"First Impressions Review!!!!" "Hands On Review!!!!" "First Preview !!!!!!!" "Image Gallery !!!!!!" "Our Experts Intuit Camera Performance Under Glass !!!!!" And much more.

"Our long wait for the ultimate large-to-medium,  format uber-camera is over. We were able to glance through thick plate glass at a clay prototype of the latest GXRXD-1001.5 and come to striking conclusions about its possible capabilities." We think it will be a paradigm shifting, mind-bending tour de force for photographers everywhere. A must have. 

"Join us for a manufacturer's sponsored love fest of the latest miracle from Zarcon Cameras as we shove their sponsor money in our pockets and introduce you, via a lovely video presentation, to our ephemeral tester, Bob Smith, for a hands-on romp with a pre-pre-pre-production version of what might just be the last camera you'll ever need." 

"Now, I do what I call "REAL WORLD REVIEWS" where I do absolutely no scientific or repeatable testing, make no measurements, have no metric for any objective evaluation, and actually just figure out the results from a handful of shots I made with the new camera, a third party kit lens, in exasperating light, taking snaps of my cat and my large and dour drinking buddy. I've had the camera for 48 hours now, part of which I spent unconscious, and I'm ready to make all sorts of recommendations to help you rationalize spending money you don't have."

"I am self-appointed camera expert, Chip Gobsworth, and I'm here to explain why the cameras I like to use are the only ones any sane photographer could even think about having in their bag. We'll start with a brisk discussion of nano-acuity and move on to bokeh homogenization before we tackle gamma ray interference patterns and their effects on the outer 97th circle of confusion in our imaging. My credentials? I have photographed (successfully!) over 1,700 test patterns and charts, 512 brick walls, and, literally, millions of kitty whiskers. I used to work in some vaguely technical industry and hold a vaguely technical degree in something totally unrelated to imaging, optics or photography. I once saw a book of landscapes by Ansel Adams. It was okay."

"Join me and many other retired sales executives, lawyers, doctors and landed gentry as we look at new cameras through the nostalgic lens of our past camera experiences. Read along as I compare everything new to the Leica camera I owned in 1977 and the Hasselblad camera I bought in 1985. Compare dozens of very similar landscape photographs that we'll use to show the massive differences between 36 megapixel cameras and 42 megapixel cameras. Come along for the ride as we take 24 well heeled amateur photographers along with us to the unspoiled landscape of some nice canyon somewhere. We'll mark the spots we used to take our "teaching" photographs so you can put your tripod-mounted camera in the very same spot. You'll know you're doing ART when your photographs look exactly like ours. Plus we drink ancient, single malt Scotch while parsing the differences in tripod heads that sell for under $2,000."

"Take a look at the photo gallery from our rigorous pre-test time with the Dyno-flex 12000. Enjoy over 75 haphazard, handheld photographs of coffee cups, in various stages of consumption. Inadvertently body shame my chubby girlfriend or boyfriend. See how cool it looks when you shoot extreme close up portraits with the wide angle kit lens! Check out the camera's performance shooting in AWB, handheld at a 1/5th of a second, at ISO 120,000. My oatmeal never looked better!!! Our gallery is chocked full of colorful fences, old cars that should be in Cuba, my girlfriend looking bored, coffee cups, shadows of myself on concrete and a blurry shot of my dog running away from me. You'll marvel at the Dyno-flex 12000 performance!"

"We were thrilled to find that the Reguro-D113 is able to nail focus on a fast moving Hyundai while shooting at 15 fps. A huge improvement over the previous model which could barely handle 13.5 fps under the same conditions. But let's talk turkey here! While the camera, sensor and lens were all absolutely perfect, and the images sublime, we had to ding its pre-preview 60 points for two very important omissions: First, Horrors! No in camera raw converter!!! And two, the internal GPS is only accurate down to one meter. Let's move on to BIF."

