Imagine shooting concerts at ISO 400 with a manual focus 50mm lens and no meter in your camera. Imagine it was more fun.

Alanis Morrisette at Liberty Lunch in Austin, Texas. Shot with a Leica M3 rangefinder camera, 50mm Summicron, on Tri-X. Nothing fancy. Just roll after roll of well exposed, in focus images. And, bonus: it's in black and white.  © 2014 Kirk Tuck, All Rights Reserved.

Random Image from a trip to Rome.

Everyone stood around waiting for the Ferraris to roar through town. It was the annual day when the Ferrari owners from all over the country converged on Rome to show off their cars and socialize with each other. I was walking near the Spanish Steps with a Nikon F100 and an 85mm 1.4. I clicked a quick shot onto Kodak T-Max 400 CN and moved on. The day was rainy and warm. The cars were beautiful. The people more so.

Fun with a Physicist. Michio Kaku at a Freescale Technology Forum.

One of the amazing fringe benefits of being an event photographer for smart technology companies has been an ongoing "ticket" to a front row seat at events featuring some of the smartest and most interesting speakers of our time. This is Dr. Michio Kaku and he spoke to our audience of technologists and engineers back in 2008. His lecture was loosely based on his book, Physics of the Impossible, and I remember how quickly and completely he was able to draw me into his vision of the future.

I shoot corporate shows mostly with available light but I do make a valiant effort to understand the nature of the light and to talk to the lighting designers to find out about the light sources and the filtration they'll be using during presentations. I remember being able to go to a lighting rehearsal the morning of this talk and take meter readings on the stage and to use a color meter to devolve the mix of lighting on Dr. Kaku. I was able to set the camera I was using (a Fuji S5) to a pretty exact color balance and it was very helpful in post processing. The lens was the old standby, the 70-200mm f2.8 used somewhere around f5.0 with a shutter speed of 1/60th of a second.

I understand that Dr. Kaku has written a new book called, The Future of the Mind, (#1 bestseller in the physics category) and I can hardly wait to get my hands on it. This kind of book straddles the divide between fiction and non-fiction. That should keep both halves of my brain happy...

For more information on Dr. Kaku see his Wikipedia Page.

Edit: Funny how memory works to put everything in such a vague folder. I was cleaning the studio after writing this only to discover my (non-virtual) planning calendar from 2007.  It tells me that I used a Nikon 55-200mm lens and not the bigger, 70-200mm lens. That's probably why I used f5.x. I also noticed (quite obviously) that I shot this Freescale Event in Orlanda in 2007, not 2008. It took place in late June and the day after I arrived home my first book for Amherst Media would hit its deadline and need to be sent out. I now remember spending late nights at the show double checking the manuscript. Always good to write stuff down...

Tip of the day: Defusing the indecision of art directors and clients.

Kinky Friedman. Writer, Musician, Perennial candidate for Texas Gov.

You are thrilled. You are a professional photographer and you've booked a good assignment to make some images for an advertising agency and their client. They asked you to bid on one final image with three models on a location. You figured out the time required, how they'll end up using the image and all the details and, miraculously, they approved your bid without much haggling. 

So now you are on the location, your lights are set up and the camera is on the tripod just waiting to take some incredible shots. The talent is professional, fresh and ready to work. You're already patting yourself on the back for the incredible job you and your team are going to accomplish today. The make-up person is ahead of schedule (fantasy) and the stylist has a rack of good clothing choices so the client and art director have the best combination of wardrobe to choose from. You're waiting for the client and art director to come to a consensus with the stylist over what the models will wear and you are having a cup of that wonderful Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee your assistant picked up as part of the craft service. Life can be so good...

And then it happens. The client says, "I can't make up my mind about Jeremy's shirt." Jeremy is one of the three models.  The client continues, "I like the blue shirt with the strips but I also like that yellow, retro shirt. And I think we need to shoot a conservative version with one of those button downs. Maybe a white one and a blue one. Can we just try all four?"

And that's how it starts. You know it won't stop there because there are two other models to dress and there are choices to be made (or not made) for each of them as well. My math skills are no longer amazing but if you shot all the permutations you'd have something like 64 basic combinations and something like thousands distinctly different variations. And that doesn't take into consideration selecting shoes and pants. Or accessories. 

All of a sudden the half day you thought would be a generous amount of time to shoot in is looking like a small part of a two or three day shoot. Or at least a one day shoot that goes really long.

Even shooting three or four variations total puts a serious dent in the post processing budget, not to mention the extra time on set and the possible overtime for models and crew. What's a photographer to do?

