Sunday. Nostalgia-rama

Teenage Benjamin, illuminated by the glow of his MacBook Pro.  Sitting in the dining room at sundown.  Taken with a Kodak SLR/n and an old Nikon 50mm 1.2.  ISO 320.

It's Sunday evening and it's been another week spent in the trenches of art.  As many of your know I usually try to put aside some time on Sundays to go out for a long walk in Austin's ever changing, ever growing downtown.  During this time I take photos for an audience of one:  Me.  And I don't really care if anyone else likes them because that's not the point of the excursion or the point of the photography.  The stroll is like walking meditation punctuated by anti-photos and photos that I would normally resist taking because I couldn't think of a rational market for them. And that, in itself, is even more reason to take them.  The images wouldn't resonate if something subconscious wasn't ticking away and tickling the alternate vision gland.

Everything about my photography seems to be a multi-track, multi dimensional process.  By that I mean that I'm drawn in a lot of different directions and tend to go backward and forward in assessments of gear and technique, subject matter and motivation.  2009 was the year of abandoning the traditional Nikon/Canon path and downsizing into Olympus gear, and more importantly, the micro four thirds gear. I've loved roaming the ranges with palm sized photo machines and snapping away with immediate feedback.  This afternoon I started to reach for a mini camera and I froze.  I knew I was pining for a taste of the old times.  Something big and brutal and manual.  A camera I would have to work at and beat into submission.  I opened some drawers and found just the right thing=the Kodak SLR/n and a Nikon 50mm 1.2.  When I purged the Nikon stuff last year ( I still remember how soulless the D700 was.....) I couldn't bear to send off the Kodak.  At some level I didn't want to let go of Kodak as a company and as a concept so interwoven in the lives of American photographers.  And no one who's ever used the 50mm 1.2 would willingly send it away.

Here's the deal with the Kodak SLR/n and the Nikon 50mm 1.2:  You get the right format, frame and focal length with the combo.  You get a very high res camera.  In fact, I'm planning to test it next to a Canon 5D Mk2 to see which one is really sharper.....Canon fans, get out your handerchiefs.  There may be tears......  But you get a combo that has to be manually focused, exposure set manually and there will be a total reliance on the histogram because the tiny screen is beyond useless for checking quality and exposure.

A downtown landscape punctuated by a vine that's captured a telephone pole.  Exposure calculated by conjecture.  Focus by zone and composition by chaos.  SLR/n+50mm

Sounded perfect to me, so I grabbed the combo, a couple batteries and an extra memory card and headed out the door.  I remembered that manually focused cameras can be "set once/shoot often" cameras and started to forget about the center autofocus sensor reality and started filling frame any damn way I wanted to.  I also remembered that, in full sun you can, "meter once/shoot often" so I metered once and stopped worrying about it. So, to recap:  No worries about focus, no worries about exposure.  All that leaves is:  see picture, compose picture, shoot picture.  Wow!  So simple and so straightforward.  Makes photos fun again.

The vampire power plant.  Shut down years ago, it just won't go away.  The camera was already set for the exposure and focus, all I had to do was lift it to my eye and compose.  How easy is that?

The walking was the part that showed some intentionality.

 I headed downtown in the high performance (satire intended here) Honda Element.  At first the total manual experience was frustrating and mind occupying but then, at a certain juncture, I stopped caring about whether or not the images turned out as turned my attention to the walking and the seeing.

This is the modernist awning above David Garrido's restaurant, downtown. 

It was cool not to care.  It's not that I didn't care, I just didn't have a dog in the hunt as it related to the final output.  I was playing scales, practicing stroke drills, working on the technique, screwing off, snapping at random.  The more playful I was the more fun I had.  The less I cared about the outcome the more I cared about the experience. And what I see is that the camera has less and less significance in the photography and my state of mind has more and more significance in the photography.

Let's face it, the lens is forty year old technology and the camera, in digital chronology, is an ancient relic.  And yet, in every instance, they were more than adequate for the tasks at hand.  The colors are no better or worse than my last year's Nikon or my this year's Olympus.  The difference is the quantity of my engagement.

Just love that Norwood Tower in the middle distance.  Can you believe that one exposure setting and one focus point could last you on an entire two hour walk through downtown?  Well I did cheat by changing it once or twice when walking through some open shade.  But those weren't the photos my brain wanted.