Is anyone else dead tired and annoyed by all the silly ass previews and specification regurgitations at blog sites and camera review sites all over the web? Do we really need to give credence to the most cursory look at a not yet released camera, with pre-production firmware, no less? Should we pay any attention to the (typically) crappy images that are supposed to be examples of this latest super tech but which really look like first year photography class rejects? I'm exhausted at the hyperbole. I'm exhausted at trying to pretend that the (mostly) children who write this garbage have more experience and understanding of photography than my dog. If they don't have any real news to talk about perhaps they could spend a hell of a lot more time shooting and experimenting with all this "breakthrough" gear before they sit down at some beleaguered coffee shop and pound out crap on their laptops just to fill the space between the click through ads...... I'd rather read about Michael's new Miata than to crack open another "First Hand Preview Impressions" article. What's next? Previews of cameras that might get released. 

Here's an interesting challenge. Don't write a review of a camera until you've at least shot it for a month and charged the battery five times or more. Don't write a review to tell me your impressions of the "color or sharpness" of the camera sensor if you are handholding it all the time and using the world's cheapest kit lens. Don't pretend that the lack of an internal, raw processing app makes any difference to anyone with a rational brain. Don't ding a camera because you don't know how to use it. But mostly the first thing, stop trying to understand and write a camera review in 24 hours or less from the time FedEx shows up with the box at the door. And for God's sake, don't tell me you don't really like the genre of the camera you are testing but you have to review it anyway. We're pretty smart we'll realize that, if you are a sports photographer who shoots with a big DSLR, you're not going to be happy shooting a Fuji X-100 of any vintage. Fact checking would be nice too. 

Just to be clear: I don't mind announcements of new product. I do mind endless "hands-off" previews of these products... sad. 

See analog world map on the back. Accurate to within a thousand miles.

Experience the gut-wrenching nano acuity of the moulded lens.

We tested it. In the future.

How the decimation of traditional advertising has eroded the market for "professional" photography.

We, as practitioners of professional, commercial photography love to have scapegoats to blame for shrinking markets, eroding margins and disappearing fees. In the recent pass we've blamed: the smartphone and its users, the "soccer" moms with cameras, and, those scurvy dogs, the weekend warriors who would work for free in return for the experience. We've railed at people who are just entering the market for not understanding that it is smarter to charge for the value of a piece of intellectual property to the client instead of gauging prices by how much you might need to make just to buy groceries and keep the heat on. 

But in the same way that robotics and automation will ensure the society-wide elimination of repetitive human jobs and fill those positions with machines that don't need breaks, don't make (many) mistakes and don't need retirement accounts, I would conjecture that the erosion in photography markets is a direct result of the granularization of the advertising channels (display media) and the ability of marketers, via the application of psycho-metrics (thank you Isaac Asimov via the Foundation Trilogy...), which allows much more precise message targeting. The value of an advertising image is based on the its effectiveness times its use over large numbers of impressions. To be useful to a very wide audience an image must be more and more "all purpose" which dilutes its impact and efficiency in prompting action (or, in the case of elections; inaction). The more focused an image is toward a defined collection of customer quirks and attributes the most effectively it will reach its demographic target, the fewer impressions it will have, and the CPM will skyrocket. 

Going forward you and I will not likely see the same advertisements when we search the web. Our buying habits, incomes, political leanings and our basic personalities (things like our introversion or extroversion) will be analyzed (Thank you! Smart Phone, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter) and data mapped and we'll have our attention focused toward ad messages that will be resonate with our oddly unique points of view, as defined by rigorous data-mining of all our public and private actions and choices. If data from my phone shows that I only drink conventional drip coffee at Starbucks then, over time, I will stop seeing ads for Mocha Frappucinos and my ads will point me toward products and services that algorithms have postulated as within my particular buying preferences. 

Your predilection for Pumpkin Spice lattes might swing your ad parade toward various seasonal drinks with high sugar and accentuated taste features. Different images will be used to target the messages more precisely. While more men than women lean republican a much tighter determiner of voting practice might be to look at car preferences instead. The more one prefers American Luxury cars the more precisely likely it is that a psycho-metric marketer can reach out to the same audience that bought a Lincoln in order to sell them a political candidate. 

