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...

Sharp enough? Too sharp? Not sharp at all? Maybe it's all an illusion.

Another series of handheld shots with my current favorite point-n-shoot camera. 

Of course we are limited in our photographic capabilities by the one inch sensor.......

Who knew photographs of spray paint and imagination could be so fun?

The Wall and its Domain seemed fertile with promise today. 

The camera was up to the challenge. 

Take a moment to look on a real monitor and click 

to see the images large. There is so much going on in every frame. 

Today I stood on a wall and took a photograph of a building a mile away. It worked out.

The Texas State Capitol. Shot handheld from the "Graffiti Wall" nearly a mile away. 

I had no agenda this afternoon; no project whining to be finished. I've spent the last three days editing video in order to get a "rough cut" ready to deliver on Tuesday morning. I put my finishing touches on the Final Cut Pro X project around three p.m. and couldn't wait to get out of the studio and into the first afternoon of warm, fresh sunlight that we've had in what seems like weeks. My editor will come in tomorrow morning and polish the rough cut, fix some of the awkward transitions, fine tune the audio a bit and make me look more detail oriented than I really am. 

I grabbed the same camera I've been using non-stop for the last two weeks and headed out the door to recalibrate my eyes from the 24-36 inch range back to the 10 ft. to infinity range. My general cure for sitting too long, staring at a computer screen, is to get out and walk and take a lot of time to look at things off in the distance. That's how I came to be standing on the high wall of the Graffiti Park ( The Hope Outdoor Gallery )  aiming the long end of my point-and-shoot camera's zoom lens at the domed edifice. I brought down the exposure here and tossed in a bit of the ole "enhance" slider. I also dodged the Capitol Building to taste...

I'm no expert, having only done this for a living for nearly thirty years and having owned every major camera system on the market, along with my share of premium long glass....but....I think the technical quality of the image is remarkably good. Sadly, though I adore nostalgia and the rose colored glasses of reminiscence, I must confess that never in the history of my career in photography have I had the ability or capability to make a photograph with this sort of magnification without relying on several stout tripods (one for the camera and second for the lens). You may have a resting heart rate of 10, have never touched a cup of coffee and are able to hold a car over your head for a good amount of time but the rest of us never had a prayer of doing a shot like this, handheld, teetering on the top of a wall, nearly a mile away. I promise. 

And this is one more reason why I say that the Sony RX10iii, and cameras like it (none yet exist) are going to change the whole paradigm of working man's cameras ----  instead of being just another impulse purchase that found it's way into Tuck's bag. 

You don't need to buy one if you don't want one or need one but the lens alone is worth the price of admission to the people who crave long focal lengths. Whether or not you should buy one has nothing to do with understanding the benefits of a novel combination of features which make the end product more than the sum of the parts. 

I also took other photographs this afternoon but this one (and the idea behind it) were asking for their own blog entry.

Shooting a commercial video project with the Sony RX10 mk3. Pluses and minuses. Stuff that works and stuff the messes you up...

Configured for handheld shooting with ambient sound. Not for interviews.

I'm always disheartened when I read instantaneous reviews of a camera. Most are regurgitations of what's on the data sheet coupled with whatever negative performance rumor is circulating around the web. Why do I bother to read the fast breaking reviews? Sometimes they'll point to a tragic fault in a camera that makes it an absolute deal killer and that can be helpful. But for the most part it's just a lot of hot air, translated into web crap. 

I like to test cameras the hard way before I go to the keyboard and share my findings. Case in point is the Sony RX10 mk. 3. I bought the camera at the full retail price back on May 4th. From Precision Camera in Austin, Texas. That's about 23 days ago. I was prompted to buy it by my really good experiences using the RX10 mks 1&2. Knowing those previous cameras in the family, forward and backward, I was able to hit the ground with a good amount of familiarity. The second reason for the purchase back then was the imminent start of a video project that's gobbled up lots of days and hours in the interim. I thought that this camera, used in conjunction with a few other Sony cameras, would make a great production camera for a two person video project that mostly takes place during bad weather, and on the run. While the camera could be operationally a bit better I must say at the outset of this post that there are no flies on the 4K files that one can squeeze from this wonderful machine. It's a stellar imager.

Many, many people horribly misunderstand the market for this camera. I hear all the zany reasons why no one in their right mind should own one. The primary objection is the size of the camera and the next most popular mindless rant is about the price. I am stunned that people are completely fixated on size rather than on the important parameters that a tool like this one is created to serve. When did the litmus test of a camera's acceptability become its ability to be shoved in the front pocket of a pair of pants? Amazingly stupid. It makes more sense to say that this camera is not one that will suit your needs but the size of a working, production camera is a silly point on which to judge. Not every camera made is intended to fall into the category of the mindless point and shoot.

