Photographer as visual anthropologist (not apologist) and visual story conduit.

I think I knew this all along but it was veiled by technical considerations in the early days. What I know is that my compulsion to shoot out in the streets is driven by some sort of desire to leave my cozy construction of relative affluence, and my wasp-y world views, and to go out and see other people's visual story; as related by their presentation in the public, on the streets, and share what I've seen with an audience that I think is largely similar to me. 

For the most part we (dedicated photographers that I know) live safe and cosseted lives. We grow up and go to college. We get, or invent comfortable jobs or careers that keep us at least resolutely middle class (economically), and because we work all the time, insulated by the corporate safety walls that are created to keep interference and interruption of the workflows to a minimum, we presume that most people are like us. 

We presume that they are looking for the two car, nice house, cool vacation, kids in private college, retirement savings safely in the bank, low crime neighborhood with good schools, lots of groceries, private health club existence that we take for granted. That they read the same stuff we do in the Sunday New York Times. Watch the same shows on PBS. Vote the way we do. Etc. 

And most of the people we know work all the time so they aren't out on the street in the middle of the day, or the middle of the night. Slowly and eventually we retire to the comfort and security of the big screen TV and the endless cable content, provided in the comfort of our well appointed living rooms. 

But there's a heck of a lot going on outside, all the time. And it's profoundly different than our own experiences. The thing that made documentary photography and cultural reportage so interesting; compelling, in the 1950's and the 1960's is that it showed average people what life looked like for people who were less comfortable, who were in war zones, who lived as starving artists. People who were less or more than average. And it showed the privileges of the fabulous rich. Now the rich are on television shows while the most vulnerable members of most cultures are on the nightly news. But there's still a giant swatch of demographics that we only see when we go outside. When we walk along a downtown street. When we go on vacation and get lost in the "wrong" part of someone else's town. 

Photographers rarely look to their own cultural or social peers as subject matter and inspiration because familiarity makes most subjects boring to us. But when we get immersed in something new and different our conscious minds filter out most of the commonalities of the intersection and concentrate on the aspects that are different. Our brains help us distill down new scenes into visual snapshot components that emphasize the differential, the deviation from our mean. 

I think these are the things (the differences) that most of us want to shoot when we walk down the street with our cameras. 

Every time I go out for walks down streets and have the bad fortune to be in the company of other photographers I am reminded that, since we live in comfortable social cocoons for most of our lives, there is a time period of discomfort that comes with trying to blend in and get into the mindset that allows us to work fluidly in the streets with our cameras. Even more time and experience needs to go by for us to work comfortably. People who can plunge right in without having to adjust may be psychologically different than the rest of us. Further along the curve toward sociopathy and away from the position on the curve that describes normal, empathetic reaction. 

On the other hand perhaps the reticence to dive right into photographing comes from a fear for our person security or, that we feel that we might be confronted for our actions, which causes us distress and anxiety for whatever rebukes and resistance strangers provide back at us as a result of their own emotional distress. 

But if we are able to change the dialog in our own heads and come to understand our desire to document our world, and the swirl of cultures that comprise our social mix, then we can rationalize our actions in a better way. One that is less about selfishly capturing charactures of social difference, replaced by a desire to document, and perhaps better understand the metamorphosis of cultures. 

I've walked through a lot of streets over the years and there is always something confusing, different or alien to me that I am curious about and want to capture. In the best of all worlds there would be ample time (and social opportunity) to walk up to people who look, dress and act differently than the people I am usually surrounded by and engage them. Talk to them about their lives, the substance of their beliefs, their experiences that are different from my mainstream. We would get to know people on a deeper level. Sadly, there are so many reasons why this doesn't happen. 

And yet, for me, the dissatisfaction of not taking a deeper dive and gaining a greater understanding is made more acute by the media training of my youth. I grew up on the photography of magazines like Life Magazine, Look Magazine, Geo, National Geographic and others. In the heady days of the 1960's and 1970's it was not rare for photographers to spend days or even weeks on assignment, getting to know and work with their subjects. 

I am reminded of a story that's been included in the general lore about magazine journalism over the years. It is Career Girl  in a 1948 edition of Life Magazine. The photographer was Leonard McComb, and he shadowed a 23 year old woman named, Gwenyth Filling, from sun up to sun down over the course of several days. Maybe a week. The story was about Fillings attempt to launch a career in NYC.  Here's a link to an overview of the story and a gallery of the images: http://time.com/3456235/career-girl-portrait-of-a-young-womans-life-in-1948-new-york/

This Life Magazine story from 70 years ago set my brain to think of this kind of immersive photo-journalism as the gold standard of pictorial story telling, and it gnaws at my artist's inclinations every time I go out with a camera and make mostly random images of life. The deeper connection provided by more time and more experiences with a subject is so critical to the ability to get anything that approaches "real" in our work. Perhaps that's why, over time, the photos we make of our own friends and families is sometimes our strongest work. We so rarely are rewarded with long stretches of time with other interesting people, stretches of time that would allow us to understand the characteristic gestures and expressions that make the person so real to the people who know them best.