Here are my three basic tips for getting the job done and still making a profit:

1. My favorite argument goes like this:  Pull the art director aside and say, "Really good models are like top athletes. They have one or two really good performances in them. Those are the performances where you can really tell they are connecting with the camera and with the audience. We really need to take advantage of that great energy and make sure not to shoot them when they've already peaked. Changing costumes is going to sap the energy out of them and you don't want to end up with the right wardrobe but a shot of them run down and looking bored after they've peaked. The best option is that blue shirt with the stripes! It'll go perfectly with the other models' outfits."

If they don't buy this (real) argument we can move on to my second tip, bringing up the money.

2. Pull the agency person aside and explain to them that this shoot was bid, discussed and approved as a "prix fix" meal. One set up, one wardrobe selection and the post processing required to fulfill just those shots. Let them know you'd be happy to shoot variations but each additional variation will cost 1/3X the original budget. Pull out your "job modification agreement form" and make it seem all very business like. You need to let them know they ordered the steak but they don't also get a free pork chop, a free salmon fillet and all you can eat caviar with every project. Especially on one with a conservative budget. If they can't decide at least you'll be charging them for each change...

If these don't work you can go for the nuclear option. 

3. Pull the agency person aside and say, as nicely as you can, "Look. This is not what we talked about and I can't keep shooting stuff over and over again. You hired me because I know how to make decisions. We hired the stylist because she's an expert in making these kinds of choices. If you don't trust our decisions then we're not the right team for you and we should stop right now, send everyone home and let you and the client have the opportunity to hire a crew that's more inline with your way of handling these things. The blue shirt works. And the other shirts work. There is no "ultimate" shirt.  

Now, we can go back into the shoot and make a decision or we can shut it down and you can start over with someone else. I'll leave it up to you..."

If you go with number 3 you probably will never work for that art director again for the rest of your career. But would you really want to? Sometimes saying "no" is the best business decision you'll be able to make in a situation. This all presumes that you covered these issues during the bidding process. An ounce of prevention sometimes gets sucked dry by the best of intentions, or hammered into the ground by the amazing sense of entitlement some clients bring to the set. Managing unrealistic expectations is part of the job. The steps above are workable escalations.  But you always have to be prepared to walk away.

Barton Springs Pool. The real "heart" of Austin.

A few Summers Back. 

Sony R1.

Nothing like it. An eighth of a mile long. Cool clean water bubbling up right out of the springs. The perfect antidote for the blazing sun  of Summer. Get a 40 punch swim ticket and go everyday.

Bikers Rally in Austin. Photographer goes to town with a 50-200mm zoom lens.

Yes. I did ask permission. 

Austin no longer has a functioning downtown. We now have a mile square area with very tall buildings that is more like an "on call"  amusement park for major corporations that want to throw cynical "consumer" events. Last week it was the X Games with a downtown exhibition (largely constructed just for the TV cameras) that took out blocks and blocks of Congress Ave. and assorted side streets so some painfully cool folks could ride skateboards up and  down some ramps. Before that it was some craft festival. And then, of course, there are the two full weeks of snarled traffic for SXSW. And before that the Europeans, and misguided Americans, who like Formula One car racing (we actually moved F1 to a God forsaken cow pasture thirty miles from town but the "visitors" like to teeter around drunk downtown. Seems like a "sporting" tradition) clogged up our downtown, smoking Marlboros and looking for the cheap beer prices.  But this weekend is all about good, clean fun with......the ROT Rally. One of the largest motorcycle rallies in the U.S. So, again, on Friday we block the streets and motorcycles sans mufflers race up and down Congress Ave. while their riders look tough and mean. Who wouldn't want to get out and photograph that?

I headed downtown with a simple camera set up; the Samsung NX30 and the 50-200mm f4-5.6 zoom lens. The camera does a great job on anything that's standing still or moving gently but it certainly wouldn't be my choice for a BIF (or "Birds In Flight") shooting tool. I tried tracking motorcycles and their riders and got about a 50% success rate. While the camera has a first rate sensor and also seems to nail exposure with aplomb I'm still grappling with some little issues like the lag time between switching between the rear screen and the EVF. It's too long. I shot mostly with the lens wide open which, while not generally recommended with consumer zooms, worked well for me and delivered files that, when in sharp focus, have rich detail and good snap. Samsung has proven to me time and again that they can make great glass.

I spent a couple of hours walking around shooting the stuff I saw but I got bored before the 7pm parade to the capitol building got started and decided to call it a day. Below are some of the marvelous scenes I came across on my walk down Sixth Street...

Don't get me wrong. I like motorcycles. 