As far as price goes I think I can make a very convincing argument that, based on the features and performance in the package, this camera is one of the very best values on the entire camera market. Not cheap, just a very good value. Why? Because in one package you are getting a state of the art lens with a reach out to the equivalent of 600mm. In addition to a lens that, on any video or interchangeable lens camera, would cost more than the total of this camera and lens, you are getting really remarkable 4K video performance from one of the top makers of no bullshit, full on professional, world class, video cameras. The same company that made BetaCam SPs the go-to video production cameras of the 1980s and 1990s. The same company that makes cameras that make Academy Award winning movies (the F65) and many more great, highly professional, industrial video cameras. They've put more movie making capability in this $1495 camera than any of their competitors and it shows. 

But there's more. Even if you never push the red button and take advantage of the killer video potential of this camera you would be using a camera with a wonderful imaging sensor, coupled with a killer lens for still imaging. One with both great range and superb image quality. Put it all together and you've got a camera that film makers and videographers, as well as still photographers, would have given a lot more money for just a few years back, if one had even existed!!!

So, back to reviewing the camera. While some reviewers might take the camera on a hike for weekend and shoot various landscape shots in good lighting, I think you must really immerse yourself in a camera to fairly understand its attributes and its foibles. Using a camera for a couple of hours on a weekend is not the same thing as using a camera for multiple working days; with real clients, real working situations, real deadlines, and a multitude of things you cannot control. Like weather. Light levels. It takes time and interactive investigations to discern the optimum apertures or the prime working ranges of the image stabilization. Even responses to ISO are varied in all cameras when one considers subject matter, light levels and accuracy of exposure. These things are all learned by pushing the envelope and then breaking the envelope to see where the edges of performance meet the boundaries of failure. There just isn't a meaningful shortcut. 

Several reviewers who wrote "reviews" just days after the cameras became available were whining about handling. How could they have possibly come to grips with the haptics of a new hand tool in just 24 to 48 hours? Muscle memory and menu memory take time to integrate into the human mind. 

But enough about the mercenary shortcomings of the hordes of web denizens who are mostly interested in the click thru marketing money of camera review content. Let's talk about the camera in actual use... 

I have now shot over seven hours of video with the camera; most of it in 4K (UHD). I have experimented with every picture profile on the camera menu for video. I have preferences but I am fascinated (as are most neophytes like me) by S-Log 2. Most cameras make you feel your way through shooting with this super-flat profile but the RX10-3 is so nuanced for video users that it even has a setting in the menu called "gamma display assist" which shows a normalized representation of the scene you are shooting so you can at least be in the ballpark as you experiment with Log files. This is something usually only found on $10,000 and up, professional video cameras. It actually works. 

There are now a number of cameras that record 4K video (some better, some worse) but how many consumer priced cameras also allow you to record two different file sizes simultaneously. You can effectively generate an in-camera proxy file concurrent with your higher mbs 4K file. This is amazing. Since the camera records run rec and free run time code to both files you can do all your roughs in an easy to edit file size and then go back and, using the time coded log you will have created, quickly piece together your final cut program from your high res footage. Not available on any other brand of hybrid camera of this type. Pretty cool, huh?

I hear from many sources that the microphone inputs on this range of cameras are "noisy" and that they are not of the quality level found on "high end" cameras or standalone digital audio recorders. Could it be that there are some mismatches here instead of just presumptively dissing the camera's pre-amps? This became evident to me in an interesting way recently. I was using a Rode NTG-2 microphone directly into the camera and did, indeed, find it to be noisy.  The mic's output is low and I had to apply too much gain. But that mic set up for a balanced input and not the kind of input a stereo mini-jack is looking for. I presumed that the noise was the fault of the camera until I plugged a Rode Reporter mic (a dynamic mic) through a passive mixer that does correct for impedance mismatch and supplies a stronger signal to the camera inputs, and the results were night and day. The camera was relatively noise free. Then I used the Rode NTG-2 with the camera but put a Tascam audio recorder into the signal path. That mic requires some amplification! But when running from the Tascam into the camera I got the same results as with the Rode Reporter mic; it was nearly noise free. The lesson is that people need to experiment with various interfaces between mic and cameras before they pronounce one product good and one bad.

While we're still in the realm of video I have to mention one of my favorite features of the camera which is something I was first introduced to on the ancient Canon XL-1 Hi-8 video camera: slow shutter speeds in video. On the Sony it's called, Auto Slow Shutter. You can set lower shutter speeds than the usual video shutter speeds in order to suck in more light AND get special video motion blur effects. I used it last night to record lightning and it was perfect. You can use it to get motion blur with your video subjects. What we used to call "under-cranking" in the days of film based cinema. 

It can be a wonderful effect. It's the opposite of setting too high a shutter speed with the attendant sharp-but-jerky motion. It's smooth and downright sybaritic. 

