Amy. In the current studio.
10.19.2015
Early experiments with LED lights proved to me that my assumption that LEDs would become a dominant photographic light source was correct.
Cuties. Lit with LED panels.
Around 2010 I became very interested in LED technology as it related to photography. The consensus at the time was that LEDs were too weak, too color inaccurate and too expensive to ever be a workable light source for photography. I thought I knew differently because I had read about cinematographers already pressing LED lights of various makes into service to illuminate feature films.
The first, serious LED lights I got were re-branded Chinese units sold by Fotodiox on Amazon.com. They made a $225 light that was constructed of 500 (quasi) daylight balanced, 3mm LED bulbs and they also made a lighting unit that used 1,0000 of the same LEDs. While many technocrats scoffed at what they described as the limited "spectral response" of the lights I knew that the custom white balance capabilities of the modern cameras would be able to compensate for any shortcomings as long as all the light sources were consistently consistent.
I bought three of the 500 bulb versions and two of the 1,000 bulb units and I proceeded to use them on jobs for me and for clients. While the output was a bit low for action portraits the lights quickly proved themselves as the perfect source for still life photography of all kinds, and food photography, especially. I probably shot over 100 assignments with the first set of LEDs and I sold them to a photographer who has probably used them for hundreds more assignments.
These lights were the impetus for the book I wrote on LED light for photographers called, LED Lighting For Photographers, which was published in 2012 by Amherst Media. It is still the best selling guide to acquiring and using LED lights for photographers, in the world.
The basic information and techniques stands the test of time, while the products available have advanced rapidly. I still think the book is worth reading at least once. I suggest you buy it and read it from cover to cover but, if you are a cheap bastard, you can always ask your library to order you a copy....
Sometimes all you need is a one stop scrim. Not a camera with infinite dynamic range or limitless ISO.
I worked on a project for an ad agency a number of years ago. At the time the state of the art digital camera was the Kodak DCS 760. It was a fine camera for its time and had many wonderful attributes, including a raw file that was amazingly pliable. But even though it had one of the highest dynamic ranges of any camera on the market, at the time, it wasn't even in the ballpark compared to the camera sensors we enjoy today.
In order to get really good (technically) images in full Texas sun we had to use the lighting techniques we learned over the years, fashioned in the era when we used very unforgiving and limited D-range color transparency film.
This image of a professional softball pitcher was done at one p.m. on a hot Summer afternoon. I positioned her to put the foliage in the background because I knew that most sensors rendered green leaves about a stop darker than metered indications would suggest. This positioned her facing into the direct sun which was merciless on her face.
I brought along (as I usually do) a one stop, 4x4 foot silk scrim (diffusion panel) which I placed on a weighted light stand and "flew" over her head. The edge of the frame for the silk is just out of the frame, right over the top of my subject's head. It's just enough diffusion to flatten out the harsh lighting but not enough to materially change the authenticity of the prevailing light. It was a simple and elegant solution when most would call for some form of fill flash.
The simplicity of execution is what always draws me to this particular image. It is a reminder to me always to build from the simplest solution to the most difficult to employ solution instead of the other way around. When you find something that works then STOP fussing and start shooting.
You make your own dynamic range if you understand how to light. Or how to modify light.
Stories from the field: Packing the Olympus cameras and lenses but ending up with the Panasonic fz 1000 in my hands for the morning. Why? How did it go?
A shot from the Blanton Museum. It has nothing to do with the content of the post
but I'm not able to use the images from the job we shot, yet. This is a placeholder.
It was shot with the camera we are discussing; the Panasonic fz 1000.
I was booked on an assignment last Friday morning. It was at the headquarters of a radiology practice that has over 100 doctors, and lots of locations around Austin and central Texas. They are a wonderful client and we have provided photographic services and video to them for nearly 20 years.
The assignment was in conjunction with a video project they were also doing. They straightened up the offices, asked the employees to dress well, and let everyone know that a photographer and a videographer would be in the building, and while the videographer would mostly be interviewing three or four people and taking "B-roll" shot, the photographer would be ambling all over the building making shots of happy employees, working or just smiling into the camera. I would be moving quickly and trying to capture a wide cross section of employees so there would be very little time for involved lighting. We would literally be asking for individual permission to photograph, quickly posing and interacting with each subject and then snapped anywhere from three to five quick shots of them.
