The First Day of Shooting on the March Video Project.

Number One Son Stands in For Test Shot.

A few years back. 

I'm trying to get as much work from Ben as I can before he goes off to college in the Fall. And it's Spring Break. I got him out of bed this morning at 6:30 and we were on the road by 7:00. Our (my) goal was to spend the day shooting lots and lots of different shots/clips/scenes/exciting video that I'll be editing into a two minute video for a technology company website. We loaded the car the night before. 

While I am mercurial and compulsive Ben inherited his analytical and measured personality from his calm and rational mother. Thank goodness. Ben's been watching my recent re-immersion into film and video with a critical eye. When he heard that I'd contracted to shoot another industrial video he came into the office and said, "Dad, we have to talk." Since he is smart beyond his years, has produced well over sixty videos, taken cinematography courses and won awards for his work (and he is generally patient with me), I decided to listen to him. 

The gist of his "friendly chat" was to tell me that if I wanted to do really good work with video I could not do the "fly by the seat of my pants" routine I've been practicing in still photography for many years. It just wouldn't work. "Here's what you need to do if you don't want to embarrass yourself in the edit suite..." is the way he started out. "You have to pre-plan, then script and then story board." I was taking notes. "The camera is the least important component. Being organized is the surest path to success." He closed by telling me to make a check list for estimating the job and not to undersell the massive importance of adequate edit time. 

Okay. I went with the program. I did a project overview with goals and objectives. Then I burrowed down and did an outline of the project with a description of locations, required talent and major shots we needed to achieve. Ben looked the list over and asked me how I was going to get from one point to the next. I  looked a little perplexed and he sat me down to talk about the importance of good transitions. Both in the writing, the shooting and the editing.  I took notes and when I wrote the script I ended each segment with as good a transition line as I could figure.

When I looked at my shot list and my script and my locations and talent figures and stuck in a rough estimate for editing I thought I was finished until I presented it to Ben (preparatory to presenting to the client).  He shook his head and said with a sigh: "Are you planning to log in the footage and go through to select the best takes? I don't see a line item in here for ingesting and transcoding the video, converting it to pro-res and making a log with time code notations. Were you just planning to give that full day away for free?" ( This is the teenager who once talked me out of buying a motorcycle...).

All that prep stuff happened a while ago and we found ourselves driving to the client's location in North Austin in the gray of the morning. We set up our cart and loaded my gear on it and headed for the top floor of a chic looking office building. Our first task was to shoot an interview with the CTO about the company's new software product. Because of my recent, strict schooling in preparation I had written out several pages of leading questions and also one sentence statements I wanted to get worked into the interview. 

We set up in a lab with a background of servers and screens. I lit it with two, fluorescent fixtures pushing soft light through nice diffusion as main and fill lights and one Fiilex P360 LED light with barn doors for a back light. My "A" camera was a Panasonic GH3 with an Olympus Pen 40mm f1.4 lens on the front, stopped down to f4. I miked our CTO with a Sennheiser wireless microphone set and listened carefully to every syllable with a pair of closed back earphones. I swear my kid walked by my position just to check my sound levels....

I had the interviewee facing me and I stood just to the left of the main camera for the interview. Ben was manning a "B" camera that was also a Panasonic GH3 with a 14-45mm kit lens. His rig was mounted on a  40 inch slider equipped with a Manfrotto ball head. He was positioned about 75 degrees off to the right from my position. 

We both agreed that the GH3 is a nearly perfect camera for shooting this kind of video. The .Mov files, set to 1080P, 30fps, generating 50 megabits per second, are as detailed as I've seen even from state of the art, dedicated video cameras and, to my eye, much sharper than the Canon EOS 5D mk2 or 3. And the wide range of lenses we can adapt and use is breathtaking. 

After we shot ample footage, even a transitions shot that invites the viewer with: "Let's go see (blank product) in action!" we stopped to also shoot the CTO's hand gestures for additional cutaway shots. 

In every office and with every person we videotaped we did not only our basic shot but also tight hand shots and second camera shots from different angles with a little controlled motion via a slider or tripod move. 

Ben and I had fun with the slider. We did the usual horizontal slide from left to right but we also did slides into and away from the subject. What a movie person might call a "push in" or a "pull out."

