Tempest. Kirk's low light test of his 5D2.

So.  Based on reviews and DXO tests and anecdotal evidence I had a reasonable expectation that the Canon5D2 would perform acceptably at 3200 ISO but you never really know until you fire up the camera and go shoot in your own style.  3200 ISO can look great if all you shoot is high key stuff with lots of sparkle and snap.  But I figure I'd put it to my typical worst case scenario and go shoot some theater with it.

I got a call from Ann over at the Austin Shakespeare Theater asking me to shoot the preview show of The Tempest.   I said, "sure" and packed a small bag.  Here's what I took:  One 5D2 body, one 70-200mm f4 L (not the IS) and my newly acquired Zeiss 50mm 1.4 ZE lens.  I had many questions:  Would the f4 zoom be too slow?  Would I regret not getting the IS version?  Could I still manual focus the Zeiss even though I had not yet gotten the Eg-S screen?

To answer each question in turn:  No,  the f4 zoom was just right.  The light levels at 3200 gave me a comfortable 1/180 or 1/250 to play with and the benefit (based on painful years of buying f2.8 versions of these lenses from Nikon, Canon, and Leica ) was that the light weight and small size was very manageable for a two hour long shoot.  That little sucker is pretty sharp right at f4 and it handles side light and flare very well.  On to question #2.  I am not the steadiest handholder the world has ever seen and I like my lenses with the IS but in this case I came equipped with surprisingly good, after market IS (image stabilization).  It was at least as good as the Canon version.  Maybe better, because it worked with every single lens in the bag!!!  It's called a monopod.  I've pooh poohed them before but I decided to grab one of the three that sit in the umbrella bucket next to the door and give it all another shot.  You know what?  They work well.  And they work best with lenses that have tripod collars......like my Canon 70-200 f4.  I was able to shoot at least three stops slower than I could handhold.

My favorite monopod is a Leitz  Tiltall monopod that Belinda gave me as a birthday present back in 1980.  It's a very lightweight, all aluminum stick with knurled leg locks.  That makes it slower to set up and adjust but it's so minimal and black and tactical looking.  I ended up taking a Bogen/Manfrotto model which has (unfortunately) a bright metal finish.  It uses flip locks for the leg extensions so it's quicker.  I used a quick release on the top.  It's nice enough.  It's just not as cool as the Leitz Tiltall version.

Finally, there's the question of whether or not I'd be able to focus the manual focus, Zeiss 50mm 1.4 lens on the Canon 5D2 which is not, by any stretch of the imagination, set up to make manual focusing easy. Actually, it came back to me pretty quickly.  I don't this you can spend years peering down into a  dark Hasselblad screen trying to focus a slow 50mm wide angle without retaining some chops.  Ditto with the decade or so I spent under the dark cloth of the 4x5 view camera, gazing at the Stygian screen, rendered at f16 trying to find pinpoint focus.  When you've focused in hell, focusing in the modern world doesn't seem as tough......

I find that truisms in photography die hard.  When most people think of taking photographs of live theater they immediately engage a part of the photographic brain, stoked by the lore from yesteryear, that they must use the fastest lenses available.  They rush to find the 85mm 1.4's and 1.2's.  The 50mm 1.2's and 1.0's and the long fast glass as well.  I was just as guilty because I always remembered the days when we shot with ISO 400 films and every photon gathered was precious.  But it's all changed.  And I'm happy.  Fast lenses aren't always good lenses.  At least, they are never as good wide open as a cheaper, smaller, lighter lens can be at f2.8, f4 or f5.6.  If you've got one of the new generation of cameras that does really decent ISO 3200 or ISO 6400 like the Canon 5 or the Nikon D3 you can rid your lore books of much old treasure.

I seem to be getting better files because the lenses can be better corrected if they aren't speed demons.  Several lens specialists, and especially Erwin Puts, haven't written volumes about how many times harder it is to design and produce faster lenses when compared to tamer designs.  The new Canon 70-200mm f2.8 zoom cracks the credit card at nearly $2500 while the older f4 version is a very affordable $650.  What do you give up?  A pound or two in weight and one stop.  Locked on a tripod and compared side by side it would be an imperceptible difference in quality between the two at every aperture.  And I'd be willing to bet that the little Canon is a bit sharper at f4 than it's new big brother is at f2.8.