If you've just sunk thousands of dollars or Euro's into some topflight gear and now you have the post cognitive dissonance because you shot with it in the front yard and it did not transform your every glance and gesture into a higher level of fine art, may I make a suggestion?  Put the damn miracle machine in manual everything, stop worrying about the ultimate image quality and then hit the streets and walk around until your eyes engage your mind in some sort of fun game.  Then shoot only what interest you and you alone.  No thought for your spouse's approval or how you think the image will play on some website.  And you'l be amazed that half the fun is just being by yourself, setting your own direction and pleasing yourself.  It's the value of less automatic equipment.  The more manual gear actually engages you in a much more immersive way that is much less about showing off and much more about being happy.  Or I could just be totally full of shit and maybe just needed a nice walk.....Whichever, it was a fun tromp through downtown.  Loving the character of the old Kodak.  Maybe I'll get some sort of ectoskeletal amplifier suit and drag out the Kodak DCS 760 after this............

Whatever you do for a living during the week be sure to spend the time appreciating the present rather than being fixated on a future that might not exist.  If the sun is shining and hitting a building or landscape in just the right way, shoot it now----don't come back later and hope is will all be the same.  It's never the same.  Just live now.  It's the most fun.

I had three epiphanies today:  I love coffee.  Anxiety is contagious.  Art is really totally about trying to bring order out of chaos.

Short post about a product that I really like...

 a one hundred dollar, dimmable, daylight balanced LED light source.

When I was writing my book on lighting equipment I wanted to touch on everything that was available to photographers without stepping into the insanely expensive and highly specialized gear.  I reviewed an LED light from a company called, LitePanels.  The product I reviewed is called a Micro and you can see it on there website, here.  It was designed, initially, for use on camcorders and even though the output isn't really high it does provide a nice kick of front light that helps most autofocus cameras provide faster and better focus lock on.  At the time the light was priced at $265 and had a run time of 1.5 hours.  At the time I was a bit conflicted.  I felt that it was important to mention the product and the category because it seems that LED lighting is destined to take over the continuous lighting crown from both florescent and tungsten fixtures.  The benefits of LED's are: consistency, low energy use and color matching.

So, fast forward to a couple of weeks ago.  I head over to Precision Camera to buy some memory cards and look at lenses.  I'm an addict.....what can I say?  Since I've recently redeveloped and interest in video I stroll over to the case that holds their video cameras, microphones, faux Steadicam rigs and portable audio recorders.  There on one shelf is the LitePanels Micro Pro LED light.  Right next to it, in a bigger box is the ProMaster 42LED light.  I have a sales person pull one off the shelf so I can check it out.  It's got more LED's than the LightPanels,  takes 4 double "A's",  comes with an A/C converter, has a control to reduce power and seems to work like a charm.  The kicker is the price tag.  It's $99.00.  It quickly became and impulse purchase and I'm glad it did.  The next week I did a job for a shelter magazine.  We were doing an article on shopping locally and we were shooting in a famous, local bookstore.  I was using my friend, Ann as a model (she's the ultimate quasi-urban, soccer mom, in shape, upscale, thirty to forty something woman) and we're shooting available light under ceiling mounted industrial florescent fixtures.  I think there's too much top light and that we're getting raccoon eyes.  I'm shooting wide open at ISO 400 and I reach into the camera bag and pull out the ProMaster 42LED.  At half power from six feet away it puts in just enough fill light to clean up the shadows and add a bit of pop to the scene.  I could have used it right on top of the camera and dialed it down until the fill was subtle and shadowless but I like just putting it on a neighboring table in the bookstore's cafe and letting it mix in.

Amazingly, the flo's and the LED weren't that far apart in color temp.  The RAW files cleaned right up in Capture One.  Since then I've tucked the light into my Domke bag just in case.  If I don't use it in the shoot I sometimes end up using it as a glorified flashlight.

The Pro's?  Cheap, light, bright, doesn't weigh much,  good battery life, A/C adapter, bigger light source than the competitors,  a shoe foot that lets you mount it directly on your camera,  and able to be powered by double "A's".

The Con's?  It's cheaply made.  All plastic.  The battery doors feel flimsy and uncertain.  The color match to daylight could be better.

The bonus points?  It comes with a plastic or resin filter that fits over the front of the light, diffuses it a bit and converts the light source from "daylight" to real tungsten.

Here's what it really looks like:

Mounted on top of a Kodak DCS SLR/n.  Shot in my studio with a little, Olympus EPL, Panasonic 20mm 1.7, lit with an Elinchrom Ranger RX Speed pack thru one head into a 60 inch Octabank.


What would I use if for?  A little kiss of fill light in an available light portrait just about anywhere.  Or even as just an "eyelight" to add some sparkle to a model's eyes.

After I took the first shot with the panel on the Kodak camera I took the ProMaster LED42 off the Kodak and put it on the Olympus Pen EPL and used it as a direct light for this image.  ISO 800, f5.6 @ 1/60th (approx).  The little camera locked on quick.