But the bottom line is this, instead of using one overarching image to reflect the paid advertising of a branded item a savvy marketer now requires a much more tightly targeted collection of images in order to address each of a myriad of smaller, more discrete populations. That means the cost of a photoshoot, or licensing package, can't be spread over a large campaign (greater cost spreading drives down the per unit cost of imaging and makes it affordable to pay more). If a marketer requires 60 images instead of 1 in order to better take advantage of a much more rigorously defined collection of target subsets then each of the 60 images has less individual value in isolation than an all purpose image would have had in the days when mass communication ruled. 

It also means that there will no longer be uniform stylistic attributes that coalesce ubiquitously in mainstream marketing. Each tiny market segment will respond differently to poses, color choices, graininess, propping, styling, the creative narrative, and even casting. An older coffee drinker may be more effectively subliminally manipulated by an image of a woman of a specific age and income class, in a quiet environment, drinking coffee while reading book (novel). This may trigger his unconscious desire to visit a coffee shop ( the visual stimulant, in addition to his decades long caffeine addiction). He might be motivated the promise of a quiet respite from home or office and the off chance of meeting someone compatible. By the same token a slightly younger coffee drinker might respond  to an image of a coffee shop bustling and full of people, who almost all have headphones on, and who are looking at laptop and smartphone screens. The imaging may be driving their desire to go to the coffee shop for greater social connection.  One image promises one outcome while the other speaks almost oppositely to a different demographic target. Both are more effective when used concurrently than one solo ad that tries to hit all markets and ultimately fails to spark a tipping point reaction in any market. 

But, the images will need to be differentiated in many ways (both content and style) and this is a cost to the advertiser. Since budgets aren't wholly elastic, and ad insertions have to be made in many more channels, and the cost of designing multiple adds is considered, the soft spot for cost optimization points directly at any external, third party cost. And that would be the photography. 

Additionally, the drive to reduce the cost of photography per ad also drives the whole scale rout toward using enormous amounts of low cost stock photography. Which can now be easily modified to conform to the parameters expressed by the data-mined and interpreted information about the sub-groups.

In the near future A.I. will work with data mining to discover just which images resonate with you, personally, the most. At that point all the thousands of reference points you've provided, and continue to provide, to the cloud of advertising research will be used to construct CGI ads (which require no actual photographer or actual models) that speak exactly to the visual+emotional constructs you have in your own head. To see them constructed and played back to you means you will feel a deeper emotional connection to the advertising in the belief that you and they are "on the same page," and that they "get" you. And at that point they will certainly have gotten you. 

But if you are sitting back smugly in your chair because you "saw the writing on the wall" and dived into video, or some related field, you might want to start studying up on artificial intelligence video editing and artificial intelligence scripting, and technical writing. And consider the implications of face detection, smile detection and automatic camera systems. Far fetched? No! All here right now. 

Much maligned Rode NTG-2 microphone rehabilitated by impedance matching. Harrah!

The internet is a dangerous place to look for specific information. I bought a Rode NTG-2 super-cardioid microphone three or four years ago and used it plugged directly into my camera's 3.5mm input with the help of a plug adapter. When I started using the microphone with my cameras I found the output of the microphone to be very low. I always needed to boost the audio level in the camera. When I did that I ended up with files that were pretty noisy. 

Searching the web led me to believe that mediocre performance is just what you can expect with a $269 microphone. "Get over it. Spend a couple grand on a decent mic." Most sites that dealt with audio presumed that a smart person would get a pre-amplifier for the microphone and only then would it work well enough for professional use. Most people started using them in conjunction with external digital audio recorders, like the Tascams and Zooms, and getting much better audio so I figured the pre-amp was needed and, like a lemming, rushed to buy a Zoom (and a Tascam). And I've been using that microphone in that manner ever since. It's become a habit. A stupid habit. I hate "double sound."

About two years ago I wanted something that would interface between the cameras I use and the XLR connectors that are at the back of nearly every good microphone so I bought a passive unit for those times when I wanted to run a microphone through the box and also have the ability to pad down the levels. 