I didn't want or need a full frame camera for this adventure, after all, the biggest use of the images would be the top half of a magazine page sized print ad, and most of the images would end up being used on the web. Since we'd be carrying everything from cube to cube and from office to office it just made sense to travel as light as possible. With this in mind I packed up the two Olympus EM5.2 cameras and a nice assortment of lenses; intending to lean heavily on the 12-35mm f2.8 Panasonic lens with the longer Sigma 60mm f2.8 thrown in for good measure. When I arrived at my destination in north Austin I grabbed the bag of cameras, a battery-powered LED panel and a small light stand.
Once I was in the building the client and I lined out our plan for the morning. I started by shooting some portraits in a long hallway. I tried several different focal lengths on the EM5.2 but for some reason I just wasn't feeling the love. Too short, too long, too something. And the cameras seemed to be fighting me when it came to color balance. The blend of fluorescent ceiling fixtures and encroaching, exterior daylight seemed to conspire to make every face a thick, tangy yellow. There are some days when certain cameras (cameras that in other venues have given me good service) just get bitchy with me and we don't click together. This was one of those days. I kept telling myself that I was shooting raw and I could correct these faults in post production but that line of thought started making me dread the idea of post production.
Early on we had a natural break in the shoot as we waited for someone to arrive. They were a bit late. I took advantage of the time to run out to the car and grab the new Panasonic fz 1000 out of the backpack it's currently living in and quickly set it up for a kind of run and gun mode. Auto WB, Auto ISO with the top ISO set to 1600. Aperture priority mode. Raw. I hate to say it because I really like my Olympus cameras, but, the Panasonic just started nailing the color balance and exposure from the minute I turned on the camera. I turned off the Olympus cameras and stuck em in their bag.
A lot of the day was spent wandering around with the VP of marketing. We'd go into a phone support or scheduling area and make quick portrait after quick portrait. No real set up. Not much more than me smiling, introducing myself and asking the person in front of me if was okay for me to take their photograph. A couple people declined but nearly 60 others thought the whole process would be just dandy.
While I had heard and read many times that the Panasonic battery was a power lightweight that would give only about 300-350 shots I ended up the morning with about 650 shots and a bar left on the battery indicator. While that's not impressive when compared to DSLR battery performance what it means to me is that two batteries with a third in reserve will take me through a long and involved day of shooting.
The camera performed well in terms of focus acquisition. Again, it's better than the Olympus cameras at finding and locking on to focus quickly. The DFD focusing feature seems to live up to the advertising. The lens range came in handy when I went outside to photograph people conferencing over coffee on the company's expansive deck. I stood way back (fewer fake smiles that way) and took advantage of the long focal length compression. Even at the longer focal lengths the I.S. did its job and I didn't see much of the degradation that the more anal camera reviews had cued me to expect.
The client and I covered a lot of ground before lunch and we were happy with the coverage. But would I be equally happy with the final results?
I got home, had lunch with Studio Dog, and after the walk we took, which she insisted was for my health, I got down to the questionable pleasures of post processing in the non-deconstructed version of Lightroom CC.
The first thing I noticed was that no matter whether I'd shot with just the fluorescent lighting or if I had added in some front fill from the LED panel, the camera did a fantastic job of nailing white balance and, by extension, skin tones. The second thing I noticed was the lack of blown highlights and featureless shadow areas. But the thing that caused me to stop in my tracks and start pixel peeping was the lack of noise at ISO 1600. At 100% you can see a monochromatic pattern of noise in lower mid-tones and shadows but since there are no patches of mottled color the effect is more than just acceptable. It's film-like. On Saturday one of my friends who works professionally as a video producer came over to borrow a couple of lenses. He's extremely noise averse and already has the new Sony A7S2 in his hands. He stared at the Panasonic image on the screen and then clicked to the exif information just to be sure I wasn't messing around with the facts. He was amazed. I was amazed.
And the wonderful thing about the noise profiles at 800 and 1600 is that the fine details of the images are still sharply rendered and defined. This little camera had smacked that job right out of the ball park!!