If you are a Canon 5D mk2 or Nikon D3s user this may be all the light you need for Stygian weddings, breaking news and wacky studio shots.  It's so easy to set up, doesn't need to be sync'd and works at all shutter speeds.  If you own fast glass, this is your "gild the lily" light for available light situations that need a touch more control.

Here's what it looks like raw.

And here I've just laid the tungsten filter on top.  There are two screws that hold the filter in place on the front.  I just wanted you to see what the filter actually looked like so I didn't bother to engage the screws.


The bottom line?  I've spent more on a nice lunch with a client.  It's handy in the back of a camera bag and even handier when shooting quasi-available light video.  All lighting situations can use a helping hand.  I've been wishing for a light like this since the latter film days.  Now I have it and I can't wait to use it on more and more projects.

My next project is to shoot executives in a data center.  I'm scheduled to to it this coming tuesday.  We'll be in 60,000 square feet of florescent space.  All I really need is a little touch of fill.  I want the extensive square footage of the facility to show.  I'll go to ISO 800 on a camera with great high ISO (haven't decided which one yet.....) and then fill in with a couple of these behind a bit of Rosco diffusion material.  I'll be scouting on monday and I'll take one of these along as well as a few strengths of plus green filtration and try to work out a very slim filter pack to match up all the light sources.  If I can pull it off I may have found the "Holy Grail" of indoor fill light augmentation for a hundred bucks and a handful of alkaline batteries.  Now that is Minimalism.

Half frame mania. Starring the 150.

This is the rig.  The EPL1 with the Pen (film) 150mm f4.  I got a call from my friend, Keith, asking me to meet for lunch and knowing that he's into the new Olympus Pen cameras I looked through one of the drawers in my equipment cabinet and pulled out a lens to share with him.  I'm not sure the exact year I got my hands on this beauty.....probably in the mid-1980's....but the glass is incredibly clean and the lens looks like it's never been on a camera.  After lunch we headed out to a local museum to play around with out respective cameras.  He brought a very serious Nikon D3x with one of the Nikon Shift lenses and I played the eccentric outsider, bringing the above rig and popping a 38mm f1.8 Pen (film) lens in my pocket.

One of the amazing things about the whole micro four thirds revolution, as presented by Panasonic and Olympus, is the very short distance from the lens mount flange to the sensor in the camera bodies.  This allows people to make adapters for just about any lens from any maker whose lens was designed for a deeper distance between flange and film or flange and silicon.  There are currently adapters that will allow you to use Nikon, Canon, Contax G, Contax N, Leica M, Leica R, Olympus e series and OM series and Pentax K mount lensesFotodiox Lens Mount Adapter, Olympus PEN F Lens to Micro 4/3 Four Thirds System Camera Mount Adapter, Olympus PEN E-P1, PEN E-P2, PEN E-PL1, Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF1, GH1, G1, G2, without restriction on the the EP series and the G series cameras.  I originally bought into the new Pen system just so I could use my old Pen film lenses.

So here's my Pen to Pen adapter ring.  It's a whopping $60, which I think is pretty fair given the limited market and the machining required.  When I ordered the adapter ring I didn't have high hopes for the lens performance and I admit I proceeded out of nostalgia more than common sense.  I figured that the normal focal lengths would be pretty good but I though even those would struggle given all the advances that have occurred in lens coatings, CNC machining, optical resins and other cool, technical stuff.  I thought the longer lenses would especially show their age given the advances in ED glass and other tech.  I'll admit that I brought the 150mm along to lunch to tweak my friend given our usual repartee about the sheer poundage of gear he sometimes schlepps around.  After all, the 150mm Pen lens is the equivalent of a 300mm Nikon at 1/5th the size and weight.

A size comparison.  The 38mm Pen versus the Nikkor 50mm 1.2 with its e system conversion adapter.

After a great lunch we headed off to shoot for an hour or so and to compare notes about the new 24mm Nikon TS lens, mounted on a D3x and playing with live view.  Keith is more diligent than I so he took the lead and set up some interesting test shots.  I stumbled around and played with the EPL and the Pen 150.  When I started chimping my shots on the back screen I changed my mind about the older lenses.  

This is an interesting lens.  It's a 50mm to 90mm f3.5 (constant aperture) zoom.  Stop it down to 5.6 and it's really very good.  (above).

We love to talk about pocketable cameras but this is a seriously pocketable 20mm f3.5.  You could actually (but uncomfortably) have a three lens system of old Pen lenses that could fit in the pocket of a pair of relaxed fit Dockers.  If you were willing to wear the Dockers.....