At one point in the day we found a Metro cart with big, smooth wheels that we used as an improvised dolly for some fun, sweeping, wide shots of people working in the lab. That was fun to do and fun to watch in playback. 

We broke for lunch around one p.m. and had burgers at Mighty Fine Hamburgers. They were pretty darn good. We split the fries. They were great. 

After lunch we did as many fun "B-roll" shots as we could find. Technicians working. Super close ups, extreme wide angles and lots of gear shots. Then we headed outside for an establishing shot of their building. It was sunny and eighty degrees when we stepped outside. The building faces West so at 3pm our timing could not have been better. For the exterior we used our third video camera, the Sony RX 10. Why switch cameras from something as good as the GH3 and settle for a (slightly) less detailed file codec? Well, the RX 10 has several things going for it but the most important for me was the built in neutral density filer (3 stops) and the really well corrected 24mm equivalent zoom lens. 

Even in taking our exterior shot, which will probably be on screen for several seconds, at the most, Ben was adamant that we have a wide shot, a moving wide shot and a tighter "entrance shot." And yes, he made me wait until cars were driving by and people were entering the building before shooting. He felt that having movement and action in several planes would move the scenes forward in a more exciting way...

Before packing up and leaving our location he made sure that we spot checked all the major shots and that we watched the exterior shots to make sure we had good takes. 

The project calls for another shooting day at a second location as well as a quick turn around trip to Chicago for an interview with a client customer. 

I learned a lot today and I had a blast working with Ben. His attention to detail makes me look permanently afflicted with hyper-ADHD. 

When we got home he assisted me in unloaded the gear and headed out to meet up with friends. But he did leave me a template for efficient log in sheets. How thoughtful...

Much more to come on this video project.

Is it time to cede street photography and social photography to the cellphone world?

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©2014 Kirk Tuck

I'd vote "yes." Some wag yesterday left a comment that I dismissed out of hand. He (or she) mused that the images I'd posted were 'no better than what I could get from a phone' and in retrospect I have to agree. I had a new camera in my hand and I did what most other photographers do. I went out on a gray and featureless day and snapped images, behind which there was no real thought or emotional buy in, and I put them up on the web and waved my arms around and said "look, look, more images!" As though what I'd done was special and unique. Only it wasn't.

I had a public relations assignment yesterday that started at 10pm. The event wrapped around two in the morning and I was sitting in the studio until 4 am post processing and uploading to deliver before my client got up for breakfast. And this morning I woke from a banal dream in which line of people queued up outside a series of downtown buildings, endlessly. When I woke up I was overwhelmed with the thought that, for me, street photography is over. Just over.

A New Camera Showed Up On My Doorstep Friday. It's the Samsung NX30. I Took It To SXSW.

What is it? It's a Samsung NX30. A 20 megapixel, APS-C, Mirror Free

Interchangeable lens camera. It arrived on Friday in the Fed Ex 

shipment and I've agreed to shoot with it for a while and post a few images on a regular basis. 

No other strings attached. 

When I experimented with Samsung's experimental Galaxy NX camera last year I was very happy with the sensor but less so with the paucity of physical control interfaces (buttons and knobs). I also felt that the inclusion of the Android operating system and all of the software and connectivity bells and whistles interfered with the pure photography aspect of the camera. My final criticism was about the low res and not very color accurate EVF. When I sent the camera back to Samsung I also included my notes about what I wanted to see in a future gen camera. In almost every respect that camera is the new NX 30 camera. Samsung's P.R. agency sent me one and a kit lens to use with it last Friday. Here's a report of my first 24 hours with the camera:

The box was small. The camera is small. About the size of a Panasonic G6 but with a rounder design aesthetic. The camera body itself is smoother and more rounded. The camera is a mirror less, APS-C sensor camera that uses the entire range of Samsung NX series lenses and has both a "twisty/bendy" rear LCD screen as well as a nicely done EVF. The EVF is a much higher resolution than the previous Samsung cameras and it's nice to look at. It could use a bit faster refresh rate for fast moving objects but it's a big improvement and it's at least competitive with the majority of EVF finders in it's class. The EVF does have one magic trick. You can pull the finder eyepiece out away from the camera body and angle it up to 90 degrees. Nice for low angle shots and an advantage for studio table top work. 