Which led me into a philosophical discussion of sorts with my video counterpart. Had technology reached a point where, other than niceties like XLR connectors and S-Log3 and handling, consumer cameras were flattening the barriers to entry by putting high performance into cameras that cost a fraction of what it had cost to do certain types of work only a few years ago? Is the A7S2 within a gnat's eyelash of the performance of something like a Canon C300 or A Red camera? On so many parameters the Panasonic fz 1000, a $750 camera, was outperforming almost all the previous generations of all digital still cameras up to about the introduction of the new generation of Sony sensors in the Nikon, Pentax, Olympus and other cameras (around 2012).
Was it only ingrained, professional user prejudice that was keeping people from pressing the newer, cheaper cameras into service in projects? And the same in video?
For the most part I would say yes. The one place where the differentiation is easy to see is in the one parameter of focus ramping and depth of field. It is basic physics. A full frame camera with a fast lens will allow the artistic choice of quickly dropping backgrounds (and foregrounds) out of focus. With a longer, faster lens the backgrounds can be blown entirely out of focus. It's a nice effect and one I like to use in my personal portraits but it's hardly mandatory on all jobs, especially in documentary jobs and events. But also jobs or projects where overall context is a concern.
Are we mostly holding on to the older, bigger, more expensive tech out of reflex and habit?
I am deep in thought today about my relationship to all the gear I've been shooting with. The Nikons prove their value to me in portrait shooting situations. Part of my prevailing style is to shoot with wider apertures on longer lenses and to play with the out of focus tonalities of backgrounds. But not all of my work falls into this camp. I've spent years and years shooting all kinds of events, both social and business. I'll be doing so again on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday of this week.
On Thurs. I'll be shooting portraits in my usual style and have already selected the Nikon D750, along with the 85mm and 105mm lenses for that part of the job. But the rest of the time I'll be standing back, documenting client and customer interaction, making images of business meetings, attending dinners and catching candid images at the Formula One race --- images of the clients and customers, not necessarily of the cars.... We'll also be shooting a concert in a downtown venue. One evening we'll be doing a walking tour of restaurants on Rainey Street. These are almost all situations which seem perfect for an all in one, high performance solution that's highly portable. A week ago I had made up my mind to use the Olympus cameras for these various functions but now I'm not at all sure and am leaning toward the fz 1000.
How serious am I about using the new camera? Serious enough to head out to Precision Camera to buy a second one. Why? No professional should show up for a job without a rational backup camera. And the best back up camera is one that is identical to the first. Same batteries, same flash, same menus and the same handling. It's this a dicey decision? Naw. If the camera can make help me make beautiful portraits, by available light, in small office cubicles I should be able to do just about anything else with it too.
The past exerts a tyrannical hold on us. It keeps us in a certain stasis that may not be beneficial. Belinda and I remind ourselves when we are out on morning walks that our tendency, when charging for work, is to hew to what we've always done. But that doesn't take inflation and increased skill sets into consideration properly. We always remind ourselves to change with the times. Twenty years ago it was heretical for corporate photographers to accept credit cards, now it is mainstream. Small flashes replace big flashes. Internet replaces print. And smaller, more capable cameras can replace a dozen or more pounds of last generation gear when the final deliverable product is taken into consideration.
At a certain point, if the work supports the decision, it makes good sense to continually downsize the gear that you'll have to carry and conserve for eight or ten hour days at a time. And if you can buy a camera that does all this for what you would have paid for one prime lens for your heavyweight system, then how does it not make sense?
This particular blog post, I think, is aimed at working professionals. If you aren't doing photos for money you can use and carry whatever you want whenever you want to. We, on the other hand, have felt I think culturally constrained to use what has always amounted to "herd approved" gear for the bulk of our work, even when it doesn't serve a rational purpose. The upheaval of the past few years may change all that; especially if the quality of the images in their final use doesn't take a hit.
And it's not just that the fz 1000 is some magical tool, I could feel just as comfortable with the Sony RX10.2, and for most uses even the Sony RX100.4 or the Panasonic LX100. They are quick and functional. In conjunction with flash and ISO 200 they match what we've always gotten from cameras--- all the way back to the film age.
Need narrow depth of field for everything you shoot? Then you need a large sensor camera. For everything else? Now it's your call.
