First Blush Review of the Nikon D810. Like.

Nikon D810.

The Nikon D810 is currently the best all around digital camera on the market. According to DXO the sensor inside is the highest performing one on the market (excepting the newest Sony medium format sensors, maybe...). The camera is rugged, designed to be weather resistant, uses all Nikon lenses sold since 1977, functions in automatic modes with older manual focus lenses and is available for around $3300.

Why did I want one and what am I doing with it? Hmmm. (warning, long explanation) When we hit the times of the great recession the downturn in the economy hit photography businesses harder than it hit the traditional occupations of the middle and upper middle classes in the U.S. If you had a real job and were not laid off chances are your salary did not drop even though your fear quotient may have spiked. Your direct deposit from your employer hit your bank account each month and maybe you defensively saved a bit more and spent a bit less money. You were cognizant of the pain in the general workforce. You became more practical.

As freelance photographers came to grips with the sliding economy they started to realize that, to some extent, their services and products were discretionary. A company could go on using their CEO portrait from last year or the year before. If cuts were to be made it would be in the budgets usually dedicated to external suppliers who delivered discretionary items. The heat, light, water and basic salaries of the internal workers needed to be paid for the company to continue to exist. 

Revenues for freelancers plunged as ad agencies, corporations, brides, car dealerships and just about anyone else who could pulled up the drawbridges and opted in to the siege mentality. We were like lepers or people with the black plague soliciting at the gates. In the darkest times of the great recession we had quarters where our income was reduced by half. We even had a quarter with no income. None. Zero. It was a very scary time but it was also a time of fast changes in the camera market and we were desperately concerned about being left behind as products changed and improved. We needed to be able to compete if the market offered a chance.

When I started in the business the income of a good corporate photographer, after successfully launching, was very good and the expectation was that the income would grow, month after month and year after year. Part of the model of success was that we used the very best gear and that cost a lot of money which created a lot of barriers to entry into the field. At the top of the great recession the barriers were gone, the technology was egalitarianized and there was no longer a need to own the very best gear. Especially in a market where nearly all of our output was destined directly for the web at tiny sizes and high compressions. 

While I kept my hand in the game with cameras like the Canon 5D mk2, the various (three different) Sony full frame cameras, etc. I economized where I could and made ample use of elegant, capable and less expensive, smaller format cameras. Most notably the Olympus and the Panasonic lines. But I had grown up with full frame and larger cameras and I've always liked the way various medium telephoto lenses on those bigger formats drew for portraits. 

The economy made a good recovery for me in the last two years. Clients got braver, stock valuations rose dramatically and the purchase orders flowed more smoothly and reliably than they had in the previous five years. Clients were no longer demanding to do everything on the tightest imaginable budgets. They were (are) cycling back in some sectors to the idea of higher quality as a brand signifier, higher production values as marketing differentiators. And as a supplier to them I've learned to read the tea leaves and turn on a dime. Which often makes me the target of brand loyalists who presume that I should just buy a damn camera brand and stick with it through thick and thin---like a marriage. 

But we don't run the business to please one of the brand camps. We run it to make money while doing work we really enjoy. Which brings me back to why this camera and why now.  The bigger clients have come back to roost and they are back into the pre-recession habit of demanding the best. They are also willing to pay for the best because unlike local clients they are comparing prices internationally and with those comparisons come comparisons of every facet of the production business. 

The D810 isn't the "best camera in the world" it's the best, reasonably affordable, high performance camera in the world. My psychological damage from the last downturn precludes me from being comfortable enough to rush out and buy a Phase One or the Leica S2 that I would really like but I've conquered enough of my fear to be able to spend more and get more than I did several years ago.

Several of my current clients are heading back to trade shows and returning to producing high end print collateral, point of purchase posters and the like. They don't care about the religion of the format wars they just want to pull the largest resolution files they can get into InDesign and not have to do extreme interpolations to get where they need to go. To a certain extent all of the 24 megapixel cameras are a move in the right direction but the 36 megapixel camera is in a different class and the files are demonstrably more detailed for those kinds of uses. I sweated bullets delivering multiple files destined to be 24 by 36 inch posters last Summer using the Panasonic GH4 and its 16 megs. In late Fall, when a similar project arose I decided not to use the Nikon D7100 (24 megapixel) camera I had in hand but to rent a medium format, 40 megapixel camera for the project. What we accomplished with a Panasonic GH4, with sweat and technical brinkmanship we accomplished with ease in the final delivery of files that started out nearly three times as big from the MF camera.

Late last Fall I began testing the Nikon D800 to see how close it would come to the medium format cameras and I was pleased to find that it was within striking range for my uses. Tightening up technique on my part would narrow the distance even more. 

I'm a month into owning and using the D810 and here's what I've experienced so far: The camera with good lenses is as big and heavy as I remembered full frame cameras being. The files are enormous and converting a file folder full of raw images takes a lot of time even on a fairly fast computer. From a workflow point of view I'm still inclined to grab a 16 megapixel camera whenever I know we won't be going really large. The workflow is just so much faster. 