Then there is the ability to control whether the audio you hear in your headphones is live or lip sync (matching the delay of the recording). Nice. Very nice. Almost as nice as the luxury of setting zebras over a wide range to cue you to possible overexposure. 

People bitch about the focus and zoom by wire in the camera but you do know that you can customize the settings and ask the camera to zoom fast, medium or slow. You can ask the camera to track focus in fast, medium and slow speeds as well. You can set the aggressiveness of focusing acquisition too. But a wonderful thing for an old Nikon user is that you can change the direction of the focusing and zoom rings; heck, you can even switch the zoom and focus ring duties with each other... The ability to fine tune the operational characteristics of the camera has not be written about much by any of the reviewers who are quick to bitch about AF but slow to realize the sheer amount of customization at their fingertips.....if only they read the very complete, online manual...

As a live theater photographer it should go without saying that I appreciate the ability to use a totally silent shutter with little or no degradation of image quality (depending on shutter speed range). Take that! DSLRs.

With all this stuff at my fingertips I started a video project about two weeks ago. I've used the camera for interviews in four different cities and in rural and mid-city locations. In each engagement I've learned more things that the camera does well and I do poorly --- but that's the way human learning usually works. As long as my mistakes don't impact the totality of the project they are beneficial since they show me the limits of the camera's abilities as well as my own. 

Let's investigate what I mean. First lesson: While face detection AF is a wonderful feature for still photographers it's not an optimal thing for videographers. I can see it work in photography and click the shutter in response. In video you get the same green box telling you that the camera has found a face and is focused upon it. But the conceit in my brain was that once the camera locked on it would stay there, clamped on like a bulldog on a bone. Early on I found that this was not so and that the camera would start looking around to see if there was anything more interesting to shift focus to. That was a disconcerting discovery make when reviewing an interview on my large monitor, back at the studio. The interview started in sharp focus and then, mysteriously (once my subject looked away for a second or two) the camera decided to shift to something in the background and rest there. Fortunately we were filming with two cameras and my second camera operator, a guy named, Ben, was smart enough, and cynical enough, to stick with manual focus on his camera. We opened with my in focus, tight shot and then transitioned to Ben's locked in footage for the rest of the interview. Better interviews came along later and this one got dropped from consideration. And I was okay with that...

I've experimented a bit more with the face detection AF and have found that the control/feature is dependent on high light levels to operate optimally. If you are locked on during a bright daylight situation you are pretty much okay. As the light levels drop; or if your subject is wearing glasses, prepare to intercede to save your own credibility. So, this leads us to manually focusing the camera. Which should be okay since we have peaking and the ability to magnify the frame. But just as in the FS7 professional video camera you can only "punch in" 5.8 X times. Unless you have some highly defined lines to focus upon it's not really enough magnification for my ancient eyes (or your young eyes) to see exacting focus. It's because the camera is resolving less in video and you are at the mercy of the lower resolution being presented to the EVF. If I could fix one thing about this camera it would be to add the ability to get more magnification during manual focusing (in video). You really only need to do it when you've moved, or your subject has moved, or you've changed focal lengths --- which means you need to fine focus a lot. 

I trust the "punch in" and the focus peaking for medium distant scenes but in interviews that are mission critical I will either attach the camera to an external, seven inch monitor to see focus more clearly or switch the camera out of the movie mode into the photo mode which allows me to punch in with a much higher magnification. After acquiring and locking the focus in by switching to MF I am certain I'll get what I want in sharp focus.  Be forewarned, if you are shooting video with any Sony still/video hybrid that you don't have the option of S-AF in video. Only C-AF and MF. Plan accordingly. 

Once you nail focus and once you get use to intelligently using the zebras for accurate exposure the only other parameter you really need to worry about is getting the color right. You want to use a custom white balance or a preset white balance instead of AWB for most things because it's a post production pain in the ass for still photography (you'll end up correcting individual frames as the color temps shift) or downright brutal in video as your scenes change colors before your very eyes in editing. I choose to carry a Lastolite gray target and use it with abandon. It makes post production so much more rewarding. 

Once you've played with the camera for days on end you will come to love the programmable function menu. Mine is peppered with shortcuts for video. Audio Levels. Peaking. Zebras, Picture Profile, Face detection AF, Focus Area, ISO, Steady shot on and off and white balance. With these set as shortcuts I need only hop into the menu to format cards and to reset time code. 

I'm sure a Nikon or Canon shooter, confronted by an EVF-enabled, mirrorless video powerhouse camera for the first time can be a bit baffled by so much stuff that actually works well and makes one's job easier and of a higher quality so I understand when I read a review that complains about handling and the menu interface. Again, spend some damn time with the camera and get to know it before you grab the keyboard and spew ignorance all over the place.

