Fighting gear acquisition compulsion disorder. How did I do this year?

I'll be blunt, if I weren't writing huge checks for my kid's college education every six months I'd have bought a lot more gear this year. Somewhere in my brain my parent spending control hormones are beating out my gear avarice hormones; but just barely.

I made a conscious effort to tighten up my gear spending this year and, looking back, I think I've been at least moderately successful. The entire inventory of working cameras (as distinct from old film cameras I have owned for years or decades...) consists of just six cameras. Of those six there are two sets of duplicates, since I operate on the theory that every professional photographer needs redundant back up gear of everything he intends to shoot with. No real exceptions.

I have two of the Panasonic fZ 1000 cameras but I like to use them for rough and tumble, drag around the street and the rock quarry kind of cameras. They may get dropped. They may get sacrificed in some way. They may just stop working on their on accord halfway through a job that I've structured around their unique feature sets and portability. So I have two. At $750 each they aren't going to break the bank.

I also have two of the Olympus EM-5.2 cameras. One is silver and the other is black. I have them for largely the same reason I have the two Panasonic cameras. Redundancy. But in the case of the Olympus cameras I also need two so I can work at events with a wide zoom on one body and a longer zoom on the other body, for shooting quickly and not worrying about stopping to change out lenses. The duplicate bodies sure came in handy on a couple of video jobs where I used a second camera operator to get additional footage. Set identically, the footage from the two cameras matches up perfectly! While I pulled money out of my pocket to get the Panasonic cameras I was able to trade three of the older EM5's for the two EM5.2 cameras. I had to kick in a little cash, but not much.

Seemed financially conservative to me given all the pluses of the second version EM5.  Two new lenses were purchased for the Olympus cameras this year. One was the Panasonic 42.5 f1.7 and the other was the (ultra cheap) 40-150mm f4.0-5.6. The latter was $99 bucks, on sale, and for the 42.5 I was able to get a  decent trade-in on my Olympus 45mm f1.8. A bit of money out of pocket to upgrade to a marginally better lens with more than marginally better physical design. Not much money spent in the m4:3 realm...

The place where I upgraded significantly was in my Nikon acquisitions. I traded in two D610s and a bunch of Panasonic gear to get the D750 and the D810. Both have proven to be good choices for the higher end advertising projects I do that return to my business the lion's share of revenue. I've also been on a shopping spree for lenses, but only the older, auto indexing, manual focusing lenses from the pre-AF days. Mostly at a fraction the price of their newer, glitzier AF counterparts.

Since the middle of the year I've been quite satisfied with the performance I'm getting out of all three systems and I have no current interest in trading, selling or changing the primary guts of the equipment inventory.

I have several things on my "want" list but nothing pressing on the "need" list. If you don't do this as your 100% make-a-living gig your needs will be different. If I answered to zero clients I wouldn't crave more than a D810 with a 50mm and a 135mm. Life is so different when clients have so many diverse visions of what commercial photography is all about....

There are upsides and downsides to buying less gear. Obviously, you save money. But not as much as you might think. If you buy a lot of gear you can deduct a huge portion of it in the year you buy it, with the accelerated cost recovery deal, via the tax man. You get to know your gear really well if you have less of it to sort out. But the less you have to sort out the less a blogger has to blog about. I fear for the day when the only stuff I have to talk about is the business of photography and the process of actually making images. Who would want to read that!?!

I did buy several sets of lights this year. I bought a couple of Profoto Monolights and a couple of Photogenic Monolights but in each case the carrying cases (Kata and Tenba) that came along with the lights were worth the purchase prices alone. I might even get around to selling off the lights and keeping the cases in 2016. I also bought some really cool LED lights. They are dirt cheap models from RPS (or Dotline). They use the new SMD LEDs that are more powerful and concentrated than the panels with a thousand smaller bulbs "crowdsourced" together on them. The new LEDs are wonderful. I have three now and press them into almost every portrait assignment. If any more lights get bought in 2016 it will be more of these. Maybe.

Those two little things I have on my list??? One is the Leica SL and the other is a Leica 90mm Apo-Summicron to cobble on to the front of the SL. But one look at the cost tells me that they'll be "on the list" but not in hand for at least another two and a half years.....

Not a very sexy gear year and not much to write home about. But on the flip side I've gotten the boy through a year and a half of out-of-state college and we're not yet eating Ramen or taking out student loans from the sharks at Goldman Sachs, so I guess I should count my blessings.

The Last Job of the Year. 2015 comes to a delightful end, as far as work goes...

Holiday Lights in Johnson City, Texas.

Things were wrapping up nicely here at the studio, we enjoyed one of the best years for the business since 2000. Clients were mostly smart and reasonable, the weather cooperated through the seasons when I needed it too, and my choice of cameras, paired with the needs of the assignments, seemed to be good. So, there I was in the kitchen making Christmas cookies and eggnog when I got a text from one of my favorite clients from this year, an electric utility company headquartered in Johnson City, Texas. "Could you come out to our facility sometime this week and make photographs of our holiday light display???"

I put together a jaunty little estimate and the client approved it right away. The weather was going to be perfect last Friday; sunny and clear, highs in the 50's and lows in the upper 30's, so I planned to go then. I asked my wife if she wanted to wrap up work early and go with me. We left Studio Dog to finish decorating the Christmas tree and we headed West, into the Texas Hill Country. 