Once I was in the building the client and I lined out our plan for the morning. I started by shooting some portraits in a long hallway. I tried several different focal lengths on the EM5.2 but for some reason I just wasn't feeling the love. Too short, too long, too something. And the cameras seemed to be fighting me when it came to color balance. The blend of fluorescent ceiling fixtures and encroaching, exterior daylight seemed to conspire to make every face a thick, tangy yellow. There are some days when certain cameras (cameras that in other venues have given me good service) just get bitchy with me and we don't click together. This was one of those days. I kept telling myself that I was shooting raw and I could correct these faults in post production but that line of thought started making me dread the idea of post production.
Early on we had a natural break in the shoot as we waited for someone to arrive. They were a bit late. I took advantage of the time to run out to the car and grab the new Panasonic fz 1000 out of the backpack it's currently living in and quickly set it up for a kind of run and gun mode. Auto WB, Auto ISO with the top ISO set to 1600. Aperture priority mode. Raw. I hate to say it because I really like my Olympus cameras, but, the Panasonic just started nailing the color balance and exposure from the minute I turned on the camera. I turned off the Olympus cameras and stuck em in their bag.
A lot of the day was spent wandering around with the VP of marketing. We'd go into a phone support or scheduling area and make quick portrait after quick portrait. No real set up. Not much more than me smiling, introducing myself and asking the person in front of me if was okay for me to take their photograph. A couple people declined but nearly 60 others thought the whole process would be just dandy.
While I had heard and read many times that the Panasonic battery was a power lightweight that would give only about 300-350 shots I ended up the morning with about 650 shots and a bar left on the battery indicator. While that's not impressive when compared to DSLR battery performance what it means to me is that two batteries with a third in reserve will take me through a long and involved day of shooting.
The camera performed well in terms of focus acquisition. Again, it's better than the Olympus cameras at finding and locking on to focus quickly. The DFD focusing feature seems to live up to the advertising. The lens range came in handy when I went outside to photograph people conferencing over coffee on the company's expansive deck. I stood way back (fewer fake smiles that way) and took advantage of the long focal length compression. Even at the longer focal lengths the I.S. did its job and I didn't see much of the degradation that the more anal camera reviews had cued me to expect.
The client and I covered a lot of ground before lunch and we were happy with the coverage. But would I be equally happy with the final results?
I got home, had lunch with Studio Dog, and after the walk we took, which she insisted was for my health, I got down to the questionable pleasures of post processing in the non-deconstructed version of Lightroom CC.
The first thing I noticed was that no matter whether I'd shot with just the fluorescent lighting or if I had added in some front fill from the LED panel, the camera did a fantastic job of nailing white balance and, by extension, skin tones. The second thing I noticed was the lack of blown highlights and featureless shadow areas. But the thing that caused me to stop in my tracks and start pixel peeping was the lack of noise at ISO 1600. At 100% you can see a monochromatic pattern of noise in lower mid-tones and shadows but since there are no patches of mottled color the effect is more than just acceptable. It's film-like. On Saturday one of my friends who works professionally as a video producer came over to borrow a couple of lenses. He's extremely noise averse and already has the new Sony A7S2 in his hands. He stared at the Panasonic image on the screen and then clicked to the exif information just to be sure I wasn't messing around with the facts. He was amazed. I was amazed.
And the wonderful thing about the noise profiles at 800 and 1600 is that the fine details of the images are still sharply rendered and defined. This little camera had smacked that job right out of the ball park!!
Which led me into a philosophical discussion of sorts with my video counterpart. Had technology reached a point where, other than niceties like XLR connectors and S-Log3 and handling, consumer cameras were flattening the barriers to entry by putting high performance into cameras that cost a fraction of what it had cost to do certain types of work only a few years ago? Is the A7S2 within a gnat's eyelash of the performance of something like a Canon C300 or A Red camera? On so many parameters the Panasonic fz 1000, a $750 camera, was outperforming almost all the previous generations of all digital still cameras up to about the introduction of the new generation of Sony sensors in the Nikon, Pentax, Olympus and other cameras (around 2012).
Was it only ingrained, professional user prejudice that was keeping people from pressing the newer, cheaper cameras into service in projects? And the same in video?