Please read this one again because I've decided it's really important. And read the comments....

http://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2011/05/its-twenty-first-century-and-im-working.html

It's about reading fiction and my point of view about reading fiction.

in other news: Belinda and I finished working on, The Lisbon Portfolio. The photo/action novel I started back in 2002. I humbly think it is the perfect Summer vacation read. And the perfect, "oh crap, I have to fly across the country" read. It's in a Kindle version right now at Amazon. The Lisbon Portfolio. Action. Adventure. Photography.  See how our hero, Henry White, blows up a Range Rover with a Leica rangefinder.....

Remember, you can download the free Kindle Reader app for just about any table or OS out there....

Two accessories I could not do my photography business without. What are yours?

Kirk Tuck's Multi-Cart. Indispensable. 

We photographers tend to be a myopic bunch when it comes to gear. We are focused like little laser beams on the miracle of cameras. After that we are riveted by whatever the latest lens lore is. When we exhaust that topic we move on to sexy lights and then we're pretty much done. Oh, there are the printer/paper people but I think of them like the mole men from the Incredibles movie. Kind of trapped in the darkness and always trying to take over the world...one pigment print at a time.

But after some video shoots and some back-to-back photography shoots I've pretty much come to the conclusion that if one understands the physics and ballet of making portraits and doing interviews that pretty much you can make do with any modern camera on the market (always excluding those hard core sports jobs people love to toss in to screw up rational discussions) to do most work and no one will ever know the difference. Especially if you are showing off on the web. But after loading and unloading the car a number of times in short order, and after pulling hundreds of pounds of equipment across hot, dark, heat radiating, asphalt parking lots in a desperate attempt to reach the front door various client offices and so partake of the life affirming air conditioning, I would say, without equivocation, that the most useful and welcome piece of gear I own is also the most pedestrian: my Multi-Cart. Give me a Multi-Cart and enough bungee cords and I'll bring the most complete lighting-photo-prop inventory on to your location that you can imagine. If it fits in a Honda CR-V we can (and will) bring it, toss it onto the cart and drag it into your headquarters or your remote location. 

I can't remember how long ago I bought this cart. It was purchased at least 14 years ago to replace an identical cart that died when we worked at a Dell facility and someone decided to move a 1,000 pound, fully configured server enclosure (heavy metal, six foot tall cabinet) all the way from one side of a large building to the other----on our cart. The front wheels gave up the ghost just as we wheeled it into the carpeted shooting area. They just collapsed. Not the fault of the cart or the maker as the specs say the carts are good for loads of up to 500 pounds. The first cart was a noble machine that gave me good service for a very long time. Probably since the dawn of my current photo business, or nearly so...

We haven't attempted moving automobiles or server configurations or bags of cement with this one. We move gear in and out of client spaces and practical locations all over Texas. It's too cumbersome to fly with, sadly.  But I know that the cart has real, important value in my photography.

I was reminded of how important it is to arrive with enough energy left to actually be human and to be able to shoot without a pounding chest and a dizzy brain when one of my previous assistants regaled me, over a glass of wine, with a story about her time assisting a very famous (very famous!) London and New York based portrait photographer-celebrity who was, at the time, doing a tremendous amount of work for the New York Times Magazine. My friend had been hired as second or third assistant for a series of location shoots. On the first day she hopped into the van that would take the photographer, his gear and two other assistants to meet with the client and a famous subject on some urban location. 

When they arrived and had scouted the location in a big office building the photographer instructed his "people" to go and get the gear. My friend went with the other assistants to the van which was parked in a garage across the square from the first location. Having worked with me extensively she immediately searched the van for a cart. There wasn't one. She asked the other assistants and they shrugged, grunted and started to pick up cases with heavy power packs and head. They gestured at some 50 pound stand bags and started shuffling the 100 yards to the building and up to the 18th floor. They made about five round trips to get everything to the location. 

While the photographer was fresh as a daisy his "staff" was sweating bullets and gulping down water. Of course my friend realized that there would be a second part to all of this. They would have to retrace their steps back to the parking garage once the job was completed. And this would go on at location after location for the better part of a week. 

My friend finally plucked up her courage to ask the photographer why he didn't have a cart. His reply?  "That's what I have assistants for..."  She finished out the week and went off to find a photographer with at least the barest grasp of primitive physics and workplace efficiency.

The cart is a daily fixture in my world and has been for the last twenty years. If it were to die or disappear tomorrow I'd have another one here as quickly as I could source it. We have back up cameras and lenses but if the cart goes "Kaplooie" then all bets are off.  We'll be "on vacation" until it is replaced.

The other vital component of my photographic life...

