Show the work. Always be ready to show the work.

You can talk a good game but at some point in the creative process the people with the checkbooks are going to want to see your work. Sure, you can send them to your website and they can look at your work on their phone. If you're lucky they'll have their laptop handy and then they can see your work on a 13 inch, coffee-spotted screen with lots of glare and reflection layered over the top. Just what you need in order to show off the nuances of your incredibly detailed technique, right?

Or....you could actually make prints as you go merrily along your career path, and with enough prints you could put them into a book, or an album. You could make a book of images with similar styles and your work would look really cool when you showed it to clients in the right now, on the spur of the moment, in a quiet time between rounds at happy hour. 

The benefit of the book I made above is that the 10 inch by 10 inch prints which grace every spread are more than big enough to show detail and craft and yet, closed, the 10 x10 book is wonderfully portable. It fits in your camera bag, or your computer bag, or whatever you carry around with you. 

It works in almost any light. Your client can hold it in their hands or they can put it down on a table and it will lay flat. They get to leaf through your art at their leisure, their pace. They can stop from time to time to tell you once again that you are a genius.

Multiple people can see it from multiple angles. If the power goes out you can step into the fresh air and still show your work. It's like magic. And taking the time to print your images, sequence your images, produce a book and carry it with you shows the possible source of work and income in front of you that you are serious. You've thought about your work, its presentation, and it's overall consistency. It shows you've got skin in the game. Commitment. 

Wow. That's a lot of marketing packed into a small, square space. Get serious. Make a book of your work. Just a small one with 30 photographs. How hard can it be? You are serious about all this, right?

Lydia in quality control. Why it's good to leave the "entourage" at home sometimes...

I constantly come across photographers who can't seem to work on their own. They need assistants at their sides even for the most rudimentary of jobs. In some quarters it feels like a fashionable thing to have plenty of people around to get the photographer coffee or a juice box. I can imagine that some would never consider carrying their own gear or opening their own doors. And, of course, they would be lost without someone to keep constant tabs on their smartphone to alert the photographer instantly if the need arose for an emergency Instagram posting...

Beyond their own entourages many photographers absolutely need the minute by minute supervision of art directors and clients to help guide them through the process of.....taking photographs.  How do I know this? I talk to other members of these photographer's teams, like the digital techs.  The prevailing trend is to shoot everything tethered to the biggest screen one can find. With a tethered monitor the group centric photographer can crowdsource things like: taste, vision, style, color preferences and even simultaneous post production looks. Imagine being in a creative business without ever having to make a creative decision on your own. How marvelous (dripping sarcasm...). 

I can just imagine the scene when a client whimsically decides to proffer the idea of shooting outside, on a city street. "Can you imagine it?" she might exclaim, "We could have the models walking briskly down the sidewalk--- and get this--- they would be holding our products!!!!" The entourage squeals with delight as the second first assistant calls a rental house to source a digital tech cart with bigger wheels....maybe even a servo motor for self propulsion.  Another second second assistant calls to make sure the digital tech's chair can be attached as well. 

Now we have ten or twelve or more people moving down the side walk with two models. The photographer is shooting and then craning his neck to see what he got on the monitor as it rolls by on the cart with big wheels. His girlfriend and a series of first, second and third assistants chime in to either critique or to make "oooooohing" and "ahhhhhing" sounds of mystified approval while the digital tech struggles to both add a post production "look" to the material while correcting the exposure ("no real artist understands how to use a meter!") and simultaneously uploading selected images to Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. One layer of the entourage has their cellphones at the ready, doing behind the scenes photos of the "team" working while a second layer of second assistants snaps them snapping selfies as well. 

Doesn't really matter how good or bad the photographs are as everything is destined to go along to a retoucher who will pay for his new boat by fixing the mess the entourage created. Always sad though when no one in the entourage pays attention to the cross walks and the digital imaging cart gets creamed by a bus. Thank God the fourth assistant called the rental house to specify an ejector chair for the the digital tech. Oh, photography has become so much more difficult and unpredictable since the invention of digital imaging. 

Written after realizing that the photos above came from a project I did in New York city with no entourage. Just a bag of film, a couple of cameras, a light meter and a few lights. The ad agency didn't send along an art director. The client didn't demand a stylist or a make-up person. Was it really so easy to do good, fun work back then? Yes. I generally find that having an entourage of any size doubles the amount of time anything takes, homogenizes all creativity, quadruples the budgets and puts the photographer into a situation where he has to listen to inane chatter all day long. 