But when we need quality I grab for the D610. If we need more image quality I fire up the D810. While the cameras are larger and a bit unwieldy for a guy with small to medium sized hands the quality of the files makes up for the clumsiness of the package.

Recently I used the D610 and the D810 to document the dress rehearsal of "Peter and the Starcatcher." It's a play/musical at Zach Theater. I was delighted with the performance and more than one blog reader wrote to ask if the lighting had been totally different for this play (no) because the images were the best they had ever seen in all the years that I've been posting live theater stage shots. 

The two main differences that I saw had to do with how well the cameras nailed the white balance (really good flesh tones that did not require much correction in post) and how much sheer dynamic range there was in the files. The highlights in scenes were much less prone to blow out and the shadows were more detailed without the attendant encroachment of noise.  That was one test with about 450 images shot on the D810. One thing I did notice is that at 3200 ISO the D610 handles shadow noise better than the D810. 

The next shoot I did was different. All the variables were removed. I used the D810 on a tripod and I used studio strobes in soft boxes to make a series of images of three actors for an upcoming play. The combination of the hefty tripod and the brief exposure of the flash, along with a custom white balance and calculated exposures at an ISO of 200 was eye opening. From a three quarter shot of three actors I could zoom into a part of one actor's face before I hit 100%. And at that magnification the file was relatively noise free and highly detailed. It was amazingly good. And in the least compressed raw file at 14 bits each individual file was also 72 megabytes. Again, a trade off that is not always practical or necessary. 

In the end I've come to understand the D810 (at least here in the early days) as a substitute for a medium format camera. In this analogy my Olympus EM-5 cameras are like the 35mm film cameras of yesteryear (the film years...). They are the cameras of reportage and journalism because they make high quality files and can be carried (comfortably) everywhere. Not every file will need to go up past 16x20 inches. Not every situation will allow for large, intrusive gear. It's nice to have options. 

Finally, I spent yesterday testing the video on the Nikon D810. There is one thing I already know I dislike and that's the way the audio is set up. You can use external microphones and you can even set manual levels but you can't change the levels while you are recording. That's too bad because sometimes you really need to ride the levels with vitriolic speakers in sessions.

At the highest quality settings the video from the camera looks good. I experimented using the Flat Profile which is engineered to be something like an S-log profile in a professional video camera. Flat produces files with lots of dynamic range but they look flat. You have to interpret them in whatever editing software you use. It takes a little time to get right but the files look very good and very natural when you take the effort. The files straight out of the camera are the usual 24 mbs AVCHD variants but the camera is set up to output uncompressed files via HDMI for people who need higher imaging quality in video. The low budget fix is to buy an Atomos Ninja Star digital recorder and capture the uncompressed signals onto Cfast memory cards (a new video standard memory solution). You can set the Ninja Star to record them in three different variants of ProRes which is the editing file format of choice for Final Cut Pro X. While the uncompressed files take up more space on the CFast card (you'll need more storage) they don't need to be converted to be used in editing so it makes the editing process easier and faster.

The GH4 produces a sharper looking video file and has tons more options to use. It's the better camera from a set up and use point of view as well. The Nikon drags one right back to the age of putting a loupe over the screen to see what you are getting in live view. With the GH4 you have an EVF that tells all. At lower ISO settings the GH4 is the best choice in the lower priced video arena. The only parameters where the D810 wins by a clear margin is that it has less noise in higher ISO settings and the depth of field control gives one more options. While I am not a proponent of having just a narrow slice of stuff in focus with everything else turning to anonymous mush one of my friends to whom I sometimes lend the GH4 had a heck of a time sloughing off enough focus to do an interview and drop the screen of a monitor that showed in the background far enough out of focus to obscure some information on the screen. He was restricted to shooting in a tight space and a bit less DOF would have been aesthetically more appropriate. That might have been a time and place for the larger format camera.

I am not Philip Bloom and I don't work in the rarified atmosphere of feature films or narrative television programming. I'm okay with the idea that most of my video productions will be consumed on the web at a compressed 1280 by 720. With that in mind the D810 is a good production camera for industrial work and the inevitable interviews. That being written I am also looking forward to see what kind of progress the people who create hacks for various "hybrid" cameras will do with the Nikon cameras. There is a site called, Nikon Hacker, that is publishing hacks for various Nikons that vastly increase the video bit rate of the cameras with attendant increases in image quality. I'm looking forward to the day when they have a safe D810 hack that doubles the bit rate. And I'm hoping even more that Nikon will do the hack themselves in the firmware. I'd rather have strong, mature 2K than quick and dirty 4K but I'm sure the next generation of all the cameras will deliver 4K just to keep achieving parity. 

So, here's my list of what I like about the Nikon D810:

1. Flat Profile. Cool and it works well. 

2. 36 megapixels of good imaging, no AA filter. Files that clients love.