For the most part I would say yes. The one place where the differentiation is easy to see is in the one parameter of focus ramping and depth of field. It is basic physics. A full frame camera with a fast lens will allow the artistic choice of quickly dropping backgrounds (and foregrounds) out of focus. With a longer, faster lens the backgrounds can be blown entirely out of focus. It's a nice effect and one I like to use in my personal portraits but it's hardly mandatory on all jobs, especially in documentary jobs and events. But also jobs or projects where overall context is a concern.
Are we mostly holding on to the older, bigger, more expensive tech out of reflex and habit?
I am deep in thought today about my relationship to all the gear I've been shooting with. The Nikons prove their value to me in portrait shooting situations. Part of my prevailing style is to shoot with wider apertures on longer lenses and to play with the out of focus tonalities of backgrounds. But not all of my work falls into this camp. I've spent years and years shooting all kinds of events, both social and business. I'll be doing so again on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday of this week.
On Thurs. I'll be shooting portraits in my usual style and have already selected the Nikon D750, along with the 85mm and 105mm lenses for that part of the job. But the rest of the time I'll be standing back, documenting client and customer interaction, making images of business meetings, attending dinners and catching candid images at the Formula One race --- images of the clients and customers, not necessarily of the cars.... We'll also be shooting a concert in a downtown venue. One evening we'll be doing a walking tour of restaurants on Rainey Street. These are almost all situations which seem perfect for an all in one, high performance solution that's highly portable. A week ago I had made up my mind to use the Olympus cameras for these various functions but now I'm not at all sure and am leaning toward the fz 1000.
How serious am I about using the new camera? Serious enough to head out to Precision Camera to buy a second one. Why? No professional should show up for a job without a rational backup camera. And the best back up camera is one that is identical to the first. Same batteries, same flash, same menus and the same handling. It's this a dicey decision? Naw. If the camera can make help me make beautiful portraits, by available light, in small office cubicles I should be able to do just about anything else with it too.
The past exerts a tyrannical hold on us. It keeps us in a certain stasis that may not be beneficial. Belinda and I remind ourselves when we are out on morning walks that our tendency, when charging for work, is to hew to what we've always done. But that doesn't take inflation and increased skill sets into consideration properly. We always remind ourselves to change with the times. Twenty years ago it was heretical for corporate photographers to accept credit cards, now it is mainstream. Small flashes replace big flashes. Internet replaces print. And smaller, more capable cameras can replace a dozen or more pounds of last generation gear when the final deliverable product is taken into consideration.
At a certain point, if the work supports the decision, it makes good sense to continually downsize the gear that you'll have to carry and conserve for eight or ten hour days at a time. And if you can buy a camera that does all this for what you would have paid for one prime lens for your heavyweight system, then how does it not make sense?
This particular blog post, I think, is aimed at working professionals. If you aren't doing photos for money you can use and carry whatever you want whenever you want to. We, on the other hand, have felt I think culturally constrained to use what has always amounted to "herd approved" gear for the bulk of our work, even when it doesn't serve a rational purpose. The upheaval of the past few years may change all that; especially if the quality of the images in their final use doesn't take a hit.
And it's not just that the fz 1000 is some magical tool, I could feel just as comfortable with the Sony RX10.2, and for most uses even the Sony RX100.4 or the Panasonic LX100. They are quick and functional. In conjunction with flash and ISO 200 they match what we've always gotten from cameras--- all the way back to the film age.
Need narrow depth of field for everything you shoot? Then you need a large sensor camera. For everything else? Now it's your call.
10.15.2015
Moderno. A show at the Blanton Museum. A test for moderately high ISO photos from the fz 1000.
The Blanton Museum opened a new exhibit in their main, downstairs, space this week so I pointed my car once again in the direction of the UT campus and headed over. I have been working pretty seriously with the new (to me) Panasonic fz 1000 so I thought I'd bring it along and put it through its steps in a low light scenario. The exhibit is entitled, Moderno, and is a look at 20th century furniture and industrial design in Mexico, Brazil and other south American countries.
The last show I saw at the Blanton was set with more open space while this exhibit was chopped into a series of mini-galleries that effectively created a maze. Since the museum is generally a Minotaur-free zone I plunged into their elegant and austere labyrinth and emerged at the other end, unscathed.
But while I was on the path I stopped to take images of constructions and wall intersections that caught my eye and appealed to my sense of clean aesthetics.