I've written many times that the first hour of a portrait session is wasted for photographs but invaluable for getting to know the person you'll be photographing and vital in establishing the kind of bond that leads to a real collaboration.

I am also drawn to early images by Annie Leibovitz. I'm writing here about the work she did early in her career for Rolling Stone Magazine before being smothered and ultimately encumbered by her entourage and the enormous budgets of her later productions; the very financial nature of which ultimately limits her engagement with the later subjects.

No, earlier in her career she worked alone. No assistants and no entourage but the slight difference in technical production quality was a wonderful trade off which delivered intimacy and access. She often spent full days and even multiple days with photographic subjects before bending them into collaborations that produced amazingly connected work. Once the crew came along for the ride all the intimacy and real connection with the people on the other side of the camera more or less went right out the window.

She still does amazing work but it's different. It consists of constructs and acting rather than reportage and honest exploration.

And that, all of the above, is what I tend to think about, in between taking shots, as I walk down a street in Berlin or Austin or Denver or Mexico City with a camera in my hand, and the intention of taking photographs of people I encounter.

I have some basic rules that I enforce upon myself when I go out and walk the streets in my role as a visual anthropologist. I am fairly religious about taking one camera and one lens only. I want to understand how the singular camera package will frame and capture the scene on the street. If I were fanatical (in a good way) I would take the same camera and the same lens each time. But I am more of a "reform" visual anthropologist so my leisurely and lax hermeneutics allows me a wider interpretation which includes the ability to randomly substitute different cameras and lenses (but only one at a time) into my working construct.  If I were zealously formalistic I would inevitably choose the 50mm focal length on a a full frame body. Thank goodness my solipsistic view of existence allows me to make random determinations instead.

I am never confrontational. No means no. I can't go all Bruce Gilden on people and not feel as though I haven't in some way damaged their contemporary peace of mind while muddying the waters for all future visual anthropologists. Probably a prejudice hung around my neck by dint of my protected and insulated upbringing. If someone is uncomfortable being photographed and there's no overwhelming value of the photograph to mankind, I apologize for intruding and walk away. No arguments, no rationalizations.

One of the basic rules that I shoot by is that while photographs of the backs of people might be inevitable (especially when first getting acclimated to the street or public environment) they shouldn't be shown, or regarded as real work. I know of one photographer who is brave enough to get everything technically perfect but a bit too delicate to approach human subjects head on. His subjects are nearly always silhouetted or shot from behind, or with long lenses. He's got a rationalization for that but it doesn't wash in my version of visual anthropology.

Another rule (and one which I break from time to time to my own embarrassment) is to shoot with nothing longer than 100mm. Anyone can stand on a street corner with a tripod mounted 400mm lens and pick interesting faces out of a crowd, but........ Conversely, I hate shooting with anything shorter than a 35mm lens because then I am just depending on a scattered composition to cover a nest of visual sins. The greatest of which is a nonchalance about rigorous composition. I guess you can crop but it seems more diligent to get it all together at the time of capture. After-the-capture work always reminds me of someone endlessly reworking a piece of art not because it's necessary but because ultimately, they lack a point of view. When you take up a camera you should be able to commit to your visual gestalt.

My final rule, and it's one I become more adamant about with every passing day, is that this street photograph experience should be a solitary undertaking akin to a solo, walking meditation. Once you bring along a spouse, a friend, a fellow shutterbug you've moved from an intention to capture your singular vision to an intention to have a social outing. Most people bring along a second person to bolster their courage in shooting strangers and the unknown, but all they generally succeed at doing is to create another unnecessary layer between themselves and their ultimate intention --- getting an honest image that describes the scene that tweaks your curiosity.

I spend most of my time in the studio. I can control the lighting. I can spend more time with my subject. I can try to build emotional bridges, anchored by finding our common touchpoint of experience and humanity. But I love the process of walking through the streets and documenting the people that catch my eye. They do so because, inevitably, they are different enough from me to spark my curiosity.

The images here are taken in a number of different cities and with cameras ranging from big Nikons to a Panasonic G5 and even the late, unlamented,  Samsung Galaxy NX (which made surprisingly good images --- once it woke up and loaded its Android operating system....). I like to think that my style of shooting is more or less consistent. I wish I had more time to explore life with everyone I've photographed. At least enough time to understand how they fit into the big jigsaw puzzle.

Something to ponder in my free time.

Use the force? Oh yes.

Fighting gear acquisition compulsion disorder. How did I do this year?

I'll be blunt, if I weren't writing huge checks for my kid's college education every six months I'd have bought a lot more gear this year. Somewhere in my brain my parent spending control hormones are beating out my gear avarice hormones; but just barely.

I made a conscious effort to tighten up my gear spending this year and, looking back, I think I've been at least moderately successful. The entire inventory of working cameras (as distinct from old film cameras I have owned for years or decades...) consists of just six cameras. Of those six there are two sets of duplicates, since I operate on the theory that every professional photographer needs redundant back up gear of everything he intends to shoot with. No real exceptions.

