In your search for great full frame lenses just how weird and counter-intuitive can you get?

This is a full frame image with no post production or cropping. 

I picked up a used Sony A7ii today because it was too cheap to pass up. That's another story. I brought it home and gave it a good once over, was satisfied that everything worked as expected, and then proceeded to update the firmware from 1.20 to 3.30. That took a while... but it worked.

I may be the laziest photographer alive because after I upgraded the firmware I decided to shoot some quick shots and needed a lens for the camera. I could have stood up, walked across the room and grabbed one of the Sony/Zeiss beauties out of the cabinet drawer but instead I looked around on the top of the desk and found a totally inappropriate lens to try out. It was providence, since the lens already had a Sony E adapter on it. 

It was a lens made many, many years ago for a much different kind of system. In fact, it was made for system with a film size that was slightly less than half the area of a full frame sensor. Not even as big as an APS-C sensor. I was certain that the lens would have a very small circle of coverage and that anything I shot with the lens would have a center circle of image on the frame surrounded by a terrible and quite obvious vignette. But, of course, I was too lazy to get out of my chair and go off in search of something more optically appropriate. 

I clicked on the camera, adjusted the various settings and then pointed the camera and the misfit lens at general stuff in my studio and then clicked the shutter. Then I sat up a bit straighter in my chair as I reviewed what I had just shot. The image was sharp and as far as I could tell it covered the vast majority of the full 35mm frame with very little vignetting. Oh yes, the very corners of the frame showed vignetting but just the tiniest bit. I was stunned. Here was a forty something year old lens, designed for a manually focusing, half frame camera, and it was basically doing double duty as a full frame lens. 

This is a full frame image with no post production or cropping. 

The other thing that surprised me was how filmic and sharp the images created by the lens were. It was rendering banal images beautifully and, even close to wide open, whatever was in focus was sharp. Sharp in a (better?) different way than the Zeiss lenses I have been using. You know, the ones computed to cover full frame?

This is a full frame image with no post production or cropping. 

Since I saw so little vignetting in my interior shots I started wracking my brain to figure out what was going on here. Both of my initial shots were done near wide open which should have accentuated the vignetting. But, both of the initial shots were taken at distances of less than ten feet, and the closer you focus most lenses the more of a frame they tend to cover.  I decided to test the opposite extremes. How would the lens stand up to a shot at a small aperture like f11 while set at infinity? That should show me some clear vignetting. And yes, you can see it in the bottom left corner of the shot just above. 

But it's nothing dramatic. While not convincingly eradicable in the lens correction panel of PhotoShop it's also nearly invisible in the zone in which I typically work: portrait distance and nearly wide open.  A bonus is that shooting in an aspect ratio 16:9 or 1:1 shows no vignetting at all !!!  

In fact, hours later, it's the lens that's on the front of the new camera right now. 

Which one is it? One I have written about many times. It's the Olympus Pen F (half frame film camera) 60mm f1.5 lens. Smooth as silk in the focusing ring and some of the loveliest out of focus rendering I've seen in a normal focal length. 

It's not supposed to work this way, though. I'm supposed to have to spend big bucks on top glass for the full frame cameras. I don't want the more talented tier of photographers to look down on me for not have bespoke magic glass. It's bad enough that I don't personally own any Zeiss Otus products already....

But you know what? There seems to be a perverse charm in finding ways to use totally inappropriate, ancient lenses to do fun things on full frame, very modernistic cameras. Casual environmental portraits, here we come....

Narration is the name of my game on Monday. It's all about..."the Voice."

If you look at the typical videographer's set up on the web one of the first things you seem to always see is a microphone in a "zeppelin" at the end of a microphone boom arm; being held up by a guy with headphones on. Big headphones.

Judging from my friends who've been in the video production business for years and years, shooting for clients like Time Warner, Dell, Motorola, HBO, Purina, and many other big clients, the reality is that most production dialog is mic'd with neatly hidden, wireless, lavaliere microphones. And, these days a good amount of the programming and commercials you watch are probably being over-dubbed in post production.

But there is a widely encountered situation in film and video in which you will need the strong, clear voice of the Narrator to slide into your program and move it along. There's no law that says you can't record your narrator with a lav mic or a shotgun mic (in or out of a zeppelin...) but there might be a better way to go about it. You might consider a side address, large diaphragm, studio microphone like the one in the image above.

These generally feature very clean and clear voice reproduction with a very, very low noise base. Which means more dynamic range and less hiss.

The microphone I'll be using Monday is the AKG 2035 which it not a very expensive microphone but is very good at its narrow specialty. The larger diaphragm gives a very pleasing sound to voice with just a hint of more bass, probably induced by being able to use the device closer to the speaker and getting a proximity effect.  The round object to the right is a spit screen which actually subdues sibilants and puffs and other audible artifacts created when normal people talk.

Most of these microphones are condenser units that require phantom power to work. I'll be doing my recording with a Tascam DR-60ii recorder which is also not too expensive but has proven to have very quiet microphone pre-amplifiers and provide 24V or 48V phantom power to XLR microphones that need it.

Ben and I will probably be working with our talent in a small conference room at a client location. We'll prep the room by adding padded furniture, putting sound blankets on hard surfaces and putting up a three sided wall of noise abatement foam to help kill reflections bouncing back to the microphone from bare walls.

