Photographing The Stage With an Old Favorite: The Sony A7rii. And its understudy...

On Saturday, at a rehearsal, I shot video of "Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill" with the Panasonic fz2500. The 4K video looked really, really good so I brought that camera back the next evening to shoot images from lots of different angles at the technical rehearsal. But last night I defaulted back to the tried and true cameras for the important images at the dress rehearsal. The "go-to" camera for me at the theater these days is the Sony A7Rii. It has much to commend it; the 42 megapixel sensor is great at higher ISOs, and at moderate ISOs the image quality is pretty much unbeatable by anything else in the 35mm sensor sized digital camera market. A medium format sensor might be theoretically better but I'd be hard pressed to find the right glass for any of the models I'd want to budget for. 

I haven't seen a 70-200mm f4.0 with image stabilization on the Hasselblad roadmap....or Fuji's roadmap, for that matter. And neither of those camera can challenge the A7Rii's hybrid CD-AF/PD-AF focusing performance. 

I was planted mid-way up the house with a full audience surrounding me. I set the camera to the "silent mode" and was audibly stealthy for the rest of the evening. Since I was shooting frequently and chimping rarely, the dinky battery in the camera got me through about 700 frames.

About half the time I used the camera in the APS-C mode which gets me 50% more reach and still delivers 18 megapixels of good file. The camera and the 70-200mm f4.0 lens make for a great theater shooting photography system. I can shoot wide open without hesitation and I can handhold at all the shutter speeds that will freeze subject movement, without concern. 

Last night I also packed a system that gave me about 2X the reach of the A7rii and the 70/200 (used in APS-C mode). It was the redoubtable, Sony RX10iii. I swear that camera is magic. Its color profile is nearly identical with the A7rii and it matches, tonally, as well. But the ability to reach out with a 600mm equivalent reach and to watch the image stabilization steady up the image in the finder is breathtaking. I tend to set the RX10iii to f4.0 and leave it there. It's sharp and contrasty and, even though focusing is slightly slower than the newer Panasonic fz2500 when it locks in it's right on the money every time. No caveats. 

In a rational and sane photographic universe I would own four perfectly complementary cameras: Two A7rii's and two RX10iii's. I can't imagine anything I could not handle, photographically, with those two systems. The thing that cured my long time (chronic?) gear acquisition compulsion is the simple fact that Sony makes the two dominant cameras in their respective fields and I already own both of them. What else is there to buy?  I guess the closest thing, in terms of image quality, would be a Nikon D810 with a painstakingly calibrated 70-200mm lens inside a sound proof blimp. Wouldn't that be fun to shoot with? (sarcasm intended here). 

As to the perfect super-zoom bridge camera, nothing out there matches or betters the overall photographic performance of the RX10iii. I am tempted to buy a back-up just in case Sony management goes insane and discontinues it. To have used one and then have the option taken away would be heart-breaking. 

These files are too small to assess on the web. I am constricted to uploading files that are no larger than 2200 pixel on the long side. Take me at my word when I say that these files look amazing spread across a Retina screen at full resolution. Both cameras amaze me everything time I use them. 

On another note; I used the Panasonic fz2500 today to do interviews with Chanel (the actor shown here) and the director of the play. I was reminded of just how good a video camera it is and how different recording video is from recording very high resolution photography files. I am as impressed by the 4K video that came from the Panasonic this afternoon as I was when processing the Sony photography files this morning. A time of amazing camera riches, for sure!

Finally getting the focus tuned in on my own Panasonic fz2500. New cameras take time to learn. At least for me...

I lately thought I was stumbling around in the foothills of the learning curve with a new camera. It's the Panasonic fz2500 "superzoom" and it's a totally different camera in so many respects than the Sony RX10iii I've been using for the better part of a year. While the camera created great looking color and tonality right off the SD card I was having trouble mastering sharpness. And mastering sharpness (focus) seemed to me to be such and elementary thing to master; until I couldn't do it. 

Now, don't get me wrong, the files were not a fuzzy mess, it's just that when I punched in to 100 % the details looked soft. Much softer than my Sony. And this corresponded to what I had read about the camera in reviews. So, ever happy to waste time ferreting out why things go wrong with cameras, I dived into trying to figure out what I was doing wrong. One little clue was that when I focused on a person or  object in the distance the EVF would often show a sharper image before I hit the shutter and the resulting review image would be softer or less detailed. It seemed pretty obvious from the preview image that the camera was fully capable of delivering the results but my technique may have been the culprit...

