Blowing out backgrounds with the new lens.

I was photographing people at Garrido's Restaurant last nigh and I found myself using the new 85mm t1.5 Rokinon lens almost exclusively. Part of the reason was pragmatic. We didn't want to have to model release everyone in the restaurant and we didn't want to interrupt peoples' dining experiences so we left the lights in the case and depended on the fast lens to carve out the sharp main subjects from a soft and impressionistic background. In the late afternoon there was still some reflected daylight boosting the illumination in the restaurant, but we quickly lost that. I started shooting at ISO 800 and progressively made my way to ISO 3200. I was doing the work handheld, depending on nearly wide open apertures and the built-in Super Steady Shot IS built into the Sony a99 camera.

All of these images were shot around t 2.0 or, at the most, t 2.8. I tried to prop my elbows on bar tops and table tops to help stabilize the camera and I worked as diligently as I could with shutter speeds that ranged from 1/60th at the beginning of the shoot to 1/15th at the end of the evening.

The EVF in the a99 was a handy thing to have. I depended on seeing the color balance in the finder and making corrections more or less on the fly. It was also great to see how the frames would look at their shooting apertures as I worked, without having to "chimp."

In the last three days I've shot over 1,000 raw frames with the Rokinon 85mm Cine t 1.5 lens and I'm very happy with its performance. One of my projects involved shooting the front panels of exotic servers and I stopped down to f16 to make sure my images were sharp front to back. At f16 I saw no obvious sharpness reduction from diffraction and the files looked great. On this job I worked at the opposite end of the aperture ring and I found that whatever I focused on turned out to be sharp and contrasty even wide open or near wide opening. All in all it's very good performance for a high speed optic at a bargain basement price.

More to come soon.

Enchiladas at Garrido's in Downtown Austin.

I shot these enchiladas at Garrido's restaurant in Austin. David Garrido was the executive chef at Jeffrey's before striking out on his own and creating a really great place of his own in downtown. The menu is wonderful modern Latin with nods to fine French cuisine. The prices are suprisingly affordable and the food is incredible.

As you know I've been shooting there lately for Garrido's marketing. This plate of perfect enchiladas is one of the images we shot a week and a have ago.

I used a bank of LED panels, covered with diffusion, above and slightly behind the food. Two large reflectors, just outside the live area of the shot, in front of the entrée provided light to the front of the dish.

I shot with a Sony a99 coupled with the venerable Sony 70-200mm 2.8 G lens. Everything was locked onto the stable platform of my Berlebach wooden tripod.

This post is for the pros and aspiring pros. If you don't need to show a portfolio then reading this is optional.

A shot from Esther's Follies. Funny, silly, essential Austin Entertainment.

Golly Jeepers! Photographers are from Uranus and Art Buyers are from Venus...

Belinda and I got invited to a nice dinner at Lambert's last night. An fun, upscale BBQ restaurant right next to city hall in downtown Austin. We were guests of the Austin Center for Photography and the local chapter of the ASMP. The occasion was the kick off of the Texas Photographic Round-up which will feature presentations by photo stars like Dan Winter, Andrew Hetherington, Adam Voorhees and others. 

For a lot of professional (advertising and commercial) photographers one of the big draws of the show is the opportunity to sit down with an art buyer, photographer's rep or magazine editor and show a portfolio of your work. The Photo Review.  The idea is to get a critique that will help move your career forward.  You sign up for the review, pay your money and take your lumps (or get well deserved strokes from a tough industry insider = you win).

I'm sure portfolio reviews have value but I feel like I learned a lot by having dinner and drinks with five of the women who flew in from places like New York and San Francisco to do the reviews. And I'd like to summarize what they told Belinda and me last night in an hour and half's worth of wine fueled honesty and good food.

These are not my local-yokel opinions. They are the nuanced opinions from the top facilitators and gate keepers of the industry we all work in or want to work in. I'm going to paraphrase but I'm trying to be very accurate about the content of what they said (and unanimously agreed upon).