3. Nice finder.

4. Quiet shutter (thank God!).

5. Good rear screen. 

6. Amazing auto white balance.

7. Feels very rugged.

8. Fairly priced. I'm happy this sensor and camera performance came in a  "non-pro" body. The last pro body I bought from Nikon was the D2xs at nearly $6,000. The D810 is clearly at least twice the performance for half the cost. 

9. The movie mode is very uncomplicated which means less to set wrong in fast moving situations.

10. Works with a big range of my existing Nikon lenses (nods to the 105 f2.5, the 25-50mm f4 and all the wonderful micro lenses).

Here's what I am less happy with:

1. It's heavy and big. But I knew that going in. 

2. The files are huge and require a lot of processing power and storage to use. But I knew that going in. 

3. I miss the feedback and information of a good EVF.

4. I am reminded every time I use it in the street (not on assignment) that it is obvious, intimidating and big. It screams: "Baby boomer with bigass camera." Instead of: "Cool guy with small camera."

5. I wish there were more codec choices in the video. Would love an "All I" format...

6. Um. What slow witted audio designer decided that we wouldn't need to adjust audio during a take? Fire him. Get that Sony guy who put the rotary control on the front of the a99 to do one of those.

7.  Buying new lenses. 

8.  The battery life sucks compared to the pro Nikons (and even to a well broken in Panasonic GH4 battery. In fact the Nikon SUCKS down battery juice in video to a startling degree in comparison).

9.  Bigger format means bigger and heavier lenses.

10. Ignites desire for Sigma Art lenses or Zeiss Otus lenses. 

Here's my advice: If you are a working professional with clients who like traditional imaging then you might want to have one of these around for demanding projects. Or stuff where you and the client really want to drop backgrounds out of focus. Get one if you are a Nikon user and you want to upgrade from a DX camera to a full frame camera. Get one if you are a medium format shooter and need to downsize because your clients are no longer willing to pay for the benefits derived from the larger format and you still need to make money. 

Don't buy it if you are happy with the camera you are shooting right now. If you are a portrait photographer only you'll do just as well with a 24 megapixel camera like the D610 or the D750. If you are a Canon shooter you should seriously wait to see if the Canon rumors are correct and their new 50+ megapixel camera is coming soon. It's supposed to be a direct competitor to the D810 and you probably already have lots and lots of their very good lenses. Don't buy one if you are shooting Fuji or Olympus or Panasonic because you like the smaller sizes and the amazing range of lenses. It's the opposite. 

Finally, if you are mostly a video shooter don't buy this camera unless you've already got your GH4 for day to day production work. Once you've mastered that camera then consider the big Nikon for DoF control and some high ISO work (although the D750 would be a better choice for lower noise...).

I bought the camera because I'm 59 years old, the recession is over and I wanted to shoot with a camera right now that no client can object to. That's a whole different metric than shooting with a camera for one's personal enjoyment exclusively. It's a business decision and every business decision has a psychological component. I can't be more honest than that.

A New Lunch Item in the VSL Cafeteria. The only imaging services cafeteria to earn four Michelin Stars.

Our chef recommends....Petrossian caviar as a nice starter. Yes, it is included on the meal plan!

Seriously though, I was researching the best raw processing software for Nikon files and I came across a program called Capture NX-D. It's pretty barebones. A downgrade (in terms of features and bling) from their previous program, NX-2. But it has one over riding feature that is sure to please most photographers, it is offered free of charge.

I loaded it onto the processing apparatus in my studio and opened up the application. For a person who is just interested in grinding the absolute best image out of a file it seems pretty good. There's very little to distract one from the basics of color correction, tonal control, exposure fine tuning and profile tweaking. No adjustment brushes. No layers. No automated web gallery generators.

You get the ability to fine tune pretty much any setting you might be able to make on the camera. There's even a very finely graded control over clarity.

I grabbed the first folder on my hard drive that had Nikon raw files on it and opened one up. This is an image I shot handheld with some bounce flash with the 18-140mm "kit" lens at around 90mm, wide open at f 5.3. The file was underexposed by 3/4 of a stop and you can see that the depth of field is really too narrow to work well aesthetically. The camera was a Nikon D7100.

I spent a little time playing with the sharpening and D-Lighitng controls. I also made a quick custom white balance by clicking on the white part of the tin lid.

My quick assessment is that this will be a good option for me to use when I'm fine tuning one or two files at a time and, after making these preliminary adjustments, taking the file into PhotoShop to finish it off. If you shoot with Nikons you may want to download and play with this program and see how it works on your files. I like the overall look of my test file and like the sharpening very well.

As a bit of background for those who want to jump in and "inform" me about "better" options please be aware that I have current versions of DXO, Capture One, and PhotoShop CC and I use them pretty much interchangeably, depending on the results or efficiency I am looking for in the moment. All are good but this might be an especially good option to use for those three or four weeks between the launch of a brand new camera and the updated raw support in third party image processing programs. 

Wow. For once a positive and upbeat article for real photographers. And some push back on the crowd-sourcing mania.

https://nppa.org/news/eyetracking-photojournalism-new-research-explores-what-makes-photograph-memorable-shareable-and

Adding value. That's the whole ticket right there.