I decided that since I didn't have good results with the Rode NTG-2 I should look at the reviews for a microphone which I could both afford and get decent sound from. All reviews led me to the Sennheiser MKE 600 and I bought one. But nowadays my habit is to run everything through the little Beachtek interface. I've learned that part of the magic of that little box is internal transformers which help provide the right impedance when combining balanced, XLR microphones with DSLR/Mirror-free 3.5mm microphone inputs. I set up the system with the MKE 600 and the Beachtek and recorded a bunch of voice tests. They sounded great and the levels into the camera were ideal. No maxing out the camera gain just to get a whisper of sound...

With this success in mind I also started using the Audio Technica micrphone the same way. Success! But, of course, I had already developed a fixed prejudice against the Rode NTG-2 so I never got around to testing it with the audio interface. Until today. 

I decided to do a direct comparison between all three of my super-cardioid microphones in order to narrow down my choices for my upcoming video project. I presumed the Sennheiser and the Audio Technica would be the winners but tossed the NTG-2 into the ring just to see how badly it would suck. 

Surprise! Of the three microphones in my test I preferred the overall sound of the NTG-2 to its rivals. This was the first time I'd used the Rode with the audio adapter/interface and it cleaned up everything that seemed wrong with that microphone. Hmm. Proper matching, could it be logical and correct? 

I'm going to say, "yes." 

Funny what you can learn by stepping away from your computer and just plugging all this silly stuff in and playing with it. I'll keep the Zoom H5 and the Tascam DR60ii around for those times when I might need some portable phantom power.... 

Go microphones!

Photos from the dress rehearsal of, "The Great Society." The second interesting play about LBJ's legacy. We're three cameras deep in this one....

A photograph from Zach Theatre's, "The Great Society." 

As you might know I've spent quality time over the last 28 years documenting almost every single production Zach Theatre has done in that span. I've used at least 30 different cameras and hundreds of different lenses and I've enjoyed watching somewhere between 350-450 performances. I know a lot about theater, I just don't know what I like... Just kidding. I know exactly what I like.

I like plays that challenge my view of life, make me laugh, make me cry, etc. But most of all I like plays that are fun to shoot. That doesn't always mean comedies or musicals; it means any play that is well staged, beautifully lit, powerfully acted and, in some way accessible to me. Having literally photographed thousands of hours of material (both content on the stage and set-up advertising shots in the my studio, or a temporary studio at Zach Theatre; on the stages at Live Oak Theatre, The Paramount Theater, the State Theater, The Rollins Stage at the Long Center, and the rehearsal stage at the Austin Lyric Opera) I think I finally know a thing or two about how to photograph plays and operas, and just how my photographs will be used. The photographs I share here on my blog are not necessarily the ones I, or the marketing people from the theaters, think are the perfect ones to use for mass market communications, they are the ones I like from the shows --- for one reason or another. 

You would think that, over time, I would become a bit jaded and, more or less, just photograph productions on auto pilot by now but you would be wrong. This year I decided I needed to up my game a bit, mostly for my own enjoyment and for the challenge of making better works. A constant push for me and for my clients, and especially for the actors who commit so much time and energy to make their art work.

To this end I've started going to rehearsals and digging into the look and feel of the content while trying to better understand what the artistic directors are trying to do in their interpretations of the material. 

For "The Great Society" ( a drama about the second term of LBJ's presidency) I started my research by going to an early rehearsal and mostly watching the blocking while reading over the script. I came back a week later and we set up some lighting and used an a6300 to record three video interviews with key actors. About a week before the design rehearsal (the first rehearsal with full costumes and fully finished sets) I came by just to sit for a while and look at the set on the stage. It was also a nice chance to talk with the lighting designer for the play and try to understand the way she would use lighting to help drive the drama. 

I came to the design rehearsal which pretty much gave me the run of the house for photographs. This is where I got a lot of the closer, wider shots which I like very much. It was also the first time I was able to see a production run all the way through the script. It's great to know where the action builds and when there might be "reveals" that are important. This play is in three acts with two intermissions so there is a lot of action to remember and to prepare for. 

For the design rehearsal I brought along "the twins." The RX10ii and the RX10iii. Don't know why I did it that way but I liked it. A lot. I used the 2 for most of the close stuff and

Packing always drives me a little nuts. A new backpack always seems like the right thing to try. Here's my latest....