In analyzing how I have been using these kinds of super zoom cameras I've concluded that: If you give me a longer focal length I'll probably be attracted to using longer than normal focal lengths more and more often. Indeed, I found that the 85mm and 100m equivalent focal lengths were looking wide-ish to me now and the 200mm to 300mm focal lengths were starting to seem normal. I also noticed that a lot of my test shooting were in situations similar to the one here; shooting nearly wide open at long focal lengths and with ISOs of 1600 to 3200. It started to dawn on me that getting a good focus lock could be hard for the camera given the magnification of camera shake via my hand holding skills. Further, the long focal lengths magnified both focus error, camera movement and subject movement in a way that works against ultimate sharpness. Finally, I am convinced that the AF steps in the Panasonic are stacked against distance auto focusing but can be overcome by manually focusing distant scenes we try to shoot at the long end of the focal length range. 

With all this in mind I put the camera on the biggest tripod I own, turned off the I.S., turned on the 5 second self timer, focused manually and made images in the most controlled way that I could. Revelation, camera and lens perform well when not under undue stress. I decided to test the camera in my favorite "torture test" for any camera; shooting the tech rehearsal for a live stage show with a high contrast target which is constantly moving. A target than I can only approach to within 30 feet or so...

I shot about a thousand images last night with the fz2500 at the tech rehearsal for "Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill" for Zach Theatre. The star of the show, Chanel, is mostly in a bright HMI follow spot. She has a dark complexion and she is wearing a bright, white dress with sparkly rhinestones scattered across it. Using manual focus with "punch in" manual focus assist gave me a very good success rate at focal length from 85-400mm+ I also experimented with face detect AF and found that it was also a very successful method. My least successful tests were the use of focusing groups or the use of the wide focusing array which lets the camera choose where it will focus (generally the nearest point...). If I needed to have 100% assurance of focusing accuracy I'd use the manual option. If I set it carefully (and subsequently used good hand holding technique) I could pretty much count on nailing good focus every time. 

The other thing I think I was ignoring is the very, very shallow depth of field one ends up with at the long end of these zooms. We tend to think, "Oh, one inch sensor, loads of depth of field, no worries, I'm sure it will cover any focusing errors!" But we would be wrong. The d.o.f. is very narrow once we crest the 200mm zone. This makes technique even more important. 

I know it will sound silly but I worked on being smoother pressing the shutter button. I worked on not swaying forward or backwards as I shot. I worked on improving the stability of my stance. I leaned more often against railings or seats for additional stability and support. I tried to be more patient and allow enough time for the camera to really lock focus. You could say that last night was an exercise in remembering all the stuff we used to need to know to get sharp images out of long lenses in the slow, slow film days. But, in the end, it paid off for me. As the evening and the show progressed I watched more and more frames pop up in review that were satisfyingly sharp. And on my monitor at the studio they were just right. 

Now I think I have a happier understanding with and of the camera. There are a few things I wanted to mention that impressed me last night. One was the value of the highlight/shadow control feature. Setting this to increase exposure in the shadows and lower exposure in the highlights made for wonderfully pliable raw files. Easy to work with in post with fewer blown highlights and slightly more open shadows. The ergonomics of the camera are exemplary. Much more comfortable to hold for several hours at a time than my smaller, shorter Sony A7 bodies. Finally, the camera shoots and writes files; even raw files, very quickly and I am able to review files just shot even while the camera is still writing large files to the cards. It's a very well done system.

One more note. This camera gets dinged a lot for having a "weak" battery. The web-propaganda infers just a few hundred shots before depletion and failure. If you shoot the way we do on professional jobs you'll be shooting a concentrated number of shots in a short amount of time. My first battery change was at intermission; an hour and a half into the show, and over 750+ raw exposure recorded. The first battery was still showing 1/3rd power remaining but I changed it at the break for convenience sake. Works well for me. 

All the images shown were handheld, shot at between 1/80th to 1/250th of a second, mostly at f4.5, and at ISOs between 1600 and 3200. WB= custome setting at 4100 K. Raw files. 

Rubber meets road. The Panasonic fz2500 really performs well as a 4K video camera. Hat's off.

We put the fz2500 to the test today at Zach Theatre. I shot b-roll footage of the star of "Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill," Chanel,  going through a rehearsal, on stage at the Topfer Theatre. I also shot footage of director, Michael Vader, well.....directing.

I used the fz2500 on top of a monopod for most of my work but near the end I also used the camera handheld in order to get more feeling of motion. We worked under the stage lights and also in dim work light. I was able to dip down to ISO 800 for some of the stage shots (mostly at f4.5-5.6) and I had to scrape up photons with ISO 4,000-6,400 when shooting the director out in the middle of  dimly lit audience seating. Once I disabled the touch screen I had no issues with nose controlled focus points or shifting focus points and everything I shot was either insanely sharp or wildly out of focus (my fault).

