Fifty Millimeters. The Glorious Optics of Yesterday.

Ben Tuck.  Post Swim.  Nikon 50mm 1.2 ais.

My first camera was a Canon QL17 which sported a reasonably good 40mm lens.  It was soon replaced by a Canon TX SLR camera with a Canon 50mm 1.8 lens that seemed to remain locked on the front of my camera for most of its usable life.

When I look through my current equipment I find that I have hoarded a large number of normal lenses including:  Nikon's manual focus 50mm 1.4 and 1.8 lenses, two manual focus Micro lenses (both 55mm),  Nikon's auto focus 50mm 1.4 and 1.8 lenses, a Leica 50mm Summicron and 50mm Summilux for the M cameras and assorted "normal" focal lengths for the Olympus E-1 and the ancient line of Olympus Pen "half frame" film cameras.  I won't even start to recount the number of normal lenses I have for medium format cameras.

All this begs the question, "why?"  Well, first of all, every one of the normal focal length lenses is a superior performer.  One stop down from wide open every single one of them starts to really shine when it comes to sharpness, contrast and intangibles.  Two stops down and they beat every zoom lens on the market.  (We can argue forever about the new top zooms from Nikon).  They sit beautifully on the cameras instead of sticking out like some Freudian flagpole. This enhances the cameras shooting profile and makes the whole ensemble less intimidating.

But all of this would be moot if the angle of view wasn't so compelling.  I love the angle of view that a normal lens gives you.  Shot correctly it can seem wide or narrow.  Shot close at near wide open apertures the 50mm can give you incredibly shallow depth of field as in my shot of Ben.  But the real bottom line is that this is a focal length that matches my residual vision. Meaning that if I distilled everything else out of a shot this is what would be left.  

Those of you who are amateur mental health care professionals will probably wonder what motivates me to own so many different iterations of the 50mm.  Clinically, you might just go with exaggerated fear of loss but in reality I think it's the idea of being like a painter and having multiple brushes, each of which provides a different and distinguishable nuance to the canvas. The 50 1.2 Nikon does shallow depth of field with a sharp "core" better than anything out there.

The 50mm MF 1.8 Nikon does great sharpness across the entire geometry of a full frame better than any of its brethren (except for a few macros), while the Summilux does exquisitely sharp center with soft, happy, mellow edges better than anything else.  Couple that with a little rangefinder focusing and you've got and incredible package.  I bought the normal autofocus lenses around the time when the only cameras you could get from Nikon and Fuji were cropped frames with smaller viewfinders which impeded the focusing of fast manual lenses and I hold on to them because I find the Nikon D300 and the FujiFilm S5 Pro to be really spectacular cameras for different uses.

And, of course the obvious advantage of the fast 50's is their light gathering capability.  A sharp fast lens wide open can be two stop faster than the best zooms.  That equals two full shutter speeds of hand-holdability and action stopping!  Just like having VR in every lens.

The sweetest thing of all for a Nikon shooter like myself (edit: now a Canon shooter!!!)(newer edit: now a Sony photographer)  is that the current generation of Nikon digital cameras, like the D3, D3x, D700 and D300 actually make corrections for the short coming of the lenses attached to them.  I have found the 50mm 1.2 to be much improved in its performance with these four cameras.  The other lenses seem sharper and contrastier as well. One of my favorite new combinations is the old Nikon F4s (film camera) with the new Nikon 60mm Micro AFS.  The lens is impressive on digital cameras and even more impressive on the old film camera.  The combination drives me to shoot more film just so I can marvel at how well it all works together.

Even though I have lots and lot of 50's and related focal lengths I would say that my total financial investment is less than $2,000 or about the price of one 14-24mm Nikon Zoom lens. If great wide angle work is your interest you really only have one compelling choice.  I don't see that way and I'm thrilled to be able to match my optic to my vision of the moment.  I'm just about to buy the new Nikon 50 1.4  AFS just for its center core sharpness.  Stay tuned and I'll get a nice review of its performance together.

Finally, a friend really liked a quote I threw out on his discussion site the other day.  I want to share it with you:

"There is no real magic in photography, just the sloppy intersection of physics and art."

Kirk Tuck,  March 2009

Please help me spread the word about this blog.  I'd really like to open the dialogue to as many people as we can.

See more work:   Kirk Tuck's Commercial Website/An adventure in iWeb

Best, Kirk

Short Term Bleak. Long term unknowable.