I have two of the Panasonic fZ 1000 cameras but I like to use them for rough and tumble, drag around the street and the rock quarry kind of cameras. They may get dropped. They may get sacrificed in some way. They may just stop working on their on accord halfway through a job that I've structured around their unique feature sets and portability. So I have two. At $750 each they aren't going to break the bank.

I also have two of the Olympus EM-5.2 cameras. One is silver and the other is black. I have them for largely the same reason I have the two Panasonic cameras. Redundancy. But in the case of the Olympus cameras I also need two so I can work at events with a wide zoom on one body and a longer zoom on the other body, for shooting quickly and not worrying about stopping to change out lenses. The duplicate bodies sure came in handy on a couple of video jobs where I used a second camera operator to get additional footage. Set identically, the footage from the two cameras matches up perfectly! While I pulled money out of my pocket to get the Panasonic cameras I was able to trade three of the older EM5's for the two EM5.2 cameras. I had to kick in a little cash, but not much.

Seemed financially conservative to me given all the pluses of the second version EM5.  Two new lenses were purchased for the Olympus cameras this year. One was the Panasonic 42.5 f1.7 and the other was the (ultra cheap) 40-150mm f4.0-5.6. The latter was $99 bucks, on sale, and for the 42.5 I was able to get a  decent trade-in on my Olympus 45mm f1.8. A bit of money out of pocket to upgrade to a marginally better lens with more than marginally better physical design. Not much money spent in the m4:3 realm...

The place where I upgraded significantly was in my Nikon acquisitions. I traded in two D610s and a bunch of Panasonic gear to get the D750 and the D810. Both have proven to be good choices for the higher end advertising projects I do that return to my business the lion's share of revenue. I've also been on a shopping spree for lenses, but only the older, auto indexing, manual focusing lenses from the pre-AF days. Mostly at a fraction the price of their newer, glitzier AF counterparts.

Since the middle of the year I've been quite satisfied with the performance I'm getting out of all three systems and I have no current interest in trading, selling or changing the primary guts of the equipment inventory.

I have several things on my "want" list but nothing pressing on the "need" list. If you don't do this as your 100% make-a-living gig your needs will be different. If I answered to zero clients I wouldn't crave more than a D810 with a 50mm and a 135mm. Life is so different when clients have so many diverse visions of what commercial photography is all about....

There are upsides and downsides to buying less gear. Obviously, you save money. But not as much as you might think. If you buy a lot of gear you can deduct a huge portion of it in the year you buy it, with the accelerated cost recovery deal, via the tax man. You get to know your gear really well if you have less of it to sort out. But the less you have to sort out the less a blogger has to blog about. I fear for the day when the only stuff I have to talk about is the business of photography and the process of actually making images. Who would want to read that!?!

I did buy several sets of lights this year. I bought a couple of Profoto Monolights and a couple of Photogenic Monolights but in each case the carrying cases (Kata and Tenba) that came along with the lights were worth the purchase prices alone. I might even get around to selling off the lights and keeping the cases in 2016. I also bought some really cool LED lights. They are dirt cheap models from RPS (or Dotline). They use the new SMD LEDs that are more powerful and concentrated than the panels with a thousand smaller bulbs "crowdsourced" together on them. The new LEDs are wonderful. I have three now and press them into almost every portrait assignment. If any more lights get bought in 2016 it will be more of these. Maybe.

Those two little things I have on my list??? One is the Leica SL and the other is a Leica 90mm Apo-Summicron to cobble on to the front of the SL. But one look at the cost tells me that they'll be "on the list" but not in hand for at least another two and a half years.....

Not a very sexy gear year and not much to write home about. But on the flip side I've gotten the boy through a year and a half of out-of-state college and we're not yet eating Ramen or taking out student loans from the sharks at Goldman Sachs, so I guess I should count my blessings.

The Last Job of the Year. 2015 comes to a delightful end, as far as work goes...

Holiday Lights in Johnson City, Texas.

Things were wrapping up nicely here at the studio, we enjoyed one of the best years for the business since 2000. Clients were mostly smart and reasonable, the weather cooperated through the seasons when I needed it too, and my choice of cameras, paired with the needs of the assignments, seemed to be good. So, there I was in the kitchen making Christmas cookies and eggnog when I got a text from one of my favorite clients from this year, an electric utility company headquartered in Johnson City, Texas. "Could you come out to our facility sometime this week and make photographs of our holiday light display???"

I put together a jaunty little estimate and the client approved it right away. The weather was going to be perfect last Friday; sunny and clear, highs in the 50's and lows in the upper 30's, so I planned to go then. I asked my wife if she wanted to wrap up work early and go with me. We left Studio Dog to finish decorating the Christmas tree and we headed West, into the Texas Hill Country. 

I wasn't sure what exactly to expect so I brought along two different cameras and some lenses. I brought one of the "Swiss Army Knife" Panasonic fz 1000 cameras and also the Nikon D750 with the 24-120mm lens and the 50mm Art lens. The most important tool was the Manfrotto video tripod with a Manfrotto convertible ball head that allows smooth horizontal pans but also allows vertical orientations for still photography. Nice to have a solid, steady base. 

