I have a dilemma. Will I go out tomorrow and buy a GH4?

photographer wracked by gear addiction and indecision.

don't tell me you've never been there.

I got the call that I love and dread. It always comes from Ian at Precision Camera. It begins like this: "I put an order in on a Panasonic GH4 for you. I knew you would want one. The camera came in today and I'm holding it for you." And like the guy who always thinks that just because someone throws you a ball you have to catch it, I start planning the acquisition. Usually I just off load some other camera gear to make the math come out right but I've whittled down pretty spectacularly lately and I'm almost down to the cameras I don't want to sell. 

I could get rid of the little G6 I picked up last Fall but I won't get much for it and, well, it is adorable. I'll keep it around for it's combination of a surprisingly good finder and well done focus peaking. That and the fact that it takes great images and weighs next to nothing. Okay. That one is safe....

Well, that makes the logical next choice one of the two GH3's I bought just at the turn of the year. But again, I like them so much and now am wracked with the realization that for most of the uses I have for these cameras the image quality (in photographs) might not be much better between the GH3 and the GH4. I love having a perfectly matched pair of cameras when I'm shooting in a documentary style. Wide zoom on one and a fast zoom on the other. Magic. Will the GH4 throw my brain out of balance? Will I want two GH4's instead? Or will the cascading method of acquisition actually work for me?

My guess at the moment, to be solidified by tomorrow morning, is that one of the GH3's will get boxed up and sent off as a sacrifice to the financial sanity gods that seem to be inhabiting the studio these days. The other choice is to just not pull the trigger. To get off the "new gear" merry-go-round but I think we all know that's probably a non-starter. How could I bear to be left behind in the great Panasonic 4K revolution?

I've still got the full frame Sony but it's my safety camera for those times when I get overly nostalgic for the full frame look and need to spend a few days separating fact from emotion. Then the Sony will go back in the drawer until I see some older black and white image with no depth of field whatsoever and we'll go through the whole exercise again....

I don't have a pressing use for the new camera. I have some video projects but I'm certainly not ready to step up the ante and hit the "4k club" on actual productions any time soon. Editing is a slow enough process for me as it is. 

I think I know how to handle this. I'll just get up in the morning and swim and have coffee. Then, when everyone is off at school and work I'll just take a casual drive up to the camera store just to look at the camera in the flesh. What could that hurt? I'll have Ian pull it out of the box and we'll look at all the new menu settings and features. I'm sure I'll have an objective appraisal and I'm sure the lure of the new camera won't overwhelm me. Of course I could take the check book along, just in case. 

Random Portrait.

A few years ago Noellia helped me experiment with an Alien Bees ring light.  I ran across this a few days ago and decided to re-post it because, checking me decade calendar we're due for a resurgence of ring lights, followed a year later by a resurgence of beauty dishes, followed by more "small flash" enthusiasm. In the rearview mirror? Massive megapixelage. At least that's what a reading of the entrails tells us...

Kirk Tuck. Texas Landscape Photographer? Maybe not...

Sony RX10 with polarizing filter.

Converted from color in Lightroom 5.x

I'm more interested in faces but occasionally I'll stop my car on a road trip and snap a tree that has personality. The luxurious curve of the bottom branch on the left side makes it all so nice.

Out of the city with a fun camera in tow.

I had a fun job today. I was working for a shelter magazine. I was assigned to photograph a house in Fredericksburg, Texas that's more like a museum dedicated to early American art and craft. I took along some big flashes (which I didn't use) and a small flash (which I did use) and a selection of small sensor cameras. The house was well done and big windows ushered in ample soft light. I used some judicious in camera HDR (I know, I know...) and fine-tuned the files later in Lightroom.

It was refreshing to do an assignment that was straightforward and simple. No endless hours of post production and no budget so big that it makes everyone's adrenaline zing.

While I took two GH3s along intending to use them and the new X lenses for my primary shooting cameras I just couldn't keep my hands off their case-mate, the Sony RX10.  That little camera continues to impress me with sharp files and nearly straight lines (at 24mm eq. it needs a +1 correction in Lightroom to get lines perfectly straight..).