If I had to work this way I'd sign up for a different occupation. Preferably one that could be done far from the madness of group think. #teamworkSucks

Just for fun. From the Zach Theatre production of "Alice in Wonderland."

©2016 Kirk Tuck

A favorite, quirky image from the Zach production of "One Man, Two Guvners."

Ahhh. Settling in with a great stage shooting combination. The Sony A7Rii and the 70-200mm f4.0 OSS lens. The camera is quiet silent and the files that emerge from it as 18 megapixel Jpegs are noise free at nearly every ISO. The images are sharp, detailed and nicely colored.  The lens is equally silent and convincingly sharp at its fastest aperture. Add to this the five axis image stabilizations that combines the stabilization of the lens with the stabilization in the body and you've got a rock solid platform to shoot with in any theatre environment. Need more reach? Put the camera in the 42 megapixel mode and then selection "APS-C" as your working crop. Now you've got an extra 100mm of reach with the same resolution you had in the first place (more or less).

I supplement this with the a6300 for the wide end and I'm totally happy. And it all fits nicely into my smallest, Husky tool bag ---- you know, the one I bought for $19. A warm sense of satisfaction just settled over me......of course, it could just be the jalapeños from my breakfast taco....

One 50mm lens scratched off the list.

Just a quick note for any fellow Sony A7x users who may also be looking into getting a new 50mm lens for their camera system. I took a trip to the somewhat hallowed halls of Precision Camera this morning, credit card in hand, to investigate the inexpensive lens option from Sony; the 50mm f1.8 FE.

The lens is small and light and looks visually well matched for the smaller body. I had done some research online and understood that one must load the latest firmware in their A7ii or A7Rii in order for the lens to function optimally. I did that a few days ago.

My sales associate handed me the lens and I took the Olympus lens and adapter off my A7ii body replacing it with the inexpensive ($250) Sony. It clicked nicely into place. I turned my camera on and started attempting to focus on various things around the well lit store. The lens never goes directly to the point of sharp focus, instead it does a little jig to the point, then past the point on one side and back, past the point on the other side; only then does it finally lock into place. The jigs are small but noticeable and they take their toll on the time to sharp focus. I tried again and again with the same results. It's not as though I was trying to focus on a white wall or some smooth, beige carpeting. No, I was intentionally giving the lens an easy way in.

I was trying to focus on the hard edges of shelves or the bold lettering on posters. I also tried a human face but the lens was less than competent. I can't see anyone being happy with that level of AF performance regardless of how good or bad the lens is optically. I am flabbergasted that one popular reviewer declared the lens to be a great value and a good performer.

I looked around at some of the new stuff coming into the store, then shoved my credit card back into my cast iron wallet, snapped the wallet shut and headed for the door.

The search for the most satisfying 50mm for the A7 series continues.... I guess I won't be able to get away with the cheap options...

Deconstructing large projects in order to learn how to structure them better next time. Tune out now if you don't want to hear about video projects....

I've been working on a project since the beginning of May. Not everyday but the timeline of this video project wound itself through every week and sometimes we were shooting for days at a time. Some of the time spent was involved in chasing weather; which is almost as unpredictable as photographing toddlers with pets... Some of the time was spent scheduling interviews and more time was spent actively re-imagining the project as we worked through it. Here are things that I learned:

First off, I spent way too much time worrying about camera selection and technical stuff. When you shoot a corporate video there is always the need to use existing, archival footage and there is generally the need to grab stock photography of things that can't be conveniently shot in the moment. You won't be shooting an ice storm in Texas in early June.... This basically means that you are cutting together all kinds of visual content and some of it won't be state of the art. At first I felt compelled to either rent a high end, dedicated video camera or to use the Sony A7Rii because it's 4K video (when shot in the "super 35" mode) is really wonderful. Transcoding the 4K video into a 1080p timeline gets you close to what you might get shooting with a 1080p camera that does 10 bit 4:2:2.

I quickly abandoned those options because a lot of the anticipated production was outdoors, in the rain and in heavy duty weather. I knew I wanted a camera with a fixed lens and at least the promise of weather sealing. If I was going to lose a camera to water damage I sure didn't want it to be a pricey rental or my main photography camera and, shooting in the driving rain hardly shows off either the dynamic range of a sensor or the overall detail and resolution of the system.