The talent already has our script and we'll all work together to make sure we read it in chunks. Several sentences at a time, in a way that makes sense for a script that is divided between a narrator and on location interview audio. If there is space between the narrator paragraphs well be able to work them into the final video edit more easily.

Ben will be taking note of the timing for each take and matching those times to reference times we used to create a "scratch narration" back in our own rough cut editing. We're going to be trying to match the real V.O. with our scratch version so words fall right on the images for effect.

I'm crazy for redundancy so we'll be recording simultaneously with a Sennheiser MK600 shotgun microphone running into a Zoom H4n. We'll sort out which system we like best when we really sit down and focus on comparing the two. One way or the other we'll have nice back-up because....you know.... Murphy's Law.

So many moving parts in video. It was actually much easier to be a carefree studio photographer in the film days. Back then we'd just pull ourselves a good Polaroid, bracket the crap out of some film and then hand over all responsibility to the lab. Now we're paying attention every step of the way.

Great for control freaks but a little intimidating for inveterate slackers....

Just a preview of our battle plan for Monday.  And another version of: Right tools for the job.

By Request: A very short description of how I use off camera flash with my mirrorless cameras. In particular, my "bridge" cameras.

Sony RX10iii with Cactus RF 60 flash and V6 trigger.

Maybe it's because I can be a control freak when it comes to lighting but I never really warmed up to TTL automatic flash exposure with flash. I like to set exact power settings because once I lock into a "look" or exposure I like I want the flash to put out exactly the same power, over and over again, until I move on to the next subject. Please don't assume that I don't understand the benefits of automation when it comes to flash, and even off camera flash, after all, I wrote a best selling book on the subject back in 2008 for Amherst Media. 

No, I want my light to be consistent from flash to flash and that's something you give up when you allow the camera to control the flash, based on TTL readings. Moving the camera so it sees a different part of the subject, or moving into the path of a reflection, will change the exposure. At best it means you won't be able to easily batch photos; you'll have to fine tune exposures that change. At worst it can mean that your ratio between existing light and flash light is all screwed up, as is the color balance, etc. 

So, in this very short blog post I am going to tell you how I typically work with off camera flash and mirrorless cameras like the RX10 series. 

First things first. There are no disadvantages to using a mirrorless camera set up with flash. In fact, there is one big advantage. Mirrorless cameras have two settings that allow you to view images before shooting in two different ways. You can see exactly what the camera will eventually give you based on your exposure settings. If the setting make the image too dark you will see a dark frame. If the settings make the image too bright you will see and overexposed frame. You get this effect when you have "setting effects on" in a Sony. That means the camera is overlaying all of your settings when it shows you the frame you are considering snapping. It's a wonderful way to work when not using flash because you have a much better chance of estimating exactly what you future image will look like once you've shot it. 

But traditionally an optical finder shows you the same basic scene through the finder no matter what you have set. You could have your shutter speed set for 30 seconds but you won't see overexposure when you look through the finder; just a pleasant image which your eye compensates for, making it look to you like real life. There's really no way, other than experience (or blind trust in the metering) to understand what the image will eventually look like.

Sounds stupid to pass up a good, accurate preview for a pretty image that lies but that's what all the defenders of last century's technology (the optical viewfinder) are doing when they rush to defend the non-preview of OVFs. There is one place where this system works as well as the EVF on a mirrorless camera and that is when using flash. Whether your ambient exposure settings are dark or light the OVF shows you a bright image most of the time. At least bright enough to focus on...

If you leave the mirrorless camera of your choice in the "setting effects on" setting you might get a really dark finder or a really bright finder depending on the conditions created by your exposure settings. The camera shows you what you WILL get and not an image disconnected from the holistic process. It's not an optimal way to shoot flash because you'll need enough brightness on the EVF to compose the subject. 

Easy-peasy. If you turn off the "setting effects on" feature you'll get the electronic mimic of the old optical viewfinder. The camera will create a balanced, automatic exposure level that makes your viewing less accurate but more practical for flash. 

Just for example. If you are in a dimly lit room,  shooting at ISO 100 and want f5.6 as a starting point for your flash exposure and you would like to set a shutter speed of 1/125th of a second to freeze any subject movement, those settings (with "setting effects on") will give you a very, very dark finder... nearly black. Hard to work and hard to compose upon. If you switch the "setting effects off" you get a bright, even and automatically compensating (for overall exposure) view. 

Onward. I like to use manual settings with my flashes. So I get a meter reading for the ambient light I'd like to have as part of my exposure mix and set the camera there. Then I experiment with various flash levels (in manual) until I get the balance between ambient and flash that seems correct to me. 

If nothing changes I can move the camera all around without changing anything about my principal exposure.

On the Sony RX series cameras (and on my other cameras as well) I use a flash trigger in the hot shoe and a radio trigger controlled flash on a light stand to get the light I want. Right now I am using Cactus V6 radio triggers with Cactus RF60 flashes. They are totally manual and totally reliable. They trigger whether I am in close proximity or across a big space. They also trigger without failure in soft boxes and other modifiers. The Cactus combination allows me to use up to four groups of lights and also allows me to control the flashes, in thirds of a stop, from minimum to maximum power, from the camera position, using two buttons on the shoe mounted flash trigger. 

Usually, when I am using off camera flashes I'll be using more than one flash and it's typically when I am doing a location portrait or a small group of people. 

With decades of experience I am usually able to guess the approximate exposure but, like everyone else, I take test shots to narrow down the slop and get to exposures that are just right. I could do the same thing with a meter but it's quicker and easier just to chimp it until I hit it.