When I create video with the camera I have a checklist I've put together that I actually look at. I'm sure, over time, I'll have it memorized but right now it goes like this: set up camera on tripod and level it. Grab my target and custom white balance. Set the correct shutter speed for the frames per second called for by the project and then figure out exposure. If greater than f8.0 then pull out the variable ND filter. If lower than the widest aperture then figure out how to get the light levels higher or how sensitive my tolerance is for raising the ISO of the camera. For documentary work my tolerance goes up to at least 1600 but for CEO interview is drops down to ISO 100-200. I do want them to look so good that I'll get invited back....

After we've got WB and exposure figured out I make sure the Steady shot is turned off if I'm on a tripod and turned on if I'll be landholding (more rare). I check to make sure I'm set to the picture profile I want. Then I start checking audio levels and make sure I remember how to change them on the fly if I am not using an external mixer (which does make the job easier). I make sure to reset time code at the beginning of the project (rec run for most stuff) and finally, I focus. And focus again just to be sure. Now we're ready to shoot. 

If I've done all those checklist steps I am rewarded with crisp, clean, well balanced video that is easy to edit. Even easier if I've shot in 4K and I'm editing on a 1080p timeline in FCPX. 

Much has been made about the deficiencies of the Sony (ubiquitous) battery and its puny performance. Might be so for some people but I think they do a great job for video. I get about an hour and ten minutes of fun/run time which is not much less than I was getting with the much bigger battery in the Nikon D810. They are small and light, and Wasabi Power will sell you two aftermarket batteries and a charger for about $26 bucks. We keep them everywhere; pockets, camera bags, even in the cameras. 

I am sixty hours into shooting of the project at hand. I've shot in pouring rain using a cheap, plastic rain cover I bought at the camera store for $7.50. The camera got wet, drops got inside the plastic covering when I moved around. Water poured off the brim of my baseball hat and the hood of my poncho but the camera suffered no issues and was well enough for another bout of rain shooting today. While it is not a lightweight camera I am of the opinion that mass works for the person who handholds. I'll let the hordes of physicists here tell us why in the comment section..... A certain amount of weight is beneficial in being able to hold an object with any degrees of stillness. Take my word for it. 

I've spent twenty-five hours editing so far which means I've looked at the footage shot under a wide range of conditions, different lighting and different subjects. It's as stable as a rock.

I babied the camera when I first got it. Not anymore. I just use it now. And while we are in early days the camera has never let me down. But consider this: If I drop it, soak it, bang it up, etc. but am able to just get through this project before the camera ultimately dies I will have earned enough to keep the enterprise rolling for several more months as well as having enough surplus to replace my deceased camera. All from its first big foray out of the studio...

But wait! We've haven't even begun to talk about it's still photography performance...

It's right at the outside optimum limits of what you might hope for given the sensor size and the range of the lens. Let me explain: I've shot museum artifacts in the studio as well as long shots of trucks and line workers at twilight and in every situation the camera has excelled as far as image quality is concerned. I am a tripod user and a lowest ISO user so I'm rarely pushing the camera as hard as I might but I also have shot a dress rehearsal at the theater with this one and am impressed by everything except the focus at the long end of the zoom range. The image quality is great once the camera locks on but getting it to lock past the 500mms of equivalent angle of view can be frustrating. Maybe they'll improve that in version 4.0, which, given my early experiences with this camera, I will surely buy. 

It's not the optimal camera for several types of users. It's too complex for stupid people. It's too heavy for the fashion forward who must tuck a camera into a jeweled thong or tight jeans. It's existentially wrong for haters of camera with built-in video. It's not the optimal camera for people who live for tiny slices of in-focus imagery. If you love to wax on about "bokeh" you will not love this camera because what you probably mean is that you like stuff where the background goes totally out of focus. This camera does, in fact, generate wonderful bokeh, in the literal meaning, but doesn't have a fast out of focus ramp. You will not love it if you are one of those guys who is in love with the idea of a prime 28mm or a prime 35mm lens as being the focal length you think you see in. 

You will like the camera if you are using it to make money by shooting very, very good video and then turning around and shooting very, very good still images with the same camera. 

Get some big memory cards. Buy some more batteries. Do some exercise now and then so the camera's whopping 2.5 pounds doesn't pull your shoulder out of its socket or wreck your back (sarcasm alert for the slower readers). Learn the manual focus methods that give you a fighting chance at 600mm. And don't look back. This is a camera for people who love to get out and shoot, not dilettantes. But don't blame the camera, nobody likes dilettantes. Or reviewers who spend a lot of time at the keyboard but not nearly enough time with the camera in their hand shooting. Lots of specsmanship with no nuance. hmmmm.

P.S.  Life is too short for no whimsy.