I ended up using the two Sony RX10 cameras I already owned; the RX10ii and the RX10iii, with the "3" being my "go to" camera. I love the heft and feel of that body. One thing I discovered as I got more and more experienced and comfortable shooting with the "3" was that the 4K footage emerging from the camera was even better than I expected it to be. It is so detailed that I would think twice before using it in a studio situation while interviewing people who expect to be visually flattered. I turned the sharpening down in the profiles I used to create the 4K content.

Speaking of rain, I used some inexpensive Goja rain covers for the cameras and the covers got a real workout. In several instances we were able to shoot in rain coming down at a rate of several inches per hour. With clear filters sealed onto the front ring of the lens with electrical tape, and everything covered, the cameras emerged dry after hours of use. I carried microfiber cleaning cloth under my own poncho to dry the front surfaces of the filters. It all worked well.

The next thing I learned is that the noise from "small" sensors that people seem to worry about is largely non-existent at normal ISOs and, even with higher ISOs, is largely mitigated when you are reducing all of the information from a 4k file into a smaller, 1080p file. It's a four times reduction and the noise, as you can imagine, gets reduced in kind. In fact, we wound up using the RX10iii for almost all of the primary "footage."

When we sat down and compared our content with samples from the Sony A7R2, the FS-5 and the RX10's we found the work done in daylight, and in well lit interview situations, to be so close as to be, in some cases, indistinguishable. Since almost all of our video work was done in lit situations, or in gloomy and inclement weather, the additional dynamic range that may have been a feature of the most expensive and complex cameras was not required. That meant we spent less time trying to become  experts in the ways of S-Log and more time was spent actually working on the project.

Then I re-learned that the director of a project, which contains a number of interviews, must craft questions for people who are not used to being interviewed; questions that lead them efficiently into getting what is needed for the program. We weren't doing any muckraking, investigative journalism, and we were really trying to get the authentic story for our project, but many times questions delivered from the client were far too wide ranging and open. There is the fantasy amongst the general public that film makers will set up the cameras and microphones, get everyone settled and then just let things roll. Many people love the attention of being interviewed and would talk for hours, if we let them. It's important to step in, redirect, and let the "talent" know exactly what you are looking for. They might say something great on their own but chances are it will be buried under a lot of other words, and most of the words will arrive without the pauses that would allow editing cuts. If I had my way every single person in front of the camera would be scripted. I know, I know; that's not the way it works.... but being able to craft the messages, and the time spent delivering them, is crucial to the pace and length of a video.

My two moments of either hubris, or misplaced confidence came at the same location. I was shooting interviews in warehouse with so-so lighting. I brought my own light, via a couple of LED fixtures, but I still found myself working at ISO 800. No, the problem was not electronic noise, it was an issue with focus. I had the camera on a stable tripod, I composed the scene carefully, I lit the faces to match the ambient light but with about 3/4 of a stop more pop. I set the camera to use the face detection AF and watched it engage; the box turned green. Then I stepped to the side of the camera to conduct the interview. Big mistake. The camera was interested in the subject for about a minute and then started to lose interest and focus on stuff in the background. By the time I noticed there was an issue we were almost done with the interview. We got sharp "footage" at the front and the back of the interview but the stuff in between was dicey. The camera requires a fairly high light level to work its face detection magic with any reliability.

The only thing that saved the footage was the content from the RX10ii that Ben was using as a "B" camera, from a different angle. We were able to use the front end and back end footage from the "A" camera, and the audio from the "A" camera, but depended on Ben's footage for everything in the middle. That, and lots of cutaways to still shots that reinforced that particular interview. For the rest of the project I switched to manual focusing. But if you really need to see exact, fine focus with the RX10iii you'll need to exit the video mode and magnify in the still mode. The magnification in the video mode is only to 5.8X while the still mode allows more than double that. Once you get the lens in focus it's brilliant. Getting there can be another story...

The second bit of bad luck was nothing but hubris on my part. We were trying to do our interview with one person during a driving rain storm. Real pounding, torrential rain, and it was banging into the  uninsulated metal roof like a full percussion section of an orchestra that only does punk. I pinned a lavaliere microphone to the subject and decided to go for it anyway. After hours and hours and hours in all sorts of audio restoration programs I finally had to throw in the towel. You can't separate bad, loud noise from a voice once they are all mixed together into an audio stew. I should have moved the whole production to a different location; even though time and logistics were not on our side.

We talked in an earlier post about making a packing list so you don't pull a dumb stunt like I did. Came out during another rain storm expecting dismal lighting and as soon as I got on location the sun peaked out from behind a cloud just to remind me that I'd left the variable neutral density filter at home.