The advantage in using the RX10 series cameras with flash lies in their ability to sync all the way up beyond 1/1000th of a second with no major trickery or machinery involved. Just set the power and the shutter speed where you want it and, voila, trouble free exterior fill flash at your fingertips.

A lot of the time though I am working with mono lights in the studio or on location. In these situations I use a generic flash trigger from Wein that, when triggered, sends out a pulse of infra-red light which triggers the internal slave eyes on all my flashes. It's a small trigger that also fits in the hot shoe and requires little, if any, technical skill. No channels to set, no groups to corral. Just a pulse of intra-red and the musical sound of big lights quickly recycling. 

By doing everything in manual I never get burned by not paying attention to something the cameras are doing without my permission. 

Wanna do flash just like we did in 1999? Or 2010? Or 2015? Put a flash or a trigger in the hot shoe of your mirrorless camera, set the manual power level where you think it should be and then test to taste. Just remember to turn your controls to: "setting effect off" for flash.  

That's it. 

I'm stalling for time while my footage from this afternoon renders. Screw DSLRs. Everyone should have a superzoom for day-to-day stuff.

Tom Miller Dam. Austin, Texas

Hyperbole, hyperbole. I'm kidding about everyone needing a superzoom but I have to tell you that it's making my ongoing project work delightful, to say the least. I know, I've done this kind of work before with the D810, D750, GH4, OMD-EM5ii and even the older Sony a99. Shooting video with DSLRs just flat out sucks unless the only parameter that matters to you is how far out of focus you can put a background. Compared to the Sony RX10 cameras the audio is no better, the codecs (excepting the GH4) are no better (and in most cases much, much worse) the focusing is worse, the controls are more limited and you need to drag around a wheelbarrow to bring your lens selection along.

I'm always frank so I will say that 90% of the stuff I shot in video with the Sony RX10iii could have been done exactly as well with the Panasonic fz 1000. But I'll draw the line there and say that any other DSLR or hybrid camera would have made life more miserable, taken longer to shoot with, and required more lenses. Of course, if you were smarter than me you could trump my whole argument (as it applies to video only) by just grabbing one of the newly plentiful Sony one inch, dedicated video cameras and maybe your job would have been even easier. Not so with non-dedicated-video camera choices. Sorry. No way.

And the funny thing is that what I was shooting was not earth shattering or the kind of material that requires the lowest noise and the highest degree of sharpness.

I'll back up and go from the start; which was around 4:30 pm this afternoon. I've been working on a video about the Memorial Day flood last year. We've already handed off a rough cut and we used some archival footage, provided by the client, of flooding. You know, cascading water and water overflowing roads. The problem was that it didn't look dramatic enough. We wanted something with more power and punch behind the water. And we wanted swirling, angry, brown, fast moving water.

I got an e-mail around 4:30 to discuss raging water aesthetics and five minutes later I had my "go" bag (video) in the car and was heading a couple of miles away to the Tom Miller Dam where, I had learned earlier today, they were opening flood gates to deal with a tremendous amount of flood water coming to them from upstream. The area around the dam was boiling as the water roared down into the narrow chasm.

The Lower Colorado River Authority is officed just in front and high above the dam, over to the right of this frame. You can be sure they built their HQ far out of any possible flood zone but they like to keep their eyes on things and, you know; location, location, location.

The LCRA was kind enough to build an observation deck at the end of a catwalk that puts you in the perfect position to videotape or photograph the damn from the correct angle as well as the raging torrent flowing from the dam. I had my RX10iii in my hands and I've had it set to all the appropriate settings from the moment I left the car. I put a variable neutral density filter on the front because we had full sun this afternoon (for a change) and I started composing shots. The water was so co-operative. It swirled, broke and sluiced with all the enthusiasm you would expect, given the thousands of feet per second being released...

I got great overall shots at 24mm and amazing shots of the suffering, half submerged tree lines that used to be on little islands in the lake. I shot at 60 fps to I could get smooth footage. The range of focal lengths was like having magic in my hands and, with some practice on the little zoom switch by the shutter button, you can get some great zooms from wide to mid-telephoto which were smooth and kept focus.

No lens changing. A complement of zebras to show me just were the highlights break. Focus peaking for those really long focal length shots, and a wonderful EVF. All writing to an inexpensive SDXC card. So, we're on like, day ten of our project and, computing a rental rate of $150 per day, we've already hit the break even point at which the RX10iii has paid for itself and is now entering the realm of pure potential and profit making.

The camera is not perfect, but then neither is the operator. But that mutual understanding of our  deficiencies is a bond rather than a wedge. I help out the camera and the camera helps me.

If you shoot a mix of video and still photography for a living you might want to consider a camera like this one. Get an fz 1000 if you are on a budget. But don't tell me your DSLR is as good or better for hybrid use. I just won't believe you.

I am re-reading a great book by Steven Pressfield....

The book is called, Turning Pro, and is subtitled, Tap Your Inner Power and Create Your Life's Work. I'm not putting up an Amazon link because, today, I am just tired of the endless merchandizing that infects blogs in general. Ask your library to order a copy.

The book is great for anyone who feels stuck. Stuck in the moment or just stuck time to time. It's great for people who can't seem to get their projects started. It's a kick in the pants for people who squander time and then insist that everyone else has all the luck.

It's an honest, thoughtful book that has, as its main objective, helping people get past all the self-inflicted resistance in their lives and move forward to realize their own promise.