I'd been feeling beat up lately with complications from complicated jobs so it was nice to get out of town, away from the phone (yes, you can leave your iPhone in the trunk of your car), away from e-mail and away from the Austin traffic. I drove out on highway 290 through Johnson City (hometown of president Lyndon B. Johnson) and I stuck to the right lane with the farm vehicles and pokey drivers so I could go slow and just enjoy the drive.

We wrapped up our house shooting around 1pm and I headed into Whataburger on my way out of town to have a good ole jalapeño burger. Yummy. Just splurging today I also added guacamole. I took the same leisurely pace heading back to Austin. Now it's a little after 5pm and I've already got my 100+ tiff images corrected and ready to go.

The art director for the magazine is in Ohio and asked if I could send along a few images of Texas wildflowers. I was just planning to hit the stock file at the studio when I came across a wildflower resource just off the highway about 20 miles out of Fredericksburg. A giant outdoor store that specializes in native flowers.  Acres of beautiful wildflowers in red, yellow, blue and purple. I pulled in and walked around for while with the little RX10, just clicking away.

The sun was bright, the clouds soft and puffy and the sky washed blue from rain the night before. It was 85 degrees and the warm weather felt good. Soon enough it will be too hot. But I'm enjoying what we've got right now.

Keeping that RX10 in the bag, in the car, in the swim bag, in the bike bags and most especially, right over my left shoulder. That's how to spend a fun and productive day in central Texas. 

Thinking about how much more complicated photography has become.

The actual act of taking images has become easier and more complex. On one hand we've got digital cameras that interpret the scenes in front of them instantly. But getting to that point means making choices about how your camera is set. If you have a camera with a complex menu, like the Olympus OMD EM-1 you may have hundreds of possible settings that you can make ranging from noise reduction to color characteristics, the method of focusing, the method of dealing with tonal slopes and so much more. Will you use art filters? Are you looking ahead to making HDRs? How will you set the camera to bracket? Then you have the standard issues of color profiles, color temperature, contrast, saturation and basic exposure. Will you save the images as Jpegs? If so, at what compression and how large? Will you save them as raw files? If so which program will give you the best conversions? Have you tried all the raw converters that are out there? Are you sure you selected the right one? Just because Capture One worked best for your Nikon D800 doesn't mean it's the right one for, say, your new Canon 5Dmk3....

Oh, but wait! What lens will you use? Or more precisely, what focal length will you use? And will it be with a prime lens or a zoom?  And which aperture clearly expresses what you had in mind vis-a-vis the foreground and background sharpness relations? And, if you select a certain aperture and you are working at your camera's optimum ISO will you need to introduce a tripod to assist you in creating the sharpness your original vision required? If so, how big a tripod will you need in order to carry it around with you for those moments when it seems crucial to the quality of the image? But what if subject motion pushes your exposure predilections outside your comfort zone? What if you have to go to a higher ISO to get a higher shutter speed. Will the smooth, grainless quality you lusted after leave you in the lurch in the pursuit of the crispy sharp subject? If you choose to use a more sensitive ISO will you need to use noise reduction in post processing? Which method works best for your overall system?

Presuming the sheer momentum of choice didn't paralyze you have you taken all the steps you need to in order to post process successfully? Is your monitor of sufficient gamut to even show you what you have wrought in the shooting and editing processes? Has it been methodically and recently calibrated? Have you neutralized any color cast in your post processing area? Are the walls really neutral white? Do they have a subtle coloration that may impinge on the accuracy of your viewing system? Are you wearing a lime green golf shirt while you process your work? Will you switch to a black or neutral gray shirt? Can you really find an actual, neutral gray shirt?

And when you've created your masterpiece of photography where will you go from the computer file? Will you share it on the web? Are all the people you are sharing with sitting in front of color corrected screens? Is the infrastructure of the web and the bandwidth limits of your sharing supplier compressing the image you worked so hard on? Did they shift your colors and tonalities to wedge your image into a tighter and tighter box? Or maybe you'll print the image....