So, lots of travel miles were logged. We saw a lot of rain. We shot a lot of video. What did we do right?

We worked to a strong initial script. There was some back and forth to refine it but a good script provides a backbone for a project. You might not follow everything in your script verbatim; plans change when you see the location (and the talent), but it gets you thinking in terms of the overall message, and of the continuity required to pull it off.

When you get to a location to shoot video don't let your "video blinders" allow you to ignore the still photography potential of a place. If you have a subject being interviewed on video you might find that you can shoot a ton of different angles as photographs, and you might have more control over the image than you would in video. We inserted a couple of images that were taken with a 14mm lens on full frame and they work very, very well. Having lots of stills means you have a library of possibilities, in addition to the primary footage, when you head indoors to edit. They can add a lot more spice to your project.

Work hard to select your music bed before you start editing. A good music track will inform the timing and rhythm of your edit and make it all work more fluidly. In my recent experience, if you've taken care to consider your (approval) audience and have worked hard to find music that works you might never even hear from the committee about musical choices. There is an ocean of stock music out in the web. Make sure you buy it and use it legally.

Keep track of hours and expenses as you go along. We tend to bill by the project and almost never by the line item, but we keep track of details for those rare moments when we have to justify something. Good accounting also informs you about ways to do projects more profitably in the future. If you grossly under estimated your mileage on the current job (for example) knowing where you went wrong means you probably won't make the same mistake when you estimate the next one...

Speaking of billing. Be sure to be clear about what is included in each step. Adding days requires additional fees. Adding new sections adds fees. After the approval of the rough cut changes of images, music and content requires additional fees. Any major edits after the approval of the "final" review edit require additional editing fees and administration fees. These are routine in order to compensate us for our time. The agreement on additional fees also focuses clients on getting to internal consensus in the first place, rather than on the other side of the editing process.

Back to what we did right... We stayed flexible for the client's benefit. If we needed a good shot of hydro-electric power generation and we couldn't find the right one in a stock house we drove out and found just the right one and grabbed good content with our cameras. If we missed a great shot because of weather we sucked it up and re-scheduled for the next opportunity. Larger production houses, with staffers and freelancers (large crews in general), don't have the luxury of going into overtime without killing the budget. We'll do it if we can get a better shot and a better outcome.

One place where we ended up practicing overkill was in our audio (after the disaster with the rain noise). While I felt that the cameras could be counted on to provide clean audio straight in I had also read lots and lots of articles on the web leading any reasonable reader to believe that the audio pre-amplifiers in any but the most expensive production cameras ($20,00+) are absolute crap.

With that in mind we ran everything into a digital audio recorder with very clean pre-amplifiers, XLR connectors, phantom power and all the right tools. But, on the last day of shooting, I decided to take the signal from my Sennheiser wireless lav mics into a little, passive Beachtek D2A (to make sure the balanced and unbalanced connections were compatible) and directly into the camera. Surprise, there was no readily discernible difference in sound quality between that method and the more complex, dual sound set up we'd been using. Seems that Sony is actually pretty good at making audio circuits in most of their cameras. Who could have known?

Here is some random stuff that I jotted down in my notebook during our shoots:

The sandwiches at the Redbud Cafe in Blanco, Texas are very good. So is the poblano potato soup.

When shooting in storms add to your kit --- extra pants, an extra pair of socks, waterproof shoes, a second set of shoes to drive home in if you are too tired to scrap mud off the first shoes. Bring a couple of towels. You'll want to dry off once you get into your car. Bring a plastic seat cover, your leather seats will adore you.

Always bring a good flashlight. You will drop something vital in the dark.

Video always looks sharpest when the color balance is right on the money. Make a custom white balance whenever you can.

My cheap, Ikan shoulder rig worked very, very well in conjunction with the camera system's image stabilization. Using a shoulder rig can serve as a tripod substitute (for a short period of time).

Log your footage at the end of every shooting day. Don't make it harder to find or take the risk of overwriting a memory card.

Always bring two tripods. You never know when you'll want to shoot simultaneous "B" roll on a day with no scheduled assistant.

If you shoot with Sony cameras you can never have too many batteries in your case.

If you shoot with multiple Sony cameras be thankful that all the ones you probably want to shoot with share the same batteries.

Bring water with you.

Fill up the tank whenever you hit the halfway point on the gas gauge. When things happen quickly one hundred miles away you may not have time to stop and fill up en route. When the power is out the pumps don't work.

