Some outtakes from my Thursday portrait session with Michelle. Nikon D800e and Nikon D700.

The ones with the background light are from the D800e + 105mm f2.5 and the ones with no background light are from the D700 + 85mm f1.8.

What the hell happened to the weather? It was warm and pleasant in Austin yesterday, now looking for anti-freeze for my camera!

Studio Portrait. Wholly unrelated to this post other than 

as a continuing example of my work....

Just before I went to bed last night I took Studio Dog out into the backyard and we smelled the air and luxuriated in the warm, quiet feel of the night. When I crawled out of bed this morning there were wind gusts of 25-30 miles per hour and the temperature was a soggy, cold 43 degrees. There is still condensation on the glass panes of the front door. 

I dragged myself out of the house and over to the pool where it was still 43 degrees and, after standing on the deck marveling at our collective insanity, I plunged into the water with the rest of my aquatic crew. The water temperature was a balmy 80 degrees and we had our usual Saturday morning fun; getting in 4300 yards of good swimming. I must tell you though that getting out of the pool, with the wind and cold, was a bracing experience which motivated a fast walk to the locker rooms some hundred yards away.

When I got back home I turned on the heater, something I thought we were finished with until the Fall. 

back to photography. I was feeling a bit unmotivated to re-engage with my own photography lately. I'm sure it's a result of what has been my very divided attention. I knew that the best medicine was to shoot something I would really enjoy, with someone I would really enjoy photographing. I sent out a text to my friend, Michelle, in hopes that she would have time to come by for a portrait session. She was happy to oblige and we hit the studio on Thurs. afternoon. 

We did what we usually do when shooting for me or for Michelle; we sat in the living room of the house with Belinda and caught up. We've known Michelle for decades. She was talent for dozens of our ads and TV commercials back in the days when I was working as a creative director at an ad agency and she's been an enthusiastic fan of my portrait work since our first sitting. 

After our long conversation we headed out to the studio and got to work. I'd set up a flash with a 47 inch, deep Octabox on it and it was positioned about six to eight inches behind a 4x4 foot Chimera panel frame that was covered with a 3/4 stop silk. The silk was there just to add one more layer of diffusion to the already soft light from the box. My studio is pretty "live" when it comes to light bouncing around so I placed a 4x4 foot black panel to the opposite side to lower the shadow values. 

The main light was about 45 degrees to one side of Michelle and up high enough so that the bottom of the Chimera frame was about six inches above her chin. This ensures that the neck just under the chin falls into shadow; it's a flattering look for just about everyone. I moved Michelle in as close to the light as I could get her without the light appearing in the frame. 

I also had a gridded light aimed at the Thunder Gray background directly behind Michelle. It served as a separation light. Both lights were triggered by a radio trigger in the hot shoe of the camera(s). 

I started out photographing with the Nikon D800e and the ancient Nikon 105mm f2.5, mostly nestled in at about f4 and worked with that combination for a while. Then, because I wanted to compare files, I switched out camera bodies and started using the 105mm with the D700. Then I switched lenses and tested the waters with both the 85mm f1.8 and the 24-120mm f4.0 zoom. 

I'll post some images when I get back to work on Monday. Right now I'm too excited to sit in front of the computer to post process. I'm anxious to get out and see how the Sigma 50mm Art lens comports itself. 

This is post #3600. That's a lot of post. Let's talk about lenses and other stuff.

Black's BBQ on Guadalupe St. in Austin.

I'm having a blast with the Nikon D700 camera and a small assortment of lenses. Nothing is new, nothing is luxe and nothing would turn heads if I was sporting it over one shoulder at a workshop or expo. 

One of the lenses I picked up recently was a nicely used 24mm f2.8 AF-d lens that was languishing on the used shelf at Precision Camera. I'm betting that if I made an enormous enlargement after shooting the lens wide open and I looked into the corners with my handy, dandy Zeiss 5x loupe I'd probably find the extreme corners to be a little soft. I wouldn't care because the lens seems to be nicely sharp and well behaved for the situations in which mortals photograph. 

I took the lens and the D700 camera with me when I went to Black's for lunch with art director/friend, Greg. The sliced brisket sandwich was sublime and the sausage link filled in the few empty spots not assuaged by the sandwich. Oh, the lens? I shot a couple of handheld shots of my lunch, just like a hipster, and I'm happy with the way it looks, works and focused.

As is my habit, whenever I have acquired a new lens, I took a spirited walk around the Austin downtown area, snapping away with the same camera and lens. I find it to be a nice combination even though I am usually averse to using wide angles for my personal work. I am thawing toward the wide angles and, at the same time I am softening on the whole issue of optical view finders. I still hope Nikon launches a professional camera with an EVF and that they decide to keep the current lens mount but I'm not holding my breath and I'm not holding these views against the D700 because it's from another era....