This was the first shot of the day.  I'm stuck in lunch rush traffic on Bee Caves Road.  I shoot some cars through my windshield with the 150 f4.  I wonder why that always freaks out the other drivers.......

So, here's Keith with the power rig:  D3x, Hoodman Loupe, 24mm TSe,  and a pretty cool cap.  He's the kind of photographer I admire because he's out testing his gear and getting comfortable with it BEFORE heading out to a job or off on the trip of a lifetime.  He gets that it takes time and practice to make the hands and brain work together to make great shots.  This is shot with the 150mm at about 15 feet, wide open.  We're in open shade.  I won't show you Keith's shots, that's bad marketing for me....

So while Keith is mastering the Scheimpflug law and the intricacies of lenses that can change their focal plane and move their nodal centers all around I was wandering around shooting things with bright colors.  All of these shots are done with the 150mm lens, handheld, using the A setting on the EPL.  I kept a close eye on the max shutter speed and now I officially want the next camera to go all the way to 1/8000th of a second!

I think you'll agree that the performance is pretty straight forward.  No huge flares, no softness and no weird color casts.  Considering how small and light this puppy is I can see including it in my standard, fine art travel package......

For those for whom the desire for Bokeh is all consuming I present the repeating background, out of focus objects at our widest aperture.  I burned sage as I was shooting this and contemplated sacrificing a small animal in order that the Ephors could divine the len's mystic Bokeh potential but I was short of goats and time.  I'll leave the interpretation of the optic's Bokeh to the more adept........  I like the light bulb.  It's shiny.

Of course,  all the rational critics on DPReview and other sites are absolutely correct:  It is impossible to throw the background of any photograph out of focus unless you are using a "full frame" camera!  I'll keep trying.  

I'm not sure why but there's one website where they review cameras and lenses and they always shoot pictures of gritty rocks to prove or disprove the attributes of their gear under test.  I guess little gritty stuff shows off sharpness or lack thereof.  All I know is that this is what I got, handheld, with the 150mm at its closest focusing distance.

As we left the museum, Keith pointed out these little flowers to me.  I thought I'd shoot em and see if I could drum up any Chromatic Abberation.  Any purple halos.  Any red or green outlines.  Nope.  Just flowers.  Hmmmmm.  Maybe this 40 year old lens is better than most of the consumer type zooms people are racing around with.  The downside of this lens?  It doesn't autofocus......

A request:  If you've read my fourth book:  Photographic Lighting Equipment, would you be kind enough to write a glowing, intriguing review over on Amazon.com?  Of course, if you didn't think it was a very good book you are probably far too busy with other stuff to write a review......

Thanks.  Kirk

Photographic Lighting Equipment: A Comprehensive Guide for Digital Photographers

A wonderfully succint thought about art.

Just saw this quote on a friend's site and thought it sums up everything very well.

"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift." Albert Einstein

Dream. A MidSummer's Night Dream.

I dragged myself back from my project in east Texas and I was amazed how beat up I felt from racking up the miles on endless stretches of Texas Interstate and the cobweb of secondary highways that criss-cross our great state.  I'd put my eye to camera in service of commerce and I was ready for some down time.  Some camera fun.  I went to Eeyore's Birthday party, which is usually my favorite raucous hippy event of the Spring but somehow  I got fixated on the idea of disappearing subtlety in modern culture and it soured me on the whole thing.  One photographer in particular, in a stereotypic black t-shirt, dripping sweat, was pushing and shoving to get through a throng of party-goers so he could cover the ongoing dancing with the feverish intensity of a journalist confronted with the unfolding assassination of a world leader.  Thrusting his long zoom into the faces of young girls and grizzled old men alike he became his own theater of the absurd.  In days past we would have picked the right tool for the job.  A Leica M?  A Nikon FM with a demure 50?  In modern times perhaps the stealthy but effective Olympus Pen EP-2.  Very understated.  There were perfectly well behaved photographers there as well........ But I digress.

I was looking for photo fun and while you don't always get what you want, if you try sometime you get what you need.  My fun arrived disguised as a request to have me shoot a dress rehearsal for a play in the park.

Every Summer the Austin Shakespeare Theater puts on a production in the Hillside Theater at Zilker Park.  There's something wonderfully timeless about watching the modern interpretation of Shakespeare's work while sitting under the stars on a soft Spring night.  A person you are fond of next to you on a blanket.  Maybe a bottle of wine tucked into your bag.  This year, to my delight, the production they selected was, A MidSummer's Night Dream.  But it was done in a wonderful, modern fashion, complete with a great band and plenty of Austin style panache and humor.

