The "Wall" as a counterpoint to the wonderful blue of a wide angle sky.

Sky with Wall. Nikon D610+20-40mm lens. 

I am posting lots of pictures instead of words because I think the period of my technical relevance is waning. Everyone is already an expert in everything having to do with cameras. All that's left is to do the art.

I love paths that curve and arc. This one runs down to the Lamar Blvd. bridge.

When I started the blog back in 2009 there was so much to write about. Photography appeared to be growing by leaps and bounds and there was a seemingly insatiable audience of people who were anxious to learn whatever they could about photography. And lighting. And the business of photography. Now it feels like we've lived through the upper curve of a sinusoidal wave of interest and innovation and we're heading for the inevitable trough. 

I looked back today at some of the things I've been writing about, like micro four thirds cameras and electronic viewfinders. The push back, in our comments,  from most people doing photography at the time was pretty remarkable. Everyone assumed that we'd continue with the status quo and live on a rich diet of incremental DSLR improvements. Everyone assumed that pros would always use Canon and Nikons. They also assumed that we'd always be using optical viewfinders. To read some of the comments back then one would think that the inclusion of EVFs on good cameras was the work of satan. 

But the photo world has matured, flattened and become fully researched and rationalized. I'm sure most people reading this have handled most of the same cameras I have. Most have paid more attention to the owner's manuals than I have and most can tell you all the shortcuts you can implement with various function buttons on your new cameras. Which I cannot.

Although very few of us are engineers or scientists here there are many discussions all over the web about technical aspects of imaging grounded in high physics and arcane optical theory. Even my dentist and my lawn guy love to wax on about "micro contrast" and "noise floors" and "shot discipline." If I need to understand how lens designs create optical signatures I need go no further than to the woman who cuts my hair to have a full on discussion. Sensor technology? I go to my barista for that.

But the sad thing, at least for me, is that when the internet has succeeded in gifting us all with the same knowledge and the same proxies of experience then there's not much else to really discuss besides whatever new product is lurching through the gear pipeline (which we mostly want but mostly don't need) and the actual photographs that we take. All the other stuff we used to talk about is instantly redundant because the minute it is written and published by anyone it diffuses into the marsh of general knowledge like India ink in my glass of sparkling water. 

I wish I had a willful lack of self-awareness because I could have monetized what I know through a series of mostly meaningless workshops. Entertainment thinly disguised as photographic workshops....

But really, all I have to share is my own work and my views about how I do the work. And the last thing I would recommend here is that someone slavishly copy my methodologies since they are not really well founded, technically,  and are certainly suspect aesthetically. 

We are mostly technocratic males here and it would be healthy if we could all just meet face to face for coffee or beer. We could talk about so many things that are more comfortable and information rich than just what lens to choose to take pictures of that intense red fire hydrant against the rich green carpet of grass spreading out behind it like a.....green screen. 

But most of us will only meet here. And even sadder than the homogenization of subject matter is the understanding that most people love what they, personally, shoot and are indifferent to other people's work. Maybe talking about them "shootin' irons" is easier and more fun because it is surrounded with the excitement (as in gambling) of risking large sums of money. 

People repeat the old saw of being tired of the endless discussion of gear, gear, gear but the statistical reality of blogging is that every gear post here out pulls every post about aesthetics by a factor of nearly 10:1. For those few non-math majors here let me say it like this: If I put up a post about making an image or having an experience making an image (and that post doesn't concentrate on cameras and lenses) then about 200  people will click on it and read it all the way through. But if I put up a post about the new version of an old, but popular, lens about 2,000 people will read it in the same time frame. To really goose readership all one has to do is write a controversial review/editorial on a popular piece of Olympus, Canon, Nikon or Fuji gear. A mirrorless versus DSLR piece is also a sure bet!

If I could make a reasonable argument that the Fuji XT-1 is a piece of garbage and everyone shooting with one is delusional and certainly will never make art with one, I might be able to scrape up fifteen or twenty thousand readers in the same time frame. (Sorry, can't really make that argument). So even though everyone gets all high horsified about relentless gear posts ("tut, tut, let's talk about the art...") they are like a cigarette smoker who professes trying to quit. They denounce the drug and then step outside "just this once" to light up. 

The sales numbers for gear are illuminating. The market for cameras tanked hard, and I think it's going to tank even harder this year. It's not because ardent photographers have embraced phones with cameras it's because huge numbers of ardent photographers have moved on to something else. Their interest crested and plunged. When a market troughs there's nothing to do but ride it out and enjoy actually doing the craft instead of talking about it. Even if that's not nearly as much fun...

