Using the Sony a6300 to create video promoting a new production at Zach Theatre. Austin, Texas.

   

LBJ rehearsal intro from Kirk Tuck on Vimeo.

Ben and I had all day shoots on Wednesday and Thurs. last week. We're giving the new LED lights a good workout and I'm pretty much thrilled at the wonderful flesh tones I'm getting in both video and stills with the new lights. 

After a couple of full days of shooting video on multiple locations, followed by some rush edits on Friday, (along with too many meetings) I decided that I really needed to take some time off on Saturday. 

I slept in till nearly 7 am and then hit the pool for a refreshing swim (outdoors) in our new winter weather. Fun to watch icicles grow on the bottoms of the starting blocks while we did our workout. A little later we followed our Saturday family tradition and went out for lunch. The group consensus led us to Mexican food yesterday and it was a perfect counterpoint to the frigid weather. 

By mid-afternoon the absence of an immediate project to work on started to weigh on me so I packed a few equipment bags and headed over to Zach Theatre to make a few photographs of the early rehearsals of the new LBJ play, and also to record video interviews with three of the principal actors.  Once the actual interviews are edited and online I'll share a link here so you can see them for yourself, but as a poor alternative I did roll some video on myself before I packed up and headed home for dinner. The actors are much, much better in front of the camera --- and much better looking. But I thought you'd like to see what our final set-up looked like...

The camera was the Sony a6300. The lens was the 18-105mm f4.0 G. The microphone was an Audio Technica AT835B. One Aputure LS-1/2 LED used naked on the background and one LS-1/2 LED running through a 50 inch reflector to the left of frame as a main light. No fill. 

I spent today editing and then scouting our location for tomorrow's video shoot for one of my client's annual meeting events, in the ballroom of a local hotel. Our call time is 6:30 am and the start time is 8:00 am so I guess there's no swimming in the morning. 

Here are behind the scenes images of my set up for the videos:

And a "behind the scenes" candid of my favorite public relations collaborator, Lauren L. 

Ben, Belinda and I are off to celebrate our recent video successes with a nice dinner at the Four Season Hotel's restaurant, Treo. Hope you have a great and artistically productive week ahead.

OT: My coldest outdoor swim to date. Austin, Texas, 20 degrees.

Not today my friends. Not today.

We're experiencing a big time cold front right now in Austin, Texas.  Studio Dog is wearing her pink sweater indoors and people I see out and around are shivering under mountains of down and PolarTec. I woke up this morning and looked at my phone to see what the temperature was outside. My phone told me that it was 20 degrees (f) and that we had a 15-20 miles per hour north wind whipping the wind chill down into the teens. 

I got out from under the warm covers and my wife asked me (in the tone of voice one uses to talk crazy people off ledges) why I was getting up. I told her that I had no intention of swimming in the deep freeze  outside but wanted to head over to the pool to see if any of the crazier people would show up and swim in this weather. I grabbed a small, Sony camera that makes video, bundled up with two sweatshirts and a jacket, gloves and a Craftsy watch cap, and headed out the door.

The car was barely warmed up by the time I got to the pool. I was surprised to find the parking lot nearly full. I looked through the cloud of steam rising from the pool enclosure to see the tail end of a packed, early workout finishing up. I checked the phone again and it was still 20 degrees. I grabbed my swim bag from the car and headed into the locker room. The first person I ran into was John. He just turned 70, has about 2% body fat and was pulling on his swim cap and heading out the door to the pool. Call it peer pressure but I just fell into the routine, pulled on a swimsuit, grabbed my goggles and swim cap and headed out after him. 

As I got to the deck the coach, Chris, yelled to me, "Walk on the grass, there's a lot of ice on the deck!"

The pool deck was icy in spots and the starting blocks all had icicles dangling down from every metal bar and surface. I tossed my parka onto a poolside chair, adjusted my goggles and plunged into lane three. With the exception of having to keep our heads down between sets the workout proceeded as all Saturday practices do: A long, accelerating warm-up set followed by a tough, long, main set. The warm-up had a fair amount of butterfly and backstroke in it while the main set alternated between 200 yard aerobic swims and 100 yard sprints. 