The new backpack.

It's obvious to everyone now that you really don't want to check your cameras and lens in as luggage when you fly. The risk of damage and/or loss is just too great, and if you have a job waiting at the other end of the trip it'll make you crazy to arrive without the tools you need to get the work done. I have to confess something here; I am a very nervous flyer when it comes to work. I routinely get to our local airport at least two and a half hours before my scheduled flight. I have anxiety about getting the gear from the car to the Skycaps. If the lines are long I am indecisive about whether I should wait at the curbside check-in or take my chances with the agents inside the terminal. When traveling I am very much like James Thurber character (nervous to a fault) and, at 61, I've given up trying to make massive changes to my own travel psychology. 

Since that is the case I just concentrate on trying to control what I usually can. My upcoming trip to the Toronto area is a classic example. I'm videotaping interviews on location there, and also taking photographs. When we did our first in this series of videos we shot here in the Austin area I had the luxury of brining along everything I even remotely thought I might need. Or want. I had one case full of cameras and lenses. All the good stuff along with back-up cameras and lenses for every possibility. We could easily have done a nice, four camera shoot. I hauled along two big video tripods as well as a shoulder mount and a monopod. 

If we needed light stands in our interior locations we had five stout Manfrotto ten footers, with a couple of C-Stands riding along as contingency support. Lights?

Zany Cheap Stuff I Love to Have in My Studio (or in the car, or in the rolling case, etc.) Part 6.

Pelican organizational device. Much needed in my life.

These little waterproof cases are from Pelican. I use the one above to keep my Sennheiser wireless system safe and all together. The size is just right. I use another one that is the same size but a different color to keep all my radio triggers for studio flashes, etc. in one place. If everything has a dedicated box to live in it cues you to get your stuff back in the right container after every shoot. I need to get a couple more; one for camera batteries and one for all the small audio cables I seem to be collecting for microphones, mixers, etc.

These guys are sturdy and the clear lid is great for a quick check on what's inside. They even come with a carabiner so you can hook them to some part of your camera bag or roller case. They're less than $20 and also make a great box for the huge collection of sunglasses that seem to be building almost daily in my car....

Organization. That means I need a much bigger Pelican case so I can keep these little boxes inside.....
It never stops.

Zany Cheap Stuff I Love to Have in My Studio (or in the car, or in the rolling case, etc.) Part 5.

Sennheiser MKE 600 microphone. 

When I first jumped back into making videos I didn't think I'd get very serious about it so I didn't want to spend a lot of money on peripherals; like microphones and fancy tripods. I made the same mistake so many people do and instead of just buying one really adequate microphone I started down a path that began with less expensive units. My first new mic was the original Rode Videomic. It took a 9 volt battery, had pretty good, rubber band isolation and it really wasn't a stinky performer; especially if you used it as most are designed: within a couple feet of your actor or speaker. It was good but

Zany Cheap Stuff I Love to Have in My Studio (or in the car, or in the rolling case, etc.) Part 4.

This is a Beachtek DXA-2T. It's perfect.

A lot of us have really cool DSLRs and mirror-free cameras that have the potential to make great video files. The niggling things that seem to push people back to traditional camcorders and more expensive, dedicated video cameras are things like built-in neutral density filters and inputs that accept XLR connectors from professional microphones. 

Since most people (myself included) tend to be careful with their cash they make the presumption that the lack of XLR connectors is just an issue of cabling interfaces so they go off and buy cables that are XLR on the end that connects with the microphones and an unbalanced 3.5 mm mini-plug on the other. They use the cable as an adapter to get the microphone signal straight into camera and then discover that there is noise, that the gain on the camera needs to be turned way up and that nothing sounds the way they thought it would. At that point they dive into the complexity of using external audio recorders for their sound, shy away from microphones connected to their

Zany Cheap Stuff I Love to Have in My Studio (or in the car, or in the rolling case, etc.) Part 3.

This falls into one of those "What the Hell is This?!" categories.

It's a Boom Pole Holder. So, what the hell is that?