I bought a set of background stands way, way back in 1981. They've been used in just about every studio portrait shoot I've ever done, and they've travelled to locations all over the world with me. I take them for granted. They just work every time. I put a canvas or paper background on them, we raise them up and they work away for me without even the slightest protest. I can't imagine doing 80% of my work without them. I have no idea where they were made. They were marketed by a company called RPS. The go up to about 10 feet. They have a cross pole that breaks apart into two pieces and also telescopes. This makes it easy to break down and pack for travel. 

In addition to backgrounds I've also used Super Clamps to hang cameras from the cross bar and stands over the top of sets. It comes in handy when I need to shoot from directly over head. In the old days we'd rig up the camera with a long cable release. Then we switched to a longer, electronic cable release. Now we just stick Panasonic GH4's up there and trigger them with our iPhones. We even get to preview the shots on the phones and change settings. But what doesn't change is the background stands. 

Lately I've noticed that they are slipping a bit and it's harder to tighten them down even when I use a wrench and a screwdriver to tighten all the joints. I've also discovered (in a few embarrassing failure events) that one of the stands in the set no longer stops at the maximum extension when going "up" with the stands. It will come right out of the bottom tube and leave me standing there with a wiggly pole in my hands, balancing a half a nine foot roll of seamless paper, and with a shocked and silly look on my face. I guess it's time to retire the first set and replace them but for some reason I keep mending them and keeping them in service. 

These are the devices that supply the real continuity in the business of making photographs. The cameras come and go and the lenses and even the lights are more or less transitory but the background stands are like family. Family with a long history.  I can't imagine an other investment in gear that has returned so much, so often for so little.

The background stands and the cart are the two accessories that I use every day and can't imagine surviving without in this game. They feel even more vital to me than tripods! I am curious. I know not everyone shares the same viewpoints as me. What are the accessories that you can't work without in your photography? Please share. 

Kirk Tuck's Background Stands are Twice as Old as His College Age Kid...Wow.

Gear Happiness. Two shoots two camera systems.

Unrelated image from the Bowie Project. Serving only as a visual anchor for the blog....

I've fallen a bit behind on the blog this week. We've gotten busy with the usual rush that happens once school lets out. Everyone takes a little family vacation and then the kids are inserted into Summer programs. The phones and e-mail are dead for a week. Traffic abates. Once this ritual plays out the clients climb back into the driver's seat, rev up the engines and off we go again.

Part of the crack VSL crew is working around the clock to format and beautifully design the novel we've been talking about so it looks as gorgeous as it can on any e-reader. But the main crew have been doing more or less traditional photography work. This week we had two days of corporate shooting which felt mostly like the "good old days."

Our first project was photographing executives in a  make shift studio we set up in the client's executive conference room. We were shooting against white with the understanding that the client's in house creative team would be dropping in a uniform, color background based on images we'd shot back before the great recession.

My client was a bit surprised by my retro gear when I showed up. Not my camera equipment but the lighting gear. The last few times I worked with the same marketing person we were using some variation of LED lighting. This week I showed up with some very traditional electronic flash moonlights. I added to the nostalgia with a soft box as the main light modifier and umbrellas for the background lights.

I guess I remembered the big wash of daylight in the last location we'd shot there and how much I struggled to overcome that and light with neutral color and LED lights. They are at their best for portrait lighting when you can control the ambient light in your shooting area. I chose the flash because it was a quick, easy way to get neutral color and to freeze action. But now I have to be careful because I find myself considering flash lit portraits to be a bit too sharp. In fact, I turned down the sharpness in my camera parameters to minus two. And I could have toned it all down to minus three. The cameras are much sharper than they have even been before, especially with the better lenses, but I'm almost certain that particular "feature" isn't usually a benefit for portraiture and I find it makes files that look a bit fake. Too much detail?

You'd think I was grappling with a Nikon D800e but I was sporting a Panasonic GH4 that day. That camera makes very sharp and detailed files, almost as if Panasonic was trying to prove something to the industry...

Things I like about shooting portraits with a Panasonic GH4 and the 35-100mm X lens? Well, wickedly sharp at my typical corporate shooting aperture of f5.6. Very straightforward custom white balance setting. Face detection AF. Touch screen for those times when I want to move the AF point around with my finger. 16 megapixel files that are sharp and detailed without being so big that they bring my computer and my storage system to a crawl.

Things I dislike about shooting with this stuff? It's not my big, square Hasselblad and it's too easy to get good images. Takes all the challenge out of the process. Okay, I'm just kidding. The real challenge is never really the camera or the lighting as much as it is getting a good expression and a nice, happy collaboration with the portrait subject.

I dragged all my stuff in on a cart, navigated the security desk, got badged and escorted and set up. My biggest secret for easy post production these days is to always do a custom white balance right before I start shooting in earnest. Back in the studio not a single file needed an exposure correction (go light meters!!!) or even a look at any color correction. I just edited for expression and composition and sent them along straight.