I wasn't sure what exactly to expect so I brought along two different cameras and some lenses. I brought one of the "Swiss Army Knife" Panasonic fz 1000 cameras and also the Nikon D750 with the 24-120mm lens and the 50mm Art lens. The most important tool was the Manfrotto video tripod with a Manfrotto convertible ball head that allows smooth horizontal pans but also allows vertical orientations for still photography. Nice to have a solid, steady base. 

Like a typical city slicker from a big, hipster town, I was expecting to be underwhelmed by a holiday light display in a tiny, little town out in the Hills (about a 45 minuted drive from the outskirts of Austin). Thought maybe they'd strung some lights from a few trees and run a chain of lights along the roofline. But I was game. I was ready to get out of town and do something a little different, and having Belinda come along with me was a nice bonus. 

We got into town when the sun was still shining and did a quick survey of the site. Seeing it in the daylight at least let me see just how much effort went into stringing the lights. Not only were the trunks of the trees wrapped but also just about every branch. 

We left the car next to my client's facility and walked around the town. The ancient courthouse was also strung up with lots of lights and every antique store in town had rummaged up their best Christmas stuff from days long gone and displayed it in the windows, and on the sidewalks. 

As the light started to drop we headed back to the car so I could grab the tripod, put quick releases on each camera, and figure out where we'd start. There was a corner with a good view of the location just across the street. I figured I'd go for the wide establishing shot first. As the light dropped we felt the chill of evening swirl around us and we got our hats and gloves out of the car. Still waiting for the lights to come on we watched a Johnson City Police car park across from us. The officer smiled and said, "Are you the photographer the utility company told us about?" I told him I was and he smiled and said, "Anything you need from us, just ask!" And he proceeded to move a big van that had parked right in the middle of our view. For the rest of the evening no one parked adjacent to the facility, on the side of the street that might have occluded my viewpoint. 

With a clear shot of the dark trees we waited while hopping from one foot to the other to stay warm. 

I was being a jaded Austinite, dismissive of the whole affair, right up until the lights started to blink into life. Tree after glorious tree lit up until the entire property was bathed in a sparkling ocean of small lights. The effect was stunning. I kept trying to wrap my brain around how to shoot such an immersive experience. It was a visual wonderland. Everywhere one looked on the property the lights shimmered and glittered. My photographs don't do it justice. I can't imagine how to photograph something like this in order to get all the effect that one's eyes see as they move around the scene. Light from toe to the sky. 

We were the first ones there but the walking paths and sidewalks filled up quickly. Lots of families with small children, lots of (well behaved) teens taking selfies, a couple of older guys with cool cameras came complete with tripods, and looked pretty dang competent. Old ranchers and their wives in crusty boots and working jeans. It was beautiful. Just beautiful.

I shot with the Nikon and the zoom for most of the evening and the results were great. This is a good example of a situation where live view is effective. It was so fun to see the results firm up through a big loupe on the back LCD. I used the Panasonic to shoot about five minutes of video, which also worked well. 

Around seven thirty we were getting cold and hungry so we headed back to the car and drove over to the brew pub in town. Everyone else seemed to have the same idea and the wait would be about 45 minutes for a table. I remembered that the last time I was up in Johnson City (a month earlier) the client brought some really good breakfast tacos to our shoot. I happened to ask where they came from and she told me, "El Charro, right over on hwy. 281."  I suggested we head over and see if they were serving dinner; maybe get some Tex-Mex food. El Charro was small town funky, with bright, overhead fluorescent lighting and a cobbled together dining area, but the food was really good. My "Texas" plate with two enchiladas, guacamole, rice, beans and carne guisada was $6.99. And there was no way I could finish it all and not have to lay down and nap for a few hours afterwards. Great service too. 

Refreshed, renewed and re-warmed we headed back over to get a few more shots, this time with more people in them, and then we headed back to Austin. On the way home Belinda turned to me and said, "That was really great. It's nice to know that, at our age, we can still be surprised and delighted by a great display of holiday lights. That's the best I've ever seen..." 

I spent some time yesterday getting ready for Ben's homecoming from college and then I headed back into the office to do post production on my Holiday Light shoot. The images required a bit of color correction and some light-handed clarity enhancement but all in all I loved them.

What a great "last job of the year" this was. And the coolest thing about it all was being able to share it with my best friend. 

A Christmas Card From the Early Days of Photoshop.

Happy Holidays.

How the hell do you focus those manual focus lenses on modern DSLRs? Very carefully....

The finest lens design in the world is pretty meaningless 

unless you have a plan to focus it well. 

I've been writing a lot recently about my admiration for older Nikon lenses and my tendency to select older, manual focus-only lenses in my day to day work. To recap: I am currently making good use of the Nikkor 25-50mm f4.0 zoom lens, the 55mm f2.8 micro Nikkor, the Rokinon 85mm t1.5, the Nikon 105mm f2.5, and the Nikon 135mm f2.0 lenses on my two Nikon DSLRs; the D810 and the D750. I'm pretty sure that anyone who has tried to just pull up a modern digital camera to their face and focus an older lens quickly will tell you that the (non)focusing screens in all the modern cameras are pretty much crap for manual focusing. The screens are optimized for visual brightness but not for the acuity necessary to discern (accurately) sharp focus. What's a guy to do?

Some one asked this morning if I had a trick to using these lenses and if the whole focusing issue with manual focusing lenses and DSLRs is overblown. No and no. I wish I had some special trick to nail sharp focus every time but I don't. And since I don't have a trick then, no, I don't think this design fail in modern finders is overblown. That being said I am certain that the vast majority using DSLRs are using them exclusively with auto focus lenses. 