The other lens I'm having a good time with is the now elderly 24-120mm f4.0 zoom (the newest version).  It's funny, when I use this zoom I sometimes check the focal lengths I am using and typically find that I'm normally hanging around in the 35-70mm range. That's fine with me. I keep the longer and shorter focal lengths in reserve.

All the images below are from the 24/120mm f4.0. The lens has a plastic shell but is dense and seems solidly constructed. It's also pretty heavy but the zoom doesn't droop when you walk with it dangling by your side from a strap. Optically it's nicely sharp but does have ample distortion at the wider angle settings. The distortion should be correctable in Lightroom or PhotoShop but as with all camera and lens combos a software corner correction always spreads pixels and lowers sharpness. Starting with a high resolution sensor is preferred if you care passionately about perceived corner sharpness. 

The image just below is a handheld image from the long end of the 24/120mm. Again, I'm sure that a giant enlargement might show up all sorts of issues but anything smaller than 20x30 probably won't trigger your criticism.

Nikon D700 + Nikon 24-120mm f4.0. At the long end.

All the images below were done with the D700+24/120mm f4.0. It's a pretty fun rig. I don't mind the weight when I'm shooting for $$$ because there's so much else we're bringing along on a shoot that the heft is meaningless to me. But after spending a week getting used to the bigger Nikon stuff it was a relief to grab a Panasonic GH5 with which to shoot the product photo at the top of the blog post and to also take along to coffee in the late afternoon. Viva la difference.

The Lens That Came to Lunch.

It was supposed to be a casual lunch with one of my best friends. We'd eat some good Mexican food and just catch up a bit about business, photography and the business of photography; as well as the state of the world, families and everything else.

As soon as we order our combination plates (enchilada verdes, enchilada mole, shredded pork, pickled onions and rice and beans, my lunch companion pulled out a bubble-wrapped package and handed it to me. I unwrapped it to find a pristine Sigma Art Series 50mm f1.4 in a Nikon mount.

"Since you're back into some Nikon gear I thought you might want to re-evaluate this lens. I believe you owned one not too long ago...." He said with a devilish grin.

I'd forgotten just how big and heavy this lens is but I've never forgotten the amazing performance this lens used to deliver for me. As you know the 50mm normal lens is the sweet spot of focal lengths for me and I'm happy to have this one in the fold instead of relying on the on the 50mm AF-D 1.8.

It's a perfect match for the D700. And the D800e.

I picked up the check at lunch. It seemed the right thing to do...

There's always a lot of "G.I." (Garbage in) but not nearly enough "G.O." The dirty little secret of how photo detritus builds up like compound interest. Trying to remedy that.

Behind a solid core door with a deadbolt is a secure closet on the south side of my office. I used to keep equipment in there when equipment was "valuable" but now that it's run of the mill it hardly seems worth the effort to lock it up. One stack that has been on the shelves in the secure closet for nearly 22 years is a series of 16 metal slide cases. Each case holds hundreds of 35mm color slides. It was always my intention to go through the images one day and pull the gold out from the dreck but not once in the last two decades have I even opened one of the cases, much less made any real effort to edit down this ponderous pile of transparencies. 

All that changed when my mom passed away and my dad moved to an assisted living facility. My siblings and I ended up being with responsibility for going through the house where my parents lived for 38 years and separating things that could be donated from financial and personal papers that needed shredding or filing, from memorabilia that one or another of the siblings might actually treasure. We've saved nearly all of the snap shots from over the years and my brother has taken on the role of image archiver. The job of clearing out the house is overwhelming because my mom saved just about everything; from New Yorker Magazines as far back as the 1970's to boxes of pens which no longer write. Drawers and drawers of letters (old school social media!) and closets full of clothes which my sister routinely sent to my parents has holiday and birthday gifts. 

My brother-in-law has worked at Barnes and Noble Bookstores for many years and, as a direct result, the house was also filled with thousands of books; mostly on politics and history. After three months of diligent work by my spouse and my brother and his wife we're finally seeing light at the end of a long and cluttered tunnel. A few more weeks and we'll be able to donate everything left over to various charities. 

But this whole exercise has taught me a lot about our habits of acquisition and storage for all the material details of our lives. On a drive back home from one of my episodes of sorting and cleaning I started thinking about the sheer volume of photographic material I've generated over the course of my (happily) long career. In the last fifteen years almost all of the work has been done on digital cameras so much of the recent material exists only on CDs, DVDs and now in cloud storage and on large hard drives. But there are still tens of thousands of negatives, color slides and various format transparencies in little stashes all over my office. I've always had the best of intentions and figured that one day I'd sit down and sort through everything with the idea of ending up with a tidy little pile of stuff equaling about 100 of my best pieces. But, of course, I've never lifted a finger to get started. 