It was fun and relaxing to catch up with a long term client and shoot in a fashion that we used to do so often. By the time I got back to the studio that client had already given me a recommendation to one of his peers from the Northeast U.S. who contacted me the next day to bid on a project. Ahhhh.

Can the Panasonic GH4 handle executive portrait shooting for a world wide, high technology firm? Duh.

The next day I headed out to work on location with another really nice corporate client and we did the whole load-up-the-cart-and-drag-stuff-through-the-parking-lot again. This time I set up a temporary studio in their conference room and shot glamor shots of four of their server products. Hardware. Just old school product work against white. Making the product shine.

As you probably know I hate doing stuff the same way twice but since I already had the flashes loaded into the car I went ahead and used them again. This created a mental pressure which pretty much made my subconscious demand that I use some alternative camera in an attempt to add some challenge and fun into the mix. I went all counter productive and pressed the least likely camera into the mix: The Sony RX10.

Here's the rationale I came up with: When shooting computer cabinets you need to keep the front very sharp and even the back reasonably sharp. In this day and age this is more about getting the depth of field you require to hold focus that it is about getting enough information on your sensor. I looked at some depth of field tables that showed me that I'd be getting pretty darn good depth of field at f8. More that I would if I used a full frame camera at f16 or even f22. At the same time the RX10 is pretty resistant to problems with diffraction at f8 (although diffraction is also dependent on focal length....). To go one step further Sony has programmed in some software fixes in the RX10 to combat or compensate for diffraction.

The other factor is the quality of the sensor. If we needed to shoot the product (for some insane reason) at ISO 1600 I would have been over to Precision Camera to rent a Sony A7 or Nikon D800 from the get go. But with 400 watt second moonlights, used in close quarters I had all the ISO 100 I could ever have asked for. In fact, I could have bumped the flash power up even a little higher and shot at ISO 80 if I'd wanted to.  But the deal is that comparing the image quality of a still life, well lit and shot at a very comfortable sensitivity setting I would imagine that there's very little real difference between most modern cameras.

I took the leap of faith and shot all the various product shots and detail shots with the RX10 and when I got back to the studio and started working through the raw files and getting them ready for post production I saw what I thought I would, on screen performance that was at least as good (at ISO 100) as the first generation of full frame cameras I used to use and better looking image files (because of the extended depth of field) than I had gotten with any of the DX cameras and lenses I'd pressed into service over the years. The pixels held together well. There were no artifacts caused by noise reduction that I could see, even with pixel peeping, at 100%. Overall, the RX10 delivered files that were perfectly suited for this project. Sharp, noise free and in focus everywhere that I needed them to be.

At the end of the day we had one more shot to take. It was of the company's marketing director. She needed a new set of portrait images for a series of magazine interviews she was doing. Much as I love the Sony RX 10 it just wasn't the right camera for this particular part of the job. I looked around the conference room and realized that I couldn't light it any better than the wash of totally indirect light coming through the room wide wall of windows. I positioned the marketing director so I could put some warm shapes in the background and started designing a shot that called for dropping the background well out of focus while maintaining crispy sharpness in her eyes.

Out came the Panasonic GH4 and the dependable 35-100mm. Before we got started in earnest I slowed down long enough to make an incident light meter reading at the subject's position and I did a custom white balance for the light we had bouncing gloriously around us.  I shot a whole series of expressions and compositions with slight changes between them.  I used the wide open, f2.8 aperture of the lens at the longer end of the focal length range and the results were beautiful. Every once in a while I got some blur from subject movement but the shots without movement were stunning and in terms of focus we had sharp eyes, an acceptably sharp tip of the nose and by the time we got to the dangly earrings we were already going as soft as Kleenex. By the time your eye gets to the back wall all you see are soft, indistinct shapes with calm transition. What some would call quiet bokeh.

As of now all the jobs have been processed, masked where needed, retouched, delivered, and billed. Each job was done for a person who is at least a twenty year veteran of corporate advertising and public relations work. My first client also spent years on the agency side. There was no discussion of "this camera versus that camera." There was no hesitation in the process based on things photographers like to talk about and worry about. Just straight forward work which filled the bill for the job at hand. And that's the way it's supposed to be. That's the way it nearly always is....

Next week we're booked to shoot more portraits and I'm thinking I'll do them mostly with the Samsung NX30 and the 85mm 1.4. On Weds. I leave for a math conference in Denver. It's the same basic conference I shot for here last year but this time I get to transport myself from the early Summer heat and humidity into the Rockies. So much fun. I'm shooting it totally differently that I did last year and I'll write about it as I go along...