Like a typical city slicker from a big, hipster town, I was expecting to be underwhelmed by a holiday light display in a tiny, little town out in the Hills (about a 45 minuted drive from the outskirts of Austin). Thought maybe they'd strung some lights from a few trees and run a chain of lights along the roofline. But I was game. I was ready to get out of town and do something a little different, and having Belinda come along with me was a nice bonus. 

We got into town when the sun was still shining and did a quick survey of the site. Seeing it in the daylight at least let me see just how much effort went into stringing the lights. Not only were the trunks of the trees wrapped but also just about every branch. 

We left the car next to my client's facility and walked around the town. The ancient courthouse was also strung up with lots of lights and every antique store in town had rummaged up their best Christmas stuff from days long gone and displayed it in the windows, and on the sidewalks. 

As the light started to drop we headed back to the car so I could grab the tripod, put quick releases on each camera, and figure out where we'd start. There was a corner with a good view of the location just across the street. I figured I'd go for the wide establishing shot first. As the light dropped we felt the chill of evening swirl around us and we got our hats and gloves out of the car. Still waiting for the lights to come on we watched a Johnson City Police car park across from us. The officer smiled and said, "Are you the photographer the utility company told us about?" I told him I was and he smiled and said, "Anything you need from us, just ask!" And he proceeded to move a big van that had parked right in the middle of our view. For the rest of the evening no one parked adjacent to the facility, on the side of the street that might have occluded my viewpoint. 

With a clear shot of the dark trees we waited while hopping from one foot to the other to stay warm. 

I was being a jaded Austinite, dismissive of the whole affair, right up until the lights started to blink into life. Tree after glorious tree lit up until the entire property was bathed in a sparkling ocean of small lights. The effect was stunning. I kept trying to wrap my brain around how to shoot such an immersive experience. It was a visual wonderland. Everywhere one looked on the property the lights shimmered and glittered. My photographs don't do it justice. I can't imagine how to photograph something like this in order to get all the effect that one's eyes see as they move around the scene. Light from toe to the sky. 

We were the first ones there but the walking paths and sidewalks filled up quickly. Lots of families with small children, lots of (well behaved) teens taking selfies, a couple of older guys with cool cameras came complete with tripods, and looked pretty dang competent. Old ranchers and their wives in crusty boots and working jeans. It was beautiful. Just beautiful.

I shot with the Nikon and the zoom for most of the evening and the results were great. This is a good example of a situation where live view is effective. It was so fun to see the results firm up through a big loupe on the back LCD. I used the Panasonic to shoot about five minutes of video, which also worked well. 

Around seven thirty we were getting cold and hungry so we headed back to the car and drove over to the brew pub in town. Everyone else seemed to have the same idea and the wait would be about 45 minutes for a table. I remembered that the last time I was up in Johnson City (a month earlier) the client brought some really good breakfast tacos to our shoot. I happened to ask where they came from and she told me, "El Charro, right over on hwy. 281."  I suggested we head over and see if they were serving dinner; maybe get some Tex-Mex food. El Charro was small town funky, with bright, overhead fluorescent lighting and a cobbled together dining area, but the food was really good. My "Texas" plate with two enchiladas, guacamole, rice, beans and carne guisada was $6.99. And there was no way I could finish it all and not have to lay down and nap for a few hours afterwards. Great service too. 

Refreshed, renewed and re-warmed we headed back over to get a few more shots, this time with more people in them, and then we headed back to Austin. On the way home Belinda turned to me and said, "That was really great. It's nice to know that, at our age, we can still be surprised and delighted by a great display of holiday lights. That's the best I've ever seen..." 

I spent some time yesterday getting ready for Ben's homecoming from college and then I headed back into the office to do post production on my Holiday Light shoot. The images required a bit of color correction and some light-handed clarity enhancement but all in all I loved them.

What a great "last job of the year" this was. And the coolest thing about it all was being able to share it with my best friend. 

A Christmas Card From the Early Days of Photoshop.

Happy Holidays.

How the hell do you focus those manual focus lenses on modern DSLRs? Very carefully....

The finest lens design in the world is pretty meaningless 

unless you have a plan to focus it well. 

I've been writing a lot recently about my admiration for older Nikon lenses and my tendency to select older, manual focus-only lenses in my day to day work. To recap: I am currently making good use of the Nikkor 25-50mm f4.0 zoom lens, the 55mm f2.8 micro Nikkor, the Rokinon 85mm t1.5, the Nikon 105mm f2.5, and the Nikon 135mm f2.0 lenses on my two Nikon DSLRs; the D810 and the D750. I'm pretty sure that anyone who has tried to just pull up a modern digital camera to their face and focus an older lens quickly will tell you that the (non)focusing screens in all the modern cameras are pretty much crap for manual focusing. The screens are optimized for visual brightness but not for the acuity necessary to discern (accurately) sharp focus. What's a guy to do?

