Best Article I've Read on DP Review in Years. A debunking of some MF mythology. A nod to current full frame camera tech.

https://www.dpreview.com/opinion/2341704755/thinking-about-buying-a-fujifilm-gfx-50s-read-this-first

I'm so used to seeing advertorial writing on DPReview that I was a bit amazed to see this reasonably well written article that calls into question whether the investment(?) in a (smaller than) medium format camera, such as the new Fuji, is really going to deliver the things you might think are exclusive to the larger format.

It would be nice to see more writing like this and less gushing about sponsored Canon topics. Give it a read and see if you agree.

How learning about video improves your still photography story-telling. How good portrait lighting translates into more interesting video.

Every time I practice lighting portraits I end up porting that knowledge over into video lighting. After all, what is an interview but a nicely lit portrait that moves and has sound? By the same token, as I learn more about shooting video I learn that there's more than one angle and more than one visual point of view in a photo session. More options give me more choice. And, by being a better interviewer in the video world I've learned how to "lead" a portrait subject into a pose and expression that is more exactly what I am aiming for rather than being a session of endurance; predicated on random connections and fast reflexes.

It goes both ways. In doing both I find I am more prepared for each discipline. The more fluid I get with each practice the better my results get for each. Being able to blend the strengths of the two media is a fun exercise and a real plus. Try doing a great interview and following it quickly with a great portrait in the same set up. You'll already have the rapport on tap.....

Accidentally passed a landmark. Also came to understand why people think camera preamplifiers are so noisy....

I should have noted that the Visual Science Lab blog hit (and passed) the 3200 post milestone. I did the math, that's millions and millions of words and thousands and thousands of photographs. How do you get to 3200+ posts? One post at a time.

On a different note you may have noticed that I'm diving deeper and deeper into the discipline of recording sound. Every good videography needs to know about audio. It may be the most important component of video and probably the hardest to get just right.

I have one little kernel of opinion that I want to pass on. I've been told for years now that still cameras which feature video capabilities all have very noisy and low quality preamplifiers in them and that the only way to record "professional" sound is to skip using the camera's input and start recording to an external audio recorder which, presumably, has cleaner preamplifier stages.

Hmmm. In theory I'm sure that the good digital audio recorders do have somewhat better circuitry and, perhaps, demonstrably better noise but I also think there is a prejudice floating around that has more to do with noisy headphone amplifiers than noisy camera preamps.

I've noticed for some time now that when I monitor the sound coming into my Sony cameras (including the RX10 series and the A7rii) with headphones I get some low level hiss and noise. It's there whether I've matched the microphone to the camera inputs or not. I always freak out when I hear it but I'm usually on a remote location and don't have another option.

The funny thing is that when I get back to the office, import the video files to my editing software and then listen to the output on my studio headphones I don't hear the same, obvious noise. What I hear is fairly clean and accurate audio. I have a short attention span so I hadn't tested my hypothesis until recently. My hypothesis is that the "dirty" audio is a result of crappy headphone amplifiers; not only in the consumer, all purpose cameras but even in most of the separate digital audio recorders I've worked with.

Recently I bought and received a new microphone. It was a well reviewed Aputure Diety shotgun microphone. I was anxious to test it out and wanted to give it every opportunity to excel. That would mitigate any post cognitive dissonance I might have had about spending yet another $360 on my always expensive occupation.

To that end I ran the microphone into the Zoom H5. It's a portable audio recorder that is well known to have low noise preamplifiers. The Zoom H5 supplied phantom power to the microphone and the recording I did was right in the optimum level area for voice (between minus 6 and minus 12 Db, as shown on the meters). There was no indication of overload and the levels were high enough not to be anywhere near a noise floor.

When I monitored via the headphone jack I heard a similar kind of noise that I often hear with signals coming from the camera headphone jacks. A high frequency hiss that's not terrible but not optimal. I was taken aback. All other owners/reviewers of the H5 were effusive in their praise of this model's low noise. Ditto concerning the noise profile of the microphone.