I think everyone here knows that I am a commercial photographer. The market is currently better than it's been for years. Some sort of inverse relationship between the popularity of the hobby and one's ability to charge for it.  I intend to keep writing the blog from that point of view and showing what I am working on and what I am interested in. 

I sound like broken record lately, vacillating between Olympus EM5.2 cameras and Nikon's traditional DSLRs, but the reality is that's my current focus and I'm not anxious to rush out and buy or borrow new stuff just to satisfy our collective need for a geardrenaline rush on a weekly basis. Maybe part of the reality of the craft right now is about settling in with what we have and doing actual work. Wouldn't that be novel???

I was walking along, writing things in my head, when I saw the clouds playing with the street lights. What a lovely sky!

Austin Morning Sky.

More images from a walk through the park with a nice camera and an old lens.

This is one of the trails that leads to the Barton Springs Pool.

To the left is the stream that connects the pool to 

Austin's Ladybird Lake. 

At various places along the stream people sit in the cool water

and while away their time making balanced rock sculptures

from rocks they find on the bottom.

The water is always cool. Mostly 68 or 70 degrees (f). 

At the other end of Barton Pool it comes bubbling up from underground.

People who pay admission to the pool usually keep their clothes on. 

People who swim in the stream instead are less likely to do so...

In the morning there are many canoes at the open air canoe rental shop.

By noon on a hot day there are none left to rent. 

This is the trail that leads away from the pool toward downtown.

We have miles and miles of trails around the waters that flow through

our downtown area, most covered by old and new trees for shade.

This bridge takes traffic over the creek on Barton Springs Rd. 

On a hot afternoon paddle board people and canoe-ers glide under and linger for 

respite from the powerful sun.

I walked all morning and on the way back to Barton Springs and my car I saw hundreds of 

fit, young people paddle boarding, canoeing and running through the park.

It certainly gives weight to the graffiti on the column in the image above....

These stairs lead down from the running trails that interconnect around

Zilker Park to the pool at the north end of Barton Springs Pool. It's area that 

people frolic in when they don't want to or can't pay the $3 admission to the 

big pool. 

All images: Nikon D610+Tamron 20mm-40mm zoom.

Lovely day for a walk.

Oh Gosh! Do you think that lens is sharp enough? Do I need an ART lens? Do I need to get that Otus lens? Will people make fun of me if I'm not using an "L" lens? Will the "gold ring" make my image better? But what about cameras? Which one......

Match up the leaf crop below with its position in the image above...

The answer to everything is: "Yes." But only if I'm the seller and you are the buyer.

(spoiler: twenty year old lens. third party. my cost? $120. Is is sharp enough? ---- Duh.)

Good Morning Austin. What's going on at Barton Springs? Let's go see.

All blog images today taken with a Nikon D610+Tamron 20-40mm SP+a good attitude. 

If you want to photograph a popular place in Austin without a lot of people in your shots you might consider doing your photographs in the earlier part of the mornings. It's been my experience that millenials are like vampires, they rarely rise before noonish...

Some food images shot with the Olympus OMD EM5-2 in the high resolution mode (40 megapixels). Shot at Cantine Restaurant in Austin, Texas.

My friend, James, and I have been working on a video for an Austin restaurant's website. We shot lots of kinetic footage on our first day, both using handheld EM5.2 cameras and a box full of different lenses. Our footage, while technically similar in terms of color palette, etc. couldn't be more different stylistically. I stay on scenes longer and I shoot more conservatively. He shoots with much narrower depth of field and moves quickly. In the end both styles work well together to moderate the whole piece. The second day we went back so I could shoot high res stills of some of the food while James shot video of the same set ups. 

I felt that I had recently mastered the hi-res feature in the camera so I chose to use it for all of the non-moving imagery. I switched back to normal settings when shooting subjects like the "wine pour." 

As with the first day of video I brought along a box of lenses for the cameras. Some were older manual focus lenses from Pen FTs while some were newer. The most used lenses (by me) were the Sigma 60mm, the Panasonic 12-35mm f2.8 and the 40mm f1.4 Pen FT. James seemed drawn to longer focal lengths and shot with stuff like the 70mm f2.0 Pen FT and even a Nikon 105mm f2.5 ais. 

At the end of the shoot the restaurant manager asked me if I would shoot the community table near the back of the restaurant and I was happy to comply. 