In real life, each of the lenses I use is handled differently. If I am using the 24-50mm lens it's usually outdoors and I'm using the wide end of the lens to capture a scene or a building or something that asks for wide angle. If it's Austin/Texas blue sky sunny I just zone focus with that lens. The beauty of the older lenses is that they usually have very well done focusing scales that are very accurate. Much more accurate than the focusing scales on the new lenses. The single focal length lenses even have hyperlocal distance markings on the barrels which give you another advantage. 

So, if I'm walking around downtown with the 25-50 I might have the camera set to M or A and the lens set to f11. I know from looking at a lot of depth of field tables over the years that by setting the lens at eight to ten feet on the focusing ring that, in the 25-30mm range, I'll have sharp focus from infinity down to about five feet. If I'm really concerned about high sharpness of objects closer to infinity I'll move the focusing ring closer to between 15 and 30 feet. I know with certainty that anything further than 20 feet that I point my camera at will be in sharp focus. I don't have to fine tune for each frame. The depth of field covers it well. 

If I am shooting out on the street with a 35mm MF Nikon I might set my aperture ring to f11 and if I put my infinity setting on the yellow, color coded line on one side of the center focus hash I can look on the other side of the corresponding yellow hash mark and see that I can be reasonably in focus from about 8 feet to infinity. I can walk through the streets and shoot with abandon, knowing that anything in that range will be in focus. 

That takes care of a lot of wide angle stuff but what about the longer focal lengths? Well, first of all I think that very fast. longer lenses give you a certain advantage because, unlike the wider lenses, the apparent focus wide open tends to pop and in and out with more certainty. It's one of the reasons faster lenses were so popular back in the manual focus only days. The "in focus" was more apparent with the brighter lenses and the narrower depth of field. Win, win. 

When I shoot with the medium telephotos in the studio focusing is definitely an issue. Bugs the hell out of me. But when I shoot portraits in the studio I am almost always using a tripod. I use a tripod because it helps me to "anchor" a composition but also because I like to use continuous lighting and a tripod allows me to use slower shutter speeds than I can normally hand hold. If I am using a tripod then with both of my current DSLRs I can go into "live view" and punch in to see a magnified section of the image and really fine tune focus. I also tend to shoot about one f-stop smaller than I might with an AF lens. Instead of shooting the 105mm wide open I might use it at f3.5 instead. It's not much but I'm hoping to cover myself, at least a little bit. 

In each of the Nikons I use there is a three light system of focus confirmation that can be very useful. The issue I have with it is that it's too undiscerning. There's a green arrow on either side of a center dot. If one the arrows lights up then you are out of focus and, supposedly, when the center dot lights up you are in focus. My issue is that the center dot stays lit though a bit of travel of the focusing ring. In other words the indicator is very lenient as to what is in and out of focus. I conjecture that the system was devised with the idea that most people are shooting at f5.6 or f8 and that depth of field will cover them. But I don't shoot that way.

What I have found though is that each camera tends to help me back focus just a little bit when I wait until I hit the center spot of the green confirmation light exactly. I have experimented quite a bit and now I use the "too close" arrow and the "confirmation dot" in tandem. My goal with longer telephoto lenses (85-200) is to hit just at the spot where the "too close" light and the "confirmation dot" blink back and forth and then give a tiny nudge until the green dot wins. At that point I can shoot wide open with reasonable certainty of getting the shot. 

If I am shooting for my own enjoyment I am okay with trusting this dancing dot method and I find it pretty quick to shoot this way in the field. If my kid was running a cross country race I would rely on a different method if I wanted to shoot close to wide open. 

If I am photographing a real sporting event (swimming or running) and want to use a manual focus lens I rely on refocusing at specific points. If Ben were to run by in a race I would have a focus point in his path that I had prefocused on with one of the above methods, this way I would be able to concentrate on just shooting rather than managing an AF sensor or trying to "spin the ring." In a group of runners it's almost impossible to keep an AF point where you want it and pre-focusing can give you more keepers. 

But realistically, I use the MF lenses mostly in controlled situations and mostly when using a tripod. I compose the shot, switch to live view and punch in to a magnified view to attain perfect focus and then I switch out of live view to viewfinder mode and shoot until I change position or my subject moves. The added benefit is that I am focusing at my taking aperture which eliminates the chance of optical focus shift upon stopping down. 

When I am shooting fast moving stuff the optical benefits and characteristics of the MF lenses; the qualities I like them for, are secondary to getting the shot. In these kinds of jobs I don't have so much hubris that I risk outrageous failure so I am quick to switch over and use my lenses with AF. The 24-120mm replaced the 25-50mm and the 80-200 replaced the 85, 105 and 135. They get the job done. 

So, there are reasons to use both. My green dot method works for me most of the time and if I didn't do this for money and clients I would be comfortable using the MF lenses all the time. In nearly every situation I come across there's ample time to work on focusing. And who knows? With enough practice I may yet be able to focus accurately on the screen of a D810.  But I wouldn't count on it....

Rule of thumb. It's better to focus once and lock it down than to keep refocusing. Subjects don't move as much as one might think. That being said, if your photography depends on sharp images of moving objects with shallow depth of field then you might want to relegate your MF lenses to some other tasks and go with the sure thing.

Look versus reliability.

Need some books for the Holidays? Go HERE.

Lotta really good cameras came out this year but if I had to choose the one that set the enthusiasts' world on fire and changed the aim point I'd have to pick a camera I don't own...