Hope the Summer is treating you well, that your clients pay in a timely fashion and that you find great coffee on a daily basis... thanks.

A white background tutorial from 2012. Published. Copyrighted upon creation. Etc. Enjoy.

http://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2012/01/mini-old-school-class-on-white.html

Stand up to bullies.

in other news: Belinda and I finished working on, The Lisbon Portfolio. The photo/action novel I started back in 2002. I humbly think it is the perfect Summer vacation read. And the perfect, "oh crap, I have to fly across the country" read. It's in a Kindle version right now at Amazon. The Lisbon Portfolio. Action. Adventure. Photography.  See how our hero, Henry White, blows up a Range Rover with a Leica rangefinder.....

Remember, you can download the free Kindle Reader app for just about any table or OS out there....

It's starting to get hot and humid in Austin and I'm nostalgic for Berlin.

Random, mostly square images, taken with the Samsung Galaxy NX camera. In Berlin last September.

Did I ever mention that my hotel had the best coffee I've ever had? Well, it did.

Image Stabilization In Body or In lens? Seems like a straight win for Olympus, unless......

I've worked with an Olympus EM-5 and I've played with an EM-1 and I've got to tell you that if the number one thing on your decision list for buying a camera is the effectiveness of its image stabilization then Olympus has you locked in. For a little bit of perspective it's not like Olympus is operating in a vacuum, as far back as my time with a Nikon D300 and the first 18-200mm VR zoom lens camera makers have been offering some pretty awesome stabilization. That 18-200mm with its in lens vibration reduction was nothing short of miraculous in its day. But where Olympus has the in lens people roundly beaten is in the use of lenses that are too old to have had image stabilization or with lenses whose designs made I.S. impossible or too costly to engineer in.

Put a 1965 era Nikon 50mm f1.4 on the front of one of the new Olympus cameras and it's almost like you are shooting that nice, old piece of glass locked down on a tripod, even when you are handholding after your third espresso. So why in the world doesn't everyone rush to license this miracle of I.S. that is the Olympus IBIS?

This question comes up over and over again when people ask me why I chose to buy a Panasonic GH4 rather than an EM-1. And for a while I was at a loss for something to say other than, "I really love the video quality of the GH4 and when we shoot video we're generally working on a tripod or with some sort of stabilizing accessory..."  It sounded kind of lame as a rebuttal to my friends who gleefully regaled me with image after image, supposedly shot from the back of a racing dump truck with no shock absorbers, rattling down a rocky mountain road, littered with potholes, and shot by a hungover photographer with muscle tremors. And every one of the images was so sharp you could count the eyelashes on a mosquito buzzing around the subject's face.

Yes! Why can't we all have that same miraculous I.S.? Imagine how happy it would make my collection of old, Olympus Pen lenses.

However, there is a little fly in the ointment. While the Olympus I.S., which works by "floating" the image sensor from the infrastructure of the camera and applying motion correction in five axis, is wonderful it is very much a technology that works best for still images and is compromised by video.

Here's a condensed version of what I learned directly from Panasonic:

The single biggest obstacle to generating clean video images is noise. All other things being equal the biggest generator of image noise in imaging sensors is heat. Making an in-body, five axis, image stabilization system requires a very low mass sensor construction to enable the acceleration and deceleration required in moving an Olympus sensor in five axis, some concurrently and always accurately. Increases in the mass of the sensor and it's mooring constructions would require stronger motors and would compromise the integrity of the final image due to progressively uncontrollable inertial forces.

In order to make a very low mass, movable sensor construction Olympus is required to "de-couple" the image sensor from nearly all forms of mechanical heat sinking. A heat sink is a heat conductor (usually a low density, highly conductive metal) which draws heat away from an object and uses a larger radiator surface area to dissipate heat energy. In audio equipment, electronic power supplies, cameras (especially digital motion picture cameras) and computers one of the biggest design obstacles is the need to keep micro-processors within a narrowly proscribed temperature range. 

A rule of thumb from my long ago days studying electrical engineering was that every 10 degree (C) rise in operating temperature reduced the working life of an electronic component by half. Good designs are optimized mechanically or with forced, active cooling to keep silicon machines within a tight range of compliance. 

If you look at high-end video cameras, with no internal imaging stabilization whatsoever, like the Arriflex Alexa, the Sony F55 CineAlta and the Red Dragon and other Red cameras you'll find that all of them incorporate not only passive (and substantial) heat sinks but also cooling fans. Electrically powered cooling fans. To some extent this is what gives those cameras the stability to hold color non-linearities and especially electronic  noise to optimum levels during long takes. 