Is your printer profiled to your post processing software? Can your printer's gamut match your original vision? Do the inks have different responses to different lighting spectra? Will the viewing area undo your careful color corrections by introducing color casts and glare? Will you frame the work? If so will the glass be neutral or will it have (as most glass does) a greenish UV filtration meant to keep furniture from fading when used in buildings? Will you place a mark on the floor in front of your print so people can see it from the point of view that you intended? Will they wear a black shirt or smock so their own clothes don't minimize the "enjoyment" of your art by introducing reflections?

And once your work through all the above do you have a plan for archival keeping of the digital image? Will it be placed on some magnetic media or will you use optical media? How often will you migrate the images to new media in order to offset the perils of degradation over time? Will you have multiple racks of hard drives that you rotate? Will you spend months each year re-burning new DVDs? Will you make prints of the frames you like in a series of sizes that you might want to use in the future as a hedge against the ravages of time?

And none of the above presupposes that you've come to grips with finding visually interesting stuff to immortalize...

Oh well. It's all become more complicated. I should have tried for an easier career, like brain surgeon or president. A few quick cuts, a few grand decisions and a ribbon cutting and then I'd be on easy street.

Must be monday again. Sorry. 

Michael Reichmann at Luminous Landscape posts first review of the Panasonic GH4...

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/cameras/panasonic_gh4_report.shtml

I've followed Michael Reichmann's website, the Luminous Landscape, for many years. I've read as he's waxed euphoric over ever more powerful cameras. Starting with Canon's first full framer right on through to his Phase One Phascination--- with enormous numbers of megapixels and all things medium format. But I have to give it to him. The man is mentally flexible and willing to change with the times. And the introduction of new and useful technology.

He wrote a couple of years ago about the Sony Nex-7 (which he liked very much) and recently he's been writing about his video love affair with the Panasonic GH3. Only a few months ago he got himself an Olympus OMD EM-1 and found lovely things to say about that camera as well. But now it looks like there is some sort of camera harmonic convergence going on and the mantra I keep hearing (from myself and others who taste and expertise I trust) is GH4. GH4. GH4.

Michael has one in his hands and it's got the final firmware so no weasel words or beating around the bush need take place in his first, preliminary assessment. And the word is: Good. "As good as anything out there..."

He goes on to say that if you can work with the limitations of 16 megapixels (and he says he can!) then this camera is as good as it gets. Not just from a video point of view but from a still photography point of view as well.

I'm saving up for my GH4. I'm not often accused of being "strategic" but I started selling off other camera systems and other lenses months ago. Around the time I first heard solid rumors of the GH4 specs. I've pretty much exited the Sony system (both Nex and Alpha) and I'm not overly nostalgic about the transition. I've winnowed down other systems and I've been preemptively buying up lenses I know I'll want for use with the GH4 and, for now, the GH3.

I figured that the reviews would start coming out before the end of April and there would be a mad rush on all the surrounding eco-system for the new camera. Maybe shortages or Amazon's famous ever changing (upward) pricing algorithm for stuff like the 12-35mm X lens and the 35-100mm X lens. A run on the 7-14mm and even a shortage of the two wonderfully cheap and happy Sigma lenses, the 30mm and the 60mm.  When I found out that the GH4 shared the same battery with the current GH3 I was overjoyed. But I cut the celebration short to go and buy an extra pair of batteries before the run on essentials built up steam.

The GH4s are starting to ship. MR has his. Samy's is shipping a quantity and Amazon counsels us that it will ship end of month but I expect waiting list cameras to start out the doors of the warehouses this week.

Why am I so happy about all of this? Well, this is the first camera that is equally good at both disciplines in which I am currently interested (stills and video), as well as being the most affordable professional system I've ever bought into. You can actually buy this company's top of the line camera without busting the bank. Amazing. To add some icing to the cake the GH series is actually quite fun to shoot...