Goes back to the Tao. Mastering people is strength. Mastering oneself is true power.

Just a reminder to read more books. Now I'm back to work.

What is my favorite lens to use with the Sony A7R2? Why it's a Nikon, of course.

Portrait for Austin Lyric Opera Ad Campaign.

Camera: Kodak DCS 760C. Lens: Nikon 105mm f2.0 DC

If you are a frequent reader of the VSL blog you know I sometimes change camera systems. To the uninitiated it may seem like I do this capriciously; like a raven following the latest shiny object. But the real reason I do so is just to confound the readers of various camera forums. I routinely drop thousands of dollars to see how many people I can get screaming, "Fanboy!" "Paid Shill!" "Gear Whore!" and, my favorite: "Tuck changes systems more often than I change my underwear." 

But I'll bet I've been more consistent in my use of lenses longer than many of these armchair behavioral psychologists have been alive. You see, I have been shooting with Nikon 105mm f2.5 and f2.0 lenses since 1982. That's 34 years. And for most of that time it's been the same unit I purchased in 1982 for more money than they are worth today ---- even factoring in inflation. I have used it with an adapter to shoot on Canon digital cameras and now, with adapters, to shoot on Sony's mirrorless cameras. I shot with it on Olympus OMD cameras and, of course, on the Panasonic GH cameras. 

You know what? It's still a damn fine lens. As good or better than many of the lenses I buy new from Sony, etc. today. Lens crafting hasn't evolved that much where quality is concerned; for the most part camera companies have just learned how to make stuff cheaper and more cheaply. 

While my favorite, all time portrait lens is the 105mm f2.5 ais Nikon the image above was taken with the 105 f2.0 DC (defocus coupling) lens. Same focal length but the f2.0 lens has a ring on the barrel that lets you shift in some distortion in front or behind the plane of sharp focus. 

This portrait may not be your cup of tea because it's not razor sharp but that's because we were shooting wide open with the full measure of available distortion applied. If you want to see sharp all you really need to do is grab one of the 105mm f2.5s, put the aperture at f5.6, focus carefully (the A7R2 is a much better candidate for using this lens than any Nikon body ----- remember? Focus Peaking and Focus Magnification, made easy). Keep the camera steady (using in-body image stabilization, where available = A7R2) and make sure your subject isn't moving faster than the set shutter speed is capable of freezing, and you're done. You'll have an amazingly good image; at least technically. 

What lenses did I keep in my hands when I switched from Nikon to Sony? Just three. The 55mm f2.8 Micro Nikkor, the 50mm f1.4 (ancient, original, pre-ai), and a pair of 105mm f2.5s.  The most amazing thing for me to read these days? It's about the perennial search for a great, fast portrait lens. And then I go into a well stocked camera store and see a couple of rows of clean, nice 105mm f2.5 ais lensed in the used cases; orphans just waiting to be of some use to a gifted artist or hardworking studio guy. Yours for the taking for around $150.

See, I don't change my mind that often. Oh, the camera bodies? They are more like film to me.....

Part of getting successful work done for clients is expecting the unexpected; and packing for it.

That Boy Scout motto, "Be Prepared." ?  It's a pretty good idea. Fine-tuning my field kit for the job.

The phone rang early this morning. It was my electric utility client wanting to know if I could head out into the rain and join them for a rousing bout of videotaping and photographing the restoration of electrical power in flooded areas of central Texas. What could I say except, "I'd be delighted." And really, I am. This kind of work is so different from a lot of my typical day-to-day work, done in comfortable, interior spaces, mostly with well dressed people and close access to good-to-great coffee. But if you are heading to the middle of nowhere you have to think ahead and pack for the unexpected. The word, "client" is ancient Greek for "throws curve balls."

So, the plan, as it stands right now, is to head to a small Texas town where flooding has destroyed power poles and knocked down power lines. Our hope is to get heroic video footage of a crew getting a new pole sunk, new lines strung and the power restored. A bonus would be to capture this in driving rain with dark, brooding skies close overhead. The ultra-bonus would be that everyone working will be wearing rain gear with our client's logo on it.

What we're shooting is B-roll for future projects. Usually this means that we don't need to get more than just ambient audio but the first thing a client asked me last time we were out shooting storm B-roll was if we could do a quick interview. I hadn't thought about that in advance and so had showed up with just our camera, tripod and rain gear. When I left the house my over riding thought about lighting was the worry that we might not have enough light to make the little pixel wells twitch. It was dark and ominous at the time. So, of course, I forgot to bring along a neutral density filter, which immediately caused the sun to peek out. Enough ball dropping. I kicked myself and then got started on putting together a video "go" bag that has the basics.

Here's the bag I use:

Yes. No. It's not a "camera bag" sanctioned by the general traditionalists of either field; video or photography. It's a freaking tool bag. But you know what? I'm starting to wean myself off any sort of specific-to-the-photo-industry bags because they are frightfully expensive and, in my opinion, of no greater utility than stuff made for working men and women who carry around heavy tools for eight hours a day, five days a week.

I started collecting various sizes of Husky tool bags when I realized that most of what we were hauling to locations were accessories, not precious, delicate cameras. Sure, if you are getting on a plane and traveling on a vacation/photo adventure that doesn't require more than a camera, a few lenses and some extra batteries then you should stick with your Domke bag, over one shoulder, on its elegant strap. But consider, we have one open top Husky bag that is just filled with XLR cables and various connectors. Does that call for a Billingham Bag? (Of course, I would choose the Downton Abbey model with the mink liners....)? 