I have some friends who claim to have lost half their money in the collapse of the stock market. I try in vain to remind them that it's just paper losses until they actually sell off the stocks and take the loss.  We've heard much about the "lost decade" in Japan and I worry that we're about to have our own period of loss but in a different way.  While the Japanese were paralyzed by their inability to move spending and wealth building ahead we are losing the idea that the arts matter.  That Art matters.  That there is more to life than profit and loss.  We are abandoning the liberal arts in an ultimately failed attempt to monetize every facet of our lives.

I've been in the photography business in one way or another for nearly thirty years.  I've run a freelance photography business for over twenty years.  And I've lived through four or five nasty recessions.  But I've never seen the overwhelming fear mongering and terror that this downturn has brought.  A day doesn't go by that a colleague doesn't call to ask if I want to buy some of their equipment.  To ask if things are slow for me too.  To ask if I've seen any glimmers of hope. All I can tell them is that the markets have always seemed cyclical to me and that perhaps in a handful of months, at the most a year, all this will pass and life will go on.

And down deep I believe it.  I believe that so much of what's gone wrong with the economic machine is just abstraction.  The profits didn't exist so the losses can't exist.  I know it is naive but I think we should stop right where we are and reset the whole machine just the way we would reset a laptop computer.  Whatever you have right now is what you start over with.  No one gets bailed out but everyone gets three square meals a day and shelter.  I don't want to bail out billionaires but I don't want to be callous to the victims who have no resources.

The most important thing photographers can do in this time is to get out of their studios and keep working.  "What? Work without clients?"  Absolutely.  Work to stay engaged.  Work to provide a continuing discipline of eye/hand coordination, but most importantly work to create the new body of work that will push you into the next upcycle with a fresh vision and a fresh offering.

I included a photo of Austin's Barton Springs Pool as a testimony to longevity and endurance. The city has grown up all around the pool and yet it still flows down to the Colorado River every minute of every hour of every day.  Our resolve and vision should be like that stream.  When confronted by a boulder we'll never have the sheer power to move it aside but we can keep our fluid agility and sweep around the boulder and by doing so continue our journey uninterrupted.

I understand today that the photography I did for corporations before the fourth quarter of last year will never return in the same way just as the water in streams is never the same water as that which passed the day before.  And, as in a science fiction movie, I understand that my commercial survival hinges upon a hyper accelerated evolution into new markets and new ways of selling.  But all the things I hold dear; swimming in clear, clean water,  helping Ben with his homework, listening to beautiful music, being loved and loving people are not contingent on my financial success or the return of the traditional photo business.  I am a person first and a photographer second and as long as I don't confuse what I do for who I am I will be happy.

Examine the roots of your happiness and understand that everything comes with two opposing forces.  Lack of business means more free time.  Free time means, potentially, more time to do the art you always wanted to do.  Life is weird and we only get to do it once.  If we focus on the stock market we invite our own pain.  If we focus on a beautiful subject we are rewarded with a connection to beauty and a connection to art.  What price to put on that?

Go Fly a Kite.

This is a photograph of me flying a kite at the Zilker Park Kite Festival in Austin, Texas.  ©2009 Ben Tuck.

The last week seemed to be a train wreck as far as the economy goes.  I sat at my desk trying to knock out more copy for my book on lighting equipment while keeping a window open on my desktop for Google News.

I watched the Dow spaz down a couple hundred points.  I heard "experts" predict the collapse of civilization as we know it, precipitated by the the decline and fall of the American Empire.  And then it dawned on me.  I had fallen into the trap of reading about life instead of living it.  I was listening to experts who developed their expertise in the "bricks and mortar" days.  They understood manufacturing and traditional demand models but something became clear to me.  The experts really don't understand the post 1999 economy any better than the man in the street and probably not nearly as well as the under thirty year old in the streets.

What do I mean?  Well, in the last downturn back in 2001-02 we all waited for the computer manufacturers like Dell and HP to rescue the economy by building and innovating our way out. But it didn't happen that way.  It was the ascendency of Google and Amazon and Ebay that rode in like white knights to get things moving again.  Business models that weren't truly understood by traditional investors were instrumental in building the new economy's momentun.

Now all traditional eyes are on GM and Chrystler and Dell, Inc. but the analysts are missing it again.  It's the Twitters and Facebooks and  some new technologies that I haven't even heard of yet (but which are well known to a younger generation) that are already laying the foundation for two things:  An increasing global interconnection and future prosperity.  YouTube didn't exist in 2002 but it may be more important than cable TV right now.  The intersection of computing and entertainment programming is almost complete.  Everything will change and the people who understand the new paradigm will benefit in the short term.

