Photographing "Mary Poppins" for Zach Theatre. Battle of the A7Rii versus the RX10iii. Sorry, no smackdown.

I was packing up my bag to go to Zach Theatre and photograph the dress rehearsal of Mary Poppins. I knew I'd want to have my Sony A7Rii handy because it has the cool, silent mode and the files are outrageously good, even at ISO 6400, but I was conflicted about the second camera. I'd take a back up, of course, but what did I really, really want to try out on this show that I hadn't used for theatre photography before? Oh yes, it was the RX10iii. I've learned to trust this camera in so many other situations I just had to give it a try in the theater. 

I shot part of the show with a Sony A7R2 because it's a known commodity for this kind of work. Equipped with the 70-200mm f4.0 G series lens, and set to "silent" mode, this camera is just about perfect for theater work. It's very clean and saturated at ISO 6400 and the focus, in conjunction with the 70/200, if fast and very sure. Add to that a hybrid image stabilization system that uses both the I.S. in the lens as well as the I.B.I.S. and you've got a pretty bulletproof system for handholding and quick shooting, even in low light situations.

So, why would I bring along a one inch sensor camera (the RX10iii) and proceed to shoot at least two thirds of the dress rehearsal with it? One reason is my continuing fascination that a "bridge" camera can do such a great job with so many kinds of photography but secondly it has to do with a certain practicality. Here's the deal: Since we built the new, state-of-the-art Topfer Theatre it's become more expensive to produce shows. We don't always have the luxury of getting a dedicated performance with full costumes and effects, just for marketing photography. We end up "sharing" the dress rehearsal with a full audience of "friends and families" as well as a video crew who record the performance on a wide camera and a follow camera. That limits where I can shoot from. I don't want to cross in front of the cameras and I don't want to interfere with our "test" audience's experience of the show.

This puts me in the middle of the theater, on the crossover aisle. So now I'm generally a lot further from the stage than I was when shooting dress rehearsals in the other two (smaller) theaters. That means I have to bridge the space by leaning on longer focal length lenses. I've pretty much ruled out single focal length lenses because the composition of actors, etc. is a constantly changing target and there is no time (in most shows) to keep changing lenses. A 70-200mm on a full frame camera works for a lot of stuff but there are many instances when we need a series of wide shots to show big scenes, mixed with a need to get even closer than the 200mm focal length will allow. I had been juggling two cameras and going back and forth from the 70-200mm to a 24-70mm but I'm always on the search for an easier and more gap free way to do this kind of work. 

That leads me to the RX10iii. I was scared of the smaller sensor but too fascinated by the 600mm equivalent focal length not to try it. Here's how I used the smaller sensor camera at Tuesday evening's shoot for Mary Poppins: I set the camera for super fine Jpegs in a 3:2 ratio at the full camera resolution of 20 megapixels. Standard profile. I used manual exposure and gauged the correct exposure by evaluating the EVF image and by employing "zebras" set to become visible in areas that exceeded 100% (255). I used the center AF point and used single AF. I set the aperture to f4.0 and, except for specific wide angle work I consider this an f4.0 camera and use f4.0 as my maximum aperture. In that way there is no exposure shift as I zoom through the focal length range. People who bitch about the variable aperture would do well to study more and just always default to the slowest of the maximum apertures if they don't want to see exposure changes during zooming. 

I have the zoom control set to "fast" and the tracking sensitivity set to "high." Working with the zoom ring was frustrating a few months ago but, like almost everything else, all it takes in order to become proficient with its operation is some solid practice. Used with a light touch the zoom-by-wire is actually quite good. I set my base white balance at 3800K and it worked well with the base lighting and the follow spots. The follow spots are LEDs and seem to be balance to hit about halfway between a tungsten and a daylight balance. 3800 might be just a tad blue but very workable if I need to do slight corrections in post. 