The guy I was swimming with in my lane surprises the heck out of everyone early in the workout. He had forgotten his water bottle out in his car. He hauled himself out of the pool, skated across the deck and jogged through the wind to the parking lot, some 200 yards away, returning with his water bottle. I'd rather have drunk pool water than tried a brave stunt like that!

Of course the most gruesome part of any cold weather, outdoor swim, is getting from the water back to the locker room. Especially when one must navigate barefoot across an icy pool deck. Fortunately no one slipped and fell and the showers in the locker room had ample supplies of hot water. 

I felt like I had truly earned my coffee this morning. Sadly, though, no video got taken; no photos snapped. 

A few thoughts on the Panasonic GH5 announcement.

Will this camera be the nail in the coffin for traditional, flapping mirrored DSLRs? Well, maybe not this camera alone but a combination of cameras like this and the Olympus EM1.2, along with better and better cellphone cameras. Why? Because cameras like the GH5 offer a much, much better value proposition at a competitive price.

What!? Well, we can start with professional video capabilities. The GH5 blows away anything consumer Nikon and Canon cameras bring to the table, along with usability features to make shooting video comfortable and convenient.  Seems that Panasonic followed a trend pioneered by Samsung in that they are speeding up image processing with faster, state of the art microprocessors that make tossing around the imaging information quicker and more detailed. It's almost like Panasonic dropped a 500 HP, turbo-charged motor into a Civic body (with better suspension) while companies like Canon and Nikon (especially) are dropping Fiat motors into one ton pick-up trucks.

With their latest product introduction Panasonic's new camera goes toe-to-toe with Nikon's D500 in terms of focusing speed, lock-on and frame rates but doesn't then drop the ball by making the 4K video lame and under spec'd. They do it all with good battery life and a convenient size and weight.

If you look back at all the good photography and video work people have done with the GH4 and then look at the specs for the new GH5 you'll see that it's the current, ultimate hybrid imaging camera of the moment.

There's a lot to like about the GH5. It's a robust camera body combined with video features that few cameras at any budget can match. I'm looking forward to the first firmware update which is rumored to allow 4K imaging at 60 fps in 10 bit, 4:2:2.

Will I run from Sony to embrace the Panasonic wundercam? Naw. Not till I've watched my friends work with the ones they are sure to buy. Truth is that I'm enamored of the Sonys because I now feel that I totally understand them. How to use them. How to process the files and what to feed the imaging chain in order to get the results I crave. Part of my investment is my investment in the learning curve of mastery. That has to be a consideration now in any upgrade.

But that doesn't obviate or negate my contention that faster processors, mirrorless designs, and EVFs are fast eroding the market for traditional cameras in the hands and minds of enthusiast and pros. Kodak showed us that having huge, dominant marketshare is not defense against a sudden disruption in the marketplace. 2010 represented the bleeding edge for the trend of moving to mirrorless but we are quickly coming to the fat spot in the curve. Hold on to your hats because we're about to accelerate the transition.

Could this be the year that both Nikon and Canon capitulate and start killing their own products in order to make their transition to products that people will really want?

The GH5 is a well thought out camera. It's not a consumer photography camera. It's a professional visual content creator camera that is first a competent video camera and secondly a competent still camera. It will sell because thats where the market is moving.

What the heck happened to Nikon? Did they just give up?

Not a traditional camera. 

I'm mystified by the latest trend in advertising for Nikon products. I looked at their feed on Twitter only to find an ad that told me, boldly, that 92% of Americans wanted 360 Imaging and that the Nikon Key Mission cameras was just the family of cameras fulfill that need. In fact, Nikon's advertising states to me that up to 15% of this 92% desire to use the camera when "getting intimate." To which I respond, "What the hell has their advertising agency been smoking? And how many product managers have been hospitalized for utter stupidity?" This is not an attack on Nikon products but the incompetence of their advertising personnel in north America. The attack on the products comes later...