I moved the audio file to my computer, plugged in some Audio Technica headphones and took a listen to that set up. The noise I was hearing went away. It dawned on me that the real culprit in many cases might not be the camera but the camera's headphone circuitry. How could this be?

Well, I looked no further than to the car industry for an analogous comparison. Takata airbags were defective across a range of manufacturers and models, from Toyota and Honda to BMW and Ford. Seems like one airbag maker supplied a lot of different companies. By the same token the headphone amp is probably a feature on a small chip. Easier to spec a universally used microprocessor than to create a custom one for each camera line. And, an inexpensive product to make and sell.

The engineering/marketing rationale for using a noisy preamplifier chip is probably that, historically, so few people who purchased "hybrid" video/still cameras ever ended up shooting video, and the ones that did probably didn't use external microphones. Few would complain about the sound and, if they did complain then customer service could tell them that while it may affect monitoring it would not have an effect on the sound being recorded. Everyone saves money, no sound quality on the video files gets sabotaged.

But, of course, the product manufacturers omit any caveats about monitoring performance and so the urban legends are born and spread. And the legend in our industry is how awful the audio is on our cameras.

My experience reminds me to test, test, test and not to rely on urban legends.

I'll tell you right now that the audio I get from the Zoom H5 or the Tascam DR60ii is better than the audio I get from the RX10iii but in the same breath we are talking about 88 versus 85 and not 95 versus 42. You can do good work with the built in audio circuits of most current Sony and Panasonic cameras. I had good luck, audio-wise, with my Nikons as well. It's more a question of maximizing every step of technique than it is searching for the one "magic" solution.

Do your own tests. Listen to the output of a good system. Listen to the way it sounds through a set of monitor speakers, or through good headphones plugged into a high quality playback source. Don't blame your camera right off the bat.

Sunday. Walk with a Camera. Good exercise. Nice antidote for sitting around staring at a screen for most of the week.

I finally had some free time this weekend to get out and try the fz2500 in some freeform shooting. I made the same rookie mistakes many people make with a new camera. I lost a good shot because my nose touched my touchscreen and moved the AF cursor over to one side. Couldn't figure out for a few seconds why the nice young lady directly in front of my camera would not come into focus. I put the camera in "A" priority and shot, blithely unaware, for the better part of an hour never checking the shutter speed the camera was setting. Ooops! All of the moving/action/street scenes were recorded at 1/80th of a second. Too bad good image stabilization can't save photographers who don't pay attention to subject motion blur.... And then I started processing some of the images shot later in the evening and, of course, I was having so much fun shooting and weaving in and out of the enormous SXSW crowds on Sixth St. that I never bothered to check the ISO, and I have to confess; this camera gets a bit noisy at ISO 800. More so at 1600. 

Of course the noise reduction kicked in and I had the factory preset engaged. Hello water color detail at 100%. Of course I know better. I should have been in control of the ISO. I should have set a faster shutter speed. I should have fine tuned the noise reduction for the Jpeg setting. But in reality I didn't  care. I was out walking on a beautiful day and I had a camera in my hand. The stuff I was watching right in from of my face was a hell of a lot better than anything I see on Netflix or Network. In addition to endless action, drama and comedy you get a couple more dimensions of sensory candy that no (current) screen gives you. The smell of cigarettes and perfume, and sausages sizzling over a butane flame; all mixed in with the smell of the disinfectant the bars use to clean. The yeasty smell of spilled beer and the glorious aroma of pizzas cooking all over the place.

You also get multi-layered sound. Dialogue. Chanting. Rapping. Flirting. Clapping. Sirens. More flirting. Verbal posturing. Different music blasting through portable speakers every ten feet or so. A guy playing an old, upright piano at the corner of Congress and 4th. More sirens. 