I've tested this camera quite a bit and have found that it's ISO range is usable to a real 3200 if a scene is well lit and can be exposed exactly right. I'm not a perfect technician so I know I am pretty safe if I go with 1600 instead. On Tues. I was adventurous and roamed around in the 2000 and 2500 ISO range. I was not bitten by my enthusiasm; the images turned out well...

The important thing to do with this camera is to let the AF and the I.S. settle before clicking the shutter button. The contrast AF is very good, even at the long focal lengths but you need to be patient and not hurry it. At this point some knucklehead will point out that his Nikon D4s or his Canon 1Dx mlxxx can nail focus in a microsecond and, as a former owner of both systems, I'll just say that might be so but I'd much prefer to have the locked in point actually in focus....

With the aperture pretty much locked at f4.0 and the ISO limited to 2500 the one variable that changes as we go through is shutter speed. I've gotten used to using my thumb with the back dial to change shutter speeds quickly, up or down. With the camera set up to shoot this way, and with high ISO noise reduction set to standard, I get the best results shooting tight. That's why I still grabbed the A7R2 from time to time during the show. As I get quicker though, I could drop the ISO to 800 for static group shots and come away with fine images from the RX10 as well.  Here's some of the work. 

before the start of the play, some last run throughs. A maximum focal length image of actor, Tyler Jones on stage. RX10iii

Medium shot which informs the tight shot below. RX10iii.

Actors Anderson Zoll and Scarlet Craig as Michael and Jane Banks.  Tight close up from 

mid-way up the audience using the maximum focal length on the RX10iii -- handheld.

Actor Jill Blackwood as Mary Poppins. 

Very happy with the focusing capabilities of the RX10iii under lower light levels. 

Another shot that shows a general part of the scene at a fairly long focal length setting complimented below by a shot from the same camera position but at the 600mm equivalent focal length. Again, handheld. (See just below).

This group shot and the one directly below are fro the A7R2. While pixel peeping immediately informs one that the quality of the bigger camera is much more impressive, the reality is that at most of the smaller sizes, including the full 27 inch screen slide show I just looked at, the differences are nearly invisible in most use scenarios. 

One more RX10iii sample---just for fun.

After examining over 1900 files on Tues. night I can say with some certainty that I'll definitely be pressing the RX10iii into service for more and more theater work in the large space. The reach is just too nice to pass up. And the ability to go from a wide shot of the full stage to a tight shot of a single face is just an amazing testament to the design and production of the lens and the low noise of the BSI sensor. I wouldn't care about the mechanics if I wasn't getting something new and different by using them. Thought you might be interested. 

Those "in between" days. You know; where we get all the boring stuff done so we can do the fun stuff the next day....

I've been treating my Sony RX10iii like a chubby little Hasselblad.

I've got it set to shoot squares and sometimes I go one step further and 

set it to shoot black and white. And it's a camera I nearly always use

in the Jpeg format. So it's more like the old days of film when you

kind of had to more or less nail your shots in the camera.

Studio Dog is waiting for someone to come down the hall, 

exclaim, "Oh my gosh, you are so cute!!!" at which 

point she will manipulate them into giving her yet another 

treat from the little jar on the small kitchen table 

next to the (hardwired) telephone.

It's all retro here.

So, it's Tuesday. Yesterday was my day to get up way too early and drive the hour to Johnson City where we were supposed to shoot some board members for a utility company. I got there at 7 a.m., set up by 7:30 and had my first board member show up, in a rush, at 7:45. I got his photograph taken and waited for the next of the three new people to arrive. At the last minute the schedule changed and everyone went into a board meeting right at 8:15. "Another day." my contact said, "we'll come back and get the other ones on another day." 

I tore down the lights and the soft boxes and the meticulously placed green screen and packed everything carefully back in their cases and bags. Then I headed back to Austin. I'll charge them enough to make the trip worth my time but it seemed empty to travel so much and shoot so little. I came back to the world headquarters of the Visual Science Lab and imported the files into Lightroom, did some rudimentary color correction and converted the selects into Jpegs then put them up on Smugmug.com, in a private little gallery for the client. I spent the rest of the day making airline reservations for next week's assignment in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, sorting out retouching and post production orders from clients and hanging out with my sometimes assistant and full time son, Ben. 