The rehearsal was Sunday evening.  We got off to a bad start with a fried lighting board but we soldiered on with good humor.  I shot the play with two cameras.  Both Olympus.  I used the e30 with both of the fast, f2 lenses.
The 35-100 f2 (which is the equivalent of a 70-200mm in 35mm circles) and the wonderfully underrated 14-35mm f2 (which mimics the standard 28-70 zooms for larger formats).

Around my neck I wore my little Olympus EPL Pen camera.  The newest and cheapest of the breed.  I left the little zoom and the cute Panasonic lenses at home and brought the old film Pen lens I've come to respect, the 60mm 1.5.  Yes, a real f 1.5 made specifically to cover this exact format.  I expect my copy was put together in the late 1960's or early 1970's and it's still as smooth as butter.  The look is different but I really love the whole experience of shooting with this combo.  I used the zooms when I needed specific angles of view and I used the Pen F lens when I felt the call.

If you look through the photos you'll be able to tell pretty quickly which camera they came from.  The ones from the Pen start with the letter sequence KEPL..... While the files from the e30 start with K3.

I used both the cameras at ISO's ranging from 800 to 1600 but I mostly stuck around 1600.  Can you see noise?  At 100% there is a bit of chroma noise.   But it's balanced by the way the two zooms bite in and the way the prime owns the frame.  The prime (60mm) falls apart pretty quickly when you start to pixel peep but I have a routine solution for that which might help anyone afflicted by similar noise problems. ...... don't look at stuff too close.  Life is noisy--it's okay.  I could probably fix the noise in PS but in final use no one will look beyond the image itself.  Some of us care about noise, but not the general public.  To them the photo either works or it doesn't.  In reality, it's only the special effects that get called out.  If you do fun work all they see is the fun.

This file came from the e30 with the 14-35mm f2 lens.  You might not be able to see it well enough on the web but it was shot at f2.5, almost wide open, and the actor on the right is wickedly sharp.  But even more fun, the color tones and the general tonality of the shot are perfect, even though this was shot as a jpeg under stage lights!


My technique is pretty simple.  I chose wide open or close to wide open apertures.  If one person was the important subject I used f2 or f2.5.  If the shot had more than one person and I wanted a wider zone of focus I would shift to 2.8 or at the most f3.5.  Nothing smaller than that.   It's a small production company and the lights aren't as plentiful or as powerful as the lights we use at Zach shoots but the e30 handled the focusing without breaking a sweat.  Most of the exposures were some variation on the theme of 2.5 at 1/125th @ 1600 ISO.   I use manual exposure and I spot meter.  I try to be aware of light changes.  I chimp when I think it's necessary----but never for expression, always for basic light values.

With the EPL I was stepping back about two decades to the time in which we shot dress rehearsals with Leica M cameras.  I used the EPL and the 60mm as a totally manual tool.  The exposure and the focus were Kirk Kontrolled©
But it was a bit of a cheat since I could watch the image on the EVF and fine tune as I shot.

Next time I'll bring two Pens and do the whole thing with vintage lenses because I really liked the look.  Sharp but not too contrasty.

The gear was secondary to the experience.  I was in front of a group of actors committed to their craft.  No contingent of photographers leaping onto the stage to capture the "news in a flash" moment.  We were all engaged in what we loved and the whole process flowed.  I went home at the evening with 10 gigs of files and a feeling of refreshment and invigoration.

We had a folder full of selections ready before lunchtime and on television by the end of the day.  I got to test the limits of the Pen Cameras and, truthfully, I was impressed.

If you decide to shoot a dress rehearsal leave your flash and your ego at home.  Dress in black.  Move smoothly in front of the stage.  Try to have a feeling for the arc of the story you're recording.  Look for moments and gestures that resonate with you and they will resonate for the people who view your work. But I guess my biggest advice is to discard the role of casual voyeur and embrace the role as a member of the production team.

Because then it will be easier to serve the actual purpose.....to propel the show into the consciousness of the general public. Someone reminded me this week that I've been shooting theater productions here in Austin for 17 years.  I still learn tons of  stuff on each show because each production is so different.

At least in spirit, join in the dance.

Be like the character, Puck, and try not to take anything to seriously.

Do photography with passion.

Don't posture or make an ass of yourself.

And try not to get carried away.

If you have a theater or dance company in your town doing images for them is a great way to fine tune your skill set as a photographer.   Timing, exposure, focus and predicting the immediate future.  It's all there and chances are good that they need you too.

The play starts this week (April 29th, 30th and May 1st ) and continues through the end of the month.  It is free to the public and here's more info for the Austin readers: http://austinshakespeare.org/drupal/