As the fz 1000 is a pre-chimp, versus post-chimp, camera I was happy to see the quality of the automatic color balance and the accuracy of the camera's automatic exposure. I've stopped even bothering to stop down the one inch sensor cameras so I shot all my images at the widest aperture available. Most of the gallery images that I'm showing here are shot between 1,000 and 1,600 ISO and the camera chose 1/60th to 1/80th of a second, when it could. Occasionally, as in the tiny sculpture gallery (where half the lights were out and the shades were drawn) the camera chose to drop the shutter speed down to 1/10th of a second at ISO 1600. Fine by me, since the image stabilization in this camera seems to be a good match for my EM-5.2 cameras.
When I finished walking through the galleries and looking at the new offerings I headed back home and, after retouching four really nice portraits (taken with a different camera, under different circumstances) I pulled the memory card from the fz 1000 and ingested the images into Lightroom CC (pre-rampant destruction of usefulness upgrade...) and took a look. What I saw surprised me more than a little bit.
Here's why: The images are crisp and relatively noise free. I had been given to believe that the images would be too noisy to use when shot over 800 ISO but that was clearly not the case (click on one to enlarge). It was the combination of crispy rendered files at the widest focal length, wide open, at ISOs around 1600 that made me stop and do a double take because the results repudiated the pervasive mythology about the camera I'd read in various reviews on the web. It's getting to the point where I don't really trust any of the reviewers and I think each generation of cameras is now so good that there's really very little differences that can't be tagged right back to the geometry of the sensors and the effect of the geometry on focus ramping and other issues that are completely separate from the old considerations of noise and inadequate sharpness and resolution.
The next two surprises for me were the neutral color balance and the accurate exposure. The files are uniformly about 1/3 stop dark for my taste but I actually prefer that because the camera rarely puts me in danger of blown highlights. The one, small nick I have with the camera, when shot at its widest focal length, is that even with in camera correction of lens distortion there is still a bit of bowing outward on the edges of the frames. It's a mild correction in the Len Correction panel in Lightroom but it's there all the same and the correction probably has some effect on sharpness in the corners --- which I rarely worry about....
I'm starting to feel that this camera is being overlooked precisely because it is so good. The still image files are very neutral. There's no big, bright processing being done and there's nothing to really call attention to the work the camera is doing. There just seems to be a general ignoring of this little niche of sophisticated "bridge" cameras that is a bit irrational. If we put this camera (with its fine lens) into a time machine and sent it back to 2007 to compete directly with the $5995 Nikon D2x, a couple of serious Nikon zoom lenses, like the 70-200mm f2.8 and the 24-70mm f2.8 this $750 bridge camera would seriously kick the Nikon system's ass one just about every level I can think of, with the sole exception of putting stuff in the background quickly out of focus.
In every other regard the results are highly superior. Better noise handling, better high ISO performance, faster frame rates, better corrected lens, smaller, lighter, more controls and more customization (not that this parameter is always a benefit), better color, better AWB, better exposure and everything else. All for a tiny fraction of the Nikon system price.
I understand that we have a raft of alternate choices now but still, where else does one turn to get a 24-400mm equivalent lens (designed by Leica) along with great sensor performance and great I.Q. for less than a thousand bucks? Nowhere that I know of...
The final thing that has me mystified as to why these things aren't in everyones' hands is the stellar performance of the 4K (well, UHD) video. I haven't really spent much time with the camera on video projects but I started on two days ago for my kid. After swim practice I pulled aside a friend (who is also Ben's favorite chef) and did a quick, handheld interview. The camera nailed everything perfectly; even though I was using it in a fully automatic mode. When I looked at the video just now in Lightroom I had to close my mouth before the gnats flew in. The files are much sharper even in just a casual review, than anything I've seen from the 1080p files from any of my Nikons or Olympus cameras and the moving images were pretty much on par with the output I used to get when using the GH4 in 4K. My only griped about the fz 1000 as a video camera is the parsimonious attitude of Panasonic in not putting a headphone jack on it. That's it. I can and will use this for video production (MOS) at every opportunity. Why? Because it's really good and it's really easy to use.