Today is a "limbo" day. Not as in dancing under the limbo stick but as in stuck in limbo. I had a stack of things growing like weeds on the corner of my desk: Sign a contract to get a bunch of work done on my trees. Calculate and pay my state sales taxes. Bill several clients whose jobs I shot last week. Interrupt the billing process to read a book about how to cure procrastination. Get back to billing. Pay some bills online. Pay some bills offline. Have lunch at a little Mexican restaurant on First St. with my friend, Will. And then return to the studio to clean, clean and then clean again. 

If you work as a photographer and you stay pretty busy you are always coming back from somewhere, on a job where you chose to use some assemblage of gear, and you are always getting ready to go somewhere else and, if you are like me, choosing other gear to take on the next job. There never seems to be time to unpack, stow the used gear and get organized so stuff starts to accumulate in little piles. 

Then, all at once, you realize that tomorrow you'll be shooting in the studio with two clients in tow and you need to pretend that you are one of those highly organized photographers who keep their studios looking spare and Swiss. At this point I panic and start trying to do all my organization at once. 

The schedule for the next 24 hours is a little tricky. I'm getting the studio totally set up and ready to shoot still life stuff first thing in the morning. Right now I'm taking a break (procrastinating) after having set up three soft boxes and five, big LED lights. The reason I want everything set is that I am scheduled to go to Zach Theatre tonight at 7:30 pm to photograph the dress rehearsal of Mary Poppins. Since the production goes "live" tomorrow I need to shoot this evening (usually until around 11pm) and then head home to post process the files right after. We need to get them to assorted sites and media tomorrow...

From 11pm till about 2 am I'll be importing, editing, color correcting and outputting. My hope is to start an upload to Smugmug.com as I walk out the door at the end of the night and then be up and going by 6:30 in the morning for the first of two shoots; the still life shoot for the healthcare devices client, followed by another location shoot at a different theater. We're shooting marketing images at a downtown theater and we'll need to set up lights, etc. but not the same lights we'll be using to shoot product...

I'm sure that by the end of the day I'll be toast. I hope to get some sleep on Weds. night so I can hit the post processing for these two jobs right after a dentist appointment (see, I'm having all the fun!).

I've got the shop vac out and my earplugs in. I'm trying to figure out a design-y way to store sandbags. I'm constantly back and forth on e-mail scheduling portraits with doctors who seem to have rampant scheduling issues. Little issues that seem to require a nearly constant fine tuning of appointments. It's largely insane. 

But I am reticent to actually complain about any of this. It's what we wished for all the way through the downturn in 2007-2013 = a Summer of good paying, non-stop photographic work. Now, if I can just get through it all without collapsing from exhaustion. Some down time to nap on the couch with Studio Dog would be wonderful.

Testing a lighting set up before an important shoot (they're all important!).

The business of photograph is mostly about getting good images delivered. Clients don't really give a crap why something "didn't work" they just need photographs they can use. The better the photographs the happier they are to pay on time and hire you again next time. Since guaranteed delivery is essential we try not to leave much to chance and usually will have an assistant step in for some test shots. That way we can fine tune a lot before the clients arrive on the set. 

The test shot above was supposed to be of my assistant. We were going to photograph former president, Bill Clinton, in conjunction with a Dell, Inc. event. The problem in this situation is that, at the last minute, the secret service refused to approve my assistant. They wouldn't give him security clearance to be in the room.  I would be making photographs of the former president, and a big collection of Dell executives and local dignitaries and, all of a sudden, I found myself flying solo. 