I made a reply to Nikon (also on Twitter ---- just like the president elect...) telling them that I seriously doubted some 280 million people even had any idea of what 360 Imaging was, much less having a desire to buy some. I write daily about photography and I have no real idea of what the hell Nikon was trying to say in their ad. "Key Mission"? Is that latin longhand for "WTF"?

Then some wild eyed Nikon fan boy, who feels that the credentials of graduating from Central Florida Investors College and Trade School give him license to lecture me about advertising, wrote in response to call me "grandpa" and state that I must not understand enough about social media to scroll down and read the (initially occluded) fine print (two point type) at the bottom of Nikon's twitter ad. I went back to Twitter to see what he was talking about and laughed even harder. 

Apparently Nikon extrapolated their 92% number from a survey sample of 1,000 people. Chosen at random? I hardly think so. 

Look. I get it. Nikon is panicking and grasping at straws. They've made a nice copy of a Go-Pro action camera and are desperate to sell it. To sell anything. But even though "Lying With Statistics" was one of my favorite books when I was in the advertising business, wishing something was so doesn't make it so. 

A large portion of 92% of American adults over the age of 18 don't give a rat's ass about photography and many more don't have a clue what Nikon is talking about. Nikon's ad is an insult to the intelligence of real photographers and, in fact, to most consumers. 

Here's what Nikon really needs to do: Fire your north American advertising agency and find an agency with balls and brains. Figure out what products you make that are good and worth owning. Sell those products by telling us about their features and the benefits we would accrue from taking advantage of those features. If it turns out that the only two products that are worth more than a good spit are the D500 and the D810 then just concentrate on making those and talking about them in your advertising. 

Fix all the broken crap you've stumbled over in the last few years (two different recalls on my D750s... oil on the D600 shutters...D810 horrible back focus...) and apologize to those nice customers who've been patient enough to keep buying your stuff. Then....

Go out for a long walk with a Fuji XT-2 in your hands, or a Sony A7Rii, or an Olympus PenF, and see what the f#ck you are missing. For God's sake, at one time your company made great rangefinder cameras so the whole idea of designing and making a nice product should not be a frikking mystery. Just pretend you are designing an S series rangefinder then put an EVF in the viewfinder and a CMOS sensor in the film plane. Fill in the rest with current imaging technology. Market the crap out of it and let everyone know that you thought of it back in 1948. 

Just give up on the jellybean design cameras. They've had their run and everyone is tired of the form factor, the kludgy-ness and the desperately poor, pentaprism viewfinders. No more boring stuff. 

Don't screw around with CX mount this or DL that. Kill the small formats that you so obviously hate and concentrate on bringing a decent, full frame, rangefinder style, EVF enabled, camera to market. And while you are at it spend a few dollars more and upgrade the processing chips you spec to something that's not so cheesy and budget-y so you can actually offer faster frame rates, 4K without desperate cropping, and all the other stuff we savvy consumers expect (and deserve) in 2017. Oh hell, while you are getting the facelift and the marketing tummy tuck why don't you just max out the corporate credit card and make the video better than everyone else's? Faster frame rates, more bit depth and even the ultimate splurge: 4:2:2. And while you are catching up with the rest of the industry also try fixing your almost absent AF ability in video mode.

Or you can keep making up fatuous statistics, pushing out defective products and swigging beers on the loading dock of international commerce while you watch your market share shrink like my favorite jeans dried on hot. We just don't have to care because we've moved on.

One last suggestion, sell the name to some group of European scarf makers while it's still got some value. At least you'll have the last laugh.

The quality of good video depends on so much more than the performance of your camera.

Let's get the obvious stuff out of the way first. The primary driver of watchability for a video is first, how interesting/compelling is the idea you are communicating. Second is the quality of the script. After acknowledging those two things we can dive into the technical morass that seems to surround any project that is made with fun gizmos and tools.