The Sugar Shack Bakery in Wimberly, Texas makes great pastries.

Thyme and Dough, a cafe and bakery in Dripping Springs, Texas, has great coffee. Really great coffee.

Ask interviewees to take a little pause after each few sentences. You'll need somewhere you can cut.

Always put your stuff back in the same place. Batteries always go in one pouch. That pouch always goes in the right side pocket of the camera bag, etc. It means you can find stuff quickly, even in the dark.

If you are recording audio (dialog, interviews, narration) always wear a good pair of "over the ear" headphones. Buds won't hack it. Better than nothing but never as good as the big, goofy ones.

Build your edits carefully because about half the time you'll get a change request that blows them right apart. Make sure changing an edit doesn't take out most of your timeline.

Be sure to work with an editor who is smarter and better than you. (Not hard in my case...).

Figure out how to make all of this fun.

Realize that video is much harder and more time consuming than photography. Rush back to embrace your happy career as a photographer!!!!


Added note (June 14th): Final cut now officially approved at all levels, including, but not limited to, the CEO. Celebration at the VSL headquarters begins immediately....

Sunday rambles and notes. The wrapping up of a project. Eating Voodoo Donuts. Shooting with old glass. Dutifully wearing sunscreen at swim practice. Going for a walk.

The ongoing adventures of "Modern Camera Meets Archeological Lens Find." 

With the long, involved video project coming to an end (soon?) I've been able to get back into a regular rhythm with my swim practices. Four tough days in a row. This morning we had one time world recorder holder in the 200 freestyle, Ricky Berens, on deck as our masters coach. We warmed up with a 700 mixed yards, segued into 15 x100's in sets that went: 100 yards kick, 100 yards individual medley, and one hundred yards freestyle; repeat five times. Each 100 of freestyle was supposed to be a descend; which means each one gets faster as you go through the rounds. These were followed by two sets 1200 yard in each. That set pattern was: 300 yards, 3 x100 yards, 200 yards, 4x50 yards, 100 yards, 4 x 25 sprints. 

It was a tough 4,600 yards piled on top of yesterday's 5,000+ under the disciplined gaze of coach, Chris Kemp. And Thursday and Friday were so long ago I can remember the details, only the sore muscles over most of my body.... And that's what we do for fun around here.

After workout and breakfast today I grabbed the newish (to me) Sony A7ii along with the 60mm f1.5 Olympus FT lens, and headed downtown for a walk. This is practically our first really uncomfortably warm day of 2016. It's a bit amazing since it is already the middle of June. It's the combination of heat and the humidity from weeks of torrential rains that makes it some unpleasant. The hike and bike trails around the downtown lake are still flooded and the dam is still releasing flood waters through three gates. Thank goodness the camera and lens are so small and light (comparatively speaking); they were comfortable to tote around during my walk. My Sunday route is about four miles and takes a bit more than an hour to complete. It's a good cross train to the swimming and I can feel the swim muscles relax as I go along.

On my walk I decided to go in and give the world famous, Portland Oregon founded donut shop, Voodoo Donuts, a try. I ordered three donuts to go but after eating the "Voodoo Doll" which is a yeast donut with chocolate covering, filled with raspberry jam and decorated in a voodoo style I couldn't even think of eating the other two so when a person on the street asked if I could help out with some food I handed him the bag.... The donut I had was really great but from now on, I'm only ordering one per visit.

I'm spending a lot of time shooting this particular lens and camera combination set to black and white. Don't know why, exactly, but it feels right to me...

I saw this logo on the back of a truck and thought it would make a nice insignia for 

the Kirk Tuck Photography jumpsuits we should be wearing to all our location assignments. 

A bit of branding never hurt...I guess. 

Sorry about the architectural shot. Old habits die hard. But while we are here....

Check out the very small amount of vignetting in the corners of this lens 

that was designed for the half frame format. 

I don't know anything about their pizza but I like the name. A lot. 

Now getting ready for the week ahead. Final approvals on the video, here we go.

The enigmatic 50mm lens for Sony A7x. Continued...

Of course, in the interim, while deciding on what constitutes the ultimate 50mm lens for the Sony A7 cameras, I am pressing the 60mm f1.5 Olympus Pen FT lens into service and I must admit that I'm liking both the focal lengths and the overall rendering of this ancient lens very much.