(The part closest to the camera is an Avenger grip head). 

Well, when you decide you are going to tumble down the rabbit hole and find out all about video, at some point you decide that for some stuff you like the way shotgun (super cardioid condenser) microphones sound better than the sound you get from your $600 set of Sennheiser wireless lavaliere microphones. You buy a good shotgun mic and determine that it needs to be about 18 inches from your subject's mouth. You research boom poles. These are poles with a microphone on one end and a sound recording crew member holding onto the other end. The goal is to aim the microphone at the talent's mouth while

Zany Cheap Stuff I Love to Have in My Studio (or in the car, or in the rolling case, etc.) Part 2.

I'm not sure what to call this thing but it's not too expensive (unless there is a Leica version...). 

Okay, it's a Movo Photo HVA 20 Heavy Duty Adapter.

This one is around $19 and it's a life saver for anyone who needs to put a microphone and a small light or mixer on to of their DSLR (or RX10iii) and still be able to look into the view finder. I bought it after a bout of extreme frustration with the way microphones have to sit on camera hot shoes. They always stick out the back, about two inches above the view finder. This means you end up

Zany Cheap Stuff I Love to Have in My Studio (or in the car, or in the rolling case, etc.) Part 1.

Leitz Table Top Tripod. Vintage. 

I am aware that there are lots and lots of table top tripods floating around in the photo-universe-inventory. I've played with a fair number of them. My favorite is the one up above. The head and the legs are two separate pieces. I don't think the basic design of the legs has changed in decades. I bought mine about 25 years ago and have found it to be indestructible and strangely friendly. 

When you loosen the wing nut on the bottom of the legs they can all be pulled around together (like the legs of a C-Stand) so you can pack the tripod flat. The head on this particular unit is not the one I got with the legs in my initial purchase. This head predates my more modern ball head by ten or twenty years. There is only one major difference between the two heads.

A portrait from Primary Packaging in NYC.

Sometimes I think photographers overthink photo assignments. I know I certainly do. I've been obsessing about packing photo gear lately and you'd think I am incapable of making even a halfway decent image without a half ton package of lighting and grip gear. Which always brings me back to photographs like this one.

I took this image of the company owner near the end of a long day shooting in his printing factory. He was ready to walk out the door when I decided the project I was working on would benefit by having him visually represented in it. We were traveling lite that day, shooting everything with a single camera, one of three lenses and one light.

The light was a small, Lowell Pro Light, which is a little, focusable, tungsten fixture with a four way barn door set on it. My favorite modifier at the time was a crusty, old, shoot-thru umbrella that had, at one time or another, been bright white but had mellowed into a soft, subtle yellow. I plugged it in pulled the assemblage toward the desk, eyeballing the relative exposure differences between the available light and the light on my subject from the hot light.

I asked his secretary to hold a piece of cardboard as a "gobo" to shield the bottom part of the light in order to pull some of the brightness off his hands, papers and shirt. Her body also blocked some of the light from my fixture that would have overlit the area behind my subject.

I leaned in and took a quick meter reading and then focused my 100mm Planar lens on the front of a weathered 500 series Hasselblad and pulled the dark slide. We shot through one 12 exposure roll of film and then unplugged and moved on. We spent maybe twenty minutes on the shot although nothing was particularly hurried.

We didn't overthink the shot. We didn't make the situation any more dramatic than it should have been. No army of assistants. No make up person. No executive entourage. Just a brief, "How is it going? Are you getting what you need?" from the owner and a quick, "Things are going well. But we need you too. Can you just stay behind the desk and work while I set up a light?" And done.

I was packing today to do a portrait and a brief interview tomorrow. I've got a rolling Tenba case full of LED panels, a case of microphones, mixers and audio recorders, a rolling stand case with five or six light stands, a tripod and some modifiers, and, of course, a camera bag filled to the brim ----- just in case. It's all too much. After seeing this image I have the strongest urge to stick an old 28-85mm lens on one body, grab one panel and one pop-up reflector and be done with it. Oh, and a microphone. And a stand for the microphone. And a mixer. And some headphones. And.........