Of all the cameras in the equipment case that I've squandered my hard earned 

money on I would have to say that my favorite camera to hold in my hands

and take photographs with would have to be the Olympus OMD EM-5.2

But it's not 2015's photo world changer.

That honor would have to go to the Sony A7R2. 

And here's why: Sony made a halting, tentatively, half-assed start with their A7 cameras. When they were announced I had high hopes for the line but my first test with them back at launch in 2013 was disappointing. The shutters were so loud that, if you were photographing human models, you would have to stop shooting to give them verbal directions because, otherwise, they would never hear you over the nerve-wracking clatter of the horrible shutters. Just cheesy.

The bodies were a bit too small and seemed, delicate to me. The evf finders were no better than those in cameras that had been on the market for quite a while. But most damning was that, even though Sony seems to be the source of all imaging sensors, they cut corners on both their raw files and their Jpeg processing. Similar sensors in Nikon cameras just spanked the hell out of the Sony trio at the outset.

There were people who embraced the cameras. Mostly people coming straight from DSLRs who were finally willing to at least try the seductive reality of electronic viewfinders for the first time. The praise they have for their Sony A7 (original lineup) cameras is partly a sigh of relief that came from embracing the new viewing and reviewing technology that underlies the mirrorless experience; not from the superiority or enhanced usability of the cameras themselves.

I wanted to like the Sony A7; and especially the A7R, but after many attempts at a warm embrace I left them on the curbside and moved on with my life.

That was then. But life and camera design move on. I think Sony had a good bit of success with the new cameras and a large part of the success is wrapped around the fact that the cameras give one a reasonably priced entree into full frame imaging with high quality sensors and the ability to use a very wide array of third party lenses from many sources, and from across decades. Whatever the reason I think Sony's collective camera design brain sent the message to the Sony Borg that there really was a market for their wares and, if they had a flagship product to rally consumers the fight to sell more product in the channel would be easier. They needed a "halo" marketing product to prove that, as far as image quality was concerned, they could go toe to toe with the best on the market. They might even better the high point.

The product that I think will come to define the Sony A7 line as a workable group of cameras for high aspiration non-professionals and people who mostly make a living with their cameras will be the A7R2. Not only because they put in their best sensor, and keep improving the processing via firmware updates, but because they finally paid attention to the quality of the mechanical offering. The camera is no longer a melange of composite panels and metal but is now a more robust, all metal construction. The finder optics and finder resolution is much better. The body is beefier and feels much more solid in one's hands. Coupled with a battery grip it finally feels adequate as a support for heavier lenses like the Sony Alpha 70-200mm f2.8, along with an Alpha adapter.

The investment that Sony made in Olympus seems to be paying off with some good technology transfer in the form of a five axis, image stabilization system that works well. Much work was done to ensure cleaner and more nuanced Jpeg files and a recent firmware upgrade gave users beefier, less compressed and higher bit depth raw files. The imaging pipeline currently sits near the top of the DXO sensor rankings. Toe to toe with the Nikon D810.

But the one thing that got my attention and put the A7R2 firmly in the "great camera, I should get one some day!" category is the new shutter. Nice to have all the imaging system stuff better figured out but it still would have been meaningless to me if the shutter rattled along like a Yugo with a quarter million miles on the speedometer and hundreds of marbles in the trunk. A camera with great imaging is always sabotaged if the handling, audible and visceral aesthetics suck.

So Sony finally listened. Either to pundits or their customers or their own inner sense of pride as camera designers, and they worked on making the shutter significantly good. Tremendously good. They've lowered the register of the noise that it makes and done away with a large part of the high frequency clatter-ation that drew the attention of bystanders and camera haters. The shutter is nearly in the rarified field of, "acoustically enjoyable" machines. And this makes all the difference in the world.

So, why is the camera my pick as the break through camera of the year? Because it has just about everything a high end mirrorless user would want for the first time ever in the mirrorless/evf-enabled space. It's got a state of the art sensor that's got resolution to spare. It handles noise as well as just about any advanced camera on the market today. The in body image stabilization is competent and welcome. The shutter is significantly better and rated to work for half a million cycles. The camera works with an incredibly wide array of lenses from just about every maker. Love that Nikon 135mm f2.0? It's one cheap adapter away from being equally wonderful on the Sony.

But then there's also the bonus set of features! The camera does full on, 4K video and according to almost all sources of video knowledge and lore, it's a 4K codec that does a great job as far as sharpness, detail, color and utility. It may be a better file than the ones that video people are trying to squeeze out of the A7S2 (the 12 megapixel model).

The camera is a decent size now that it's been pumped up a bit. It feels great in one's hands (subjective, for sure) and the shutter is no longer an offensive pile of sound crap and vibration.

What's not to like about the camera? The usual stuff people complain about when moving from battery sipping behemoths with large power reserves, and, as always, the lower performance of the AF system when tracking fast moving objects. It is true, the ubiquitous Sony battery (used across most of the line and the RX10 cameras) is a weakling compared to the batteries in full sized DSLRs. While the A7R2 may be about 300 shots from a fully charged battery my Nikon D750 gets anywhere from 1200 to 1500 shots from its battery.