Some one asked this morning if I had a trick to using these lenses and if the whole focusing issue with manual focusing lenses and DSLRs is overblown. No and no. I wish I had some special trick to nail sharp focus every time but I don't. And since I don't have a trick then, no, I don't think this design fail in modern finders is overblown. That being said I am certain that the vast majority using DSLRs are using them exclusively with auto focus lenses. 

In real life, each of the lenses I use is handled differently. If I am using the 24-50mm lens it's usually outdoors and I'm using the wide end of the lens to capture a scene or a building or something that asks for wide angle. If it's Austin/Texas blue sky sunny I just zone focus with that lens. The beauty of the older lenses is that they usually have very well done focusing scales that are very accurate. Much more accurate than the focusing scales on the new lenses. The single focal length lenses even have hyperlocal distance markings on the barrels which give you another advantage. 

So, if I'm walking around downtown with the 25-50 I might have the camera set to M or A and the lens set to f11. I know from looking at a lot of depth of field tables over the years that by setting the lens at eight to ten feet on the focusing ring that, in the 25-30mm range, I'll have sharp focus from infinity down to about five feet. If I'm really concerned about high sharpness of objects closer to infinity I'll move the focusing ring closer to between 15 and 30 feet. I know with certainty that anything further than 20 feet that I point my camera at will be in sharp focus. I don't have to fine tune for each frame. The depth of field covers it well. 

If I am shooting out on the street with a 35mm MF Nikon I might set my aperture ring to f11 and if I put my infinity setting on the yellow, color coded line on one side of the center focus hash I can look on the other side of the corresponding yellow hash mark and see that I can be reasonably in focus from about 8 feet to infinity. I can walk through the streets and shoot with abandon, knowing that anything in that range will be in focus. 

That takes care of a lot of wide angle stuff but what about the longer focal lengths? Well, first of all I think that very fast. longer lenses give you a certain advantage because, unlike the wider lenses, the apparent focus wide open tends to pop and in and out with more certainty. It's one of the reasons faster lenses were so popular back in the manual focus only days. The "in focus" was more apparent with the brighter lenses and the narrower depth of field. Win, win. 

When I shoot with the medium telephotos in the studio focusing is definitely an issue. Bugs the hell out of me. But when I shoot portraits in the studio I am almost always using a tripod. I use a tripod because it helps me to "anchor" a composition but also because I like to use continuous lighting and a tripod allows me to use slower shutter speeds than I can normally hand hold. If I am using a tripod then with both of my current DSLRs I can go into "live view" and punch in to see a magnified section of the image and really fine tune focus. I also tend to shoot about one f-stop smaller than I might with an AF lens. Instead of shooting the 105mm wide open I might use it at f3.5 instead. It's not much but I'm hoping to cover myself, at least a little bit. 

In each of the Nikons I use there is a three light system of focus confirmation that can be very useful. The issue I have with it is that it's too undiscerning. There's a green arrow on either side of a center dot. If one the arrows lights up then you are out of focus and, supposedly, when the center dot lights up you are in focus. My issue is that the center dot stays lit though a bit of travel of the focusing ring. In other words the indicator is very lenient as to what is in and out of focus. I conjecture that the system was devised with the idea that most people are shooting at f5.6 or f8 and that depth of field will cover them. But I don't shoot that way.

What I have found though is that each camera tends to help me back focus just a little bit when I wait until I hit the center spot of the green confirmation light exactly. I have experimented quite a bit and now I use the "too close" arrow and the "confirmation dot" in tandem. My goal with longer telephoto lenses (85-200) is to hit just at the spot where the "too close" light and the "confirmation dot" blink back and forth and then give a tiny nudge until the green dot wins. At that point I can shoot wide open with reasonable certainty of getting the shot. 

If I am shooting for my own enjoyment I am okay with trusting this dancing dot method and I find it pretty quick to shoot this way in the field. If my kid was running a cross country race I would rely on a different method if I wanted to shoot close to wide open. 

If I am photographing a real sporting event (swimming or running) and want to use a manual focus lens I rely on refocusing at specific points. If Ben were to run by in a race I would have a focus point in his path that I had prefocused on with one of the above methods, this way I would be able to concentrate on just shooting rather than managing an AF sensor or trying to "spin the ring." In a group of runners it's almost impossible to keep an AF point where you want it and pre-focusing can give you more keepers. 

But realistically, I use the MF lenses mostly in controlled situations and mostly when using a tripod. I compose the shot, switch to live view and punch in to a magnified view to attain perfect focus and then I switch out of live view to viewfinder mode and shoot until I change position or my subject moves. The added benefit is that I am focusing at my taking aperture which eliminates the chance of optical focus shift upon stopping down. 

When I am shooting fast moving stuff the optical benefits and characteristics of the MF lenses; the qualities I like them for, are secondary to getting the shot. In these kinds of jobs I don't have so much hubris that I risk outrageous failure so I am quick to switch over and use my lenses with AF. The 24-120mm replaced the 25-50mm and the 80-200 replaced the 85, 105 and 135. They get the job done. 