What does this have to do with photography?  Well, here it is in a nutshell:  The emerging market for images is young and totally wired.  My son spends more time with his iPod Touch than he does watching TV or cruising the web on his laptop.  His information comes from a loosely gathered network of "Touch Available" media that includes news feeds, online games, constant e-mails and more.  He's never going to be a traditional newspaper customer.  He's never going to follow network prime time television.  He's skewing the market for advertising messages more and more to the web.

So, we traditional photographers have been chasing more and more megapixels in our cameras with the rationalization that astute customers can surely see and value the improvement.  No.  It's not true because it's not relevant.  We're busy asking the wrong questions.  There's a new trend and it's all about speed and audience relevance and we traditional photographers may be on the wrong side of the equation.  Like traditional economists in an untraditional economy.

   ©2009 Ben Tuck.  Kirk Tuck with Kite.

The trend is diffusion into the market with as few barriers as possible.  It's not nearly as important to deliver the highest degree of technical complexity as it is to have images totally informed by the media in which they will exist.  And tailored for the intended audience.

Newspapers are dying off like plague victims.  The photographers who are suddenly set adrift have many choices including trying to find another newspaper at which to work or shifting their focus to a new target market.  They might find it easier to find new markets for their images than finding new continuous employment.  In my field, corporate photography, clients have gone into deep freeze. I could look for new market sectors in which to try and duplicate my past successes or I can look for new markets for my skills.

As the photography markets fragment I know I'll have to do more diverse kinds of photography and I will have to monetize my other skills sets.  As my friends know, I am hard at work on a fourth book and two previously written books will hit the market this year.  But that's not enough to offset the loss of income from corporate imaging.  I will also figure out how to market my marketing skills to aid smaller companies by providing a full production service to them.  I will need to teach workshops and have already contracted to do so this summer.  Finally, I'll take a chance on the Fine Arts market this year.

The hard part is trying to service each of these individual business units while keeping my vision uniform and fun.  But as long as I proceed an organic way, one business idea supporting the others rather than in opposition to each other, I think I'll be fine.  What won't work is trying to go back to the way things were.  Clients don't want a return to the uncertainty of the film days nor do they want to go back to a pricing model that they just don't understand.  Going forward, that will be photographers' biggest challenge.  How to align our financial needs with the position of clients who seem to have all the advantages.

The answer is in service, delivery, image differentiation and being able to rationally explain the value proposition of original imagery.  I've been reading Beckwith's book, Selling the Invisible, and I think I get it.  We need to deliver what our clients need without regard to "state of the art", "best in class" or "cutting edge".  We need to make sure that the value proposition to the client is clear.  Here's an example.  Given enough time I can light a board room until it looks like a showpiece from Architectural Digest and, given enough time with a CEO I can move a shoot to the point where I get exactly the expression and body language I want.  With an unlimited budget and total access I can create the ultimate portrait (or at least I think I can) but, the reality of the marketplace is that my clients are generally not looking for the the kind of investment of time or money that was spent producing the shot of the Queen of England by Annie Leibovitz.

They'll have fixed budgets that might allow for a half day of lighting and prep followed by 20 to 30 minutes of their CEO's time.  Their question is not what I can do with unlimited resources but what I'll be able to reliably deliver with time and budget constraints.  That's the message we need to deliver to our clients:  We understand the difference between delivering a very good portrait and a perfect portrait.  Or product shot.  Or event coverage.

Okay, so what does all this have to do with kite flying on a Sunday afternoon?  Just that the world that currently surrounds me is not in disarray.  The sky is not currently falling in my zip code.  The sky is clear and blue.  Hundreds of families were out flying spectacular kites in a sixty degree, ten mile an hour breeze.  I do have work in front of me and money in the bank.  No matter how special "old school" economist think this particular recession is I know it will pass. In fact I think the economy will turn around by June and that all these scary unemployment numbers are trailing edge indicators of a recession that is almost over.

Flying a kite is all about hope and possibilities.  And faith.  Faith that your kite will find the right wind.  That your string won't become tangled.  That gravity will not defeat you today.  It's the same as running a business.  Keep your string untangled and your eyes on the kite and you'll have success.  Just being out with your kite is a success.

Final note:  Ben is taking a photography class at school.  We went out today to play with kites and cameras.  He took some great photos of dogs and kites.  He's taking photography in little bites.  He still thinks it is fun.

    ©2009 Ben Tuck.  Bulldog at Zilker Park, Austin.