Olympus cameras as well as Nikons and many other consumer brands are crippled with crappy video codecs that don't require the camera to do heavy lifting in image processing. They also have very limited run times in video before noise begins to climb up and become overwhelming (or at least objectionable..).

What Panasonic have done is to forego the in-camera image stabilization in a compromise that gives the market a camera with incredibly good video performance, a tremendous ability to process high quality, high density video material, in camera, and the ability to run for as long as the memory card has available space, without a ramp up in noise generated by heat. In a fit of good design the entire alloy infrastructure of the camera is one giant heat sink working to the benefit of the imaging sensor. But this requires the sensor to be physically tightly coupled to the heat sinking.

A cool video camera is a less noisy video camera and a happier camera. Being from Texas I'll take one more seemingly logical step and conjecture that the heat-sinking happiness also carries over to noise performance in both long time exposures (which are historic heat and noise situations) and when shooting in situations that exceed the 103 degree (f) limits for high temperature listed in most consumer camera owner's manuals.

When a camera maker puts a temperature range in the manual they are pretty much saying, "Hey, we can't be responsible for crappy files when you are shooting in a heat wave." Does this make a difference? Absolutely. The fine sensor in my older Kodak DCS760 camera was noise free at ISO 80 but when I would use the camera at swim meets in the Texas Summer afternoons the on deck temperatures would routinely hit 105(f) and inside the black body of the camera I am certain it would have been 20 degrees higher. The result was obvious. At the beginning of a swim meet the camera would generate flawless files but by the end of the meet many of the files would be streaked with huge amounts of random noise. Big, splotchy, in your face noise. Let the camera cool down indoors and the good noise performance would return.

While I think the image quality of the EM-1 and the GH4 are roughly comparable as still cameras I am quick to admit that the image stabilization of the Olympus is a high water mark for the industry and a big selling point for their two top cameras. At the same time I think the GH4 stomps all over the EM-1 in terms of video quality, and overall design and usefulness as a video camera. A powerful and very professional video camera.

Both companies have made choices. The great thing for working photographers is that both companies' cameras can use either companies'  lines of lenses and many accessories, interchangeably. A pragmatic photographer, hellbent on using m4:3 for his working tools, could very well select one of each and use them for their unique, best features, as needed. The EM-1 when hand held still images are the goal and the GH-4 when video production is called for.

Much as I like the idea of the "ultimate" in image stabilization being available to me the GH4 speaks clearly to the engineer part of my brain and it's telling me that under adverse conditions (high ambient heat) with stills, or any use of video, the Panasonic choice buys me stable and long term reliable performance.

As my long time readers know I use tripods for nearly everything. I have more tripods in the studio, currently, than I do camera bodies. I think I'll stick with the Panasonic engineering decisions for now. And, in fact, their image stabilization in the 12-35mm lens and the 35-100mm lens are only about a stop behind the performance of the Olympus lenses. I can live (well) with that.

Last thought: If there is anything from the EM-1 that I would wish for on the GH4 the IBIS would be a distant third wish. My first choice would be to have the EVF of the EM-1. It's gorgeous! Second choice? That's for a future blog.

A Fun Venue for Learning Two Very Different Ways to Photograph Well. My review of two online courses.

One of the book cover illustrations for the soon to be launched novel, The Lisbon Portfolio. 

"Henry White" shooting with his Nikon and a 55 mm lens.

I've been doing this photography thing for a long time and I've come to realize that, like it or not, even photographers who describe themselves as generalists start settling into a groove over time. The groove is probably created by a combination of two factors: subject matter the photographer likes to shoot. And, subject matter that the photographer is good at shooting. As an example, when I started out my career I had a run of maybe six or seven years where a good percentage of my photography work revolved around using a 4x5 view camera to shoot interior and exterior photographs of architecture. The subjects included office buildings, factories, custom homes and even tract homes. I learned how to balance interior and exterior light and I learned how to use the rises and falls and tilts and swings of my view camera so well that it became second nature. 

But over time I found that while I was "good" at shooting architecture I wasn't passionate about it and so the people who were driven by their love and passion for architectural style and design were better than me. Additionally, while I liked the money that seemed to flow in freely I really wasn't inspired or particularly happy about shooting interior and exterior spaces. Unless the designs were really breath taking I found most of the work to be boring. Once you've practiced the skill set over and over again you really do remove a lot of the accidental but exciting stuff that makes any project more interesting. 