From what I know of the photography business and what I've seen and heard in the video business pretty much everyone is obsessed with cameras. It's a subject that comes up endlessly and one that gets argued all over the web. Which camera is best? Which files are best? Should I shoot 4K or 2K? Should we invest in Zeiss Primes or go all out for the Leica primes? Should we stick to zooms? Can a camera be any good if it doesn't cost more than $10,000? More than $2,000? Do you need to have a touchscreen? Is Canon better than Sony? Can a project actually be done with a micro 4:3rds camera? Will clients run screaming from the room if you aren't writing files to an external recorder? How will we mount the camera? What cage should we get for our camera? Is the rosewood grip better

Yesterday afternoon. The first downtown Austin walk of the new year. Strolling with a Sony A7ii and a 50mm f 1.8, just like the old days.

City centers shift. In the years that I was an undergraduate student at the University of Texas at Austin downtown was definitely NOT the place to be. Blocks of it were just empty buildings, warehoused with the hope that someday development would come back. The 1980's saw a revival of our downtown with the construction of skyscraping office buildings, better and better hotels and an invasion of decent restaurants and trendy bars. In the 1980's and 1990's the pace of gentrification and development was fast and reckless and wonderful. The locus of power had been the state legislature at the north end of what we considered downtown. The southern border was the Colorado River which was always called, Town Lake, but was recently renamed as, Lady Bird Lake, after former first lady, Lady Bird Johnson. 

I'd say that downtown peaked somewhere in the late 1990's or just before the bust of 2001 and has been on a downhill slide ever since. Yes, we have built dozens of towering residence condominium projects and yes, we have subsidized retail all the way down an entire street but the fine restaurants and upscale bars and music venues that were the original and foundational drivers of downtown's energy are going or gone, replaced by seedy clubs serving jeep drinks and bad rock and roll. 

A new development in what we used to call "North Austin" (but which is now more or less the geographic center of the metropolitan area) opened up a few years ago and this year saw the blossoming of a host of new food and drinking establishments. Nearly 50 openings this year. And the development is attracting the audience that fled the squalor and potential danger of the sagging downtown. The development is called The Domain and was built on land that had been owned by IBM. It's home to stores like Nordstroms, Tiffany's, Apple (retail) and many other high end retailers. The development is being relentlessly fleshed out with high rise condominiums, office towers and carefully planned social infrastructure. There are boutique hotels and a Westin. There are niche, local restaurants and chain steakhouses. It's a soulless representation of Dallas writ large right on the shoulder of our old city, and it's sucking the party life out of the traditional downtown. 

Funny how these things go in cycles. The locals have left old downtown to the tourists, the convention goers and the fans of SXSW. 

But at the same time downtown is feeling less corporate and less homogenous than it has over the last ten years. There's still good energy here, it's just mixed with some bad. That makes it a fun place to wander around with a camera. 

Yesterday I stripped down the A7ii. I took it out of its cage and unscrewed the battery grip from the bottom. I tossed some effete Zeiss lens into a drawer and clicked on the cheap 50mm 1.8. I felt like I did when I bought my first SLR so many years ago === unencumbered by complexity or technical pretension. It was the present day analogy for the Canon TX and FD 50mm f1.8 that I sported around Austin about four decades ago. Nice. 

What prompted my revisionist urges? I had just been to the HRC to see the exhibition of Elliott Erwitt's great work and I was pounded over the brain, again and again, by just how wonderful making photographs could be with the very simplest of tools. No function buttons were disturbed during the walk and none of the menus consulted. I was shooting in Jpeg and willing to treat the whole experience the way we did with slide film. Eliminate the unnecessary choices so you can spend quality time thinking about the important stuff = which way to turn next...

There's a recent trend in our old downtown and that's the appearance of painted murals hidden around various corners. My walk yesterday kept introducing me to torrents and patches of color I hadn't seen before. The smaller side streets were like outdoor galleries. Visually, it was so much fun. 

So, today is the 2nd of the year. Everyone who could is taking today off as part of the long, weekend vacation. I'm cleaning up. (Actually I am procrastinating about cleaning up by blogging instead...). We have a project we start on Weds. and I'd like to get the studio part of the job set up, tested and ready before I go to bed tomorrow night. It's always more wonderful to get an early morning swim in before the excitement starts and it's hard to justify racing to swim practice if there are still loose ends to tie up. 