But here's the deal, if I was to drop over dead tomorrow it would fall to Benjamin and Belinda to sort through my stuff and make the same hard determinations that I and my siblings are making about my parent's stuff. It hardly seems fair to make a young person, or your partner of many years, shoulder the burden of trying to decide what possessions of yours you would have wanted preserved and what to throw away. It almost seems like a prison sentence. 

With that in mind I pulled the first box of slides from the closet and started sorting. There were hundreds of images; most of which I barely remember shooting and now realize that if I had really thought they were good I would have been using them and showing them from the moment of their creation. I tossed pretty much anything but photos of close family members. Images of Belinda were safe. There were no images of Ben in the mix because he came after these were all "safely" stored in their boxes and largely forgotten. 

I thought there would be more hesitation on my part to part with all this material. It's images that I took at parades in San Antonio, parks in Mexico city and endless urban landscapes. Most of it is the kind of horribly bland work we used to create in our early years before our vision started to narrow down and become more selective. After I went through the first box I started on the second and then stacked the third and fourth boxes next to my desk in readiness for their execution. 

Over the past few weeks I've tossed nearly 150 CD's that contained client work from the early days of digital. Most were files of headshots of people who might be retired but who most certainly no longer work for the start-ups that hired me and then evaporated into the industrial afterlife where bad ideas reside. If the contracting company no longer exists then there is no obligation of any kind to hang on to old work. Out it went. 

My family's goal is to have the parent's house cleaned out and placed onto the market by the end of May. This goal setting led me to set my own personal goal of having all the old materials I've unconsciously let pile up here in the studio sorted and tossed by the end of the Summer. Reducing the clutter is already helping me be more economical in my image creation. And more vicious in my editing. But mostly I see my newfound vigor for tossing old work (and older paperwork) as a gift to my son and my wife. The more stuff I dispose of the less of their lives they will spend digging through it all and grappling with the guilt and uncertainty of what to keep and what to throw. 

Fortunately we're not packrats in the house. We don't bring new stuff in unless we get rid of old stuff. If only I'd used the same rules in the studio.....

Friday. A good day to take out the trash.

If you want to save stuff for the kids try CDs, bonds or stocks, they'll appreciate them

more than a framed print of an anonymous space in downtown San Antonio.

Sufficiently Sufficient?

Performer at SXSW in Austin, Texas. Several years ago.

Sufficiency. It's a word that Ming Thein uses and I'm starting to warm up to the concept. The nature of many photographers over the years is to continually strive to own and use the absolute best gear they can possibly afford at any given time. My pursuit of the Nikon D810 and then the Sony A7Rii is an example of that. My clients were perfectly happy with "lesser" cameras like the D610 and the A7ii but something vulnerable in my psyche kept pushing me toward potentially "better" cameras. 

My recent purchases of two cameras has stopped me in my tracks. Two cameras, one ten years old and the other one twelve years old, made me pause and consider. How did the two different 12 megapixel formats stack up to the cameras I'd been reflexively buying since owning them? Were there files better or different? Was my photography better now? Or worse? Or the same?

When we are trying to justify new camera purchases, especially if we already own perfectly good and reliable ones, we mostly talk about resolution, and the way the cameras handle low light/high ISO situations. With the exception of things like in-body image stabilization and different viewfinder options there's really not a lot else to compare. 

Like many other photographers I presumed that the cameras I used nearly ten years ago would have been eclipsed by the newer models and that the differences in actual performance (in "real" use) would be so glaringly obvious that one would have to be a dolt not to see it and want the newest magic sauce, if for no other reason that the color improvements in the latest sensors. Right?

Then I found a folder of images I'd taken a while back at our local music festival, SXSW. There were a bunch of images of performers on stage. I know they are nearly ten years old because the camera data in the files shows that they were done with a Nikon D300 camera and a (non-stabilized) Nikon 80-200mm f2.8 zoom lens. I started clicking through the hundreds of images I'd taken (on assignment) that at the festival that year and I have to say that I think the skin tones and colors are as good as anything I've taken since. In terms of dynamic range I am fascinated that the camera (and I) have nailed exposure on the performers face (above) but the backlight on her blond hair is not blown out at all. I can also see into the shadows without much strain. 

The D300 had a more limited raw buffer than we are used to today and the finder was smaller as well, but the body itself was stout, reliable and easy to handle. 

I guess the question I keep asking myself is: Why did I continually upgrade? What metric was so bad on the older generations of cameras that I felt compelled to keep buying and selling them? And, controversially, where was the sweetest sweet spot and how do we get back there?

I had an interesting comment on the blog yesterday. I'd posted an image of the Nikon D800e sitting on a tripod in the studio with a 105mm lens attached. One daily reader (MM) wrote to ask what I had done differently when shooting the image. What new sharpening routine had I embraced? 