Well, that's why camera makers put self-timers on our cameras. Sure, it's a pain in the butt to shoot, then chimp, then shoot and chimp again while walking a circuit from the subject position to the back of the camera but it beats the hell out of noticing that something isn't working in the middle of a non-repeatable assignment. Especially one on an insanely tight time schedule. 

The tension of a last minute change in staff, along with the pressures of the moment probably go a long way toward explaining why I am not smiling my usual endearing smile in this particular image....

Paris Hatters. San Antonio, Texas.

My first real memories of downtown San Antonio were of eating ice cream sundaes at Joske's Department Store on the corner of Alamo Plaza and Commerce. They had a restaurant on one of the top floors and they made clown faces on the sundaes and put the cones on upside down, like clown hats. It wasn't until I was old enough to walk around the downtown area by myself that I started to discover older businesses like this one, a hat shop that's been on a side street in downtown for over one hundred years. It's still there. It's still open for business and they still sell hats and boots. 

I like to think that ranchers and ranch hands come in from the small, surrounding towns to buy their authentic hats there. It was somehow reassuring to round a corner and see that the shop was still there. Progress marches so quickly sometimes...

I tried two different compositions.

I like seeing more of the building but I'm not sure 

I like seeing the tops of the cars. 

I'll have to look at them for a while.

Camera: Sony RX10iii.

ISO: 100

Fancy Jpeg.

Summer self-portraits. Reflections in the old Alameda Theater. San Antonio, Texas. RX10iii.

Stumbling through San Antonio in the Heat. Trusty RX10iii Swinging by My Side.

I was down in San Antonio yesterday doing the routine human stuff. Buying some groceries for my octogenarian parents and making sure their air conditioning was working, visiting with my in-laws, and acting as a chauffeur for my wife. But I carved out the time between 3 and 5 pm to grab a camera and head to downtown San Antonio to see what might be new since I last roamed through, well over a year ago. No great art here, only the realization that the camera works as a motivator to get me out looking and walking. The experiential parts of walks are at least as important as any images one comes back with. 

It was hot but I was sporting a new hat that worked well and an old, white shirt from REI that seems to have built-in refrigeration capabilities. A nice time to be out and about. San Antonio can be so vibrant; it made me a bit resistant about heading back to Austin. But, since I needed to be in Johnson City this morning at 7 a.m. ...  

The importance of small, incremental jobs. Making a photography business work.

I don't like to turn down small jobs. I remember all too well the early days in my career when my livelihood depended on piecing together dozens of smaller projects over the course of a month in order to make enough money for the mortgage and groceries. It seems like most people (and articles) are focused on the "big" projects with big price tags. Not a bad idea, if you can get them with any degree of regularity, but I counsel younger photographers not to walk away from the smaller, "bread and butter" jobs because they can be more numerous and available, and if you stack enough of them together it's actually possible to make a living taking photographs.

A case in point is head shots. I'd love to charge $1,500 to $2,000 for a single head shot in the studio. But you know what? There is a range in every market and those prices are a bit more that businesses in Austin are currently willing to pay. The range here is about $125 to $650 for an in-studio head shot. My clients seem comfortable in the $350-$450 range. What does this buy them? It buys a 30 minute session with a seamless background (or canvas, etc.) along with a web gallery to select the image they'd like to use and the retouching of that selected image. It also includes the usage rights for personal public relations and use on a website.

Advertising projects pay much more so why do I "waste" my time doing an almost endless series of head shots? Well, for one reason, practice makes perfect. The more people I photograph, and the more often I photograph them, the better I become at fine tuning lights, making good conversation and identifying poses and expressions that make sitters look their best. If I spent less time doing these kinds of business portraits I'm certain that I'd be rusty and I would be slower. Maybe I would deliver a lesser product without the constant practice.

But the smaller jobs, like head shots, also serve to keep the cash flow flowing in between the bigger jobs. If I could nail down 6 jobs a year that net me $25,000 each I could work for a month or a month and a half every year and have a good income. But reality intrudes and work never comes in on a methodical and regular schedule. If I waited around just for the "whales" I might be disappointed. I might also, eventually, be broke.