1. "We do not care about what camera or brand of lights you used. We never ask. We never want to know. We don't care. All that matters on that front is how the image looks and how it's presented. (and I would infer from their collective body language that you supplying a running inventory pisses them off. Big time. And it makes them understand that you really don't get that the subject is more important than the toys...)."

2. "We do not want to know what technique you used; either when shooting or when post processing. If it works for us we'll like it without you having to give it a name. If we don't like it we also don't need to know what you call it or how you do it. Period. The discussion of how the sausage was made seems to always curb the appetite."

3.  We don't...... mind.....iPad presentations but they (iPads, physically) are so unpersonalized. Quote: "Flick, Flick....now who's book am I looking at again???" If you show work on an iPad there are two things they (the buyers and reps) want you to know: 1. The work better stand out. 2. They feel as though the image inventory on the average photographer's iPad presentation is.....endless. And not in a good way.  Many sighs around the table and unified nostalgia for big, beautiful, printed portfolios....

4. "The impression of the photographer's fun quotient and fun to be around quotient is at least as important as the work. One magazine art buyer said, "If they are wonderful, happy personalities and easy to work with I don't care what their book looks like." (interpretation: if you are a self-centered ass you probably will lose more jobs than you'll gain with a personal portfolio show)."

5. "We've all seen thousands of presentations that are copies of really good photographers and we've seen lots of commercial work. If we want a famous person's style we'll try to hire them. What we want to see in a book is what makes you, the photographer, excited to shoot. Personal work. Wonderful personal work."

So, by having dinner with the reviewers we were entertained and learned what the big fish are really thinking. It all boils down to this:

We don't care about cameras

We do care about personalities

We want the presentation and the work to be memorable

We don't want to hear how the sausage was made

The thing you are selling us is your style. That's it.

Sounds like good advice to me. And the brisket at Lambert's was really good. None of the guests did anything embarrassing and everyone seemed to be having a really good time.

Now, you'll have to excuse me, I'm frantically trying to narrow down the images I have on my iPad, print a new, sexy portfolio and review my dog eared copy of "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie.  Good luck out there.

Crazy Photographer buys Wacky Off Brand 85mm Lens. Why? What was he thinking?

The 85mm t-1.5 Rokinon Cine Lens. Yum.

 I've been around the block long enough to know that there's no free ride. But I've also racked up enough lens purchases to know that there's also a lot of wiggle room between quality, branding, features and price. So you'll have to forgive me for going off the reservation and purchasing a wacky newcomer to the 35mm lens market, the 85mm 1.5 Cine Rokinon lens.

A couple of weeks ago I did a test with the 85mm 1.4 CZ for the Sony. While I'm a sucker for cool lenses and I would definitely toss one in the bag is the price was right I was also very underwhelmed by the center performance of the lens wide open. You may want a homogenous sharpness across the full frame but I'll trade some corner performance for center sharpness any time. Like it or not, the important and juicy stuff usually winds up in the middle of the frame. (Please don't be too literal, I'm talking about the inner 70% of the frame not the little 10% chunk right in the center...).

While I am deeply and irrevocably in love with the cool little Sony 85mm 2.8 lens I have found a few situations (mostly in video production) when I'd really like to use a decent 85mm 1.4 lens at its wide open aperture. So when I started having second thoughts about the venerable Zeiss offering I also started to look around at other options, like the Sigma. That's when I discovered this particular lens. The Rokinon 85mm t-1.5 Cine version of Samyang's well respected and inexpensive 85mm 1.4 still photography lens. I'm increasingly interested in the intersection of still photography and motion so this lens caught my attention for several reasons. First, the basic design is based on Samyang's latest permutation of their still lens and countless reviews have made it pretty clear that its optical performance is competitive. Secondly, the lack of click stops is a great thing for quiet interviews and other video situations where you might need to compensate for a light shift during a live take. Finally, the lens looked cool in the product advertising and it was dirt cheap compared to everything but my little 2.8. I figured I could compare it to what I saw with the CZ and if it wasn't as good I could send it back for a no hassle refund. A quick test with no harm done.