I went back again today for lunch and had a great meal with my super-tech friend, Amy. She's an electrical engineer and it's a joy to understand the latest technology through her eyes. As we were having lunch I was watching out of the corner of my eye as another photographer and his assistant came through the door to shoot the food and make a little slider enhanced video.

Their methods, location selection, etc. were much different than the ones I made but I guess that's what makes this job so interesting...

At any rate, here's the stuff we shot on our afternoon of food photography:

The Cantine Salad.

Rotisserie Chicken.

Salmon, cauliflower, capers and tomatoes.

Porchetta.

The community table.

Cocktail shakers at the bar. At the ready.

Used in the high res mode the colors are exemplary and the endless detail makes post processing a breeze. I'm warming up to the EM5.2. I can hardly wait to share the video with you and am amazed that you can now buy such a talented camera for only $900. 

The world of work is changing with every new toy.

Forget the toys, read the novel...

Panasonic announces a new camera that might make m4:3 users upgrade. It looks great on paper, with one exception.....

What's not to like about the latest announcement from Panasonic? It popped up on my radar this morning because the announcement is all over the web. Here's the main stuff we like: The body style is super groovy. Very retro and aimed at photographers who are nostalgic for the cool, self contained, rangefinder style cameras of the 1960's and 1970's. The EVF is one of the new, high density internal screens that provides something like 2.6 million pixels to provide a detailed finder image. The camera  features Panasonic's respected 4K capabilities and it should be a very decent video camera. The thing that most people will be excited by is that it's the first micro four thirds camera to feature a sensor that provides more than 16 million pixels. Thom Hogan reminds us that the scale up from 16 to 20 million pixels only gives us 13% more resolution. Pretty sure that's not going to make a huge difference but then again, you may be one of those shooters who needs every last pixel for some giant prints.

The camera is a bit bigger and bit heavier than its predecessor, the GX-7, but I think that's a good thing on both counts; more space to lay out buttons and give our fingers a bit of relief space and the extra weight will probably mean steadier shooting.

The camera has built-in image stabilization but it goes one step further (when using Panasonic lenses that are so endowed) by using the I.S. in the lenses at the same time. Apparently the combined stabilization from both body and lens makes for a steadier image than either method used individually. I can only imagine that combining the two is a direct result of the inclusion of a much faster processor that can do the math required to optimize both sets of moving parts in tandem. Seem Moore's Law keeps improving cameras in a way that is different than just stuffing more pixels on a die.

So, better finder, better I.S., 4K video, more resolution (and presumably the same or lower noise!) and better handling all add up to a mature and potentially delightful new imaging product. What about my caveat in the headline?

It's not really that big of a deal but when I read through the specs I see that, while the camera has a port for the use of external microphones there is no port for headphones with which to monitor said external microphones. That instantly relegates the GX-8 to Fun secondary art camera for me. But the omission isn't a big deal if you never really intend to do much video or if you are happy shooting double sound with an external recorder instead of using audio that comes directly into the camera.

I think the camera is quite handsome and I'd like to have one in the silver finish. It looks very much like the Company's L1 (See DPR for illustration and review), digital 4:3 camera from about eight years ago. I handled that camera and liked its ergonomics as well.

If one were transitioning from a massive DSLR this might make a good choice for a first, higher end, foray into micro four thirds, but the equation is much different if you already own current Olympus products. Switching to the GX-8 as the primary camera would be scary since Olympus must surely have something new up their sleeves such as a revision/upgrade of the OMD EM-1. Remember that the launch of that camera happened during the October Photo Expo show nearly two years ago. Seems like it's just about time for something new to come out.

I'm hesitant to buy a GX-8 until I see if Olympus leapfrogs them again with something special. Choices, choices.

I wonder who will be pre-ordering this one? 

Celebrating Wing Span. On stage.

Play: Sophisticated Ladies.
Location: Zach Theatre, Austin, Texas
Date: July 14, 2015
Photographer: Kirk Tuck
Cameras: Nikon D610, D810
Metering: Yes.

The Piano Series from Sophisticated Ladies at Zach Theatre. In the red dress? Afra Hines, incredible dancer!

I had much fun photographing the final dress rehearsal of Zach Theatre's rendition of "Sophisticated Ladies." As usual, the sheer quality of the actors, the stage sets, the lighting and the music were as good as the best anywhere. For a photographer who loves to photograph people there is a little that beats an evening spent in a comfortable seat, watching incredibly talented people move through space with grace and precision. Add to that great songs written by Duke Ellington and performed by a live orchestra. And finally, I get to experience it all with two really cool cameras and two of my new favorite lenses. 