All I had done was to put an "ancient" Nikon D2XS on a firm tripod, focused a 30 year old, manual focus 28mm f2.8 lens as well as I could, locked up the mirror and shot at f8.5. The file started life as a Jpeg. I tweaked it a little bit (as I normally do...) in SnapSeed, dialing in some shadow lifting and a little bit of "structure." No more or less than I would do with a file from a Panasonic GH5 or a Sony A7Rii. But something in the file from the ancient Nikon resonated with an experienced and savvy viewer. 

Did we hit the peak of camera performance for some subject matter, use targets, and points of view a decade ago? Were we so focused on the "potential" of new technology that we failed to see what we actually had? I wonder. 

I know the improved high ISO performance of sensors has helped many. The higher resolution comes in handy for some demanding applications. Live view can be handy. But if we come to grips with the nearly universal experience that the web is our real target for 99% of photographs then the larger pixel wells and various other attributes of the older cameras might be a better match for much of what we do. 

I point to recent cameras from Sony and Panasonic as examples of a re-consideration of larger pixel aesthetic pursuits; both in the GH5S and the A7Sxx cameras. Perhaps more camera makers will embrace the offering of cameras with sensors adapted for more than just resolution horsepower. 

Me? Just snapping up old D2XS and D700 cameras as fast as I can find them....Might look at D3S cameras as well....

Thanks to Ming for introducing "sufficiency" into the dialog. It's an interesting and worthwhile concept to consider. See Michael Johnston's ruminations as well: http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2018/04/whats-adequate.html

Buy yourself something nice at Amazon. I have an idea.....

Since I tossed up a Sony A7Rii portrait I thought I might also play around with an image from the Nikon D810. All over the imaging map here today.

An image made for the Pedernales Electric Cooperative's Annual Report in 2016.

This image was done in a medical center near Kyle, Texas. It's one of dozens and dozens we set up and shot for an annual report project. A nicely "old school" assignment on which photographs were printed nicely across two page spreads and the design and printing were first class. 

I liked this image because I added a tiny bit of front flash fill to the two men on the right of the frame and even I can't tell I did it. I needed the extra puff of light to pull up the darker tones but I worked hard to not get any telltale shadows in the rest of the photograph. 

This was a quick set up using the Nikon D810 on a tripod, along with an 85mm f1.8 lens set to about f2.8. I wanted to shoot the "let's look at the iPad!!" shot in this location because it was such a nice way to show depth. Having the hall go on forever in the background makes my eyes happy. 

I tweaked the color a bit this afternoon with the new controls in Lightroom. Nothing earth shattering but every little step they improve means one more bit of control you have over your work...

Comments?

A portrait of Rebecca. Playing with the new color controls in Lightroom Classic.

About a year ago I saw Rebecca L. in a production of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, and I asked if I could make a portrait of her. She agreed and we were off and running. Since we met at Zach Theatre we thought it would be appropriate to take the portrait there too. We asked permission to use the Serra Lounge (best bar in town...) and the Theatre graciously agreed.

I lit this with with one LED panel blasting through a 50 inch, round, collapsible diffuser and depended on the ample ambient light streaming in through floor-to-ceiling windows to provide the fill light and background light.

At that time I was photographing with the Sony A7Rii and I used the Rokinon Cine 135mm f2.2 lens because I loved the compression I could get in that space.

Last year I wasn't into contrast the way I am now. I've ramped up the contrast and saturation to achieve this effect.

There was a new update to the Adobe Raw converters in PhotoShop and Lightroom today. The update adds some profiles and looks and is a quick way to get started on a look which you can then fine tune as you like. I've got a few more images I'm re-imagining using the new updates. It's fun.

I love this portrait not only for Rebecca's eyes but also because I really like her hands. 

It's a slow and doggie time around the studio this week. Everyone seems to be "on hold" for some reason or another.

Studio Dog's eyes say it all. "If there's nothing you have to do shouldn't you be taking a nap?" After a disjointed but fairly busy couple of months, beginning just after the New Year, I was as busy as I needed to be but then, about two weeks ago, everything just seemed to go quiet. The e-mail machine lay fallow and the text unit docile and a bit forlorn. Of course, as an optimistically pessimistic freelancer I immediately started to panic and started walking back into the house frequently, imploring my (still hard working) spouse to assure me that I would work again---one day---in the not too distant future. She assured me that we go through this same song and dance just about every year, right around tax time.

I called one of my best friends (who is also a professional photographer) and I immediately regretted it as he launched into a tale of work woe that eclipsed mine by several orders of magnitude. I think we could sense each other's discomfort and we both worked to change the conversation around to, "So, what new gear have you snapped up lately?" He's a long time Canon and Leica shooter who is making a seemingly happy transition to the Nikon D850 along with a bold selection of new Nikon lenses. The turn in our conversation took the edge off but later reminded me that if we worked more we could buy more gear....