Short story: It's not going back. Long story? It toasts the Carl Zeiss lens for center sharpness wide open.  And to my eyes it's at least as good at the rest of the f-stop range as well.

The 85mm t 1.5 Cine mounted on a Sony a99.

As you can see in the image just above the lens has it's t-stops (actual light transmission stop as opposed to theoretical f-stops) running down the side of the lens when the camera is in a normal position. That's because filmmakers tend to prefer apertures on the side because there are so many attachments that loom over the top of their full configured cameras that getting to the ring and seeing the settings can be....challenging.  You'll notice that the focusing ring is rotated into this position as well. 

The focusing ring is deeply scalloped and it's done that way so it will mesh with most of the follow focus units that are on the market. Those are the units that use a geared attachment to the focusing ring so that accurate focusing can be done by rotating a knob. The focusing ring is also a long throw, linear ring so it's harder to overshoot your mark.

So, the lens is solid, the focusing ring is smooth as butter, the aperture ring is click-less but has enough resistance to stay put when you engage it and the whole package looks very professional. Optically, the lens is constructed with 9 elements and includes an aspheric element. I used the lens yesterday at a product shoot and stopped down to f16 without much perceptible diffraction effect on the Sony a99. Below are a couple of studio illustrations I did before I sat down to write this.

My favorite, older ball head. The Leitz Ballhead. This was shot at f4.

I wanted to see what the sharpness of the lens looked like in the center at f4. According to all the tests I've read this is where most 85mm's shape up and become bullet proof in their performance.

Here's what a 100% crop of the center looks like. 

But, if you are going to pay for a fast aperture you've got to be curious about what you're going to get as a result of your investement. With that in mind the next photo down is in my studio as well and is shot at the full 1.5 t-stop. First the full frame:

And then the 100 % crop (see below).

I'm happy with that kind of performance. But what are the downsides of a great performing but dirt cheap ($350) fast lens? Since Samyang/Rokinon didn't scrimp on image performance what got left out of the mix to hit this price point? Well, it's totally manual focus. The Nikon version has a focus confirmation chip but the Sony and Canon versions are bare-bones. That's okay for Sony users because we have focus peaking and it makes using this lens in most situations fast and accurate.

The lens also has no aperture automation. When you move the dial to a smaller aperture the lens stops down. Always. In a traditional OVF camera the finder gets darker and darker until (varies by camera) the finder gets too dark to be useful. For a number of situations it's useful to focus near wide open and then stop down and that can be a real pain in the butt. There's a reason people like automation.....

Their are two other glitches but neither of them shows up anywhere in my list of deal killers. I'll mention them anyway. First, the lens hood, while included ( take that, Olympus), is about as flimsy as it comes and most ham fisted American users will have theirs in small pieces in short order. The same sentiments for the lens cap. Look to the aftermarket market if these things bug you. I'm presuming most video users will be using a filter holder or compendium bellows shade on the front of the lens anyway and most of us still shooters have so many 72mm lens caps floating around from yesteryear's wonder lenses that it won't matter.

For studio shooters like me, and photographers who set up lights and work with maximum control, there are no real deal killers with this lens. It's a great value for us. If you do a lot of sports the long, linear focus ring will screw you up. So will the lack of automation in exposure.

My most anticipated use? Portraits. Wonderful portraits with vaporous backgrounds. I like the look of the files I'm getting enough so that the lens has not come off the front of my camera since I first got it. Your mileage will vary depending on what you'll be using the lens for but you won't be able to complain about image quality. This lens delivers that.

It is available in Sony Alpha, Sony NEX, Canon and Nikon mounts. 

Healthy Lunch.

I've really enjoyed photographing food lately. The new cameras hold onto such incredible detail in the highlight areas when shooting raw. The LED lights provide a great light source for food. You can see what you are doing and you can work without the heat of tungsten or the one step removed from reality reality of flash. On the last several shoots I've found the longer zoom lens in my collection to be the most flexible.