There is a cure for the battery problem and it's a simple one.  Buy more batteries. Carry a couple extra in your pockets. Change as needed. (Or buy into my KickStarter campaign to manufacture plutonium based fission batteries like the ones they use in military satellites. Those last a very, very long time but we are having issues with those damn environmentalists about disposal and some issues regarding manufacturing safety. In the long run I am sure we'll get some regs changed in congress. The bulk of our Kickstarter money is earmarked to pay off politicians...). Seriously though, the Sony batteries are small and not super high capacity but a battery grip is useful and also adds a better gripping design for handholding the camera.  I never asked for cameras to be small, I only wanted mirrorless for the advantages of shooting with EVFs...

The second issue is one that rarely effects my shooting and that's focusing fast moving objects and tracking focus with fast moving objects. I think each generation of mirrorless camera improves in this performance parameter and, for my uses, the camera's focus is more than adequate. In fact, the majority of my intended use for a camera such as this would be to use it with lenses from other companies. Leica, Nikon, and Leica..  In that kind of use the camera also excels because it comes complete with both image peaking and quick image magnification for fine focusing. For an ad shooter that's a perfect combination.

To distill, Sony gets my honor of innovative camera of 2016 because they have single-handedly brought to the market a flagship for the EVF/Mirrorless concept with a camera that checks every box on my list of features. The whole A7 line is the first to implement a full frame sensor with the mirrorless design set. The shutter and mechanical handling is finally in the first rank. And the 4K video is most certainly state of the art as regards video in still cameras.

Had the camera hit the same price point as the one it replaced (the A7R) I would be even more enthusiastic. In a few months, when Sony rushes out a replacement for the A7R2, and the prices drop, I'll probably add one to the drawer. The neat deal is that one embedded in the Nikon system can easily rationalize buying this body as a supplement to the Nikon bodies, since all of them can (with adapters) use the same lenses. And that is one of the genius features of mirrorless cameras, as a class.

Interesting to handle and write about a camera that I haven't been compelled (yet) to rush out and buy. That alone is a paean to how pleased I am with my current Nikon cameras. And at the same time it's probably and indicator of why the camera market is in decline... too much good stuff that works to well. Why rush to replace?

But if you are in a rush to replace, consider using this link:  Sony A7R2 and other stuff...

Kirk's Books on Amazon

The camera and lens that sucked me right back into the Nikon system this time...

This bust lives at the Blanton Museum in Austin.

I like to photograph the statues when I'm playing around 

with new photographic equipment.  They don't move around and blink.

I shot this with a Nikon D610 using a Sigma 50mm 1.4 Art Lens. 

I shot the image at f2.0. 

1/400th of a second. 

The quality of the resulting image led me to understand 

that the combination had characteristics I liked. 

From that point onward I've been buying lenses 

I like for the system along with several new bodies. 

I certainly love this focal length. 

And, at nearly wide open the Art lens 

is pretty compelling. 

I think I'll keep it.


Kirk's Books on Amazon

I"ve made at least two really good lens purchases this year. This is the one I find most intriguing.

It's a Nikon lens made a long time ago. It's the 25-50mm f4.0. I saw it sitting on the used shelf over at Precision Camera and I haggled on the price until it didn't make sense any more to leave it on the shelf. On a full frame camera it's ---- a 25-50mm equivalent (snicker).

Last night I found an interesting article about this lens and quite a few other Nikon lenses at a site I have never visited before. You might enjoy the articles there; especially if you are inclined to appreciate and enjoy some of the classic, older, Nikon manual focus lenses. The articles I found are on a Nikon website, tucked into a part of the site called, "Nikkor."

Here's the article I read about the 25-50mm lens: http://www.nikkor.com/story/0046/ The discussion of the design parameters and the process of creating the lens are very interesting. Even more interesting is just how good this lens is and how well it stands the tests of time.

I'd love to link to some retail website so you can order one and I can get a commission but, as you can see in the article, they stopped making this one (and a few other favorites of mine) a long time ago (1981).

We'll just have to enjoy the reading and keep our eyes peeled for mint examples, out in the wild...

There are articles at the site on several of my other favorite Nikon lenses; including: the 105mm f2.5 ai and the 135mm f2.0 ai. If you are a dyed in the wool Canon shooter you can ignore this.

Kirk's Books on Amazonhttp://amzn.to/1IYPzXc

Just clowning around. Austin Lyric Opera.

Sony a99 + Sony 70-200mm f2.8.

OT: looking forward to a special swim practice on Monday the 21st.

Here's the pool I swim in. It's beautiful. It's heated in the winter to 80 degrees. It's chilled in the Summer to 82 degrees. The only times we don't have masters swim practices are on (most) Mondays, big holidays and when there's ice all over the deck (safety issue).

Today I went to the noon practice and swam with a guy named, Tom. Our coach wrote a fun workout on the board and we dragged ourselves up and down the pool, bracketed by faster swimmers in the lane on one side and slower swimmers in the lane on the other side. We knocked out about 3,000 yards from noon until 1 pm and that was that.

After swim practice I pulled on some running shoes, and a pair of running shorts, and did a leisurely run down at the lake. There are three loops most people run. There's a 2.9 mile loop, one that's about 4.5 miles and a third that's around 7 miles. If you are really ambitious you can run from Mopac to the damn on the east side of downtown, and then back around on the other side of the lake for a bit more than 12 miles. I'd already swum so the shortest loop felt like a good option to me.

That's all pretty routine, but I was excited to hear about one cool, upcoming workout that should be a lot of fun for obsessive swimmers; it's this coming Monday morning and it's 10,000 yards. We start at 8:30 am and we do 100 x 100 yards on a one minute and forty second interval. For non swimmers this means you have one minute and forty seconds to swim 100 years and, if possible get a few seconds rest. You leave on a new 100 yard swim (four laps of the 25 yard pool, per) every minute and forty seconds.  Until you've done this one hundred times in a row.