After making these little files for your consideration I picked up my aging phone and called me sales associate at Precision Camera to make sure they had more of the cameras in stock. Why? Because I think cameras should travel in matched pairs. Whether I'm heading out for a job or a personal art shooting experience I want my back up camera to match the main camera, from the menus to the batteries to the position of the switches and buttons. And I generally go to great lengths to make sure my shooting cameras are set up identically.
I have some travel plans in mind for the end of the year and the beginning of next year and right now this is the camera I am considering taking along.
I have one more test to do before a big project next week. That's to grab the Olympus flash that works on this camera (the Olympus FL600R) and put it through its paces. If it comes up golden I'll be pressing this camera into service for my biggest job of the quarter. But I'm not altogether crazy...I'll have some of my regular cameras riding along as "lifeguards" for my bold experiment.
I'm pretty impressed at how useable and comfortable this camera is. The bulk of the body comes without the usual, commensurate weight and that means a good amount of hand space to get comfortable with but none of the shoulder drag we begin to dreads as the days go long.
24-400. f2.8-4.0, 4K video, killer EVF, outrageous Image Stabilization, a well thought out menu. What the heck is there not to love? Why didn't I buy one last year? Mysteries of the photographic universe, indeed.
Golly jeepers!!!! I forgot to tell you that the camera can also show and shoot square. You get a 13+ megapixel file and all the squareness you deserve. Now I'm considering this one as a portrait camera too. Where will it end?
ISO 1600. No color correction. No noise reduction other than what was provided in Jpeg.
I certainly didn't think I'd find a yoga class right in the middle of the upstairs gallery. Surprise.
Square documentation of Vincent Valdez's work. Wonderful and powerful, life-size paintings.
Always good to go to museums and see new work.
Moderno will appeal very much to graphic designers.
I was more enchanted with the configuration and colors of the space.
See? Something for everyone.
Some observations after speaking to a small journalism class at the University of Texas at Austin.
I was invited to speak to a small photography class at the University of Texas at Austin on Tues. The class was composed of some undergraduates, a person working on his MA and another person working toward his doctorate. The general discussion revolved around e-publications but after a while spun off into a general discussion about the future of photography.
Twenty years ago, when I was invited to speak in the same department, classes overflowed with eager students, cameras were slung over their shoulders, hung from backpacks and bravado was everywhere. It was tough to get into the photography classes and often there were waiting lists. If you were a Photojournalism major you still had to learn to write, scan and send your images, etc. But the main point is that the classes were full and the mood generally very positive. The future of photography seemed, as usual, in flux and unsettled, but it's always been that way.
When I went to the Belo New Media Center to speak this time I found a building that looked nothing like the academic halls of just a decade or so ago. The buildings have taken on a shiny, contemporary, corporate sleekness that reminds me of a cross between an upscale hotel lobby and an Ikea furnishing store. The lobby area, with plenty of tables and chairs, was filled with students at work --- which seemed to revolve solely around looking at laptop screens, texting on phones and chatting up the people across the table. Something was unsettling to me. Oh yes, it was the total absence of any camera of any type (still or video) other than the potential cameras resident in every phone. How vastly different from my last visit to the halls of photojournalism.
When I met with my friend and tenured professor, Dennis Darling, he explained that the discreet silos of speciality: photography, videography, graphic design, writing, etc. were crumbling and now students were able to put together their degree plans like selecting from a Chinese menu. One from each column in any order you like. Most classes now were multimedia classes with an emphasis (big emphasis) on mastering -------(get ready to be disappointed) social media! As if social media was not as natural as falling off a log for this generation...
We headed up to a small conference room on one of the palatial floors of the building and I was introduced to the students. They all seemed earnest.
At the end of the long evening, while sitting in Kerbey Lane cafe, eating chicken verde enchiladas, I mentally conjoined the things I thought were true with the opinions and observations of the much younger generation I'd just met with and came up with exactly the concept that drove my essay, The Graying of Traditional Photography. Photography, while a vital component of advertising, marketing and even social media conversations has shifted from a series of images meant to hold their value and knowledge over time to a series of consumables that are meant to more or less be emotional inflections and ephemeral memes in service of very temporary themes or subjects. The photo opens the blog (any blog) because it is more visually exciting than straight type. The image holds the eye long enough for the headline to engage the viewer. It's best if there is a tangent or connection between the narrative message and its visual accomplice but it's not always necessary and usually an image is chosen for its relative intersection with the text, and also for the universality and homogeneity of its appeal. The photo is the appetizer course for a fast food menu of various social media genres, and traditional media struggling to disguise itself as socially relevant, but with a whiff of hard news and purpose.