You walk in and out of shadows. You keep one eye peeled on the screaming homeless person wrapped in blankets like a Caesar's toga even though it's 85 degrees outside. 

The camera gave me a tertiary reason to be there but my real goal was just to sample.....the multitude. To see what was making this little corner of Austin tick on this particular day. To slip into the crowd and walk with the flow.  And then, like a hungry homing pigeon, disengaging and "flying" toward  my car, parked two miles away. And then home to the quiet and serenity of affluent suburbia. And a decent restaurant. Cameras are fun. But they are largely meaningless if you don't have something interesting to put in front of them...

Is all social exchange about the smartphone now?

I met a student. I think his name was Justin. He was shooting a project with this 4x5 field camera. He was smart and engaging. He knew all about Richard Avedon. His camera was on a rickety tripod. If he remembers to get in touch with me I have an extra Benro tripod that I'd be happy to pass along to him. It would be better than the skinny Manfrotto the school loaned him....

Google took a beautiful and iconic building downtown and did everything in their power to make it fucking boring. Not swearing, really, it's a technical, architectural term.

At the W Hotel.

A few more thoughts about super "bridge" cameras and why they make me smile.

People are slow to adapt to change. They hold onto ideas that have lost their deep roots and reject innovation because it comes in a form that they don't recognize; or reject it because of anachronistic prejudice. It's kind of dangerous because change is accelerating at a rate that's so fast we can barely recognize what exists today and few can imagine the change and innovation that will happen by next year. Who, in 2005, would have imagined that Nikon and Canon's biggest challenge

A funny thing happened in the kitchen on my way to my next photo assignment.

Temporary billboards for SXSW.

We had a nice photo assignment booked for today. One of my healthcare clients sent me a box full of products last week and we'd made arrangements to meet at my place at 9:00 am this morning to start shooting 25 thingies on white backgrounds.

Here's what I do when a day long assignment like this comes up: After we confirm the day, and get a good idea of what we're going to shoot, I dive into how I'm going to shoot. None of the products move and none of the products needed to be shown on live models so I knew I'd be safe lighting everything with LED lights. I also knew that we'd be shooting with a longer focal length and not with wide angles so after figuring out the distance of the object to the background, as well as the maximum object size I knew I could shoot everything with a 50 inch wide, white seamless paper backdrop in the background and I built out from there.

Here's the tricky part of the shoot: The products are generally black. They are things like back braces and neck braces and things that are generally worn by patients recovering from things like accidents and back surgeries. So, all of the objects are either black or gray and black. The clients has a style established and it consists of shooting these products on shiny, white, featureless mannequins. So, deep black products on shiny white mannequins against white backgrounds. Got it.

Shoots like this mostly mean that you need to control the light on the background separately from the lighting on the product. Usually, I would make the background one third of a stop hotter than the light on the foreground but since I needed to do clipping paths of the shiny, white mannequin and the product I couldn't blow out the background to put white or I'd never stand a chance in cutting out those backgrounds. Where would the edge be? I wanted the mannequins to have some detail in the whites but I also wanted there to be good detail in the deep black material the products were made of. I decided to pull down the exposure on the background to keep a good edge between the background and the foreground. This would help give me an edge to cut against without adding too many wraparound highlight on the main subject.

To evenly light the background I used two Aputure LightStorm LS-1/2 lights, set in vertical orientations, to either side. I used them far enough from the background to give me an even wash of light and used barn doors made of BlackWrap (tm) to block any direct light from hitting my subject. A quick incident meter reading let me know that if I wanted f11 @ 1/4 second, ISO 100 on my main subject I would need to dial the background lights down to 60% each. The LS-1/2s are controllable from 10% 5o 100% in single digit increments so no problem there.