Like most of the new cameras I've come across lately it doesn't come with a conventional charger, the camera comes with a USB charger and cable that restricts you to charging in camera. Since I currently have only one battery I don't really mind... yet. From my point of view there's a lot to like about this camera. It's got a nice 20 megapixel sensor that seems to perform well. I shot stuff from ISO 100 to ISO 3200 yesterday and noise was not problematic. On a few frames I thought the noise reduction was a bit heavy handed but that's probably what I get for not shooting raw and not paying attention to the noise reduction settings in the menu. I've now opted for "off" because I love to go to extremes. I'll get it fine tuned as I continue to use the camera. 

The exterior control buttons give me quick access to most of the operations I want to use and pushing the FN button gets me a few more. Once the camera is set up you'll rarely have to dive into the menus but if you do you'll find them logical and well structured. The camera has all kinds of connectivity niceties but as you might guess I've turned off as many of these as I could find. There's still a little drain to the battery but I'll try to hunt that down and squash it as well. For me a camera should be ALL about taking the image. Anything that interferes with that, even if it's just a quicker battery drain, is to be avoided. 

I know that many of you feel uncomfortable if you can't upload your images immediately but until everyone gets the shooting experience of the cameras just right that fast access capability is just a distraction. Agree or disagree. But I'm speaking from my own experience. 

So, on the camera you have buttons for a quick menu call up (FN--which is programmable), WB, AF, Drive Modes, Display, Metering pattern, a big exposure Mode dial and two control dials. There's also the EV compensation button and an AEL button. If you need more controls you can enable the touch screen and customize the quick menu on the rear screen. Also, some of these controls are available by pushing the fn button on many of the Samsung lenses. The settings come up on a dial and I actually like the representation and the sound effects that go with them. This is the first camera on which I have not totally disabled sound effects. Almost forgot, there is also a movie start button on the top panel of the camera. All of these physical controls are a good thing because I don't care how good a touch screen might be there are situations like cold, dry weather that interfere with the touch interface and nothing is more frustrating to me than a camera that can't be controlled at will. My will. 

I'll confess that I didn't read the owner's manual. I felt like my experiences with the Samsung Galaxy NX would put me in the control ballpark for this camera and, so far, I have not been wrong. I charged the battery while I worked on a proposal and when the green light came on I packed up my stuff and headed out. We're in SXSW (South by Southwest Interactive, Film and Music Festivals) for two weeks. 50,000+ people from around the world descend on our town for this and the parking goes from tight to non-existent to $100 a day. I walked a half mile to our neighborhood bus stop and rode the bus to the epicenter of the excitement. It cost a buck. Chalk one up for mass transportation!

The bus ride also gave me time to go through every menu on the camera and personalize it to my shooting requirements/proclivities. S-AF, Single point AF, Auto-ISO, diopter fine tuned, Jpeg Super/turbo fine, matrix metering, etc. By the time I hit Congress Ave. I felt like I'd used the camera for weeks. Easy and straight forward. 

I walked around downtown and shot a couple hundred snap shots. I was looking for things like: How fast the focus locked in (very fast! Snapped in is more like it...must be the PD on chip), How quickly the camera shifted from LCD to EVF (quick indoors and slower in full sun. When I shoot in full sun now I just go into the menu and choose EVF all the time. Works great. 

The camera is a great size for my average hands. It's also a good size for my wife's smaller hands. 

When I started my journey to the great intellectual marketplace being held downtown there was a weak but present sunlight punching through wimpy patches of clouds but as the afternoon wore the clouds moved in and everything was over cast. I took a very small leather backpack along with me for the usual collection of modern clutter. My cellphone. A pair of reading glasses. A back up camera in the form of the Panasonic G6 (in case the sole battery for the Samsung raced to zero) and two extra batteries for it. I also dropped in my Kindle Fire so I could read Anthony Artis' book, Shut Up and Shoot. (A good but slightly dated resources for videographers who do documentaries, interviews, etc.).