It works very well with Sony's focus peaking and, though one of the expensive options I've explored may be sharper, the old Olympus lens stands up very well. The only reasonable objection I can see to it is the slight vignetting in the corners at most focal lengths and apertures. And, in fact, I am finding this flaw a bit endearing given that the lens was computed to work with half frame cameras and was never (as far I my research can uncover) intended to cover or work with the full sized, 35mm frame.

That it works as well as it does is a bit of a miracle. How strange that this combination can actually deliver sharp and contrasty images!

The combination certainly looks wonderful. The lens is compact and fast, and, even with an adapter to convey its charms to the Sony cameras, it is a small and graceful package, made entirely of metal and glass. It's most charming feature is that I have already paid for it many, many years ago.

On another note: A reader named, Ken, left a comment a few days ago. He was complimenting my writing skills (Thank you, Ken!) and at the same time he was honestly telling me that he doesn't really like the style of photography I usually show on the blog. He also stated that he would be fine if he never again saw a Kirk Tuck image of architecture again. I feel his pain. I am not an architectural photographer and sometimes I get foolishly carried away with the promise of a new lens or camera and am not patient enough to wait for the right subject matter to roll along in order to test out the new toys. I guess I often default to shooting what's available. I'll try to do better.

But this all got me thinking about what people might consider to be my style or why they might question the kind of work I do for clients. It's hard to show client work. I'm reticent to show the many, many, many portraits I shoot in a year because they are created to fit a space on a website or in a capabilities brochure and are not unique nor inspiring but are instead the bread and butter of a real photography business. I also hesitate to show work portraits because I sometimes need permission from the subject and the company in order to share them.  What this tells me is that I should spend a good bit more time lining up fun, personal portraits to shoot.

But even with non-portrait work there is a weird dissonance between what I show and what many, many other photographers show as work. I try to show actual, daily work; not the once in a lifetime, big budget shoot or work created speculatively that masquerades as commissioned work because this is not a "portfolio" for me as much as it is a dialog about the process of a photographer's life. I can cherry pick from the hundreds of thousands of photographs I've created and show more exciting work but it would hardly be a reflection of the reality of the industry as I see it. As I live it.

This became clear to me on a project I was working on last week. When we started talking about it we were talking about portraits in unusual locations, created with dramatic lighting, made with contrasty and layered lighting. We (the client and I) talked about making each one exquisite and beautiful; reminiscent of some of the earlier work they had seen in my portfolio. This was a first conversation with the graphic designer. But, of course she would need to run all of this by her supervisor who, we found out, would have to run this by the V.P. of marketing, who then felt duty bound to run it by the founder and CEO of the company.

At each step the concept got watered down. First they supervisor balked at the cost of shooting the portraits on unique locations. Couldn't we just bring everyone into a conference room? Then the marketing V.P. stepped in to have his say. He didn't like contrasty photos with dark shadows on the shadow side of the face. Could we flatten out the light but still make the images "exciting"?

By the time the founder got involved the discussion was more about which shade of gray, seamless paper would look best in the background behind the shadowless images, shot in the small conference room and cropped to head and shoulders.  And he nixed the idea of shooting squares...

Which all left me to wonder how in the world we've ever gotten through the creative killing labyrinth of business relatively unscathed enough times in my career in order to have anything at all to put into the portfolio, much less to have enough material to place in the blog on a daily basis... That I have anything at all to show seems sometimes to be a miracle to me. Maybe that's why I write....

Choosing a 50mm lens for the Sony A7 series.

I've written many times about my admiration for the 50mm focal length on a full frame camera. It's a chameleon of a focal length, straddling both wide angle and telephoto camps when used correctly. After years and years of experience with the 50mm, in so many varied circumstances, it just seems natural to me for my photography. But here I am with no real 50mm lens to use on the two bodies I'm using. Well, I do have an adapter and an ancient 50mm Nikon f1.4 that predates the whole concept of auto indexing lenses but I think that one wasn't really computed to do justice to the high density sensors in today's camera. That, and the adapter makes for a bulky set up.

Since my slate is clean right now I am considering all options.

The ones I have identified as possibilities are:

The (cheap) Sony 50mm 1.8 FE that just hit the market. About $ 249

The Zeiss Loxia (current frontrunner in my popularity contest of lenses) 50mm f2.0. This is an electronically coupled lens but it is manual focus only and the MF is a mechanical one with a hard stop at infinity (+). About $ 950.

The Zeiss Batis ( fun and sexy looking) 50mm f1.8, which is probably very similar to the Loxia but with the addition of autofocus and a cool, disco read-out of f-stop and distance in an LCD panel on the lens...  Around the same price as the Loxia.