I used the UHD, 30 fps, 4k setting with the camera set to 1/60th of a second. While the AF was good I find it much better, at the long end of the lens, to use MF which I have set up to "punch in" when I touch the focusing ring. I'm also using focus peaking to enhance my chances. The camera is much, much, much easier to manually focus than the RX10iii. Much easier.

After the rehearsal, and a quick coffee with one of my video mentors, I rushed back to the studio, opened Final Cut Pro X and started looking at the stuff I'd shot. The "footage" at ISO 800-1,600 was impeccable. Very little noise in the shadows and lots of sharp detail and good saturation. No additional sharpening was necessary.

The image stabilization, in concert with the monopod, was great. The hours I spent shooting at the theater this afternoon helped me gain a new respect for the fz2500 as a video camera. I used the slow zoom controls and was very happy with the smooth, slow zooms I was able to achieve. I trust the focus peaking on this camera more than I do on the Sony RX10iii. And I think the quick menu is highly effective.

I'll be using this camera to shoot my interviews this week with the actor and director and look forward to seeing if the microphone pre-amps play well with external pre-amps and audio recorders. I've got time scheduled tomorrow to do a complete audio run through in the studio in anticipation.

My assessment of this camera? As a low cost/high performance 4K video camera it is exemplary.

Gearing up to shoot another little video project for Zach Theatre. Putting the Panasonic fz2500 through its paces.

I have a project to do for Zach Theatre. They are producing "Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill." It's a musical play about Billie Holiday and from what I've heard so far it's amazing. We thought it might be a good idea to expand on the idea of the quick interviews we did of three actors for the previous "LBJ" play and do a nice video interview with Chanel; who will be playing the role of Billie Holiday; and a second interview with director, Michael Rader.

I'm trying to be more strategic in my approach to these video projects so we don't get rushed into producing a bunch of (mostly unusable) footage under tight schedules. We haven't scouted shooting locations for the interviews yet but we know they will be somewhere on the Zach "campus." Before we schedule the actual interviews I want to see what kind of b-roll we can get of the two interviewees  in the context of the play. The "behind the scenes footage."

Tomorrow afternoon is the last rehearsal before the tech rehearsal on Sunday. I'm heading to swim practice in the early morning and then will get to the theater around 12:30 pm to get ready for some very discreet, candid video shooting while Michael and Chanel go through a full run of the show.

I won't be lighting any of this and I don't need to record sound. I'm shooting with the fz2500 on a monopod so I can move quickly and get as many angles and compositions as I can. I've mapped out a list of shots I want, everything from tight shots of Chanel's face while she sings to much looser "two" shots of the team working through the fine-tuning that always happens. I plan on taking this footage and rendering it as black and white. I'm not worried about noise because I love the look of grain in black and white and have been testing in post with files from the fz2500 to get a very similar effect. I'll use it in conjunction with the color footage from the interviews. It's a luxury I didn't have with the previous projects. I'll have about two hours to get as much good stuff as I can.

Today I tested my set up. I'm shooting in 4K with the idea of downsampling to 1080p (Pro-Res 4:2:2) in post. At ISOs all the way up to 6400 I'm fine with the way the noise works in black and white. I wouldn't really consider going there in color. I'm shooting in color with the Cinelike D profile instead of shooting black and white in camera because I'll have a lot more options for the conversion to monochrome in the editing software.

The image stabilization in 4K is pretty good. Not as crazy good as it is in 1080p but the use of a monopod more or less equalizes the stability advantages of the 1080p, five axis performance. I've also been working on focusing for high sharpness with longer focal lengths and longer distances. Frank and I played with all the variations this morning and we found an interesting and weird anomaly. When using the mechanical shutter I tend to get a tiny bit of secondary ghosting that only becomes obvious when I chimp the files at 16X (this is in the "stills" mode/photographs) but the ghosting goes away if I use the electronic shutter setting. It makes sense that if we were going to see vibration induced image destruction it would happen at the higher magnifications. Something learned for the next still shoot.

While I am using the Cinelike D profile I am fine-tuning it by pulling out some of the noise reduction. I'm working at minus three right now and can see more detail; especially at higher ISOs.
This reportage style of shooting should be a nice test of the camera's video functionality and I'm happy that I've tested most of the parameters in advance.

I'll go to the other extreme next week when I shoot the interviews and bring a bunch of good lighting; aiming to shoot as close to the "native" ISO of the camera as I can and with an aim to get wonderful skin tones. I want the contrast between the black and white b-roll and the color interview footage to be very obvious.

With a pocket full of batteries and a 128 Gb card in the slot I should be able to get as much b-roll as I'd ever want to dig through.