Fun to start the week with a very nice review. Thank you Patti Jane!

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent--A++++, January 31, 2015 By  patti jane - See all my reviews Verified Purchase(What's this?) This review is from: The Lisbon Portfolio (The Henry White Portfolios Book 1) (Kindle Edition) This was a fascinating story and a great read. The hero is an average guy with an ability to overcome  incredible obstacles. He manages to recall the obscure methods that his storybook heroes used to slither  out of impossible situations. What a delight!! I'd give it 6 stars if I could. Help other customers find the most helpful reviews  Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Report abuse | Permalink Comment Comment

A few more shots from "Peter and the Starcatcher." Now playing at Zach Theater here in Austin. All photos ©2015 Kirk Tuck

This was a deep immersion week for me as far as theater photography was concerned. It started last Sunday when I scouted the technical rehearsal for Zach Theatre's newest play, Peter and the Starcatcher. I came to an earlier performance so I could watch the play and figure out where the memorable/marketable moments were. That way I'd be prepared to catch them when I came back on Tues. to shoot the dress rehearsal. The photography at the dress rehearsal went off without a hitch. It was my first time to use either the Nikon D610 or D810 for live theater photos and I think they worked well. 

These shots of the mermaids (mermen? credit to Ben Stiller in the movie, Zoolander) were embargoed until today because they constitute a surprise scene and we didn't want to give it away until we were well into the run. The mermaids are shot with the D810 and the 80-200mm f2.8 Nikon zoom (ancient push/pull design). I knew what was coming and I still laughed out loud when I saw the scene in all of its glory.....

Wednesday I was at the Kevin Rollins Theater in the Long Center scouting and shooting the David Bowie Project 2. I turned those images around ( you may have seen the black and white images in a previous blog post) the next day and then went back the next evening (Thursday) to shoot it once again because this time they were using hazers to fog up the stage for a different look. 

Today, while the rest of the country was watching the SuperBowl I was back over at Zach Theatre setting up two enormous soft boxes and a white, muslin backdrop in order to make marketing images for a future play. As I write this I'm also bringing the images from today's shoot into Lightroom so I can tweak them for delivery tomorrow. All in all I've spent five evenings this week shooting or working in some capacity at theaters. But I have to say, it's all been a lot of fun. 

I heard an interesting factoid about the SuperBowl today on NPR. I'm not sure if you fans know this or not but those "athletes" at the Superbowl will spend less than 18 minutes actually playing and being active on the field out of a four hour game. 

I'd rather be shooting at a theater.

What's the best (reasonably priced, not priced like a car) camera for 2015? Looks like it will be another slugfest between Nikon and Canon.

Don't worry, if you shoot with Fuji, Olympus or Panasonic you can stand on the sidelines and watch the spectacle without giving in to the urge to grab a fistful of credit cards out of your pocket and go berserk. But if you are a Canon power user you are no doubt on pins and needles because of the news we've heard in the last week (strong rumors) of not one but two Canon full frame camera bodies coming into the market which will seek to better the specifications of the Nikon D810. Or at least match that camera's imaging quality in a body Canon lens collectors can be proud of. 

The rumors (somewhat confirmed for me by contacts in retail) point to two very high resolution bodies based around an improved Canon 5D mk3 body. By very high resolution we are told that the bodies will boast 50+ megapixel, full frame sensors. In a move similar to Nikon's just previous D8XX adventures one camera will have an anti-aliasing filter (a nod to the needs of videographers?) and the other will not. It will be unencumbered by a detail degrading filter in order to achieve  maximum sharpness.

I'm hoping Canon goes for the Full Monty and adds real 4K video capability to the new machines. It's already available as a Magic Lantern hack for the 5D3 but hacking your primary shooting camera tends to scare the crap out of a lot of careful people so having it as a native feature is always a marketing plus. 

It's overall an interesting strategy on the part of Canon at a time when the bottom part of their camera market is succumbing to the same entropy that everyone else's bottom markets are falling prey to. As camera sales decline around the world camera makers seem to be focusing more and more on the tops of their product mixes where (no doubt) the profit margins are thicker and the bang per sale is much greater for the bottom line. It's also no coincidence that the upper end of the enthusiast market is where the people with the greatest concentration of money are greatly concentrated. Especially those with an interest in buying some sort of cutting edge camera. It all seems to me to be like the big pirate ship that is sinking and all the officers (top cameras) are climbing the mast in the hopes that the ship will settle on the shallows before they themselves are totally underwater. 

The clear winners in the race for maximum sensor resolution and image quality? That would be Sigma and Zeiss. Each is rushing to establish and brand segments of their product mix as the only lenses really capable of actually doing justice to all those tightly packed pixels. The mantra I hear on every forum and at every camera counter goes something along the lines that all the camera makers' lenses before a certain time period were designed in a time period when there was no need to design in critical performance at the levels that are now purportedly required to show even a mild difference between a 20+ something sensor resolution and those at 36 and now 50+ megapixels. 