The second reason for speed back in the old days was all about focusing accuracy and finder brightness. Focusing was real work and took real skill.  People practiced focusing in their downtime. Now that's so much less important because it's the rare photographer who flips the switch on the camera body or the lens barrel and goes into the manual focusing mode.

Yesterday I upgraded the Canon 5D2 screen to the Eg-S screen and there's a little bit of difference.  Mostly it's all down to practice and acclimation.

There's not a lot to say about the ISO performance of the 5d that hasn't be said elsewhere.  It's a great camera for low light shooting and I'm very pleased with the files.  The nice thing for  me is that, even with the high speed noise reduction set to standard, there is a lot of detail preserved in the files.  It really does look nice.  Next time I'll be brave and try the 6400 setting.

I didn't have time to do these files on Thurs. because we were engaged in a corporate shoot.  We shot from 8 to 11 am which is what? Three hours.  But I've been editing the 1300+ files, doing global color corrections, processing to smaller jpegs and uploading to Smugmug for most of this day.  Amazing how much back end work there is for a typical photo assignment and how little that part gets talked about.

On Sunday I start another two day project so I want to make sure I process as I go.  Nothing worse than getting behind when there's money to be made.

Two more photos and then I'm off to D.J. Stout's book signing at the Steve Clark Gallery.  Should be fun.

I hate packing. But I'll have help with the unpacking and the re-packing and the unpacking that goes with it.

This is my secret weapon.  Her name is Amy and she's smart, strong and fun to hang out and shoot photos with.  I wish every job came with an "Amy" budget.

On most shoots I try to handle as much detail as I can by myself.  The reason is that business has been slow for the last year.  Slower than I'd like.  And I usually have enough time to handle stuff without running into too many roadblocks.  Where it all falls apart is on shoots that have tight schedules, require lots of gear, and require leaving the studio to make it all work on location.

Tomorrow is a great example.  I'm going on location to shoot a bunch of small groups of people against a white background.  I'm pretty boring when it comes to lighting white backgrounds.  I do it the same way nearly every time.  Here's the way it goes:  1.  I set up a nine foot wide white seamless at the far end of  the biggest room the client can find for me. That takes two light stands.   2.  I pray that we don't need full length portraits because, if we do, I'll have to bring a couple of shiny white boards with me for people to stand on.  They have to be shiny so they bounce enough light that they burn to white.....  3.  I'll set up two lights as far from the sides of the background paper as I can and about 45 degrees out from the center.  If you look at the set up the center of the seamless is the sharp point of a "V" between the two lights. There's two more light stands.  4.  I'll overlap the light beams a bit so they lights are almost pointing toward the opposite side of the white seamless.  5. Once I do that the lights end up hitting the subject or wrapping light around the subject so I need a black flag on either side to keep any direct light off  the subject.  Each black flag requires a light stand.  6.  Then I'll use a big light like a Photek 60 inch Softlighter for the subject.  There's another light stand.  7. Occasionally a client will want a total, bland, fill light so there's another light stand.  8.  I'll want a stand so I can use a small flag to help block light from hitting the lens and causing flare.  There's another light stand + magic arm + black wrap flag.

(For a more detailed discussion of my method of white backgrounds, please check out my Studio Book)

Add in the cameras, lenses, loupes, meter, batteries, extension cords and everything else I might need and you've got a ton of stuff.  Could I go Minimalist?  Sure, but on this job we'll be shooting 60 people in 20 or 30 groups, shooting 20 or 30 variations for a worst case scenario of up to 900 shots.  That's a lot of battery juice, a lot of waiting around for recycle or a handful of fried flashes coupled to high output batteries.  For a one person portrait I'd definitely roll with speedlights.  On an agency job with 60 people?  Thanks, I'll go with Profoto or Elinchrom gear and back-ups.  

So tomorrow I'll use a small set of Profoto lightheads hooked to an Acute 600e pack for the background and an Elinchrom Ranger RX AS pack and head or heads for the foreground.  Why two different sets?  I want to be able to precisely control the ratio between the front and the back.