So, there are reasons to use both. My green dot method works for me most of the time and if I didn't do this for money and clients I would be comfortable using the MF lenses all the time. In nearly every situation I come across there's ample time to work on focusing. And who knows? With enough practice I may yet be able to focus accurately on the screen of a D810.  But I wouldn't count on it....

Rule of thumb. It's better to focus once and lock it down than to keep refocusing. Subjects don't move as much as one might think. That being said, if your photography depends on sharp images of moving objects with shallow depth of field then you might want to relegate your MF lenses to some other tasks and go with the sure thing.

Look versus reliability.

Need some books for the Holidays? Go HERE.

Lotta really good cameras came out this year but if I had to choose the one that set the enthusiasts' world on fire and changed the aim point I'd have to pick a camera I don't own...

Of all the cameras in the equipment case that I've squandered my hard earned 

money on I would have to say that my favorite camera to hold in my hands

and take photographs with would have to be the Olympus OMD EM-5.2

But it's not 2015's photo world changer.

That honor would have to go to the Sony A7R2. 

And here's why: Sony made a halting, tentatively, half-assed start with their A7 cameras. When they were announced I had high hopes for the line but my first test with them back at launch in 2013 was disappointing. The shutters were so loud that, if you were photographing human models, you would have to stop shooting to give them verbal directions because, otherwise, they would never hear you over the nerve-wracking clatter of the horrible shutters. Just cheesy.

The bodies were a bit too small and seemed, delicate to me. The evf finders were no better than those in cameras that had been on the market for quite a while. But most damning was that, even though Sony seems to be the source of all imaging sensors, they cut corners on both their raw files and their Jpeg processing. Similar sensors in Nikon cameras just spanked the hell out of the Sony trio at the outset.

There were people who embraced the cameras. Mostly people coming straight from DSLRs who were finally willing to at least try the seductive reality of electronic viewfinders for the first time. The praise they have for their Sony A7 (original lineup) cameras is partly a sigh of relief that came from embracing the new viewing and reviewing technology that underlies the mirrorless experience; not from the superiority or enhanced usability of the cameras themselves.

I wanted to like the Sony A7; and especially the A7R, but after many attempts at a warm embrace I left them on the curbside and moved on with my life.

That was then. But life and camera design move on. I think Sony had a good bit of success with the new cameras and a large part of the success is wrapped around the fact that the cameras give one a reasonably priced entree into full frame imaging with high quality sensors and the ability to use a very wide array of third party lenses from many sources, and from across decades. Whatever the reason I think Sony's collective camera design brain sent the message to the Sony Borg that there really was a market for their wares and, if they had a flagship product to rally consumers the fight to sell more product in the channel would be easier. They needed a "halo" marketing product to prove that, as far as image quality was concerned, they could go toe to toe with the best on the market. They might even better the high point.

The product that I think will come to define the Sony A7 line as a workable group of cameras for high aspiration non-professionals and people who mostly make a living with their cameras will be the A7R2. Not only because they put in their best sensor, and keep improving the processing via firmware updates, but because they finally paid attention to the quality of the mechanical offering. The camera is no longer a melange of composite panels and metal but is now a more robust, all metal construction. The finder optics and finder resolution is much better. The body is beefier and feels much more solid in one's hands. Coupled with a battery grip it finally feels adequate as a support for heavier lenses like the Sony Alpha 70-200mm f2.8, along with an Alpha adapter.

The investment that Sony made in Olympus seems to be paying off with some good technology transfer in the form of a five axis, image stabilization system that works well. Much work was done to ensure cleaner and more nuanced Jpeg files and a recent firmware upgrade gave users beefier, less compressed and higher bit depth raw files. The imaging pipeline currently sits near the top of the DXO sensor rankings. Toe to toe with the Nikon D810.

But the one thing that got my attention and put the A7R2 firmly in the "great camera, I should get one some day!" category is the new shutter. Nice to have all the imaging system stuff better figured out but it still would have been meaningless to me if the shutter rattled along like a Yugo with a quarter million miles on the speedometer and hundreds of marbles in the trunk. A camera with great imaging is always sabotaged if the handling, audible and visceral aesthetics suck.

So Sony finally listened. Either to pundits or their customers or their own inner sense of pride as camera designers, and they worked on making the shutter significantly good. Tremendously good. They've lowered the register of the noise that it makes and done away with a large part of the high frequency clatter-ation that drew the attention of bystanders and camera haters. The shutter is nearly in the rarified field of, "acoustically enjoyable" machines. And this makes all the difference in the world.

So, why is the camera my pick as the break through camera of the year? Because it has just about everything a high end mirrorless user would want for the first time ever in the mirrorless/evf-enabled space. It's got a state of the art sensor that's got resolution to spare. It handles noise as well as just about any advanced camera on the market today. The in body image stabilization is competent and welcome. The shutter is significantly better and rated to work for half a million cycles. The camera works with an incredibly wide array of lenses from just about every maker. Love that Nikon 135mm f2.0? It's one cheap adapter away from being equally wonderful on the Sony.

But then there's also the bonus set of features! The camera does full on, 4K video and according to almost all sources of video knowledge and lore, it's a 4K codec that does a great job as far as sharpness, detail, color and utility. It may be a better file than the ones that video people are trying to squeeze out of the A7S2 (the 12 megapixel model).

