days and that's better for me and the client.

The workflow is, for me, so much more efficient that shooting/chimping/fixing/shooting/chimping fixing.  I know you think EVFs aren't for you and that's okay.  This story is about my use of the EVFs.  They make photography a hell of a lot more fun for me.  And that's all I really care about.

I was out shooting a restaurant yesterday and I photographed the chef.  And his hands.  And when I came home I put the photo into SnapSeed and started playing with my favorite sliders.  Now I don't feel so left out.  I can do work in a modern  vernacular. If I append a magnificent manifesto then the sky is the limit.

I think it all looks perfect.  Well, maybe the blur on the sides is a bit heavy handed.  And, well, maybe the color is a little...too juicy.  And, well, maybe the clarity slider got away from me a little bit.

But...ta da!  It's my new style.  And I wrote down all the filters I used to it's repeatable. Bon Appetit.

Post #997.


Edit:  My client says "This is not your new style!  Not if you want another P.O....."


note to self:  It is possible to overdo the modern idiom.

For the gear boys:  Sony a77 with 16-50mm Zoom.  Two small LED panels.  

Buy yourself something nice to read:

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