So I spent a couple hours packing today.  I found the umbrellas I wanted to use.  Made sure the camera batteries and the flash batteries and the back up flash batteries were all charged and ready to go.  I packed my main camera, the Canon 5D2 and my back-up camera, the 7D.  I chose prime lenses that have the fewest elements so I'd have a fighting chance against background flare.  Then I cleaned out the Honda Element, checked it with a Geiger counter just to make sure there was no residual creative radiation from the last shoot, took out the back seats and started to load it up.

All you professional photographers who use assistants for everything you do will laugh at me for loading up the day before but our call time is 7 am, the location is about an hour away, (add 15 minutes for a Starbuck's Run) and there's no way I'm going to get up at 5:30 am in the morning just for the privilege of watching my nice assistant break a sweat before the sun comes up.  The idea that a team of assistants will work from a check list and load up your Bentley station wagon while you have fancy donuts with super models is so last century.  If you still have clients with budgets like that you don't need to be reading this ragged little blog......

So I loaded one car up this afternoon but I'm taking another car to another job tonight.  Why the second car?  Don't want a car full of Swiss and Swedish lights sitting unwatched on the mean streets while I photograph the dress rehearsal of a Shakespeare play.  Go Tempest!!!!

When we hit the client's office tomorrow we'll have to drag everything out of the Honda, put it on the big multi-cart and drag it down endless corridors to the designated temporary studio area.  If we're lucky they will have taken out the tables and chairs.  If we're unlucky there will be an unmovable conference table right down the middle and they'll expect us to shoot around it or use alien technology to make it invisible.  So, from 7am til 8am we're unpacking, setting up, testing and re-testing.  We'll mark the floor with white tape and mark the exposures at those marks.  It'll save time in the long run.

The final thing I'll do before the first group walks through the door at 8 am will be to use a lastolite gray target (on of those pop up things) to make a custom white balance for my raw files.

We'll shoot all morning long and then, at 11:30 am we'll reverse engines and pack it all up.  Put it back on the cart, move it back down the hall, stick it back in the car, drive it all back to the office, unpack it from the car to the cart and then from the cart to the various shelves in the studio.  So,  look what a big percentage of photography involves the logistics of packing and moving!!!!!

With luck we'll have a bunch of files with animated, gesturing employees.  With more luck the backgrounds will just have crested 255 in PhotoShop.  Once the client makes their choices it should be an easy thing in PS to make selections and send the files on their way.  If it all works the way it's supposed to.

This is the kind of shoot that you really need to use an assistant on.  The logistics are too odious otherwise.  I hope to be back in my part of town around "late lunch" time.  

The afternoon will find me doing global corrections and making web galleries in Lightroom 3.  Can't put this off because we start a three day corporate job on Sunday.

That's a behind the scenes look at the glamorous, "white background" shooting day of an average commercial photographer.  Does it really sound better than sitting in a comfortable chair, eating pizza, drinking Mountain Dew and writing code?  Didn't think so.  I'll let you know if we EVER get to do a shoot with the super models.

Thanks.

   

The five minute portrait. Just checking in.

This is my kid, Ben.  I'm blessed to have such a good kid.  I had some lights set up in the studio from my photo session with Alexis, last friday.  I walked past Ben's bedroom on my way out of the house and out to the studio and I was amazed at how much he'd grown.  I was also amazed that he was sitting on his bed studying his Spanish.

I asked him to come with me to the studio and spend just a few minutes sitting for a portrait.  I wanted to see how the light looked and I wanted to see if my memory of the Kodak SLR/n having better skin tones (by far) than my new Canon 5D mk 2 was just optimistic or if the Kodak really is a better portrait camera.  It is.  I also wanted to photograph one more subject before I tore down the lights and got ready for the upcoming work week.

To light this I'm using one gigantic 84 inch Lastolite umbrella with shoot thru diffuser on the front.  It's firing through a 6 foot by 6 foot diffusion silk that about five feet from Ben.  The background is lit by a little light in a small softbox five feet from the canvas background.  I'm using various black flags to prevent to  much "fill/spill" from hitting the shadow side of Ben's face.  This took, literally, five minutes and 20 frames.  I'm happy with the look.

I'm using a Kodak SLR/n with a 135mm f2.8 Nikon lens (MF) that I picked up last year for $60.  The light for both sources was from the Elinchrome Ranger RX.   The file is a conversion from raw with no levels or color controls.  I love the flesh tones.  That was my question.  I love that my kid dropped his book and followed me to the studio without a moment's hesitation.  Life is good.