I think many users have one bag and it's configured to match what they always carry. For non-commercial photographers that's usually a camera and a couple of lenses. But we seem to be re-configuring our cases all the time; to match the jobs at hand. As an example, I used the smaller version of the bag above two nights ago for the theater shoot. Two bodies and two lenses fit well and the bag was easy to carry and work out of. None of these bags are intended to go into checked airline luggage so concerns about ultimate toughness are not so cogent.

Here is how the bag opens (above). It reminds me of my great grandfather's leather medical bag. The opening is as wide as the bag but is rigid and pulls back into a closed position quickly. This open maw makes it easy to reach in a grab the thing I want. You'll notice that instead of traditional dividers I'm just putting cameras into neoprene Zing cases to cushion them and to add a layer of water and dust resistance. The bags themselves are a thick and sturdy canvas-like material that is very water resistant. Water will get in through the top zipper so if you have a fantasy of yourself standing in rain shooting, with your loyal bag beside you, you might want to get a poncho for your bag as well. 

So, the bags are very well made, relatively water resistant, voluminous and rugged. They must cost a fortune, right? Well, I haven't checked the Billingham Bag prices lately but would conjecture that you can buy a couple of hundred, various Husky bags for the price of the smallest Billingham made to hold one point-and-shoot camera. Seriously though, the bigger bag, shown above and above, is about $30 to $40 at one of the big box hardware stores. While it's a bit big to carry around for street shooting it does have an included shoulder strap to help you in getting from the car to the location you'll shoot in. 

What's in this bag? After my supply missteps on the last few outings I have this one stocked and ready. It contains two small, Manfrotto light stands, two Fotodiox 312 AS LED lights with extra batteries. One Rode Reporter (dynamic) microphone. One wired Audio Technica Pro-70 lavaliere microphone with an extra battery. One short XLR cable to the Reporter mic. One small, Beachtek mixer, which also matches impedance for the balanced to unbalanced connection. One set of good, ear covering headphones, one Zing bag full of neutral density, variable neutral density and polarizing filters with adapter rings, and cheap rain covers for two cameras. I have a cheap (but comfortable and effective) shoulder mount for my cameras.  I also have a green garbage bag folded up in there somewhere in case the case and I get stuck outside in a rain storm. Finally, I have two Power Bars in a side pocket, just for emergencies. 

When I am ready to hit the door and I drop in an RX10-2 and an RX10-3 cameras, as well as a small bag with four or five extra batteries. My final addition is a larger, lithium battery which will allow me to re-charge camera and phone batteries on the road.

Being pre-packed saves me time and saves me from making inventory mistakes. 

The car usually contains a Manfrotto video tripod with a 501hv head and a five-in-one collapsable reflector set, as well as swim gear and three or four extra sets of goggles. 

The Husky bags are great. I have a small one for grabbing cameras and heading to shoots with no video or audio components. It's just right for most available light situations (gear wise) and it cost a whopping $19.  I also have a big, Husky rolling case which holds as much as my original Think Tank Airport Security roller but cost me only $69. It also has bigger wheels. But, in defense of the Think Tank roller the Husky will not fit in the overhead compartment of an airplane.... I guess that's why we have both. For working out of a car, or off a cart on location, the cheaper bags are just as good as anything out there. 

There are discussions about ultimate bags and weight. I understand entirely. If I'm traveling intercontinentally and intend to work out of my bag, in an ambulatory fashion, I would always default to my Domke bags but job after job informs me that it's the overall amount of gear that requires more logistics not the portage of a camera and a few lenses. 

It seems silly to grouse about a few extra ounces on the camera bag when you are hustling up the stairs with two or three heavy C-Stands in your hands, or a brace of sandbags, or the bags full of electrical cables, etc.

The low cost and the good utility of the Husky line of bags allows me to dedicate bags to certain stuff. I mentioned the audio cables but I also have a bag full of various scrim materials, flags, nets and diffusion, along with grip heads, for use on Westcott flags. I marked it with a Sharpie so I know which bag to pull of the shelf when I need it.

This morning I made sure each camera had a 64 Gigabyte SDXC card inserted and formatted and I stuck them into the video bag, along with five extra batteries. The case is in the car and now I can zoom away from the studio knowing I haven't inadvertently forgotten that one widget that makes everything else possible.

Today, if a client asks me to do an interview I'll whip an appropriate microphone out of the bag, set my audio levels and get to it. Peace of mind. Pre-packed inventory. 

Note: I am kidding about Bellingham Bags. I know some of you have invested as much in fine and proper Billingham bags as the rest of us have in a good lens. You have a vested interest in wanting the bags to last forever ---- it will take that long to depreciate them. ( wry smile emoticon imagined here).

Welcome to June. This is the month in which we write about cheap-ass camera bag substitutes.

A quick re-cap of my work at the theatre last night. Warning: This blog post does NOT include anything about the Sony RX10mkiii.

It was kind of a relief to be back on familiar ground, taking photographs instead of working with video yesterday evening. It was another dress rehearsal shoot for the folks at Zach Theatre. This time we were shooting a farcical English comedy, "One Man, Two Guvnors."  The play is classic theater and the cast was great. Martin Burke is one of Austin's finest comedic actors and he brought some really great energy to the stage last night; as did the rest of the cast.