I love the look of clean, white plates on white tablecloths.

Where did I put my guidebook to relevance?

I was walking around downtown today with a Sony a57 and it's wonderful 35mm DT 1.8 lens. I felt playful and used the "toy camera" setting on the camera's menu. Then I felt so dirty....

But seriously, I think photographers in the digital, massively-shared age are mostly looking for a feeling of relevance. What does my work mean? What is my real context? What difference does my point of view really make? Stuff like that.

I was looking at these two cranes and understanding that the left crane was helping to build the counterbalance for the right crane which would then be used to build yet another high rise which, in the grand southwestern American tradition would be used for 20 years or so and then knocked down to make room for another temporary structure. None of us will really stand the test of time. So what is our relevance as photographers?

I guess we're the little bitty building blocks that are part of the temporal photographic foundation that will anchor the next generation in their incremental journey toward somewhere else.

Ed Koch, "I can explain it to you, but I can't comprehend it for you."  Love it.

A series of interviews about 33 Variations at ZACH Theatre.

A couple of Sundays ago I spent an afternoon at ZACH Theatre shooting interviews with the artistic director, the lead actor and the featured pianist in Zachary Scott's production of 33 Variations. The theater's digital expert, David Munns, took the raw interview footage, edited it and created this web PSA for the play. Colin Lowry shot the footage of the actors on stage.

The interviews are shot with the Sony a99 and the Sony 70-200mm G lens. The microphone used was a Sennheiser wireless lavalier. Lighting was a mixture of ambient light supported by small LED panels for fill.

Ice Cream and Bread Pudding. Sony and LED lights.

I'm so happy I took a refresher course in food photography by buying Nicole S. Young's book on food photography. It was easily my most effective purchase of continuing education in all of 2013. The underlying principles of the craft are pretty much the same as they've been for quite a while but Nicole did a nice job explaining them and reminded me to use certain techniques that just make food look better. The printed book is a whopping $14 on Amazon. And it's useful even for people who don't necessarily shoot food. Just buy it and put it in your library. Pull it out next time you plan on cooking something great and you just want to show off your culinary chops to your friends.

So, why was I re-reading Nicole's book? Because I'm working with a gifted marketing guy on a restaurant project. My part of the project (as I'm sure you've guessed by now) is to make heroic and tasty shots of the food. The image above is one of many we shot last week. Right before my immersion into boots.

This image was lit by two big 1000 LEDs above and behind the food. The two LED panels are scrimmed or modified by a white diffusion panel on a 24 inch by 36 inch frame. They are color corrected with 1/4 minus green gel filters. While they are called minus green filters they are actually magenta. The magenta cancels out the green, hence minus green in the name. I get them at a movie supply house here in Austin called, GEAR.

The backlight is reflected back into the front of the food by two big, white reflectors. The reflectors are used as close to the food as I can get them and still keep them out of the shot.  I love the way the back lighting makes the green mint leaf translucent.

I shot this wonderful combination of ice cream, drizzled caramel and bread pudding in a hurry to I could catch it before it all melted into itself. But at least the melting process was slower than it would have been with tungsten lights. Even the tungsten lights in electronic flash modeling lights.

Before the dish arrived on the table I did a careful custom white balance using a small, collapsible Lastolite gray/white balance target. Getting the color balance nailed down in the shooting process means more consistent files in post production and, by extension, more consistent exposures. Get one of the targets and stick it in your bag. It will improve the technical quality of your work. Really.

I used my Sony a99 camera with the 70-200mm f2.8 G lens to make this image. I used the lens near 180mm and as close as it would focus, cropping a little bit to get the exact composition I wanted.

We wrapped our Austin food shoot around 6pm and I was in San Antonio by 8pm to get ready for the next day's shoot. The economy seems like it's really thawing out. I'm busy and loving it.