And with the kind of enthusiasm Mr. Reichmann is expressing I expect that this particular offering will go over well without the recent caveats we've heard in conjunction with half-baked Sony products recently. No lens adapter required. Plenty of good lenses in the market. No tiny battery syndrome. No Bang-Bang-Pow shutter noise, Etc.

Ah. A nice, happy, productive camera launch. Just what we all needed after the doldrums of the recent lackluster product unveils.....

While I am saving up for my GH4 I am painfully, keenly, aware that my child just got accepted at his first choice of college. A private university in the Northeastern U.S. Much to the amazement of my European readers we parents will be required to scrape up the equivalent, in cash, of a nice, average American three bedroom house and send it to this fine institution over the course of the next four years. Will this slow down my thirst for new cameras? I guess we're about to find out....

Fun times at the graffiti park. Shooting with the Samsung 30 NX.

I went to the Graffiti Park today to test out the Samsung NX30's video performance. Video takes a while longer to deal with because I want to edit something together that won't make people grind their teeth or reference fingernails on chalkboards. The camera's sensor is great. APS-C is great for depth of field control. Even with a pedestrian sounding 50-200mm f4-5.6. In all the camera does video well.

The image above is a still grab shot. Most of my afternoon was spent shooting handheld video (will I never learn?).

But this particular post has nothing to do with the camera or the lens or the sensor. It has to do with a funny thing that happened to me four times this afternoon. As I was walking through the park I had four different couples come up to me and ask me if I would take their photograph with their camera. Of course I obliged. What else would a civilized person do? But each time the person handing me the camera was very careful to (talk slowly and...) explain which button to push to make the exposure and how they wanted the shot framed. I listened carefully and tried to follow their instructions to the letter. Except for the couple who had their camera mis-set. It would have taken a silhouette. I fixed the exposure mode and took several versions just to make sure we had what they wanted.

One couple thanked me, looked at the images and then told me that they were very well done. I thanked them for saying so.

I can only imagine what we could have done if we'd flown a 12x12 foot silk over the couple, filled them in with 1100 watt seconds of flash from an Elinchrom Ranger flash pack and then used a camera that could sync a bit faster....

Anyway, I was pleased to be asked. When I came home I told my wife about my encounters. She laughed. She thought it was karmic-ly appropriate.

If you are at an Austin landmark look for the older person with the black rimmed glasses and the white, broadcloth, Julian Alexander button down. I'm sure he'll do a good job with your photograph....

A "selfie" from a client request.

One of the agency people involved with Samsung asked me to send along a selfie with one of the Samsung cameras. At one time last year I was the most knowledgable user of the Samsung Galaxy NX camera anywhere. Since I am vain and constantly self-promoting I got on the assignment right away. I pulled out an ancient, non-connectivity Sony a850 and put on the cheesy 24-105mm Sony lens, grabbed the electronic cable release and fired away. I like the black mock turtleneck and the glasses with the black rim over the top.

Pulling out the Samsung Galaxy NX for the photograph got me investigating that camera anew. I think the gap in my thinking last year was my myopic concentration with the camera's still imaging and still photography handling capabilities. I overlooked the video capabilities of the camera entirely. So yesterday I spent a lot of the afternoon playing around with the Galaxy NX as a video camera.

Now I have an all new respect for the camera. I have always liked the sensor and I was always impressed with every Samsung lens I've shot but now I am a fan of the video capabilities as well.

But first one caveat: The camera is not well set up for recording professional quality sound along with the video. There is an all purpose 3.5mm plug on the side into which you can use EITHER a set of headphones to hear playback, or a microphone to record audio, but you obviously can't use them both at the same time. Another constraint is that the audio set up of the camera doesn't allow for control over the sound levels in the recording mode. You get automatic levels no matter what.

But I will say that they do some good software in the audio region that senses gaps between words and clamps down on levels instead of letting them spike up and create hiss and noise. You can still hear some anomalies but it's pretty workable.  I recorded myself with an inexpensive Olympus stereo lavaliere microphone and while it wasn't bad it also wasn't perfect.