I lit my main subject (the mannequin with the product applied) with two LightStorm LS-1S lights shining through diffusion material on Chimera 48 inch ENG panels. The panels were set 45 degrees to each side and fairly close (about two and a half feet from the subject). This allowed me to move the actual lighting instruments back to make the light spread on the panels more even across the surface. When I wanted one light to take precedence in the lighting scheme I could bring that light in closer, creating a bright spot in the center of the panel fabric which made the light brighter overall and contrastier (since the size of the light relative to the subject becomes smaller). This gave me more control and quicker control that I would have had using an umbrella or soft box.

Finally, I used a small Aputure Amaran portable light panel just in front and below the camera position to provide fill into specific areas. This worked to help me control small shadows adjacent to the products without having to increase the overall illumination.

I used a Sony A7Rii on a very big Benro tripod for the photographs. I used it in its full on raw mode; 42 megapixels of uncompressed pixel happiness. This might seem to be overkill for a photograph destined for a catalogue or a small inset image in a brochure but the extra resolution and detail comes in handy when one is making finicky clipping paths.

I used the trusty and sharp, 70-200mm f4 G series zoom lens for nearly every shot. Its well controlled flare characteristics and high overall sharpness make it a perfect choice when you don't need a lot of close-in magnification or wide angle coverage. Every Sony shooter should consider this lens as part of their toolkit. Boring but close to perfect.

There were several shots that needed to be made with much higher magnification and in these cases I used the Rokinon 100mm f2.8 macro lens. On one shot which needed deep depth of field I stopped down to f16.5 and, on 100% examination, was pleased with the results!

I had three guests in the studio for the duration of the shoot. One was the product manager, one was the graphic designer for the company and the third was the advertising and marketing coordinator.

When I have guests in the studio I always make an effort to keep them happily hydrated and fed. We offered them five different kinds of energy bars, whole wheat croissants with the option of adding peanut butter and blueberry preserves, fresh apples and bananas as well as yogurt. Hell, if someone had come really hungry I would gladly have fired up the range and made them a pan of migas. Or huevos rancheros.

We have a big Keurig on the counter and lots of coffee brands to choose from. Sparkling water, sparking water with lime, and still water.

We have a guest share for the Wi-Fi network as well. It's great to work at the home base because I have all the tools and modifiers I'd ever want immediately at hand and, when we hit a spot where styling takes time, I can head into the house and check on Studio Dog.

But every once in a while the photo gods love to toss a wrench in the works. Just before hitting the rack last night I was washing some pots and pans in the kitchen and the sink began to back up. Wouldn't drain! I tried a plunger and boiling water and finally (grumbling) pulled on my shoes and headed to the grocery store to buy a bottle of Liquid Plumber. I followed the instructions and.....still no joy.

I let everything sit until this morning. I guess I was expecting that time and the Liquid Plumber would do the trick, if I was patient. I headed to the kitchen and the sink had drained. I tried running some water before turning on the dishwasher and creating a catastrophic emergency (you can see how tough life can be for us photographers....)

Still no joy as the sink filled up again and refused to drain.

Didn't much matter in the long run. We shot photographs. We made coffee. We ate croissants. We shot more photographs. The only thing different is that instead of rinsing coffee cups as we went along I had to round them all up after the shoot.

One thing I should mention that really helps in studio still life shoots is the use of a monitor tethered to the camera. I hate tethering to laptops or desktops. I want the screen close to the camera and moveable. I used a clamp on the tripod leg to hold a small (7 inch ) monitor a couple of inches to the left of the camera. This gave the product manager and graphic designer constant access to either the preview of the shot or a review of the shot. It made for an efficient feedback chain. I loved having the live histogram and all of the camera info right there on a bigger screen.

When we finished the shoot it was about 1:30pm. No one wanted to go back to work so we headed over to my favorite Chinese restaurant for a late lunch. Never a better time to get to know your clients better than over lunch.

When I got back home Studio Dog was waiting by the door and helped me decide which plumbing company to call. She must know her stuff because we had a plumber here in less than an hour and the sink is righteous once more. Old cast iron pipes. Some oxidation. Some clog somewhere.