Having a master's degree in anxiety I am quick to panic and am always making alternate plans which I hold in the ready just in case everything goes to hell. As I wrote notes to various client this morning I daydreamed (day-nightmared?) about possible "twilight" jobs for which I might be qualified should this whole 30+ year experiment in self-employed photography not work out.

Obviously my first thoughts ran to Barista but I dismissed this one as too cliché. I was also thinking neurosurgeon but a quick peak on the Google informed me that I'm a tad under qualified. I batted around a rewarding stint at Costco.com but couldn't quite come to grips with what department I might enjoy most... Selling big screen TVs? Wearing a hairnet and serving up pure beef hotdogs, and fresh hot pizza? Studio Dog stepped in to remind me that I dislike interfacing with the general public, and that none of  these jobs provided the freedom of schedule needed to both walk with, and then nap with, the Dog at random hours during the afternoon.

Seriously though, the life of a freelance artist/photographer/videographer is like a random chance generator. Some weeks you have so much on your plate you feel as though you need bigger forks. Some weeks there is so much silence it is deafening. There is no middle ground. Feast or famine. Ah well, at least we're through paying for college...

On a different but related note, I've come to trust Studio Dog's taste in many things and so, as an experiment today, I laid out all of my cameras in a row and had her come into the studio to sniff test them. You know, to see which ones pass the "smell" test. Sadly, we might never know her true feelings re: Nikon vs. Canon vs. Panasonic because she snatched a Milk Bone right out of my hand, chewed it up, and then curled up in front of the cameras and took a nap. I took her general disregard for the assembled gear as a sign. It's time to stop thinking about cameras and get serious about that afternoon nap. At least she didn't pee on any of them...

Why it's still a "Canon versus Nikon" choice for so many photographers. And, which one is best?

Canon 7D.

I've recently been playing around with two interesting cameras. One is a Canon 5Dmk3 and the other is the D800, a predecessor to one of my recent favorite Nikons, the D810. My romp with the cameras comes shortly after having divested all of my Sony mirrorless cameras and lenses. I have now shot professionally (and as an enthusiastic hobbyist) with full frame cameras from both Sony lines (DSLT and mirrorless) as well as many of the recent (and older) Canon and Nikon cameras including 1DSxx cameras and  D8xx cameras, I think I've come to some conclusions. 

Both the Canon and Nikon cameras are mature products which, when used to create raw format files, deliver very good results and very detailed images. But why, with all the competition out in the world do these two brands still dominate the marketplace and what might change?

If we look at the niche in which the two brands have the most dominance it's in the higher end, full frame markets. It's no mystery that a full frame sensor can deliver extremely good files with less noise than other formats but the real idea most people have is that by using the bigger sensor it's easier to create good files while using smaller formats might require more shot discipline, better technique and more attentive processing in order to get the same quality results.

That being said my first two brand examples (above and below) are both from APS-C cameras and are from older products that have not been on the market for a while. It's obvious to me that both are capable of capturing very good color and, for the web at least, very satisfying levels of detail. I am always surprised when I revisit the photo just below and remember that it was taken with a 2003 vintage 4 megapixel camera, the Nikon D2H.

I think that if everything else was equal and people wanted cameras to use to most easily create day-to-day images of their family, friends and events in their lives that most people would be better served by a mirrorless camera like the G85. It combines an affordable purchase price, a good kit lens with lots of range, wonderful image stabilization (which I think is much more of a boon to casual amateurs than to working pros) a more than ample file size for both social media and actual prints, all combined with the highly useful, constant feedback of its live view system. What you see is mostly what you get... But instead people tend to end up with Rebel Kits or Nikon 3x00 kits because, like an incumbent president or congressman, these brands have much more name recognition, and because of their long tenure in the market and their overall market share they have bigger budgets with which to advertise. Most of the other brands and their current models just get lost in the noise.

But I also tend to think that looking at the bottom or middle of the market really isn't interesting to people like us, who have a keener interest in photograph. The place to look is in the upper middle and top of the market. It's interesting to understand what drives people in this sector to select the big two instead of other options.

The best answer is that most people who are in this market are more likely to have been in photography longer and to have made some selections that created a pathway to future purchases long before mirrorless options where even available. Chances are you started out with a Nikon FM film camera or a Canon AE-1 and upgraded from time to time as new models came to market. When digital came into vogue you selected from one of the big two because they came to market with what looked like more mature and usable products. Plus you already had some lenses that worked. 