The Sony 55mm f1.8 OSS super lens that features optical image stabilization in lens. Fully autofocus and reputed to be exquisitely sharp by some reviewers; also around $ 900.

The Rokinon or Samyang (identical) 50mm f1.4 at $ 399. (manual everything). Reputed to be sharp, with nice out of focus rendering.

And then there are legions of 50mm lenses made for older cameras that can be adapted for use with the mirrorless A7 bodies. But which one to choose?  I've always been partial to Olympus 50mm lenses for the OM system; they are sharp, small, light and usually available pretty inexpensively....

Are there any of you out there who might have an informed opinion about any of the options listed above? I'd love to hear them....

Thanks.

Every once in a while it's nice to take a day off and go to a museum. Surprisingly, I took a camera with me even though I had a phone in my pocket!!!

It's a been a non-stop month of still photography and video production. There's a certain amount of mental wear-and-tear that goes along with juggling a lot of things all at once. So, after a quick assignment downtown this morning, and a quick lunch, I invited Belinda to go over to the Blanton Museum with me to see the newly hung show of Peruvian photography. 

As is typical of the Blanton Museum, the show was set up nicely, the lighting was good and the curators did a nice job with their selection. There was a good sampling of really well done, black and white photojournalism balanced with some exquisite, large format, fine art landscapes and, a bit of experimental work tossed in for good measure. Parts of the permanent collection of modern paintings have changed; one of our favorite Ben Shahn paintings is gone but there's a nice Franz Kline that I hadn't seen before, just down from an Andy Warhol painting of Farah Fawcett. Eclectic, for sure. 

I took along a camera and a short zoom lens (24-70mm) but I had no serious intention of taking photos any more meaningful than snapshots for the proverbial, endless scrapbook. After our visit to the museum I came back into the real world when I checked my messages and saw the latest round of changes to our latest project. Why do CEOs seem to always wait to chime in after all the approval stages are done and the project is in the final phase? I should be used to it, after all, I have been doing this long enough to know the routine.

On a totally different and very happy note: the house next door; the one that took three painful and acrimonious years to complete, finally sold to a very nice family who just happen to be mutual friends of my friend, Ellen. Same politics, same basic philosophy and great taste in friends....

Finally, a happy ending to the endless construction stories....

How I screwed up yesterday without screwing up my whole project.

I got a call a few days ago about a video project. Could I come out and do a very short interview that would be inserted into a larger project? I've come to like shooting real interviews and I don't mind the quasi-interview process that is prefaced to the interview subject like this: "Hi Mr. Smith. We've got a thirty second gap that we're holding for you in our video. Can you touch on this (the "big" subject) and then say, quickly, how our company helped to solve the problem for your people?" I've come to see these little, episodic plug-ins as extremely valuable; especially when requested by the CEO who "owns" the budget for your overall project.

The brief was to shoot video of one person on location in another city and to come away with about thirty seconds of great messaging. We didn't need B-roll so I left Ben behind to tweak our ongoing edit, promising I wouldn't come back with anything that would run over 32 seconds. Something about  retiming all the audio. 

I'd scouted the intended location before and, since it was a sunny day, didn't think I would need lights; but I brought some anyway. While I had been shooting with the RX10 cameras I capriciously decided to mix things up a little bit. Make a few changes 95% of the way into a project....

I packed two cameras: The A7Rii and the most recently acquired A7ii.  My intention was to shoot with the A7Rii and just bring along the other camera for snapshots and back-up. I packed three lenses; the Zeiss 24-70mm, the Sony 18-105mm G lens and the Rokinon 85mm f1.5 cine lens, with an adapter.

The night before I sat at my desk and went through the A7Rii menu several times to make sure all the menu settings were on target and that I'd set up the function menu for video capture. My intention was to test out the 1080p output of the camera since the final output for the project would also be 1080p. We went into the project with the idea of shooting everything in 4K but a certain percentage of the material we ended up using was archival footage (fortunately only from a couple of years back) which was 1080p so we ended up putting everything on a 1080p timeline. Everything looked great and the camera was ready to go. I stuck it in the case along with the rest of the gear and packed the car.

The trip to Wimberley, Texas was really pleasant. Ranch to Market Route 12 is really pretty, with lots of rolling hills and fun, gentle "S" curves to glide through. I'd had the Honda CRV serviced the day before and the car just hummed along. The cherry on the ice cream was the almost total lack of other traffic. Almost like a holiday from the relentless Austin traffic...