Now everything is once more right with the world and it's time to download those files and to sit down and start working on clipping paths. I've spent too much time thinking about the kitchen for the last 24 hours. I think that means Belinda and I should head out to dinner tonight. Gotta be able to read the signs.

The monitor is now pretty much mandatory for shoots where art directors or product managers are attending. The ability to share images without slowing down the shoot is good. It's quicker and easier to use an HDMI monitor, originally purchased for video production, than to go the fully tethered route. A benefit beyond good seeing and sharing is that running the monitor shuts off the screens in the camera and vastly increases the run time for the camera batteries. Important for some stuff. Very useful when doing long form video.

Nothing fancy here. Just a Super Clamp attached to one of the tripod legs, anchoring an arm that allows me to position the monitor where I can get the most use out of it. We get much use out of Super Clamps and Grip Heads. Everybody should have a bag full. (We don't sell them...). 

I use "nets" for lighting control. Nothing's better than pulling unwanted light off a subject without introducing hard edged shadows, etc. I used this net to pull light off the shoulder of the shiny, white mannequin we had in the studio earlier in the day. It's not in its "working position" for this photo...

While I am happy to work on various locations nothing really beats working at home base. My 600 square foot studio/office is about ten steps from the front door of our house; which makes the daily commute very manageable. It's fun to be able to reach into a bag and grab three or four extension cords. Reach into another bag for an assortment of microphones. Turn around and grab five or six different rolls of tape off a shelf. Etc.  It's also convenient to be able to walk into the house and check on Studio Dog. She always appreciates a visit and some time outside.  

Above is an itty-bitty Aputure Amaran LED light. Amazingly, it matches the color spectrum of my much more expensive lights. It's great to be able to grab a little, battery powered light and reduce a shadow in a single spot --- instead of having to make more "global" corrections. 

A Newly Published Work produced in January. Shown here.

Karen Roy Talks About the Ottobock OBSS Chair Back from Kirk Tuck on Vimeo.

On a cold, clear day in January Ben and I had the opportunity to do an interview with Karen Roy for our client, Ottobock. I'll have Karen tell her story in the video.

Ben and I got up early and packed the car for the half hour trip to Georgetown, Texas where we would set up and be ready for a short interview in a private home. My focus early on was to set up and light for lots of b-roll (most of which we ended up not using...). Ben was on the second camera and he was getting details (which we did end up using...).

The main interview footage was done with a Sony a6300 camera recording 1080p. The interview was lit with three Aputure LightStorm LED panels and the audio was provided by an Audio Technica AT835b microphone.

We picked up additional video in a nearby park and at the offices of our client.

Since the day was bright and sunny I was happy I had thought to bring variable neutral density filters for both cameras/lenses.

While it might seem that Karen is miraculously delivering a perfectly crafted statement her interview is actually made up of audio (and video) from about nine or ten different clips. And some of the clips are interwoven in a different order than which they were recorded.

Ben handled the editing for the project. It was the last one he worked on before heading to Seoul, S. Korea for his long semester abroad.

For the kinds of projects I do I think the perfect crew size (including myself) is three. A first camera, a second camera and a sound person. That gives us plenty of hands for moving gear around as well as lighting in the minimalist tradition. More crew makes for more logistical moving parts. I like to shoot and move a lot in a day and I love a very small crew who can move with me without having to give them detailed instructions.

I'm sure that on bigger projects every crew member adds to the efficiency but on smaller, more intimate jobs, a larger crew is just more friction.

This is the last of the videos I'll share for a while as every video shared seems to drop readership of the blog by about 25%. At the rate we're going we'll be into negative numbers by the next three shares.

I guess I'll just go back to the old "Nikon Versus Canon!!!" & "DSLR Versus Mirrorless" routines. People never seem to get enough of that. Or maybe I'll explain how to use fill flash in sunlight for the thousandth time. That seems like a mystery that never gets solved....oh well.