Nikon and Canon users traded systems back and forth, depending on their photographic specialities, until both systems had in place full frame cameras with more than 20 megapixels, then the system abandonment based on ever changing standard specifications slowed down. People locked into their lens silos more faithfully. There were a number of bleak years for Nikon in which Canon had full frame bodies with 16 megapixels counts while Nikon's flagship offerings topped out at 12 megapixels in a cropped frame body--- but that's all history now. 

I think reason for overarching market segment loyalty is that for the longest time people have been taught and marketed to that full frame represents a gold standard for formats and one that pros and serious hobbyists aspire to in their tools. For the longest time they were really the only game in town. Yes, Sony came out with their a850 and a950 but they were already considered obsolete by the time they hit the markets and, by comparison, there was nowhere near the number of branded or third party lenses available for that mount. It's only since the second generation of Sony's A7 series cameras that Nikon and Canon have had any competition to speak of in the full frame space. 

Nikon D2H.

Obviously the big disruptor since 2013 has been the ever expanding line of Sony A7 series, full frame cameras along with an increasingly well filled out lens offerings. They are new, novel and fun and Sony's success seems to have taken Nikon and Canon by surprise. For me the advantage of the Sony line has little to do with the size of the camera bodies or the inclusion of various features; it has everything to do with the inclusion of an EVF as an eye level viewing mechanism. I was lured into the Sony system because of the potential of combining high image quality with the distinct usability of the constant live view of the electronic finders. 

I am still a big fan of the EVF but I'm not so sure anymore that there is an image quality advantage to the Sony line when it comes to the character of the files; raw or Jpeg. Sony seems to make some color and tonality choices that are less advantageous for portrait photographers than the color and tonality from cameras in similar price and performance ranges from Canon and Nikon. 

One of the benefits of having shot with a variety of cameras when wearing my "professional photographer" hat is that I have a rich store of "test" shots and "real world" shots I can go back and examine when I get in my head that one camera or system has better or worse color or tonality than a competing system. I can look a ten or twenty thousand examples, shot in a range of job types, from low light, available light to studio flash and just about everything in between. 

During my recent down time I started looking in earnest at lots of old files across systems. One observation is that nearly every camera I've owned is able get into the "excellent" ballpark without much effort. Some are better than others, some are easier to use than others.

If I look back through all the modern cameras I've used (from 2008 onward) I'd have to say that there are two that really stand out as portrait cameras. One is the Canon 5Dmk2 and the other is the Nikon D610. Both had their foibles but with the right lens on the front both made files that made peoples' skin look better than other cameras I've shot. Both were capable of high sharpness tempered by good handling of highlights. Both were solid and reliable. 

In an age with lots of good choices I can see why wedding, baby and portrait photographers are drawn to traditional cameras. I think it has a lot less to do with usability and mirror versus no mirror and a lot more to do with how the two big players have optimized their files for rendering humans more beautifully. I don't have extensive experience with Fuji cameras so I can't really compare them.

If I were to counsel someone today whose goal was to make the best possible portraits, budget not an issue. I'd direct them to either the Canon 5Dmk4 or the Nikon D850. 

You can do good work with any good camera and across formats. It might just be easier to make a classic portrait with one of these two cameras. Mostly by dint of the sheer amount of color science research and development that's gone into them over decades. 

Which one is the best? The one whose lens system you already own.....

Canon 5Dmk2

Nikon D610.

Nikon D2H.

Sony a850.

Observations about cameras as a result of a nostalgic dive into three and four generation old models. Warning: This one is about traditional DSLRs, not Mirror-Free.

Everyone needs a hobby. Even professional photographers. My hobby is photography and in the pursuit of this I sometimes follow Alice through the mirror and have adventures that are....less than rational.

About a month ago I was bumming around Precision Camera, handling all the lights, asking to see weird lenses in the used case, and generally making myself an annoyance. Didn't seem to phase the staff who are either used to my shopping habits or just had nothing better to do at the time. They dutifully pulled out old Hasselblad lenses and ancient Broncolor flashes so I could play with the focusing rings or the knobs and controls before shaking my head and moving on to the next shiny object that caught my eye.

And that next shiny object was a very nice, relatively unscathed Nikon D2XS which was sitting, unloved, in the glass case with other cast off Nikon DSLR bodies. I had someone extract it from the case and I played with it for a spell, all the while remembering when I had owned and extensively used one, many years ago. The price was minimal so I bought it, rationalizing that I'd use it with some of my older Nikon manual focus lenses.  I came home and charged the battery and re-familiarized myself with the old and simple menu and then shot with it for a while.