The camera is a decent size now that it's been pumped up a bit. It feels great in one's hands (subjective, for sure) and the shutter is no longer an offensive pile of sound crap and vibration.

What's not to like about the camera? The usual stuff people complain about when moving from battery sipping behemoths with large power reserves, and, as always, the lower performance of the AF system when tracking fast moving objects. It is true, the ubiquitous Sony battery (used across most of the line and the RX10 cameras) is a weakling compared to the batteries in full sized DSLRs. While the A7R2 may be about 300 shots from a fully charged battery my Nikon D750 gets anywhere from 1200 to 1500 shots from its battery.

There is a cure for the battery problem and it's a simple one.  Buy more batteries. Carry a couple extra in your pockets. Change as needed. (Or buy into my KickStarter campaign to manufacture plutonium based fission batteries like the ones they use in military satellites. Those last a very, very long time but we are having issues with those damn environmentalists about disposal and some issues regarding manufacturing safety. In the long run I am sure we'll get some regs changed in congress. The bulk of our Kickstarter money is earmarked to pay off politicians...). Seriously though, the Sony batteries are small and not super high capacity but a battery grip is useful and also adds a better gripping design for handholding the camera.  I never asked for cameras to be small, I only wanted mirrorless for the advantages of shooting with EVFs...

The second issue is one that rarely effects my shooting and that's focusing fast moving objects and tracking focus with fast moving objects. I think each generation of mirrorless camera improves in this performance parameter and, for my uses, the camera's focus is more than adequate. In fact, the majority of my intended use for a camera such as this would be to use it with lenses from other companies. Leica, Nikon, and Leica..  In that kind of use the camera also excels because it comes complete with both image peaking and quick image magnification for fine focusing. For an ad shooter that's a perfect combination.

To distill, Sony gets my honor of innovative camera of 2016 because they have single-handedly brought to the market a flagship for the EVF/Mirrorless concept with a camera that checks every box on my list of features. The whole A7 line is the first to implement a full frame sensor with the mirrorless design set. The shutter and mechanical handling is finally in the first rank. And the 4K video is most certainly state of the art as regards video in still cameras.

Had the camera hit the same price point as the one it replaced (the A7R) I would be even more enthusiastic. In a few months, when Sony rushes out a replacement for the A7R2, and the prices drop, I'll probably add one to the drawer. The neat deal is that one embedded in the Nikon system can easily rationalize buying this body as a supplement to the Nikon bodies, since all of them can (with adapters) use the same lenses. And that is one of the genius features of mirrorless cameras, as a class.

Interesting to handle and write about a camera that I haven't been compelled (yet) to rush out and buy. That alone is a paean to how pleased I am with my current Nikon cameras. And at the same time it's probably and indicator of why the camera market is in decline... too much good stuff that works to well. Why rush to replace?

But if you are in a rush to replace, consider using this link:  Sony A7R2 and other stuff...

Kirk's Books on Amazon

The camera and lens that sucked me right back into the Nikon system this time...

This bust lives at the Blanton Museum in Austin.

I like to photograph the statues when I'm playing around 

with new photographic equipment.  They don't move around and blink.

I shot this with a Nikon D610 using a Sigma 50mm 1.4 Art Lens. 

I shot the image at f2.0. 

1/400th of a second. 

The quality of the resulting image led me to understand 

that the combination had characteristics I liked. 

From that point onward I've been buying lenses 

I like for the system along with several new bodies. 

I certainly love this focal length. 

And, at nearly wide open the Art lens 

is pretty compelling. 

I think I'll keep it.


Kirk's Books on Amazon

I"ve made at least two really good lens purchases this year. This is the one I find most intriguing.

It's a Nikon lens made a long time ago. It's the 25-50mm f4.0. I saw it sitting on the used shelf over at Precision Camera and I haggled on the price until it didn't make sense any more to leave it on the shelf. On a full frame camera it's ---- a 25-50mm equivalent (snicker).

Last night I found an interesting article about this lens and quite a few other Nikon lenses at a site I have never visited before. You might enjoy the articles there; especially if you are inclined to appreciate and enjoy some of the classic, older, Nikon manual focus lenses. The articles I found are on a Nikon website, tucked into a part of the site called, "Nikkor."

Here's the article I read about the 25-50mm lens: http://www.nikkor.com/story/0046/ The discussion of the design parameters and the process of creating the lens are very interesting. Even more interesting is just how good this lens is and how well it stands the tests of time.

I'd love to link to some retail website so you can order one and I can get a commission but, as you can see in the article, they stopped making this one (and a few other favorites of mine) a long time ago (1981).

We'll just have to enjoy the reading and keep our eyes peeled for mint examples, out in the wild...

There are articles at the site on several of my other favorite Nikon lenses; including: the 105mm f2.5 ai and the 135mm f2.0 ai. If you are a dyed in the wool Canon shooter you can ignore this.

Kirk's Books on Amazonhttp://amzn.to/1IYPzXc

Just clowning around. Austin Lyric Opera.