Sigma's "Art" branded lenses and Zeiss's "Otus" branded lenses are positioned as some of the few optical systems that are capable of delivering the resolution required to match the potential of the new generation of sensors. That older zoom lens? Not gonna do the job. So there's both an inertia to ignore the "ultimate upgrades" based on the idea that the lenses won't support them (or that you'll need to totally re-invest in better glass) or to pauper yourself buying new lenses that are a critical match for the new camera bodies you also have to have. No one wants to look like the jerk that buys a Canon 1DX and then puts a cheap, off brand, super zoom on the front. 

Of course, this process is rarely binary and the first blush response after getting one of the new bodies and convincing one's self that the lenses are sufficient unto the task, will be to get "just my favorite focal length in the newest formulation." Which only breaches the dyke and starts the process of good judgement erosion that eventually leads to a spirited defense of the benefits of the new system upgrade. 

I can hardly wait for the articles. "Battle of the Titans!" "Winners and Losers." "Who will wear the crown of Imaging when the smoke clears?" Perhaps by that point people will have played around with the Sony A7S some more and decided that 12 really fun megapixels is a better holistic value.  Naw, people love a good school yard dust up and that's what we have to look forward to if the rumors pan out. 

Ah, this way lies madness.

The Freakiest, scariest, nail biting-ist time of the year for Freelance anybodies: December 15th through to the Super Bowl. Ouch.

From a  Zach Theatre Performance of "Peter and the Starcatcher."

Hey! It's a brand new year. Are you young and enthusiastic? Always wanted to be a professional advertising or corporate photographer? Ready to jump into a big, crazy market with both feet? Got your gear ready to go? Been to the workshops and got yourself all fired up at an industry tradeshow? Already picked out the Porsche you plan to buy with the amazing profits you'll surely earn snapping images of half-naked super models on pristine beaches? All optimism and no business plan?

Then you'll want to skip this particular post. Because today we discuss a reality of the business that often gets glossed over as every practitioner who's still standing tries to put a brave face on the monetary/schedule reality of the business. 

I'm sure everyone whose photo job revolves around snapping photos of children on Santa's lap in the mall, or taking images of wonderful, suburban families in their homes, gardens and local parks had a pretty decent month in December and they've stayed pretty busy in January making sure everyone got their prints and their files. They probably even got to send out invoices and collect checks and credit card information. But you know all those guys and girls who mostly dress in black, hang out around ad agencies and stay in touch with the corporate mar com people? The ones who always have a large cup of Starbuck's coffee in one hand.  Well, the end of the fleeting year and beginning of new years generally sucks for them. And here's why.

If you aren't working for retail clients every other type of B2B client tends to have all their budgets spent and their projects done by the second week of December. They have to. They can't depend on enough people showing up for work at the same time to even create half a committee, much less a full committee with enough people to approve, disapprove or change advertising projects. Everyone goes on vacation. They go to see daughter, Tiffany, dance in her dance school's rendition of The Nutcracker. All of a sudden parents have to deal with the fact that schools are closing up for the holidays and community standards frown on leaving pre-teens and younger to fend for themselves all day long. Someone has to be home to make sure they aren't getting into trouble. Or the liquor cabinet.

Right after the week of realizing the burden of raising children during times of no school comes everyone's favorite thing to do: Holiday Travel. That will take days out of your typical work schedule and possibly years off your life (Really? You really want to head up to Des Moines to visit your spouse's family? Even the ones in prison? Are you really going to eat that?).

Then there's the dreaded period between Christmas and New Years Eve when anyone with budget or approval authority is gone. Out of the office. Out of the state. Maybe out of their minds. Long story short, no one can sign a P.O., much less approve an invoice that might get the ball rolling and  authorize the taking of yet another image of that family of servers that may or may not make the inventory cut when the inevitable start of the year downsizing starts.

After the holidays our clients still have a week left to stabilize their families and get the kids ready for re-entry into school. The process is generally made more difficult since that's the week the flu and other winter illnesses kick in and start ravaging the populace. By this point corporate workers and their ad agency counterparts have already burned through the first full week January. The next week allows them to slide back into their comfortable workflow like an old man easing himself into a bathtub full of hot water. This is the week of budget meetings. Staff rearrangements. The wholesale firing of ad agencies from some accounts the the equally wholesale hiring of the newer, shinier, better ad agencies for other accounts. Which then starts a new round of creative proposals. Which then goes through the approval processes and meetings. Then there are the meetings about the meetings and finally the committee consensus that we'd better get busy on SOMETHING or we'll lose whatever budget we don't take advantage of in the first quarter. Chop. Chop. 

So, somewhere in or around the third or fourth week of January the phones ring ( or chime or play dreadful ringtones ), the e-mails start flowing and the projects start being presented to the creative class of content makers so that bids, estimates, quotes, pricing, budgets and procedures can start being discussed. If you are lucky you'll start nailing down bids and project assignments by the end of January or the first week of February which will be shot some time in February and then billed, and hopefully the first round will end up being paid for in the late March time frame. That's a long time to go with no cash flow! 