But the video at the highest quality settings, and using the 1080p, 30fps is very good indeed. Unlike the big Sony a99 the video written to the memory card is very sharp and detailed. The color balance, even using the AWB setting is great and it's a lot of fun composing and shooting while using the almost 5 inch screen on the back. It's the production equivalent of having an outboard, large monitor.

A bonus is that the camera provides focus peaking in manual focus settings which worked well with the tests I did using the new 85mm 1.4 lens.

Funny that this is a camera I didn't really warm up to when shooting stills and yet I am very pleased and intrigued to use it as a video tool. I'm shooting some personal work with it over the weekend and I'll be using the Zoom H4n and a shotgun mic to do audio. In one of the recent upgrades to Final Cut Pro X Apple has basically incorporated the same kind of sound matching we used to need PluralEyes to get. Now it can all be done in the program by matching up the outboard audio with the camera scratch track. You really have to shoot live view with a 5 inch monitor to get the appeal but believe me, it's fun and highly productive.

The camera is currently selling for around $1200. We're getting into a more realistic price range. I'll have some footage to show next week. I'm not advising any one to run out and buy one right away. But if you have one sitting around fire up the video setting and do some work. I think you WILL be pleasantly surprised.

Yes, it's this camera:

I meant to get some work done today. I really did. So after my second cup of coffee and a quick read of the New York Times I grabbed the dog and headed out to the studio. I sent a bill to someone and then I sent along 18 enormous 100 megabyte Tiff files to a service in India to have them masked and retouched. I'm gonna say that part qualifies as real work, although I had uploaded the files yesterday....

I read the usual forums and websites (theonlinephotographer seemed strangely off-line today...).  I got all riled up by a crazy person over on the digital pro forum at DPReview (there's always someone stirring the pot over there).

And I sent off some correspondence to people I needed to, well, correspond with.

Then Studio Dog poked me on the leg with her paw and gave me that look that said, "Really? Sitting on your butt for two hours banging on the keyboard? We've got squirrels to corral and important communications with other dogs to perform.  And your butt isn't going to get any skinnier wiggling your paws on the keyboard." She is so right. She always is. So I grabbed a leash and a bag of treats and we set off to look at the neighborhood. We both growled at the lawn guys with the leaf blowers. We had a few moments of silence for the scrape-off houses that have been recently scrapped off to make space for much bigger houses that will dominate once gracious lots.

We practiced walking "steady" and we practiced giving and receiving treats. I gave many lamb treats and got only joyous hand licks in return. After passing an hour ambling through and checking the smell of every letter box and light pole we returned home.

I answered another e-mail. This one from a client who recently asked for a bid on a huge job. The  response and tentative "yes!" by the client was too quick and then, reading further I saw that I would have to sell myself with a dog and pony show to the final client of the ad agency and I would have to finance about $20,000 worth of hard cost for 30 to 60 days if I wanted the job. I like jobs but I don't like them that much. I sent back a note suggesting that if a dog and pony show and financing for agency and client were part of the mix I might not be signing on. We'll see what happens there but I don't really care how slow or hot the market is, 25 years in the business gives one a tingling spider sense for eminent train wrecks and career stoppers. Some business I can live without.

Well, that took us right up to 11:30 am and frankly not much got done. I took the Studio Dog back to the house, grabbed a towel and headed over to the pool for a crowded, kinetic, fast paced master's swim practice. I rarely remember workouts but this one was devious for it's 300 set that went: 50 butterfly, 50 backstroke, 50 butterfly, 50 breaststroke, 50 butterfly, 50 freestyle. Rinse and repeat a number of times. That's a lot of butterfly to repeat. I guess I'll sleep well tonight.

The reward for any hard, noon workout is a good lunch so I headed to Chipotle Grill for a bowl with beans, rice, carnitas, two different salsas and some cheese. Yummy. Now I'm back at the studio with Studio Dog and she's pretty insistent that it's nap time. Dog bed in place. Yoga mat in place.