The Anti-Workshop was a smashing success. No one got hurt and we saw art. Great art.

Let's get the important stuff out of the way first.  I shot with an Olympus EP2 camera and a 20mm Panasonic lens.  I thought it was perfect and tiny and light.  Nice to carry around all day, especially if you have a skull and crossbones wrist strap, carefully selected for you by a teenage boy...  I can't imagine any working photographer that doesn't have a collection of self portraits in bathroom mirrors from around the world.  This one is from a bathroom in the new section of the McNay Museum.

Speaking of Museums, the McNay utterly blows away the Blanton Museum in Austin for architecture, the breadth and depth of the collection, and just plain coolness.  Here's a newly acquired Picasso which joins the other two in one of the intimate galleries in the original part of the museum.  My shooting companions were as amazed as I at the stellar collection of twentieth century masters that  are hidden away in this treasure of a museum.  I guess I'm a sucker for sentiment because I really liked the Monet water lillies.   But the Renoir nudes are the raison d'etre of being an artist......

We spent a good amount of time rummaging thru the collection.

I found this sweet person at the market square sitting with a similarly dressed companion.  I asked them why they were dressed up.  They smiled and said, "We're celebrating the fact that we're still alive!"  Sounds good to me.

I guess I was channeling my "inner Stephen Shore" with this shot.  I love the many meaningless juxtapositions I find all over San Antonio.  That, and the famous Olympus Jpeg colors make every image a bit juicier.

But I guess I should report on the actual anti-workshop:

We met in front of the Alamo at 8:30 am.  Bernard brought ample copies of my maps of downtown which had areas of visual interest marked and noted.  We pulled together the group of 28 intrepid shooters and talked about the mechanics and ethics of street shooting.  I gave a vague itinerary which basically suggested that we meet up again in two hours, at Mi Tierra restaurant in Market Square for a brunch.  There was tons of activity around the Alamo and many stayed for a while to shoot.

I headed off to see the San Fernando cathedral and was charmed once again.  I'm also very happy with the new park in front.  It's very cool.  Then I made my way over to the Market Square.

Being Labor Day weekend things were hopping.  Food merchants had booths set up everywhere. The smells of cooking food were intoxicating.  Bands were playing on three stages and diverse groups of tourists ranged everywhere.  (Free range tourists?)  I put us on the waiting list for a big table and I could see our people having a blast, shooting everything that moved, just outside the windows of the restaurant.

If you're a Texas photographer and you haven't had a meal at Mi Tierra, shame on you.  It's not about the food (although it was very good, especially if you are a lard snob...) it's all about the giant mural, which now contains film maker, Robert Rodriguez's image as well as Eva Longoria's.  We're talking a painted mural at least 60 feet wide by 18 feet tall, painted with a wild impasto/realist style.   It's also all about the 50 foot long case of Mexican pastries and candies.  It's all about the carefully trained staff and the endless, over the top, decor.  We stayed for two hours and could have stayed one more if the street hadn't beckoned.  Amazingly, for such a large group, no one shirked their part of the check.  We actually had a surplus of cash.  First time I've ever seen that.  And I'm 54.

Off we go to shoot the swirl of activity in the market square.  Off to see the old buildings on Houston St.  Down the Riverwalk to see the Southwest Craft Center (beautiful!!!!!) and then back to the heart of downtown.

At 3:30pm some people peeled off and a core group of about 14 rendezvous'd at the fabulous McNay Museum.  I think I've described the experience pretty well, above.

When the guards and docents kicked us out a closing time we headed one block away to La Fonda restaurant on N. New Braunfels to get our second helping of great salsa and Tex Mex, layered in with a little alcohol.  Lively discussions ensured:  Who's the biggest online photo poseur?  (you had to be there) What does the future hold, technically? What the hell is diffraction and why is it intent on limiting things.  Which was the favorite painting at the museum?  Who got to photograph the teenagers learning to throw knives at the Alamo?  And so much more.

Best part?  I think everyone quickly learned that they didn't need a big name teacher or a fancy venue in order to practice their photography crafts at a high level and to really enjoy the day.  At least that's the vibe I felt.  If someone disagrees I'm sure we'll see it in the comments.  And if anyone had a bad time I'll be happy to refund their full tuition!!!!!! (What?  It was all free???????).