My advice to the people who are ready to get started in advertising photography or corporate imaging work is this: Start saving up now so you can make the jump at the end of this year and into next year. You'll need a big stack of money. Remember, the end of the year, when you stop working is also the single most expensive part of the year: Gifts to buy, dinner parties to host, travel to pay for, entertainment, and it seems to be the time of the year when CPAs come alive and share with you the idea (threat?) that you'll need to add a few more (tens of) thousands of dollars to your meager IRS contributions for the past year. And you also need to cough up a bunch of cash to toss into a tax deferred retirement account (you do want to retire someday, right?). 

Well, after paying all the regular stuff ( income tax, property tax, business tax, self employment tax, mortgage, retirement fund, donations to the governor's defense fund) and the swim club dues for the year, plus the annual premiums for a couple of life insurance policies and a disability insurance policy and the above mentioned, CPA recommended, wallet clearing exercises, and another round of college expenses (and air fare to and from) I'm just about tapped out. Like clockwork, clients have roused from their slumber and begun the requesting rituals. With a little luck we'll just about make the spread. But I have been researching places in town that will pay for plasma...

It's the same story I hear from everyone I know in the business; be they freelance writers, photographers, videographers or designers. I'm thinking we could create an entire lobbying campaign around asking for the whole holiday break to be shortened. Whatever happened to productivity as a buzzword?

One more thing that always strikes me as a bit ironic. I'll have a great 4th quarter and, anticipating more of the same to come (freelance is Latin for optimistic) I'll decide to buy some new gear. Fun stuff. Like the D610, the D810 and a raft of lenses. And as surely as I do that the equipment karma teams up with corporate holiday lag and leaves me sitting here in the studio surrounded by really cool gear and nothing to stick in front of it. Next year I'm going on vacation somewhere really cool for half of December and the whole month of January. I'll figure out how to pay for it in March.....

Camera Talk is Cheap. Show me Some Photos.

I love to believe that there is a camera lurking out there somewhere that really is the "magic bullet" of imaging. But you know what? I can pull out a file full of great images from just about every camera I've ever owned, no matter how ratty or dilapidated the cameras were. No matter what their sensor density or their lineage. At some point everything boils down to lighting and having the right subjects in front of whatever camera you can scrape together. I proved it to myself once again a few nights ago by shooting an Olympus EM-5 the evening after the Nikon D810 love fest/photo shoot. And my favorite portraits of 2013 came right out of a camera that I found difficult to use and slow to warm up to. 

At some point you just have to ignore the pedigree and the current buzz and get down to work and shoot. We could test cameras for the rest of our lives and probably die thinking that the ultimate one is just around the corner. But I'll tell you want, the power of rationalization is stunning. Don't believe me, just read about this (excellent) shooter's agonizing analysis of his latest toy acquisition. http://dedpxl.com/moving-to-motion-pt-02-lumix-gh4/

I went through the same rationalization last year and ended up with the same gear but I have no doubt that eventually both of us will move on to something like the Sony FS7 dedicated video camera by the end of this year. The search (and the rationalization of the interim steps) is timeless and too easy. 

I posted these images because they flowed into the camera for me. The camera was meaningless, it was the process that was all the fun. Zach just reminded me of how good we get at making a case for the stuff we want to buy. Guilty here too. These images make the case for me that none of that really matters.

Shooting a live performance of the "David Bowie Project 2" performance with a full house of ticket buyers. Stealth?

Yesterday I posted a bunch of black and white images from the Ariel Dance Company's latest work, The David Bowie Project 2.  This is not a traditional play but a multimedia performance piece that combines modern dance, dramatic dialogue, live music and light painting. The Company calls what they are doing, "sound painting" but I think it is more than that. 

Each performance runs 70 minutes and each performance is different. Three people from the company take turns using a sophisticated sign language to cue different music, sound effects and movement. The piece is loosely wrapped around the various dialogs of David Bowie and interspersed with his music and actor delivered quotes attributed to Bowie. 

On the first night, the final rehearsal, I was feeling my way through the piece trying to figure out where to be during each part of the performance. I shot 1200 images between the big Nikon D610 and the tiny Olympus EM-5. I shot the EM-5 entirely in monotone and my experience with it reminded me of what a great shooting tool those smaller cameras could be. Especially small cameras with unmatched image stabilization.

When I went back again last night I packed only the Olympus mini-cams. I took a small Tenba photo backpack housing three EM-5 bodies. I stripped down the bodies so that they were unencumbered with battery grips. I brought one lens for each body. The lenses were the 17mm Olympus f1.8, the Sigma 30mm 2.8 dn lens and the Sigma 60mm f2.8 dn lens (my current favorite for the m4:3 cameras). That and a few extra batteries comprised my entire shooting inventory. 