Commence napping. It's all part of the rich life of the freelance photographer....

Life gets all settled down and mellow and then the UPS guys shows up to roil it back up with new gear...

Beautiful Sunny Afternoon at the Graffiti Park. 

Punchy, Swirly colors.

Sitting at my desk in my quiet west Austin neighborhood just working away on some silly post processing and minding my own business. I'd just hit the Keurig machine to blast the drooping eyelids back open when I hear the dog barking over in the house. About three minutes later the big, brown truck rolls up and my regular delivery guy drops a package outside the front door. He's here so often he doesn't even bother to knock anymore. 

I wasn't expecting anything but that's how this stuff usually goes. A package arrives out of nowhere and all of a sudden I'm playing with new stuff and changing direction a little bit at a time. I had no idea what was in the box and I left my reading glasses on the desk so the label didn't clear things up. 

I grabbed my Trident folding knife out of my left cowboy boot and sliced into the cardboard box with  a flick of my wrist. The prize was another box wrapped in some New York newspaper. 

Once I got through the newsprint I hoisted out a dense silver box and deftly sliced the lid off that one with a quick twist. Yep. Another fun toy from the Samsung people. Last time a box from them came it was filled with their new NX30 mirror less camera. The kit lens was a side bonus. This time they upped the ante a bit and sent along a lens that a portrait photographer can really use. It was a brand spanking new 85mm 1.4. Complete with their little iFunction button on the side. 

I pushed a few scorpions aside, made a quick look under my desk for lost rattlesnakes and then I settled back into my chair to take a good look at the lens. Damn, it's heavy. Dense heavy. Like plutonium. It's short and squat and it's got the biggest hood, relative to its size, that I've ever seen. 

I'm always side-tracked by my own curiosity so I put the lens on the NX30 and shuffled over to the door. I took my coffee cup into the house and quick ate a couple of jalapeños just so I'd have something to wash down with the last few sips. And this was Texas coffee...we grind up a few smaller habeñeros along with the coffee beans just to give the brew a bit more zing...

I headed over to hipsterland central, the edges of the Clarksville neighborhood. And I cruised around to the big painted wall where I could do some thoughtful "art" with my newly conjoined rig. 

I shot till the sun went down and the Bob Wills album I was singing to myself in my head wound down. I saddled up the Honda and headed back home just hoping my spouse would get right with her Texas roots and rustle up something beefy and barbecued instead of that healthy stuff we've been gagging down----- Vegatables? Grains? Fresh Fruit?  That's damn tree-hugger fare. 

Well, we had a branding fire raging in the backyard so my hopes were high but further investigation revealed the cruel reality; grilled vegetables. Lots of zucchini. More kale than anyone might need in a lifetime. 

I finally got settled and downloaded the images I'd shot for a little "look-see." 

I liked them pretty darn good. So today, just out of curiosity I dragged out my much maligned Samsung Galaxy NX camera and started playing with that as well. But that camera has me more interested in doing a bit of video. It's the lure of the giant screen on the back.

I don't really have much of a Samsung system going on here. Yes, I've got a couple of bodies with 20 meg, APS-C sensors. I've got the can anyone please choose some different focal lengths for the damn kit lenses 18-55mm kit lens. Somewhere around Christmas I seem to have acquired a really sharp and nice 50-200mm f4 to 5.6 zoom lens. Over in one of the saddle bags I've still got that pretty little 30mm pancake someone sent along last fall and now I've got a super fast, super sharp 85mm. Now, if they'd just send along a really cool wide angle I could alternate camera systems on alternate shooting days. A little work with the Samsung, a little work with the Panasonic. A day off with a Sony a850. 

Just when I think I have it all figured out the UPS guy comes along and stirs it all up again. 

But frankly, having all these choices makes me as happy as a pig in mud. 

And so that's what I played with today as well. Time to take the boots off, unstrap the six shooters and the chaps, take the spurs off at the front door and wrap up a day of Texas photography. Ah, the mystique.