From my tests so far the 4K video from the camera is really, really pretty. Nicely detailed with few motion artifacts. I'm ordering an Atomos Ninja Inferno monitor/recorder to use for the interviews; I'd like to see how the footage looks writing the files directly to 4k Pro-Res files instead of the H.264 internal files. I'll flesh out a report as soon as I test it out.

The fz2500 is a camera with a very nice, very camera-esque personality. I like it a lot even if I think the files coming out of its closest rival, the Sony RX10iii are just a hair sharper and contrastier. Once I drag the Panasonic files through post processing you'd never be able to tell the difference. Remember? We're adding grain...

I'll keep them both. Interesting personalities and perfect for two different project mindsets. More after the shoot........

Trip to the Blanton Museum #93. Confronting the red furniture.

It was a luxurious, warm Spring afternoon. I'd spent time blowing oak pollen out of the gutters with a leaf blower. I had a leisurely, late lunch of cheese enchiladas, corn and beans washed down with a grapefruit soda. It seemed like a good time to go to a museum. 

The Blanton has been closed for the last few months to revamp, re-fit, and re-imagine the space. Some galleries got reconfigured. A giant wall got painted a blue-ish purple. Three pieces of red, seating furniture arrived.

I brought along a camera just in case I saw someone who was so beautiful that I couldn't bear to go through life knowing I had no photograph to prove such beauty existed. I settled for images of the red couches. They are not so much beautiful as overpowering. 

The camera was a battered example of the Sony A7ii. A pedestrian, 50mm f1.8 on the front. It felt simple and perfect. For once I didn't mind that it is goofy loud. the noisy camera seemed to aurally match the visual scheme in front of it. I tossed some mezzotint all over the photos, in post. 

Sometimes walking around with a camera in your hands is the best way to figure out how to use it well. Some cautionary experiences with the fz2500.

I'm going to dive right into it. There's something going on with the Panasonic fz2500 but it's not that the lens on the front of it is unsharp. I turned off the rear (touch) screen and set the camera to focus with the pinpoint focusing mode and I was able to get frame after frame of sharply rendered images from the camera. But there are several things that give me pause. The first is my suspicion that having the touch screen enabled can cause focusing issues because if your nose is touching the screen while you are pushing down on the shutter button there is the possibility (and I think I've experienced this...) that the focusing point changes or moves during the exposure process, confusing the camera. Almost as if there isn't a lock out of the focusing point movement control when you initiate a shutter press. This is only a "defect" if you think you should be able to have both an external control interface and be able to swipe the interface with your nose at the same time. Kind of like having two fully engaged steering wheels in one car.

A second focus/interface issue I've noticed is something that occurs if you have the camera to your eye and push the shutter button halfway down while gripping the zoom ring. The zoom ring seems to be always active and is not locked out during exposure. I've locked focus, taken my hand off the zoom ring and witnessed a slight compositional "jump" in the finder. Of course, the remedy is to keep your hands off the ring when not zooming but that's not the way most of us have trained ourselves to use the camera. Any camera.

Additionally, I have noticed that when using the multi-point options to AF, locking focus and then switching to manual, I must fine tune the manual focus ring in order to set sharp focus. I have noticed none of these issues on the Sony RX10 series of cameras.

Finally, I have noticed that most of these issues only occur at longer focus distances and become worse near infinity. It could be that, like many AF lenses in bridge cameras, the focusing discrimination (or number of discrete steps for AF) are more concentrated in the closer distances where it is presumed depth of field gives less coverage, and become less concentrated at longer distances, where it is presumed that d.o.f. will help cover the gaps. 

Reader, Casey, suggests that even if the lens is not the ultimate culprit that Panasonic ought not to have launched a camera with these kinds of flaws. Whether or not some of these issues can be fixed in firmware is yet to be seen. The biggest help for users who may want to use multi-point autofocus is to disable the touch AF on the rear screen. The biggest help for single point AF fans is to either use the center point with a small target selected or to use the pin-point focusing mode. 

I am still testing the camera but feel confident that I can get still image results from it that I want. 

All of the (above and below) files here were uploaded in their original file sizes so you can blow them up as large as you want to look around the frames. They were all shot handheld. All started life as Jpegs.

With these glitches in mind why on God's green earth would I consider keeping the camera instead of racing to the store to return it? Mostly because I bought it for the video features and my tests while shooting video have not shown up the same kinds of issues in video focusing that I've gotten shooting stills. When I shoot video I tend not to rest my hands on the controls.... Just thought you'd want this clarification. I'm interested to hear from other Panasonic fz2500 users. I'd like to compare notes. 

Taken with no intervention on my part. Just a snapshot. But it is sharp and perfectly exposed. 

I love the colors as well. Mmmmm. Cupcakes!