There are a few things I remember from shooting murals with this camera back in 2007, one is that this camera is exuberantly happy at ISO 100, relatively content at ISO 200 and starting to get a little edgy at ISO 400. By ISO 800 we're veering into full blown noise anxiety. Shooting raw and post processing with finesse and experience might get you a relatively decent ISO 800 (if you nail exposure!) and a fairly usable ISO 1,600. I also remembered that when I shot my original D2XS at ISO 100 and used my best techniques the files that I could get were pretty much perfect on many levels and could be easily enlarged to just about any end application. I find that is even more true today with all the Adobe PhotoShop's constantly improving re-sizing tools.

The D2XS is huge and heavy and the shutter is loud like banging trash can lids together. But the whole package certainly has its charm for an old school photographer. I give muscle memory a nod for a certain amount of my current nostalgia --- decades of form combined with function make re-accessing old cameras just like getting back on a bicycle....

A week or two later I ran across another old Nikon I remembered from my past. It was a nicely preserved D700 and after I played with it for a while I remembered the beauty (especially for files used on the web or used smaller than 11x17 in print) of the large pixel files I routinely got out of that model. I decided to add it to my growing collection of "hobby" cameras. This purchase engendered a secondary purchase of a smattering of older lenses, hand-picked for their cheap pricing and their under appreciated sharpness and general performance.

The one lens I had that I wasn't entirely happy with was a used 50mm. It was too new and I wanted to find a nice, older 50mm f1.4 ais model to augment the plastic AF model. So I pointed the car north and went back to the store one more time----- just to look. As far as lenses go I came home empty handed but continued my collecting lunacy by buying a nice copy of the more recent Nikon D800e.
And that's what I wanted to write about today, the D800e.

The D800 and D800e were interesting cameras. At a time when 24 megapixels seemed like the resolution end game for 35mm framed cameras these two cameras took the whole industry up a notch to 36 megapixels of resolution. They were also the leading edge of a generation of cameras that, along with the Sonys, were becoming ISO invariant (sensor noise floors low enough that they could be raised dramatically in post production without provoking the shadow noise that has plagued digital cameras from the beginning).

One thing I did not remember from earlier research on the D800 series was the availability of uncompressed, 4:2:2 video from the clean HDMI set up. I'll be testing that when I have some down time....

I set up some studio flashes and used the Nikon 105mm f2.5 on the D800e to test the camera. I was fairly conversant with the menus having used a D810 extensively and relatively recently. For all intents and purposes the files I created in the studio were on par with those I had routinely gotten from my D810; noiseless at ISO 100 and with detail that just goes on and on. But the thing that I had forgotten, after my long immersion with Sony, Olympus and Panasonic, is just how good and mature the color science of Nikon cameras is. They've been doing digital for a long, long time and even though I wish they'd make the leap to mirrorless in at least some of their APS-C and full frame models I have to admit that they (and Canon) know the formulas for pleasing color.

Many articles recently have been tossing around the topic of "Color Science." The general understanding (at least how it pertains to Jpeg files from cameras) is that Olympus is a master at making colors that please most users, as is Fuji, and, that while Canon colors are warmer they too have a huge fan base of photographers who find the Jpegs from their 5Dx cameras to be subjectively, visually wonderful. Nikon has the reputation for generating files that are a bit more "analytic" and less pleasing OOC but which can be edited into submission without too much of a struggle. Panasonic was, for a long time, dinged for crappy skin tones but have made huge strides in fixing their Jpeg renditions in the newest series of cameras (GX8, GH5, GH5S and G9). Sony got low marks for their Jpegs until this latest generation and they finally have circled around and started delivering much nicer skin tones and generally pleasing color.

Many years ago Kodak and Fuji both dove deeply, and with huge budgets, into the "science" of creating two kinds of color for their film stocks. There were two different objectives in the making of color films and the objectives were often at cross purposes. It turns out that there is accurate color and then there is pleasing color. Accurate color is based on delivering a recording medium in which the colors match known references as closely as possible while delivering a saturation and contrast that also matches measurable targets. Kodak and Fuji both delivered several transparency and negative film stocks that were as accurate as their science could make them. But there was an issue with acceptance by the general public.

Seems that their general consumers (the people who made up the overwhelming bulk of the film buy-in market) didn't care nearly as much for accuracy as they did for what Kodak called, "Pleasing Color." And in North America that meant much more saturated colors, warmer skin tones, less accurate but richer yellow and blue hues and, in general, a much less "correct" approach to accurately capturing a photograph. I don't know exactly how this cultural vision evolved (and, yes, it is somewhat cultural according to studies by Fuji and Kodak...) but I conjecture it had to do with what people were seeing in regional movies and on television at the time. I think domestic advertising was also pushing more saturation and color in their work at the time of the "pleasing color tipping point" as well.