Everyone is going on the same interval. No faster lanes and no slower lanes. If we stay on pace and do the whole set we'll have swum 10,000 yards in about 2.5 hours. That's about 6.2 miles and 300 flip turns. I think I'll be ready for a big lunch right after this....

This has absolutely nothing to do with new cameras or photography of any kind. I write about it because I think it's important for photographers (and everyone else) to think about getting exercise and staying in good physical condition. I believe that when you are in good physical shape your brain is sharper, your attention is more acute. The discipline of exercising regularly also translates into habitual discipline in other areas; like photography. You can carry more, go further, stay in the field longer and be present to take advantage of chance interactions with nature or whatever it is you shoot.

Here's a link to the U.S. Masters Swimming: http://www.usms.org

Real skin versus retouched skin. Lenses, lighting and signatures.

There is a technique I sometimes use to repress detail on problem skin. I make a duplicate layer of a portrait, introduce a gaussian blur at 28.5 pixels, hit the quick mask icon at the bottom of the layer menu box and then use a paintbrush, set to 20% opacity to brush in a softness to the image. The benefit of this very simple method is that I can use the opacity slider in the layers panel to pull back on the effect. I try to be judicious when I use this method because I think most people's eyes are very good at seeing this "deception."

I try not to use any blurring techniques for most portraits. It really all depends on the skin quality and the way a portrait is lit. Contrasty lighting can make even the nicest skin look worse. Clients with big pores or rough skin texture love the softening effect and, when the images are for their use, I am not disinclined to please them. When I photograph for myself though I am too keenly aware that the introduction of the softening technique diminishes the value I find for myself in prints and images. I can only conjecture the same is true for my intended audience for these sorts of portraits = VSL readers and others who appreciate photographs.

The image above uses no post processing blur technique but takes advantage of a close, large diffuser to moderate the transitions between highlights, midtones and shadow areas. In this regard shooting with 14 bit raw files is helpful to prevent even slight banding in shadow areas and transition areas by dint of throwing more information into the mapping mix. That my model is young, has great skin, and has used make up well, is a big benefit to the final image as I pre-visualized it. (Actually, I can only pre-visualize in giant swaths, like putting up a big fence. Everything creative happens unconsciously in smaller sections of the big fence, mental ranch).

One uses retouching on images when there are details that take attention away from the main goal, a subjective but positive rendering of the subject in it's holistic form. At times one must "kill" the details so the whole construct can serve its purpose.

The right lens can also help. I am doing more and more research into why various lenses were designed to function the way that they are. I started getting interested when I discovered that the lenses that made the best black and white images for me were one with under corrected spherical aberrations. Those would include the 135mm f2.0 I recently picked up, as well as the raft of 105mm f2.5 Nikons I've been collecting.

There is a similarity between them which is a signature of sorts. Stopped down they rival anything out there for sharpness  but at the wider apertures they create out of focus backgrounds that have a very pleasing aesthetic look. I know that the current mania, at least in the U.S., is to value a lens based on its ultimate sharpness. As I get more experience under my belt, and shoot more portraits, I'm beginning to think there are other considerations in lens design (and performance) that are equally, if not more, important.

My friends wonder sometimes why I seem to have a preference for older optics. It's not that I want the burden of manually focusing these lenses, it's that they render photographs of things in a way that seems both more pleasing and more real to me.....regardless of which camera I use them on.

Besides, if everyone photographs with the same little trio of zoom lenses then visual life gets boring.

reflect and direct.

What's on your "photographic" Holiday wish list? What do you hope Santa drops (gently) down your chimney?

Martin Burke and Meredith McCall in a series of images

marketing "Santaland Diaries" at Zach Theatre.

It's a tradition for photographers who blog to do a laundry list of stuff they recommend to their readers. I presume that the conceit is that you would never have heard of these products if talented bloggers had not brought them to your attention. And now that you've been informed the smart thing to do is to click through the links supplied and make sure you get that perfect camera, lens or light before the stores run out. Or before the companies making the goodies decide to give up and move on to greener pastures; like the design and marketing of innovative new microwave ovens and smart phones. 

I thought I'd take a different tack and ask you what you are actually interested in getting for yourself during this holiday season. And I thought I'd start the ball rolling by letting you know which two or three things I have bouncing around in my head right now:

1. Since I'm a sucker for the "idea" of really good lenses the first item is a "want" and not a "need." I have my mind set on thinking-about-getting (as opposed to actually getting) that Sigma 24-35mm f2.0 zoom lens I rattled on about a few weeks past. I love big, heavy zooms because the implication is that fewer compromises in design and construction were made. My fantasy for this lens is that every time I need a wide angle of some sort I'll be able to put one of these amazing lenses on a D810 and out image the hell out of everyone else.  Buildings will be sharper and more three dimensional, faces more animated and products made more desirable just from having been photographed by this two pound wonder lens. The fantasy continues all the way through post production when I will hand a finished print to a client who will be so impressed, and content fulfilled, that he or she will faint onto a convenient settee and need to be revived with smelling salts. 

The reality might turn out to be that I buy one and compare it to my ancient, Nikon 25-50mm f4.0 and realize that the old lens is at least 90% of the new lens but is already paid for and nicely broken in. But by then I'll be too embarrassed to sell the new lens or return it because of the amount of uninformed gushing I have been doing on my blog.