Sony a99 + Sony 70-200mm f2.8.

OT: looking forward to a special swim practice on Monday the 21st.

Here's the pool I swim in. It's beautiful. It's heated in the winter to 80 degrees. It's chilled in the Summer to 82 degrees. The only times we don't have masters swim practices are on (most) Mondays, big holidays and when there's ice all over the deck (safety issue).

Today I went to the noon practice and swam with a guy named, Tom. Our coach wrote a fun workout on the board and we dragged ourselves up and down the pool, bracketed by faster swimmers in the lane on one side and slower swimmers in the lane on the other side. We knocked out about 3,000 yards from noon until 1 pm and that was that.

After swim practice I pulled on some running shoes, and a pair of running shorts, and did a leisurely run down at the lake. There are three loops most people run. There's a 2.9 mile loop, one that's about 4.5 miles and a third that's around 7 miles. If you are really ambitious you can run from Mopac to the damn on the east side of downtown, and then back around on the other side of the lake for a bit more than 12 miles. I'd already swum so the shortest loop felt like a good option to me.

That's all pretty routine, but I was excited to hear about one cool, upcoming workout that should be a lot of fun for obsessive swimmers; it's this coming Monday morning and it's 10,000 yards. We start at 8:30 am and we do 100 x 100 yards on a one minute and forty second interval. For non swimmers this means you have one minute and forty seconds to swim 100 years and, if possible get a few seconds rest. You leave on a new 100 yard swim (four laps of the 25 yard pool, per) every minute and forty seconds.  Until you've done this one hundred times in a row.

Everyone is going on the same interval. No faster lanes and no slower lanes. If we stay on pace and do the whole set we'll have swum 10,000 yards in about 2.5 hours. That's about 6.2 miles and 300 flip turns. I think I'll be ready for a big lunch right after this....

This has absolutely nothing to do with new cameras or photography of any kind. I write about it because I think it's important for photographers (and everyone else) to think about getting exercise and staying in good physical condition. I believe that when you are in good physical shape your brain is sharper, your attention is more acute. The discipline of exercising regularly also translates into habitual discipline in other areas; like photography. You can carry more, go further, stay in the field longer and be present to take advantage of chance interactions with nature or whatever it is you shoot.

Here's a link to the U.S. Masters Swimming: http://www.usms.org

Real skin versus retouched skin. Lenses, lighting and signatures.

There is a technique I sometimes use to repress detail on problem skin. I make a duplicate layer of a portrait, introduce a gaussian blur at 28.5 pixels, hit the quick mask icon at the bottom of the layer menu box and then use a paintbrush, set to 20% opacity to brush in a softness to the image. The benefit of this very simple method is that I can use the opacity slider in the layers panel to pull back on the effect. I try to be judicious when I use this method because I think most people's eyes are very good at seeing this "deception."

I try not to use any blurring techniques for most portraits. It really all depends on the skin quality and the way a portrait is lit. Contrasty lighting can make even the nicest skin look worse. Clients with big pores or rough skin texture love the softening effect and, when the images are for their use, I am not disinclined to please them. When I photograph for myself though I am too keenly aware that the introduction of the softening technique diminishes the value I find for myself in prints and images. I can only conjecture the same is true for my intended audience for these sorts of portraits = VSL readers and others who appreciate photographs.

The image above uses no post processing blur technique but takes advantage of a close, large diffuser to moderate the transitions between highlights, midtones and shadow areas. In this regard shooting with 14 bit raw files is helpful to prevent even slight banding in shadow areas and transition areas by dint of throwing more information into the mapping mix. That my model is young, has great skin, and has used make up well, is a big benefit to the final image as I pre-visualized it. (Actually, I can only pre-visualize in giant swaths, like putting up a big fence. Everything creative happens unconsciously in smaller sections of the big fence, mental ranch).

One uses retouching on images when there are details that take attention away from the main goal, a subjective but positive rendering of the subject in it's holistic form. At times one must "kill" the details so the whole construct can serve its purpose.

The right lens can also help. I am doing more and more research into why various lenses were designed to function the way that they are. I started getting interested when I discovered that the lenses that made the best black and white images for me were one with under corrected spherical aberrations. Those would include the 135mm f2.0 I recently picked up, as well as the raft of 105mm f2.5 Nikons I've been collecting.

There is a similarity between them which is a signature of sorts. Stopped down they rival anything out there for sharpness  but at the wider apertures they create out of focus backgrounds that have a very pleasing aesthetic look. I know that the current mania, at least in the U.S., is to value a lens based on its ultimate sharpness. As I get more experience under my belt, and shoot more portraits, I'm beginning to think there are other considerations in lens design (and performance) that are equally, if not more, important.

My friends wonder sometimes why I seem to have a preference for older optics. It's not that I want the burden of manually focusing these lenses, it's that they render photographs of things in a way that seems both more pleasing and more real to me.....regardless of which camera I use them on.

Besides, if everyone photographs with the same little trio of zoom lenses then visual life gets boring.

reflect and direct.