The studio works best when its clean and tidy and everything is in the right place. Then I can tell my assistant how to put his hands on a certain piece of gear, diffusion material or magic arm without even having to think about it. That makes the process of photographing smoother. The smoother the shoot the longer we'll be able to linger at lunch with our client. 

In other news, Ben asked me to make him some passport photos today for use on a visa. I thought about the process and decided that we should, instead, get in the car and head to Precision Camera and have them make the shots. They have a dedicated passport camera and an intelligently lit, dedicated spot with white background, just for this kind of work. We walked in and walked out 10 minutes later with two sets of prints for $12. If I had done the same thing we would have had to pull out a roll of white seamless, set up lights, test, shoot, post process, size the images, apply a profile, send them to the lab to be printed, driven to the lab to pick them up, etc. I figure we just saved hundreds of dollars in opportunity costs to use someone else's system. Done.

Alan left a comment today and asked me why I didn't run the sound for my video productions into a separate digital audio recorder instead of sending them to the camera as my final target. That's a question I get fairly frequently. The underlying premise of the question is that the dedicated recorders are much less noisy/of higher sound quality than the microphone pre-amplifiers on the cameras. The other premise is that it's simple work to sync up everything in post. 

I'll agree that in the early days of DSLR video recording that the Canon and Nikon cameras had pretty bad audio inputs. Hell, in those days you couldn't even disable the auto level control (ALC) in most  cameras. No wonder they had such bad reputations. The embracing of digital audio recorders was a work around mostly for the poor implementation of camera sound. But a heck of a lot has changed since 2008. 

Both the Tascam and the Zoom recorders I use do have lower noise floors than the Sony cameras the overall quality of the sound beyond the noise floor is hardly poor. I think it's basically solid. Noise floors are important where sound is the reason for the content. That being said nearly every video we make for corporations has some music added to the bed of the program and, if we do a good job with microphone placement and input matching we can get pretty darn close with our cameras to what we are getting from the external devices. Now, you might be insanely organized and able to find and match up separate audio tracks and video tracks from two or three different machines but I'm not. I like the security of having the sound permanently attached to the video. 

I use my digital audio recorders like mixers and interfaces but that doesn't mean we don't enable recording at the same time that we're sending out a signal to the camera. This makes for wonderful safety tracks in the event that we do find the camera sound underwhelming. But, having to juggle everything when shooting (sometimes) as a one man band is just a recipe for messing something up. I want to monitor what I'm getting in camera because it's all part of the handling package. If it sounds good in the camera, and I'm also recording it externally, then I know I've got everything nailed down. 

Everyone works in different ways. I'm hoping we get so busy shooting video this year that I'm able to hire a sound person whose only job will be getting beautiful audio and channeling it everywhere I need it. For now, I'll stick with the camera being my final binary check. I either have it or I don't. 

And, by the way, I found the audio circuits of the late Sony a99 to be really, really good. Tascam or Zoom good. I guess some day I'll be able to afford a SoundDevices recorder and everything will change. Not yet. 

I saw a lot of people downtown yesterday with cameras. I guess we were all celebrating the temperature in the 70's and the perfectly clear, dirt free skies. I used to take that for granted but that was before I did a lot of traveling. Now I understand that we're lucky most of the time. Fresh air is a wonderful thing. And the late afternoon light in the winter is mesmerizing to just look at. It's a great time to be out walking. And today looks pretty much perfect too.

I've spent most of today re-reading and memorizing the information in the manuals for my Zoom H5 Audio Recorder and the Aputure Video Monitor. I've used every control at least ten times to build a memory for each setting. I've put them through their paces. I've wired up six different microphones with various power or termination requires and figured out how they sound best. I feel so ready for our project to begin that it's all I can do to keep from calling the client and begging her to get started tomorrow. I guess patience is one of those things I should work on.