Since there was a live, paying audience in the house I had to make sure not to call attention to myself or my cameras. Before I left the house I dressed completely in black. Black shoes, black pants and shirt and even a black skullcap to cover my zone 7 silver hair. I was able to shoot from either side of the audience as long as I didn't go past the front row. I could also shoot from the left and right side of the back of the stage. I took care to slow myself down so sudden or quick movement wouldn't catch people's eyes. I also did my best not to make eye contact with either anyone in the audience or the actors.  I didn't worry too much about shutter noise since the music usually masked the noise in all but the quietest moments. At those times I re-upped my gratitude for the EM-5's quiet and low tonal profile shutters. 

Since the performance is all about movement and a lot of the moves and choreography were unknowable to me before they happened I broke with my usual style, put the frame rate for the cameras on high and shot tight, fast bursts of action. The auto focus of the cameras had no problems locking on to the dancers even though the stage was well fogged---which always lowers the overall contrast. With the small backpacked stashed behind stage I wore the cameras instead of trying to maneuver with extraneous holders or bags. The body with the long lens always went over the left shoulder while the body with the 30mm went over the right. I wore the body with the 17mm around my neck. In almost every frame I shot wide open (with both Sigmas) and one stop down with the Olympus 17mm. I needed shutter speed more than I needed deep depth of field and I wanted to keep my ISO at 160o or under. 

At some point I realized that I could get down near the floor with the articulated finder on the rear and I would be able to capture the rays of light falling on one of the "conductors" in a nice way. Then I remembered that I could also use the square aspect ratio. At that point it all fell into place for me and that's the way I shot for the rest of the performance. 

Why didn't I use the Nikon cameras and lenses? I felt like they were too big and with the fog in the atmosphere the benefit of the high resolution would be lost. Why carry a bigger camera with a bigger set of files if the limitation exists under the common denominators of both cameras?  I'd rather work in situations like this with cameras set to manual exposure, using me EVF as a defacto meter. The instant visual feedback loop is a hard (nice) habit to break. (If Canon and Nikon really want to save sales they'd do well to realize that enthusiasts aren't all rushing to mirror-free because of the small size benefit, hordes of us embrace them because the change to EVFs is a paradigm shift that will eventually kill off the OVF cameras. Size differences be damned, it's the feedback loop, stupid).

The combination of the great music and kinetic flow of the dancers pretty much ensured that I was almost totally invisible to the audience (and hopefully to the dancers). I delivered a huge batch of files today and I'm certain that the company will get a ton of them into the hands of the press and event websites before sundown. This is how local art gets marketed. 

One last note: I've always been warned away from shooting video with the EM-5. The experts are not happy with the look for the files or the "brittle-ness of the codec" but last night I decided to thrown caution to the wind and see what the video really looked like. I set the camera to 24 fps, 1/50th, f2.8 and blazed away handheld. The I.S. is a revelation for video. It's amazingly smooth. I loved shooting that way and, in situations where it's warranted shooting handheld with the EM-5 could be a great technique. Seems perfectionism can create roadblocks to creative practice. I can hardly wait for the rumored new EM-5 type 2. It's rumored to have tweaked I.S. as well as a really decent video file implementation. Not perfect but perfectly usable. Count me in!

The above is a link to a new EM-5 but if you go to that page you'll 

be able to navigate to the used EM-5's offered. They start at just 

under $400. Still a bargain the way I see it...

And while you are there deciding that you really do want to take a chance on an older camera model, please pick up a Kindle or Print copy of the Novel to help support VSL's house writer....

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Totally off the topic of photography but right on target for Kirk.

As many of you know my kid, Ben, went off to college last Fall. He got out of Texas. He got out of the Southwest. He went all the way to Saratoga Springs, NY to attend Skidmore College. He chose the school, visited on his own and made the final decision. Even though it is 1849 miles from Austin we were very pleased with his decision. It's a rigorous school and very selective. And Saratoga Springs is drop dead beautiful.

So, I was waiting for Belinda to meet me at the Blanton Museum after my swim practice this afternoon and I got a text. It was from Ben. He made the Dean's List for last semester. It was his freshman, first semester.

I am very proud of Ben.

Go Ben.

The David Bowie Project. Another shoot at another theater with another production company. Intro.

Prop.

This post isn't really a full fledged post. It's a demi-post written while waiting the files to be ingested into the gaping maw of Lightroom. When we last convened I was just finishing up fine tuning some files for Zach Theatre's production of, "Peter and the Starcatchers." I put 900 images on a sixteen gb stick and delivered them to the marketing folks. We're having a love fest over on Facebook over a small sampling of the images. The pirate is trending well....

So, I finished up the post production on the Zach project and put the cameras back on the chargers. Backed up the images across a couple of hard drives and then wiped the big, fast cards so I could use them later that day. The rest of the afternoon was spent doing droll stuff. I bid on a lifestyle project for a big resort project that's going up down on the Texas coast. The agency had a wish list a mile long and budget we could measure with a short ruler. I sent along a bid with endless detail (I used to shoot advertising for a whole series of resort properties in the Caribbean and Mexico...) of stuff they had overlooked or didn't know about and I thought that I'd pretty much put myself out of the running. Sometimes it's better to decline a job then to stick your foot into a tar pit that just sucks you in and (temporarily) kills your business. My estimate was three times their initial "suggestion." 