What a departure from the very serious productions Zach has produced in the last few months! In a total departure from the standard procedure the house opened 40 minutes before the show and there was a full bar up on the stage. Audience members were invited up to buy drinks and walk across the stage. There was a 1960's cover band playing right up until curtain --- on the same stage. A very festive atmosphere to be sure.

This is the first production I've photographed with my full complement of Sony products. My last theater adventure was the dress rehearsal of Holland Taylor as "Ann Richards" and I did that one with the a6300 and the quixotic 18-105mm f4.0 G lens; backed up by a Sony RX10mk2.

Yesterday afternoon I pulled together a kit to take to the performance and it all fit in a very small Husky tool bag. The top of that bag opens wide for quick access... It cost $19 at Home Depot. It's a great bag for a small assortment of day to day stuff, like a note book, some pens, a phone, two cameras and two lenses. Maybe a little zipper pouch with some batteries in it as well.

There was no hesitation in packing yesterday. I grabbed the A7R2 and the a6300 along with the 70-200mm f4.0 G lens and the 24-70mm f4.0 Zeiss lens. I loaded both cameras with fast, 32 gigabyte cards and I brought along an extra battery for each camera.

I set up dead center in the house, just below and in front of Eric Graham, an old friend, and the person who shoots the video documentation of the shows. The row I set up in the cross over row between the two sides of the house so there is no row in front of me. I have the house manager block off the seven center seats so I can shoot from the center and have three empty seats on either side. This is a holdover from the days when I shot with Nikons and other mirrored cameras that were loud enough to disturb audience members sitting adjacent to me. It's still good because I can lean left or right to get a better viewpoint and it also means I'm walking in front of fewer people if I need to get up and re-position to shoot an important shot of an action that plays to one of the corners of the stage.

I put the 70-200mm on the A7R2 and the 18-105mm on the a6300. After a brief consultation with the lighting designer and the videographer I decided to shoot in Jpeg. We'd need to send a ton of files over to the marketing people the next day and extra fine Jpegs at around 20 megapixels is much more fun to wade through than 42 megapixels of raw mania...

I was comfortable in doing so because the nature of the play meant that the stage was lit brighter and a bit less dramatically (dynamic ranges challenges!) than a drama. The videographer asked me to go up on stage with a white towel he keeps in one of his camera cases so he could white balance under actual stage lighting. The lighting designer confirmed that the color temperature didn't change much during the performance. Eric set 3000K on his cameras while I opted to go a slight bit warmer at 3200k. The lighting in the theater is predominantly LED and bare it's seems balanced to around 4400 to 4600K but a large number of the lights used in this production were gelled warm.

So, with the A7r2 set to medium resolution, extra fine, we were getting 18 megapixel files while the a6300 set at large gave us 24 megapixel files. Not a very big different, mathematically speaking.

With the color temperature/white balance set I started looking at ISO settings. Even though the light levels were higher than I am used to working at I decided to set both cameras at ISO 1250 because, well, they make 1250 look like "old school" 200. I've switched from my previous way of using AF in the theatre because the two Sony cameras have PD elements on the sensor and both are very, very fast to acquire subjects. I had both cameras set to C-AF using zones. I'd put the zone over the subject I wanted to focus on a wait for the tiny green boxes to light up in the desired areas. On the A7R2 I'd push one of the focus hold buttons that surround the front barrel of the lens and shoot away, holding the button until my subject changed position. Same with the a6300 except you have to use the AEL/AF lock button instead.

Another change for me was to be able to shoot both cameras in the silent mode, which is really silent mode and not "silent mode."  Really, the only way you know whether you've taken a photograph is seeing the review image coming up in the finder. The lack of mirror slap, combined with good image stabilization in both lenses, and in the A7r2 meant NO photographer induced motion blur.

Speaking of finder... I have gotten into the habit of just turning off the rear screen altogether. It's as obnoxious as the screen of a cellphone in the theater and with a great EVF there's no good reason to add any light pollution to the space. I can review in the finder and set menu items in the finder as well. I have to give high regards to the EVFs in both cameras. They are absolutely the closest to the final image of any camera I have yet used. I am able to use the finder, along with zebras set at 100% to accurately judge exposure. How accurate? Well, I could have sent along all 1300 images without making a single exposure correction after the fact. I didn't because I wanted to add some shadow recovery to a good number of shots and I fine-tuned everything else out of habit.

The images were impeccable. Both camera and lens sets delivered images that were correctly color balanced, sharp and with appreciable dynamic range. I like to add a bit of clarity slider to give shots destined to run small a bit of "presence."

After I edited the take in half (or less) I did my post production and started the upload to Smugmug.com. I make a web gallery so everyone who needed or wanted to see the images (theater staff) could do so concurrently. I'm sending links with folders of downloadable files from Smugmug to the executive who heads up marketing for distribution to the people who will actually use the images for public relations and marketing. They'll make a subset of the images to send along to social media and conventional media.

The Sony's were small, light and outrageously good. The lenses don't have too many faults (as long as I have distortion correction set for the 18-105....) and the battery use wasn't the drama most people would profess it to be. I changed batteries at the 800+ mark in the A7R2 and not at all with the smaller camera.

So, now I have used my little Sony collection for several events, a bunch of video, a theatrical dress rehearsal, two product shoots and about 40 portraits. Am I still happy? Yes, where do I sign up to be "paid off" by Sony? I would dearly like just one or two more things.... A second A7r2 and a 55mm f1.8 lens. Or maybe the 50mm Loxia. But overall? Happy as can be. But ready to become a fanboy for the right price....(not).