I just finished a "whale" job last month. It paid well and it required my skills and attention for several weeks. If jobs like this came in regularly I'd be thrilled, but, in reality, they come in sporadically and are never quite predictable. Head shots, product shots and interesting events happen all the time. They are a great source of regular and almost continuous income between the big stuff. They are like the  minnows, trout and salmon. Not the whales.

I remember having dinner and chatting about business with one of the people who was a super star photographer in the 1990's and early 2000's. His work consisted almost entirely of big, national and international advertising projects. Most of which came from NYC. We talked about the difference between the way I had structured my business and the way he has structured his. He might only get three or four big jobs in a year but the budgets were in the range of $50,000 to $100,000 per engagement.

I was working three or four times a week for local corporations, or divisions of national corporations that had a big presence in Austin. My day rate at the time was around $1,800. I would have to work for a month to make what my friend could make in a week. His client list consisted of six or seven giant advertising agencies on the east coast. My client list was sixty or seventy local clients that ranged from a small, regional theater, a few mid-sized medical practices, and a large number of technical companies like Dell, Motorola, IBM, and Tivoli Systems.

The projects I worked on were (are) always large industry events (not advertising), images of cool, new product, lifestyle portraits for product marketing, and executive portraits. Not very glamorous very often. But it was (is) steady work. And I have a personality that feels comfortable when I'm always working on something.

When the economy collapsed in 2007-2008 advertisers cut back. Traditional, big campaigns were replaced by cheaper, early attempts at social marketing and highly targeted niche marketing, and moved away from big campaigns aimed at wide markets. My friend's six or seven agencies switched gears and the work stopped flowing to him. When the markets finally recovered and cycled back to those more traditional projects the three or four year hiatus killed my friend's business. On the recovery a whole new crew of younger "photographers of the moment" were positioned to take over and start a new cycle.

My business fell during the same period but with ten times the total number of clients the shock was spread across a wider group and there was always someone who still needed the day to day work for their company's advertising. Six or seven head shots in a month covered the mortgage and property taxes. Three or four product shots in a month kept food on the table and the occasional, smaller, local or regional ad campaigns filled in enough so we could still make contributions to retirement accounts and the kid's 529 college plan. The jobs shrunk for a while because our clients were having difficulties with the economy as well but we were lucky in that 90% of our existing base of clients was loyal through the years.

The secret was to be diversified not only by client types but by project types and sizes as well. In the tightest economies it seems that only the smaller jobs get approved and funded. The more of these jobs you can round up; even though you are working more or longer days, the more financially healthy your overall business can be. It's all back to cash flow...

Since we could gauge more regular results I remained committed to regular marketing and in those lean times the marketing emphasized our competence at doing smaller, more routine jobs. No sense sending out images from big and costly campaigns if everyone is tightening their belts....

To this day, even in a year when bigger projects seem to be flowing in nonstop, I am loathe to ever turn down a smaller project; if I can do it profitably and efficiently. I understand the need for cash flow. These are the jobs that ultimately make a business sustainable.

Life in photography can be a jumble of disconnected images. It can also be fun.

Paddle Boards. 

Canoes.

Water and Trees.

Barton Springs Pool. Closed on Thursdays for cleaning...

Sony A7ii camera.

Sony/Zeiss 24-70mm f4.0 lens.

Swimming Pool = 68 degrees.

Ah. Those Austin Summer Skies.