A few hours later I heard back and, golly, I'm still in the running but the agency has gone back to the drawing board to figure out just what we might be able to do within their budget. It's one thing to want to drive a Bentley but it a whole other thing to actually pay for one....

I also did a multi-page estimate for a very cutting edge technology company. Many layers of detail. We'll need to shoot so many angles and we'll need to do it with models and without. Then there's the retouching. And the clipping paths. And the logo replacements (same model chassis with different guts).  There was a lot of typing on my part. I hope it all makes sense to our prospective client.

This kind of backend work is tedious and has to be done correctly because the detail in the bids and estimates becomes part of the final agreement, which is binding. I'd hate to promise something we can't deliver or overlook the number of hours that would really be required to make a process work well in imaging. There will be some give and take about the final numbers but that's to be expected. 

Once we have everything nailed down we'll tender an agreement which is our basic contract. When I read a lot blogs about the business of photography few of them talk about contracts and agreements in writing but it really forms the backbone of the process and clients do take them very seriously. Who will get what? What will it all cost? How are the rights licensed? What if something doesn't match up? All vital questions in business. 

Anyway, it was my turn to make dinner and I knew I needed to be downtown for a new performance rehearsal at 7:30. Hello Jason's Deli. A half mufuletta to go. We ate our sandwich and shared news of the day. The boy has not frozen in the arctic wastelands of the northeast; he has survived the blizzard of 2015. 

I did the dishes and headed into the office to pack. One Nikon 610, one Nikon D7100, the 24-85 zoom and an 85mm. Just for happy fun I tossed in an Olympus EM-5 with the Sigma 60mm f2.8 DN Art lens. 

EM-5.

The performance was at the Long Center here in Austin. The production company is headed by Andrea Ariel and the project is called, The David Bowie Project. Andrea calls this kind of integration of music, drama and dance: Sound Painting.  I call it structural improvisation. 

I'm still processing images from last night and I'll share them later but I wanted to explore on thing that came to me in a moment of satori last night. An epiphany.

But first some samples: 

And now for my personal epiphany: I was shooting with the Nikon stuff and they were doing their basic camera stuff very well. They are like guys in suits who can tell you what escrow really means and will explain securitization to you in detail. The color is what the color is and everything is acceptably sharp and detailed. So if you are a linear thinker you might be able to stop right there and endless iterate in a linear fashion. 

But then I picked up my Olympus EM-5. For some reason or another the camera was set up to shoot Jpegs in monotone. Black and white. Grayscale. I went to move it into a color profile but I stopped myself and decided to shoot "just a few" images in black and white to see how it all looked. I shot and I liked. The image on the rear screen looked like a beautiful print from my heyday's with Tri-X. 

I decided to throw caution to the wind and set the camera up to be exactly like the cameras and films of my past. I set the ISO to 400 and the filtration to green (a subset of monotone that emulates the effects of different color filters on panchromatic films). I boosted the contrast a little bit. I turned down the noise reduction a bit. And then I just shot with reckless abandon. 

I was using the 60mm f2.8 Sigma DN Art lens as it was the only one I'd brought along. Just look at the rich tones and also go back and look at frame after frame with powerful stage lights directly in the frames! Look at the rich, noise-free blacks! But mostly, look at those luscious tones! 

In some situations the bigger cameras will give one a technically better file but I don't always want that. Sometimes I want a file that looks like art all on it's own. 

The amazing thing to me is that most of these (all of them?) were shot with the lens wide freakin' open. The shutter speed vacillated in the realm of 1/40th to 1/80th of second with me leaning on timing and the camera's remarkable I.S. performance. 

Once I got engaged in shooting with the Olympus and the monotone setting I was so hooked that the other cameras got tossed onto a theater seat and ignored for the rest of the evening. Oh sure, I had enough color coverage to keep the client happy but this stuff made me happy. It make may them happy to----afterall, they are artists too. 

Many questioned whether I would just abandon the micro four thirds cameras in favor of the full frame Nikons. I've been quiet about it until now but I have to say that there are certainly times for technically perfect images with outrageous amounts of resolution and detail but in my life there are at least as many times when I want images to look not perfect but really evocative and lush. 

My recent Nikon purchase, the D810 is $3300. The last Olympus EM-5 I bought (last Fall) with a battery grip was $395. For work like the stuff above (which may not be your personal cup of tea) I'll take the Olympus EM-5 nearly every time. What a great and transparent camera!

What's my commitment? Well, I've got four of them in the gear cabinet and I've got my eye out for more as the prices continue to drop. What a bargain. And the Sigma 60mm lens? Well, look at the Samples!

Just a few thoughts while watching some avant-garde dance performance. Your mile will surely vary (YMWSV).

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