The Steve McCurry Tempest in a Teapot.

You have probably all seen Steve McCurry's most famous photograph. It's the photograph of the Afghani woman with the haunting green eyes. It graced the cover of National Geographic and has been reprinted endlessly, everywhere.

For most of his career McCurry made his living as a magazine editorial photographer. From all indications he performed well, followed the rules and made a living traveling the world. In the last decade he transitioned from magazine editorial work into the art world and has been using the skill set and vision he honed in his previous career to make work that many, many people find truly evocative.

Recently he has been taken to task, sometimes harshly, for apparently PhotoShopping some distracting elements out of his work. The important thing to remember here is that he is not enlisting this work into the world of hard news or breaking news. Rather, it is being sold as "art" in galleries and on the web.

The knee jerk argument, if I can sum it up, is basically: "Once a starving photojournalist always a starving photojournalist!!!" His critics would hold him to journalistic ethics and standards even though he is no longer working in that field or having his work used to directly illustrate news.

To me this smacks of indentured servitude to a cause.

I say, that at this point, all bets are off. The once free press is now settled into the hands of about seven major holding companies and they all have agendas put in place to serve a tiny elite of plutocrats and their pet causes. Photojournalists are being discarded like old VHS tapes. The contract calling for a lifetime of service to the ideals of the free press is null and void by those who no longer work in that niche.

Here's what I wrote in the comments at theOnlinePhotographer.com in response to Michael's thoughtful article, and the reason and unreasonable comments that followed:

Steve McCurry is a very, very good photographer. He may have been a photojournalist at one time and should, then, have hewed to the rules of that industry. For many years now he has worked outside that field and just creates art. His manipulations have no more or less merit than the contrived set ups of Crewdson or Skoglund. The art is the art. He is not working in breaking news. He is not manipulating images in the service of some political agenda. He is creating art. No different than the legion of photographers who routinely edit out teen acne, double chins and wrinkles in images of graduating seniors or mid-level corporate managers. His vision now includes the ability to hone or distill an image for our enjoyment. If he was shooting for the NYTime, hard news, to illustrate a news story then he was out of line. If he was showing us his impression of a place and time and people then screw the critics and go for it. Tell me that every landscape photographer whose work has ever graced a gallery wall didn't burn in some sky, take out a piece of trash in the foreground or pretty up the colors. Should we dig up Ansel Adams and burn him at the stake for his egregious over-darkening of the sky in Moonrise over Hernandez, NM.? Photojournalism is one of those jobs that's been beaten to a pulp by the economy and cast aside by media moguls. McCurry left the fold to do what he does best and make a bit of money for a decent retirement ---- and now a bunch of fat and sassy armchair quarterbacks, who've never risked dysentery and war are going to deny the guy his chance to be an aging artist with some sort of financial safety net under his feet? Get real. Put your Hush Puppies on, button up your cardigan and go out for a walk. Contemplate your misplaced outrage and then direct it somewhere meaningful.

If you disagree I'd like to know the reasons why. Not "how I feel" but what rational and logical belief causes you to champion your cause. We are no longer living in the age where the news is anything but un-tinted by the interjection of corporate holding company self-interests; why then should photographers be the symbolic surrogates that help give credibility to an already fixed system?

Give McCurry a break. His art appeals to a broad cross section of our culture. His work is good and visually satisfying. What he did for a living before becoming an artist should not be part of our assessment of the value of his work. 

As I sat editing in still photographs to my recent video project I had new thoughts about what aspect ratios to shoot...

When I shoot portraits I sure like working in a square format. This will come as no revelation to people who have followed the blog for a while...

For most commercial stuff I've been shooting whatever the actual, full format of the sensor is. The reason, no doubt developed in earlier times (the era of insufficient resolution), it to take full advantage of the total number of pixels available.

But as I sat editing video and trying to add still photographs to it I discovered that it might be a better idea, going forward, to shoot the routine documentary work and corporate advertising work in a skinnier format; something like 16:9.

We now have ample resolution at our disposal and shooting with an aspect ratio like 16:9 means we're not losing much quality but we might be gaining a library of images with more flexibility for multi-media work.

Now I know that someone out there will tell me that they have a series of sub-routines hardwired in their massive brains that can immediately identify the intended future use of every image they create which then informs them exactly how much space to leave in their 3:2 composition for future cropping. The rest of us mere mortals would do better with a formal guideline.

The issue in video is that every 35mm, m4:3 and square frame will have to be chopped, top and bottom, to work in the much more horizontal video format. If we start by setting our cameras to the video crop (16:9) we can compose a shot that we know will work for both still and video. With a 24, 36, or 42 megapixel camera we can easily cropped off the ends of the frame without a visible reduction in quality.

For me frame lines in a finder are NOT enough. I want to see the frame, sitting in a field of black, that shows me the exact edges without my mind having to remember to stay "within the lines."

After my time in video editing this week I think I am about to become a photographer of extremes, with my Sony cameras set to 16:9 for general shooting and then set to 1:1 for portrait work and art that will never grace the moving screens. Can't think of a more practical way to do it.

While the a6300 and the A7R2 don't give me 1:1 they do both give me 16:9 and that's a good start. Both the RX10s provide a wider range of aspect ratios that also includes 1:1. I wonder if the RX10iii would also make a good portrait camera? Next experiment?