A different view of the Pfluger Pedestrian Bridge over Lady Bird Lake. Austin, Texas

There are two overlapping lenses that I bought for the Sony A7 series cameras. Both are wide angle zooms and both were designed by Zeiss, but they come from very different eras. One is an older, manual focus zoom lens that was made for the manual focus Contax cameras which were popular in the 1980's and 1990's. It's a very solid and heavy lens that utilizes a push-pull design. It's the 28-85mm f3.3 - f4.0 lens. Used with an adapter on an A7x camera it is front heavy but it does a very nice job when it comes to making images. It is moderately contrasty and has a very rich color palette. By that I mean that the colors are very well differentiated and quite nicely saturated. It is not overly energized but has a nice visual balance to it. As a photographer who likes to make classical portraits I am happy that the long end goes out to 85mm as opposed to the more current vogue of emphasizing the wide end over the long end. The "cool" Canon, Nikon and Sony zooms of today start at 24mms and end at 70mms. Nice if you really need to go wide most of the time but not really optimal for beautifully drawn headshots.

The other lens is a member of the new order. It's the 24-70mm f4.0 Zeiss/Sony. While it's not as long as I would like it's a very functional street shooting lens and in some ways is a complement to the above lens and not a redundancy. Whereas the manual lens pushes one to be more methodical and careful the newer lens combines with the latest A7X cameras to deliver fast and accurate autofocus. This makes for a system that just seems made for taking quick slices of life while moving through time and space. The AF lens is also much lighter than its manual, distant sibling which makes it much more fun to drag around during the day. 

The lenses seem to render colors and tones in very similar ways but the main difference in imaging between the two lenses is the overall contrast of the resulting photographs. The older lens, no doubt optimized for use with film, is only moderately contrasty and has a balanced look to it. The newer lens follows the modern design idiom in making the contrast stronger and placing more emphasis on sharpness than a certain visual balance. 

So, yesterday when I left swim practice and went for a walk I chose to use the new lens. I knew I would be photographing things that might benefit from the combination of contrast and high sharpness and I knew that I would benefit from the lighter weight and faster operation. If I had been heading to the studio to make portraits with specific lighting I'm pretty sure I would have made the opposite choice. Of course I am spoiled. A good photographer could press either lens into either kind of service and get satisfying results. Additionally, with a little work in post I can make the older lens look very much like the newer one. But it is nice to have two different tools that, while nuanced, do have differences that can be expressed in daily shooting. Just as I've come to realize that it can be useful to have more than one model of 50mm lens the same applies to standard zoom lenses. 

Part of the difference is the psychological momentum created by the heft, feel and operation of each lens. To achieve perfect focus with the MF lens one must slow down and take advantage of the camera system's focus magnification feature. This works best when adapting a contemplative style of photography. When shooting still life, landscapes, objects, and people who aren't moving around too much. Knowing the limitation of manually focusing slows one down and makes one become more methodical. 

When using the AF lens one is freed to turn, snap and continue on without having to break the flow by demanding a greater concentration on the mechanical steps of picture taking. Both methods are valuable and both have their limits. Part of being an artist is to desire the right tool for creation ---- in the moment. Different moments call for different approaches. It's nice to have choices. 

A look toward the neighborhood where my studio is located. Just Southwest of downtown and across the Colorado River. This view is about a mile from home.

In the middle of Summer, in the middle of Austin. July 15, 2016

Barton Springs Spillway.

The lakes are full and the sun is shining. Even though the heat is oppressive it seems everyone in Austin is heading outdoors. Some are walking the streets of downtown, looking for Pokemon, but the rest are heading to Barton Springs, the streams along the Greenbelt, or out to the lakes. Yesterday, in the middle of the work week, I drove over a bridge across Lady Bird Lake; the lake that runs through downtown. There were hundreds and hundreds of people cruising around the water below on paddle boards. 

As I walked along the hike and bike trail there was a continuous stream of runners heading towards me and heading away. 

I was out taking taking a walk with the same old camera. I've found a camera among the assorted collection that most fits my style and temperament. I may shoot jobs with something else but this one is as comfortable as an old pair of sandals, well broken in. And the funny thing (to me) is that it's the last one in. I bought it only a month or so ago and it was already well used. 

But comfortable. A great camera to take along in the hot weather, just in case I see a Charizard under the Lamar Blvd. Bridge. 

You never know.