I got to Wimberley (hippie, artist, trustfunder, escape destination for exhausted Austinites....) and found our location in the local community center. I found a room with a bank of windows on one side and no real visual or audio distractions and started setting up. I'd use the soft, indirect, window light as my main light and bounce an LED panel off the ceiling for some vague fill light.

At this point the client arrived and started talking to me in detail about the many facets of the overall project. I paid as much attention as I possibly could but in the back of my mind the countdown clock until the arrival of our talent was clicking away with urgency.

I pulled out a camera, formatted the 64 gigabyte SDXC card and slapped a microphone mixer/impedance matching device to the bottom. I attache a quick release plate to the bottom of the audio device and put the combination on the tripod. I've been wanting to try the 85mm Rokinon 1.5 (cine) lens on the A7R2 for some time so I put it on the camera.

My client stood in while I roughed in the composition for the shot. She also held a white test target so I could get a nice custom white balance (God, that makes the whole editing/grading process so much easier....). I loved the look of the shot so we marked the position for the subject on the floor with some orange tape. The last task before we got started was to set up the wireless microphone and get the levels set. During this whole process I am carrying on a somewhat technical and detail-laden conversation with my client. Lots of stuff to hammer out...

The subject walks in and we chat for a few minutes. I get the microphone position on his dress shirt and show him how to drop the cord inside his shirt and run the wire out the bottom (out of frame) and around to the radio transmitter I'm attaching to his belt. We discussed what the video project needed and what we needed him to say.

Just before we got rolling I went to change the shutter speed and the camera told me that I couldn't do that function in the current setting. The warning showed me that while we were in the movie mode the camera was set to movie/program exposure. Odd, I thought. I was almost certain I'd set that menu to manual weeks ago when I first got the A7Rii. No matter, I found the setting, changed it and then modified the shutter speed. The finder info told me we were shooting in XAVC at 50 mbs and 24 fps. I was happy and ready.

The comp of the shot and the quick fall off behind the subject was exactly what I was looking for. The interviewee was at ease in front of the camera and had a good, strong voice. I had him say the same thing a number of times and we even stopped and reviewed a couple of takes in the process. By the end of the fifteen or twenty minutes of "hands-on" engagement we all felt good about what we'd shot and I started packing up. The cameras got the lenses pulled off and put into their neoprene pouches. The cameras got their body covers and dropped into their protective cases. Everything went into the big, rolling Husky case and I headed back to the buzzing beehive of Austin. I was feeling professional; very satisfied with the work I'd just done and the ease with which we were able to coach the interviewee into giving us exactly what we needed.

I dragged the case into the studio and then went in to the house to find Ben. Since he is doing the primary editing for our project I thought he'd want to come into the studio and help choose the best take to include.

He came along and we headed to the workstation. I pulled the Sony A7Rii out of the case and pulled the memory card. I stuck it into the card reader and opened Final Cut Pro. On the desktop I popped open the folder in which the video clips should have been. There was nothing! It was blank. I went through every single folder on the card. Nothing. My panic started to well up. I'd have to call the client and re-shoot. Yikes. Ben suggested we put the card back in the camera and see if we could see the images on the review screen. No. Nothing. Another wave of panic.

Then I started entertaining the improbable. Was this the right camera? Had I somehow gotten the cameras mixed up? Me, the perfect technician making a technical mistake? Holy crap! I calmly asked Ben to hand me the other camera body. I pulled the card, stuck it in the card reader and....voila....there were all the precious little files. In my haste to set up in Wimberley I had grabbed the wrong camera. I'd just shot my first video on the A7ii in the middle of a real job. Something I always avoid, just in case.

My initial action was relief, followed by sheer embarrassment. What a huge fuck-up it is to choose the wrong camera. I must be loosing my marbles.

But then we looked at the cameras carefully and noticed that they are almost completely identical and, if I take off my glasses it's hard (almost impossible) for me to differential the little model insignias just to the left of the lens on the front of the camera.

Ben was gracious and acted like this was just something that happened to everyone. But I suspect he was thinking...."Ah, so this is how the inevitable decline begins......"

My two takeaways? The video from the A7ii looked great and it cuts in perfectly. I did my actual job correctly even if I did screw up in grabbing cameras. And? Bring bright orange tape. Put a swatch of it on the shooting camera to differentiate. I got lucky this time; what if I'd still been trying to shoot everything in 4K?