Just something I fell asleep thinking about last night...

Shooting squares in 2009. I thought this would make a perfect book cover for my best photography book.

 I wrote a book back in 2009 that was published by Amherst Media in 2010. It was called Commercial Photograpy Handbook: Business Techniques for Professional Digital Photographers.

 I like the photograph because I seem to like beautiful women and I know I like beautiful cameras. I shot this with a Hasselblad 500 CM and actual, real Neopan 100 black and white film. It was one of those weeks when I was feeling decidedly retro.

The publisher chose a different cover design and that's their prerogative; but I think they left a lot of business on the table since beautiful women trumps still life and commercial photography collage any day of the week.

I re-read that book today over a tuna sandwich at Thundercloud's sandwich shop. It stands up well. Of all the technical books I've written I have to say that the writing, the information and the images are the very best of my endeavors.

There were some photos in the book that put me back in the mindset of shooting to the square; something I think it well leveraged by the EVF finder cameras. One can set the aspect ratio to 1:1 and the finder shows the exact crop with no extraneous distraction. Very nice.

And I'm sure you know where I am going with this..... yes, the Sony RX10iii has a wide range of settable aspect ratios, at your vision's service. Just cue them up and shoot. "Yes!" He said, "I will."

The video rough cut is out the door. Time to play for a while......

Oh yeah, and buy the book! Commercial Photography Handbook.  Read it like a novel....

Mr. Friedman. Gosh I wish he was our state's governor.

Renae G. Printed and then later copied from the print into a file.

Just resting my eyes and brain for a while today. Too much work done in too short a time span. A mental recalibration reminds me of what I like and why I like it. 

Every "big picture" person needs a "fine-tuner" to make stuff really work. At least I do...

Oh goodness. You learn so much about a craft when you drop yourself into a big project and get close to the end. I've been shooting video for the last two weeks and I'm learning more than I want to by having to edit my own work. God, I can get sloppy! A couple of times in the last few days I wanted to either put myself in "time out" or "dock my allowance" for some of the goof-ups I made in the video capture part of the job. Some of my missteps were clearly a result of hubris while others were caused by making the decision to go ahead and shoot in less than optimum environmental conditions. My biggest errors were in trusting the gear too much and not monitoring it enough.

None of the kinds of mistakes I've been making are really obvious in the field but they become very obvious once you sit down at a monitor and start going through footage over and over again. On the flip side, I think I partially redeemed myself by overshooting. My videographer friend, James, always says, "You can never have too much B-roll." And he's right.

But one thing I am learning is that when you are shooting corporate stories you can make incredibly good use of still imaging inside your moving program. My one lesson for next time is to force the client, at light stand point, if necessary, to give me every shred of historical photography then have hoarded away as a starting point for any project. Then I will remind myself to take stills all day long as I shoot video. Being able to start with a good video interview shot and then cut to a still shot that's been enhanced by some Ken Burn's "pan and scan" can make all the difference in the world.

So, by the end of the day yesterday I had edited down to a seven minute timeline. That's right inside our target zone. In the seven minutes I'm using something like 358 discreet clips and, in places, five or six audio tracks deep. But here's the issue I've always been aware of: I am a big picture editor. By that I mean I see the grand arc of the project and I understand where I want to go. But I am not detail oriented or methodical. It's just not part of my nature. I know I want to go from interview "A" to interview "B" and I know I need good transitional material but the intricacies of cobbling it all together are more or less lost on me. I have an intellectual understanding of the process but I'm like a guy who has read a lot about dancing but rarely tried it to actual music; with a partner.

When I review what I've edited it gets the message across but feels a little .... kludgy. Truthfully, it's rife with almost invisible or inaudible glitches that stem from (metaphoric) fat fingers and not enough discernment. Agile fingers (metaphorically) and sophisticated discernment come at the end of the 10,000 hours of editing, not near the beginning.

But self-knowledge can be grand power. I know all these things about myself and I have work-arounds that help to offset my weaknesses. My son, Ben, is the Mozart of Final Cut Pro X performers. I watched him last Summer as he cobbled together a clean and very watchable corporate branding video with nothing but a supply of so-so stock images, some logos and a deft hand at using keyframes; as well as an uncanny ability to quickly illustrate icons. His real power in video comes from his attention to video and audio detail; spacing, pacing and structure.

So, after I'd done the best I could, I hired him for eight hours to sit in the ersatz editing bay and "sweeten" my project for me. We're in the rough cut stage but I've found (from my tenure as an advertising agency creative director) that the more polished the rough cut is, the better it looks, the less the end clients complain and the less they mess with the final product. In the first hour he made the project 50% better overall than it had been. At two hours it was a different presentation altogether. We are heading into hour five and the cumulative power of lots of little changes and fixes has become enormous.

I am now looking forward to sending my client a rough cut instead of having the typical anxiety that comes from approval stages. After all, it's hard to remove every trace of one's own ego when you've concepted, written the script, directed, shot and also done the audio on a project. We'll get this up on a private Vimeo channel later today and see what the client has to say.

Once we have final edit changes I'll hand the project over to Ben or James to finish and polish. Keeping me "out of the kitchen" from this point on seems like a smart thing to do. I may use my "big picture" skills to get the work and shoot the big arcs but, if I want the projects to sing  I'm a lot better off calling in people who have different talents and strengths from mine. I guess this video stuff really does work better with a team...