2. All of a sudden I want a Nikon D4S. Don't know why. Maybe it's a reaction to all the pixie cameras I've been buying and using over the past five years. Maybe I believe that if I spend obscene amounts of money on a camera that it will have special imaging powers that most people don't understand. Maybe I want a camera with a battery that lasts all week instead of all day (or just a couple of hours). 

I'm pretty sure I'm not going to buy one of these either. But I'm sure if I wore it around my neck all day as I walked around downtown two things might happen: a. A lot of people will ask me if I am a "full time," "professional" photographer. And, b. I will have a very sore neck by the end of the day. 

There are things to like about the big camera. The finder is extremely nice. The sensor is supposed to be extremely good, and it will most likely take more of a beating that a more reasonably sized and priced camera.

All very rational stuff but I'd still like to find one in my stocking this year ---- unless those people at Nikon want to buy me off for a while by sending me a D5 for free instead. I'll take a prototype, as long as the firmware is upgradable...

3.  I would dearly love to have a Leica M4. The original M4, not the "P" version. I'm a little light on M bodies since I lost one in that horrible Range Rover accident in Lisbon. That's what I get for loaning equipment to Henry White.  If you are sending me one as a gift for all of my hard work and brilliant (and funny) writing here on the blog, save yourself some money and don't send along a 50mm lens for it. I already have one that will work. This is one camera I would buy, if I had the money and could find one in mint condition (black, enamel, please). 

Those are all my camera, self-gift fantasies for right now. Sad (or happy) thing is that I can't really think of anything I need, photographically. Nothing I can point to and say, "Not having this is holding me back!" But it's nice to think about what I would buy if I got all capricious and silly and went on a spending binge. But that will have to wait a while as most of my extra cash goes off to a college somewhere. 

So, this is the interactive part. Is there some cool stuff that's not on my radar? A camera out of the mainstream that we haven't written about? Some product or finely crafted tool that you think all VSL readers might need to know about? What do you want for the holiday? Tell us in the comments.

(and yes, I think all of us would list PEACE ON EARTH, and all the other planets too...)

Coolest lenses?

Coolest cameras (existing or imagined)?

Coolest lights?

Coolest light modifiers?

It's kind of an open forum: Go!

Sorry. No gratuitous links. You'll have to look up your own "must have" gear.

This used to be the view walking toward downtown Austin. Now it's littered with high rise buildings. I guess that's not so bad.

I was struck more by the range of colors and tones of this image. It was not taken with one of the modern, super cameras but with an older, Kodak SLR/n. That was a bitchy camera that often stopped to "recalibrate" itself in the middle of a shoot, but when it was good it was very good.

Every model of camera has its own palette. Some more interesting than others. The one area in which the old Kodaks excelled was in the rendition of skin tones and colors. Operationally it was less wonderful. But back then we had to suffer a bit for our art.....

A portrait of Belinda.

Belinda.

Someone recently suggested that I only want to shoot "beautiful" people. This is true. But one's definition of beauty can be so wide and encompassing as to include the majority of people one meets in life. Sometimes we are "blinded by love." But most of the time I like to think people don't work hard enough at finding the combination of things that make a person "beautiful."

Eyes. Poise. Strength. Wisdom. Calmness. Being comfortable in one's own skin. These things are the nature of beauty. Harder maybe to capture in photography than traditional measures of beauty, but more permanent and engaging. 

People have said that a portrait can only capture what is on the surface. I think a subject's presentation and energy can provide much more.

We just need to shoot with more appreciation for the beauty that exists at a remove from popular culture's glossy surface.

Portraits. Sometimes it is the quiet moments that seem to bring forward images we didn't think about when we started our sessions.

Fadya and I were in the studio making portraits. There was a lull in the conversation. Things were quiet. She looked away and I shot a frame of that pose. It's not one of the compositions I generally try to work within but it seemed to me to reveal a different perspective about my subject.

On a technical note, the image above reaffirms my preference to work with continuous light sources when making portraits. I know that flash is all the rage but..... When I work with continuous light sources there is always a softness within the detail that feels seems more natural. Skin is smoother without resorting to typical post production. The need for the sitter and photographer to be more synchronized when it comes to motion and stillness creates even more of a collaborative spirit.

This image was lit with a K5600 HMI light bouncing into a large umbrella. A second HMI light head was aimed at the background. It's simple lighting. But light is always simple in the real world.

Have you tried my favorite portrait exercise? It goes like this: Find a model who is also an interesting person and who is patient. Set up your lighting and camera before the subject gets to the studio. Make tea or coffee for your subject when they arrive. Have the subject settle into their space on their designated chair, posing stool or whatever. Sit on a chair or stool next to your camera. Ask them about their day. Ask them about their kids. As them about their passion in life. Ask them where they grew up and what their favorite kind of food is. Ask them what ideas they have when the think about portraits. Ask them what they want to be doing next week, next month and next year. Let them talk. Sip coffee or tea. Find the things you have in common. Listen to the things that they are focused on.

Then, tell them about the portrait process you are trying to do. Tell them what they can do to help you make the process work. Tell them what your goal in this project is.

Once you've discussed these things, and you've both had a warm beverage, and you are both comfortable. Start the process of making the portrait. Only at this point should you begin to handle the camera.

Finally, don't hide behind the camera. It severs the connection you have both tried hard to build.

Some Thoughts about Holiday Marketing.