On the other hand I never get tired of bringing someone into the studio, lighting them and trying to make the best portrait possible. Because of the nature of portraiture it requires collaboration. It requires building an interpersonal understanding of some shared objective. And, to a certain extent, it requires mastering yourself so that you don't tip the scale too far in favor of the artist and out of favor for the sitter. Simply put, for a sitter to feel comfortable they need both physical space and emotional space. Too controlling a portraitist creates either an ambivalent or even hostile subject. Not the right mix for a revealing portrait. 

One major problem for photographers who've spent decades doing their photography is that we get locked in on certain things and we either don't recognize the need to change or don't have the tools to effect change by ourselves. Creating a new perspective is scary because we sometimes have to leave the things we know with certain assurance behind and, in a way, start over as  beginners. We have to get over our expertise when it becomes a boat anchor around our necks and we're wading out into deeper water...

I've found that I can learn from watching other photographers do things in different ways than me. Most of the stuff I find to watch on the web is a regurgitation of the same styles and points of view that we already have. We're watching videos by students of the students of the students of the originators of the discussions, who themselves were students of previous masters. There are millions of YouTube videos about "off camera" flash. Most are plainly derivative of the things David Hobby talked about and showed during the first five years of Strobist.com. David's work on Strobist.com (and the flash work of most newspaper photographers who got their start in the 1990's) is based on the work of people like Jon Falk, whose book, Adventures in Location Lighting, covered everything from the use of optical and radio slaves on small flashes to the construction and use of external batteries that could be used with consumer flash equipment.

Every once in a while I find something useful. It's usually a short interview with someone like Albert Watson or Nick Knight which ends up being inspirational but doesn't really move my craft, technique and overall point of view in one direction or another. 

But recently I decided to move past my own ego and look at some of the other photography courses on the www.craftsy.com platform. I have three of my own classes there right now. One is a free, more or less introductory course on photographing the day to day life of families. Launched last Fall the free class has played host to over 60,000 students.

I decided to look around and find some stuff I could watch that might be so different from the way I operate, both the way I see and the way I shoot, that it might budge me out of my complacency and change the course of my own "rut." 

The first course I found was this one by George Lange: George Lange's Course on about having more fun with photography.

George is a wonderful photographer, a former assistant of Annie Leibovitz, and the antithesis of me. He uses the latest, full frame, high ISO capable cameras to craft a style that doesn't depend (at all!!!) on using flash or supplemental light. But he gets great results and the rejection of lights for his personal work allows him to really concentrate on pulling emotion out of people and to enhance his awareness and appreciation of beautiful available light. For me his video course is all about the absolute JOY of photography. George seems to draw sustenance from each encounter with friends and family. 

I watched the course and I came away thinking of how much I need to free myself from my own need to control. (My favorite quote about control came from Stephen Pressfield's book, The Last Campaign. Alexander the Great's entourage, in an encounter with Indian holy men, asks them: "Alexander has conquered all the known world, what have you done?" and one of the holy men answers, "I have conquered my NEED to conquer the world.")

I found myself needing to control every aspect of a photograph, from the lighting and composition right down to the expression on a face. George is there to goad happiness from people and to capture the moment when they let go and really smile. I had a blast watching the whole course and would suggest it to anyone who thinks their work has gotten stale.....

The second course I found was one by long time photo book author and photographer, Chris Grey. It's the opposite extreme. It's a course on lighting products for clients. Something else I've done often in the last two or so decades but about which I could always learn more. When doing something complex, like product lighting and shooting, a nice refresher course is always welcome because a life spent mostly photographing interesting people is apt to make my other imaging skills a bit stiff and rusty. 

His course on Product Lighting and Photography walked me back through the process in a very logical, step by step approach which is coupled with his deep knowledge reservoir of facts and experience. Chris is good at explaining stuff. This video may not be "exciting" for a hobbyist who has no intention of doing still life work for business but it's a great review for me. In fact, I cued it up specifically because I'll be shooting new technology components for a client this week and if I walk away with three or four new ways to more efficiently and effectively do my work I'll be grateful. 

Head over to Craftsy.com and take a look. The things that make their course worthwhile to me are: There is a money back guarantee. You don't like a course? Let them know and they'll refund your money. If you buy a course and you like it then it's yours to keep forever. You can go back and review it again and again. The other thing I like about the Craftsy model of instruction is that part of being an instructor is the responsibility to respond to and answer questions from students in the online forum connected to each class. If you don't understand something the instructor is showing you can directly query him, even give him the time stamp from the part of the program you have questions about, and he or she will post an answer for you. 

Between Lynda.com and Craftsy.com you could put together a pretty good introductory education about most digital arts and crafts. Anyway, that's what I did after breakfast this morning. I watched Chris explain the technical nuts and bolts of lighting. The refresher made me feel a bit more confident about an upcoming, on location, product shoot. And that's exactly what I wanted.