At first I was a bit put off by the camera for two reasons, both associated with viewing. The EVF is about a stop hotter than the LCD in its rendering of scenes. The LCD and the histograms agrees and my computer agrees with them too. But while there is a control to change the brightness and color of the LCD I haven't found the same control for the EVF. The second point was that in bright, exterior lighting the sensor that decides when to switch between the EVF and LCD seems to see too much ambient light and is loathe to switch to the EVF unless you crush your eye socket right into the eyepiece. Well, I don't much use LCDs in bright ambient light so I found the menu item that would allow me to select my viewer manually and I set it to always be the EVF. That will come in handy when shooting theater as well. Then I set up the menu display to always show the live histogram and I was making a subconscious accommodation for the bright finder within the hour. Done. 

The rear screen is just like every other rear screen on cameras that I use. It's bright, sharp and detailed as long as you are in the studio controlling the light. If I'm are standing around in the sun shine I can't see a damn thing on the screens. And if I'm wearing something reflective like a white t-shirt I can see even less... This is why for the last few years I've railed about the need for all cameras to have some sort of eye level viewing mechanism. Even if it's the contrived, giant loupe I have for my Pentax K-01 Super Cameras. The screen on the NX 30 is no different. A pleasure in the studio or in a restaurant or bar but a freakin' nightmare in high EV settings with lots of photons bouncing around. Thank you very much, Samsung, for the EVF. 

All in all my initial reaction to this camera is different from my reaction to the Samsung Galaxy NX. That camera refused to work for me, out of the box, until I logged on  and registered it online. The new camera comes with the connectivity in the "off" mode. And in no way does the mania for wi-fi or NFC effect my ability to snap the shutter in a timely fashion.

I've used two lenses on the camera so far; both with very good results. The first is the kit lens (18-55mm) which I originally got when Samsung sent me an NX300. It's a good kit lens and it has a control button on the side that you can push and the camera ratchets through four frequently used controls, including my favorites, EV and WB. The lens seems sharp enough and the range is nice. But the one I really like a lot is the 30mm f2. It has neither the I.S. nor the function button on it but it's small, light and quite sharp. 

I was nervous about battery life so I found myself turning the camera on and off again much more so than I do when I use a camera which I have a pocketful of batteries for. But during the course of my shooting the battery indication never dropped below 70% and the battery does seem to charge pretty quickly. 

I think Samsung has made a good competitor for the rest of the mirror less systems on the market. While it's not as polished as the Olympus OMD EM-1 the bigger sensor offers some advantages. Will I switch everything, drink the KoolAide and shoot everything with the Samsung? I think you know me better than that. I would get bored to tears just shooting one model or brand of camera. But I will stick a strap on this one and squire it around for a while to see just what I can get out of it.

Below are some images I shot at SXSW yesterday. Nothing spectacular but I was looking for technical stuff on this go around...

Kirk daringly executes a selfie. 

The Cavernous "Check in and Get your Badge" area.

People of the floor.

I like to stick images up on the wall and look at them and try to figure out why I like them.

Back in the days of film and darkrooms 

we used to make 20 by 24 inch work prints

like they were free Xeroxes. 

I just wanted to see what stuff looked like

BIG.

So, after a long day of paperwork and planning and phone meetings I came back into the studio after dinner and played. I looked through boxes with hundreds and hundreds of large, black and white prints and I pulled some out and laid them out on the floor and thumbtacked em to the walls. I pulled out some fun nudes we did back in the 1990's and some great portraits from the 1980's and few from last month that I just got back from a real lab and I laid them out and just walked around the room looking at them. 

I'm not planning a show or anything like that-----I just wanted to see how work looks when it's big and it's aged like a fine, old red wine. And it's really having an effect on me that I didn't anticipate. I'm happy with my portraits. One thing I've been missing from digital is printing stuff really big. Printing it really big and printing the perfect frame and the frames on either side and the frames on either side of those. And then living with the work for a while. Big.

It's curious. After the passage of long years I seem to like the alternate frames. The ones I didn't show. The nudes between the sensual and the prurient. The expressions that were just to one side of alluring. 

I'm thinking I need to send more stuff out to be printed big. There's no question that today's cameras can handle it. And I'd like to have another dozen or so boxes of 100 prints or more in the "just because I can" vault before I hang it up. 

Maybe I am thinking much more along the lines of what I see in this project (motion/film/video):

http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/blog/exclusive-video-look-into-godfrey-reggios-new-film-visitors-as-it-looks-into-you

Hope you are having a nice Thursday. Any time to go out today and look at stuff?

Oh fashion, thou art a cruel mistress...