If you are the marketing director of a regional theater, and holiday plays are a big part of your yearly budget, it makes good sense to advertise as hard as you can during the last quarter of the year. If you have a retail store and you sell seasonal (4th Q) holiday stuff I think marketing is also strongly indicated. If you are a restaurant that can host large gatherings then, yes, go, market. But, if you are an advertising photographer who isn't interested in developing a following in family portraits or making hundreds of photos with Santa at the mall, you might want to delay your marketing push just a bit.

Relax and let your advertising agency clients and marcom directors, your product managers and your corporate communications people have a little breathing space. The budgets for 2015 are mostly gone by now and very, very few people are rushing to spend on, and produce, big projects right down the middle of the holidays. Seriously. My wife works at an advertising agency and I spent eight years in an advertising agency, and at this point in any given year the focus is on final execution. Is that brochure back from the printers? Is the new website up and running? Did the magazine insertions drop on time? Did we finish getting our clients' holiday cards to the list/sort provider? Did we get our corporate gifts out to the clients who pay attention to those little niceties?

I'm going to think that having you send them yet another e-mail blast about your latest project is something that's really far down the list of priorities for them right now, especially given their time management struggles of the season.

I certainly don't think you shouldn't reach out to your clients at this time of year but it's time to do it graciously, and with a light touch. A given is to send a tasteful and thoughtful holiday card along with a very brief note of thanks for making our year so great. If you must make your card all photographic think about making your card clever and fun instead of making it yet another folded, mailable, mini-billboard for your awesome capabilities.

If you have happy, continuing clients you might consider sending over a tray of holiday cookies from one of the premier bakeries in your town. Just send a small note along, don't bother having your business logo emblazoned with icing on the top of every cookie. If you know what your direct contact likes to drink (alcohol-wise) a discreetly delivered bottle of their favorite beverage is always well received but, please, no note that tells them you'd like to help them drink your gift.

The holidays are a time to be mellow and sincere and human. It's too easy for a promotion, timed to the holidays, to go dreadfully wrong and send a shallow, callow message.

Now, the time to go for the marketing juglar vein is the second full week of January. Save your resources and ready your campaign for the second and third critical weeks of the first quarter. That's when your client's wonderful children are safely back at school. The in-laws are long gone. The gifts are exchanged for all the things people really wanted. Staying home and doing chores is wearing thin for most of your clients. AND, they are just then sitting down to do strategic planning for the rest of the year. That's when you need to deliver your best shot. Or series of shots. A nice New Years postcard, followed by an e-mail blast, followed by a request to show new work, followed by a follow up card. A link to your new video project. Etc.

I can pretty much guarantee that your fusillade during the critical holiday weeks will get totally lost in the clutter or tossed by an overworked art director rushing to get gifts at the last minute. I can't guarantee your success in an early in the year surge but I can tell you that it works pretty well for the people who try it. By week three of January people are bored to be back at work and thrilled to look at anything you send them. Distractions welcome.

But all this means you have to be patient and get prepared. It's almost here. 

Love at first click. I've just used the new (to me) Nikkor 135mm f2.0 lens in the studio for a commissioned portrait and I couldn't be happier. Can't you tell from the expression on my self portrait? (recent edit, additions).

Amazing what a haircut, a shave and a cup of coffee can do...

This is today's before and after selfie event.

I wrote about waking up with a vision of a certain lens in my mind and then finding that exact lens later in the day. It all happened last week. Was it just Friday?

I made sure the lens worked as it should over the weekend and then, this morning, I used it to photograph a radiologist here in my west Austin studio. I used the lens the way I intended to: with continuous lighting, camera and lens on a steady tripod, and the aperture of the lens nearly wide open. My results were right on the mark. I loved what I saw through the lens and was very happy upon examining the 47 different files on my 27 inch screen.

As a side note, I think the reason so many people are happy when they shoot portraits on a Nikon D810, is that the camera has so much dynamic range that, when shooting in the low to middle ISO range the camera delivers the kind of exposure latitude we used to depend on when using color negative film. This is especially true if you are shooting 14 bit, uncompressed raw files. The amount of information in the files is massive and the dynamic range is very good at helping photographers preserve detail in the highlights and shadows.

I lit the doctor's portrait with LED lights. I use a 6x6 foot scrim to one side, angled from right next to the camera to about four feet out from the doctor at the other end of the panel. Two LEDs were aimed at the scrim. I used a third LED light on the background (same background we've used for this practice for nearly 16 years) and, I was going to use a fourth LED light as a hair light but it turns out this particular doctor is bald so I turned that one off.

I used a silver reflector to the opposite side of the main light for fill.

I used ISO 640 on the camera and that gave me f2.8 and a half at 1/125th of a second. Just right.

When I took the glowering (not intentionally) self portrait above I purposely under exposed the background and took the fill reflector out all together. I also dropped the exposure on my face by half a stop. I did not take the portrait out of vanity but because I wanted to show what I meant when I said I like the focal length and the character of the lens, but I didn't have any great models lingering around the studio, just waiting to be cajoled into posing, so I took on the burden of representation myself.

The lens is quite sharp at f2.8. It is well behaved in every way. I, however, could use about five days of really good sleep, a haircut and a shave. A self portrait every once in a while has a way of humbling even the most self-delusional amongst us. Oh well....

(the beginning of my descent into the new Selfie Regime).

Why Leica? Why Leica indeed. Here is an interesting video. One or two tiny parts aren't safe for the workplace. But it's beautifully done and homage to great work from the last century.

https://vimeo.com/148355161

So many great photographic moments recreated in the service of this company's narrative...