This led to a decline in popularity of accurate film stocks and something of an arms race to create film stocks with ever higher levels of saturation and candy color. Not at all accurate but happily embraced by millions and millions of hobbyists, moms and dads and even some pros. But Fuji and Kodak were kind enough(?) to continue to make and provide color accurate films to working professionals who might be working with critical color requirements (the Cheerio box, fashion make up or car interior color samples needed to be a close match to reality to prevent client revolt!!!) and we made good use of the neutral stocks, especially when making color ads for book covers and when shooting floor material catalogs.

So now we're in the age of digital imaging and the software of our cameras can be tweaked to deliver a range of colors, tones, saturation, contrasts and hues from the available sensors. Having precise metrics to aim for makes it easier, on one hand, for camera makers to proceed when creating a color/tonal menu assortment for their cameras if the end goal is accuracy but if the goal is pleasing color or most acceptable color ("color" including: saturation, hue, tone, and contrast tweaks) then the design of a camera's color space becomes more like gourmet cooking and less like slavishly following the recipes in "The Joy of Cooking." 

There are qualities such as the angle of the curve of the highlight rendition, mid-range contrast tweaks, color responses in the twitchy red and blue spectra, and a lot more. Fuji had a head start in the "pleasing" color race since they could access so much data from the film days. In almost every camera with pleasing color reponse there is a gentler roll-off in the highlight areas, a bit more contrast in mid-tones and a pleasing red/yellow combination in the area close to skin tone. The one area where there is more differentiation is in the depiction of blues.

If we move from Jpegs to Raw files some of the differences between cameras become less obvious as much of the color "flavor" is provided via the interpretation of the Raw processor being used. Files from Nikon Capture, DXO and Adobe are obviously different if one uses each Raw processor's defaults.

While it should be possible to create profiles or even LUTs (look-up tables) to make one company's line of cameras resemble another company's line I think it would take a deep foray into the camera's software to match them more precisely. A deeper foray than most photographers have the time of inclination for...

Camera companies decide where on the spectrum their spectrum will exist. There is a range from "very pretty color" to "absolute color" and it will be affected by things as disparate as the coloration of lens coatings to the regional markets in which the cameras sell most profitably. The bottom line is that companies are taking pretty much the same raw data off the same kinds of CMOS sensors and overlaying a look and feel that they feel will sell best.

It seems to make sense that cameras aimed at the lower end of the buyer demographics will have punchier, more saturated and more culturally nuanced color aim points than cameras aimed at much more exacting and demanding users such as advertising professionals. The files straight out of a Canon Rebel will look, to most consumers, better than the files from cameras with lower saturation levels and flatter profiles. Since the expectation is that most consumers will perform less post production the color science of a Rebel or Olympus EM10-iii is a "win" for sales. A more accurate color response would probably reduce sales, within specific markets.

If you are curious about the color accuracy or color delta of a camera you can use controlled and known lighting to shoot known color targets and judge the results on a vector scope which can show you how far the camera's response is from the accuracy of the original color as well as the degree of saturation for each color of the target. This, of course, presumes that your camera is able to output HDMI.

What it mostly boils down to is that Jpeg shooters should have a keener interest in just how the different camera companies choose to craft their Jpeg color science because, in Jpegs the color is "baked in" and harder to change without consequences than a raw file.

If you are a raw shooter who sometimes needs real color accuracy to produce accurate results for commercial client you may need to use a camera aimed at more absolute color renditions even though you might not like the "straight out of camera" Jpegs as much as cameras from other makers. But when shooting raw it should be possible to create settings that will get your camera closer to pleasing color and further from absolute color without too much effort.

So, what do I think about the files I'm getting from my collection of Nikon's older cameras? Interestingly the Jpeg files when used with Nikon's neutral profile setting (in camera) are pretty darn accurate. They got a lot correct back in the day. If you want to get closer to a Fuji, Canon or Olympus "look" you'll need to make changes to blue hues, overall contrast, mid-range contrast and parts of the red and yellow color saturation levels and a few other things. And none of what we've discussed here includes the various sharpening settings to which the cameras default....

Interestingly enough, the more controls camera makers include for videographers (see a Sony RX10iii menu to understand just how changeable files can be, in camera, before you poo-poo the idea) the more controls you have at your disposal to transmute the Jpegs to your taste (assuming you can access these profiles in regular photography!!!). Some folks on the web have even created mini-idsutries in fine-tuning camera colors.

I cut my digital teeth on Kodak's ancient DCS 660 and DCS 760 cameras which worked in raw only in Kodak's software for a long time. You had more control but you had more options with which to fuck up. The Nikon professional DSLRs seem to be set up to be conservative in their overall color responses --- a neutral color science. While it requires more tweaking before we can put it in the same "pleasing color" ballpark as some competitors the neutrality is welcome for demanding applications where built in casts are less welcome.

What will I buy next? It's a toss up. The 45mm f1.2 for the m4:3 system or a 20mm lens of the Nikons. All depends on what kind of job hits the inbox next...