As with music the great majority of photography has been flattened and delivered as a commodity. The saddest thing though is that the delivery, unlike music, comes without any monetization for the vast majority of practitioners. It just exists naked on the web, waiting for the casual "right click" that will repurpose it, mostly without permission, in infinite numbers of micro-uses.
The great University, by conjoining and blending all the ingredients of journalism and communication in one stew gives credence and stature to the idea that everything is in service of the melange of sights, sounds and copy blending into a different recipe altogether, which they call new media.
There is still hope. Even these wet-behind-the-ears students each had a project they were pursuing and most of the projects were centered around a series of still images. We may yet see the emergence of a new generation of image creators who value the single image, and the collection of images within a theme, as art that is still relevant. But we're sure distilling down the numbers of dedicated participants as fast as we can.
10.13.2015
Stories from the field. Working in Austin's legendary heat. And humidity.
Leading a group of doctors to the shooting location.
(all "behind the scenes" images courtesy of James Webb.
©2015 James Webb. Taken with an iPhone 6).
Way back in June of this year a client called and we talked about shooting a new version of an image we'd done nearly six years ago. We all knew the location at which we wanted to shoot. It was the front "patio" of the Long Center, which has a great view of the downtown Austin skyline. But we all agreed that the Summer heat and the long days would work against us and so we delayed the shoot until October 12th. We calculated that the sun would set at 7:06pm and that we'd be in open shade and would have perfect light on the skyline right around 6:30 pm.
The photograph was a group shot of twelve doctors who work together in an oral surgery practice. They would all be wearing suits and ties for the photograph.
Yesterday morning I woke up and looked at the weather forecast. It's usually in the 80's this time of the year. My infallible iPhone app told me we were looking for a high of 97(f) with high humidity which yielded a "heat index" of somewhere around 104-105. Since we planned on two locations, a five minute walk apart, and since I'd be hauling lights, stands and sandbags with me, I called a great assistant and booked him.
For the first shot we set up the Elinchrom Ranger RX AS flash system with one head running at the full power of the pack. It puts out 1100 watt seconds into one head. I used a 42" silver umbrella as a modifier. We had a nice breeze (a blessing and curse. Blessing for the subjects and crew; curse for the umbrella wiggling twelve feet in the air...). We sandbagged the light stand with the 18 pound strobe pack and a 30 pound sandbag.
When we finally got everyone rounded up and positioned my art director came over to me and showed me the screen of her phone. The temperature at 6:25 was needled in right at 99 degrees. We both laughed. We could have done this shot in August and it may have been cooler. I don't understand weather but a really nasty high pressure system seemed to get most of the blame. A lot of people were walking around with sinus headaches yesterday....
Once we got everyone positioned (notice the sweet little arc I have working...) we fired up the old Nikon D810 with the 24-120mm f4.0 on the front and banged out a series of test shots and then ten or fifteen serious shots. Since we were working the flash at full power we had five second recycle times and I had to be mindful of my shooting cadence.
The images looked great. I will have to spend some time changing one guy's shoes from brown to black, take some reflections out of some eyeglasses and generally take the red out of several peoples' cheeks but all in all, the first shot was a success. Yay!
My assistant and I packed up the gear, stuck it on our cart and headed off, cross country, to our next location; a manmade hill about five hundred yards due west. There's an easy, circular path that winds up the hill but we didn't have time for that nonsense so we went right up the side to the top. The view there is equally nice. While we were setting up the doctors were changing (in the air conditioned comfort of the Long Center = Thank you! Long Center!!!) into jeans and casual shirts for our second shot.
For some reason I decided that this needed to be a two light set up. We also had to keep dropping the shutter speed as we photographed right at the moment of the sunset. When we finally wrapped and pushed the laden cart back to the parking garage the temperature had fallen to a more comfortable 96 degrees. Don't you just love it when you pick up the phone and the client says, "Let's shoot outside!!!"
The doctors were all in good shape. The heat didn't seem to effect anyone. And the images look good. I guess that's all we can ask for.... Yes, we still do this for a living. Almost every day.
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