I blocked off the seats on either side of me and the seats in front of me so the noise of the shutters wouldn't disturb people. I generally had the Nikon D810 in my hands, coupled with the older 80-200mm ff2.8 ED push pull lens. When a dance scene with a large ensemble spread across the stage I reached for the D610 sitting on top of the Domke camera bag in the seat next to me. That camera had the 24-120mm f4 lens on the

A fun job from the earlier days of digital. Fuji S2pro camera.

Day by day packing for lights.

Small. Light. Fast. Cute. 

I went on location today. I was in a mid-sized conference room making portraits of four men in coats and ties. One after the other. The camera portion of a job like this is hardly a big mystery and really, any camera that allows you to change the lens and use a focal length that is somewhere near the equivalent of 85-90mm (on a full frame, 35mm camera) will probably suit you just fine. The predominant use for the images will be on a website and, really, just about any camera made since 2004 should do a decent job delivering a sharp, mostly happy file. It's always the lighting that's more interesting. 

Last year I might have taken my case with three of the Elinchrom monolights and used them for the project but it seemed like so much overkill to haul the big case up the stairs, plug multiple cords into wall sockets, piece together a softbox and a speed ring and decide where to put it all. Since last year the folks at Cactus sent me an RF60 flash unit and three of their V60 triggers and after I figured out how to use them they way I like to light stuff I've honestly been trying to shoe horn most of my interior shoots into minimalist lighting scenarios. 

I've been throttling down the size of my modifiers in an attempt to make my light a little harder. Given the high dynamic range of the Nikon D610s and D810 I don't really need to worry about softening the highlight transitions as much. When I don't have to worry about burned highlights I can spend more time getting a harder, more dynamic feel to the light. After working with friend Frank and seeing a couple of the modifiers for small flash that he uses I decided to pick up a Westcott light modifier called a Rapid Box Duo. The model I got is basically a 32 inch octagonal softbox that sets up much like an umbrella and provides several levels of diffusion as well as a little metal dish one inserts into the softbox to help spread the light from a small, electronic flash evenly across the front diffusion of the modifier. The box takes a couple of minutes to set up and most of that time is putting together the two piece flash holder that couples the flash to the soft box and the whole set up to a light stand. 

I use the Rapid Box about six feet from my portrait subjects and it gives me a harder light with more contrast than the much larger diameter umbrellas and soft boxes I have generally used. The Cactus RF60 flash is a perfect companion for the quick box because it uses an internal radio trigger and the power levels of the flash can be remotely controlled by the V60 trigger sitting on the camera. At a quarter power I get quick recycling and lots of flashes from a set of Eneloop batteries. Today I used a second flash in a 48 inch umbrella with the power dialed down low (1/32th) to add just a bit of fill to the shadow side of my subjects' faces. That flash was also triggered by a V60 transceiver.

I chose a shutter speed/f-stop/ISO combination that would give me a perfect exposure with the sun lit trees outside the windows of the office and then brought the flash exposure in line to match that level. Takes longer to write about it than to do it. 

The benefit of two inexpensive, battery powered flashes and a portable, collapsible octabank? Mostly portability. I didn't need an assistant to help me haul the gear up to the second floor of the converted  old house that houses my client's company. Everything came along either in my Think Tank rolling case of in a stand bag in my other hand. No muss, no fuss. But it isn't always like that....

And that brings up my shoot from yesterday.  

I have a client who like to have portraits made of their board of directors and their senior executives outdoors with lots of out of focus green in the background. Last year we shot for them on a day with gusty wind and direct sun. Yesterday the Photo gods met me half way and just delivered the hot, direct sun....no wind to speak of. But trying to over power direct sun is different than matching the lively green on foliage outside a tinted window that also has solar screens. In a true, outdoor setting you generally need a flash with a lot of power and, if you are shooting more people than you can count on one hand you also need an electronic flash that has lots of electrical capacity.

Yesterday's lighting kit was the antithesis of this morning's light weight assemblage. Here's why. I wanted a 4 foot by 4 foot black flag to take the direct sun off the subject. This required an extra tall Century stand that can be raised as the sun climbs in the sky. A stand with a 4x4 floating up ten feet in the air can do a lot of damage if it comes down in an uncontrolled fashion so I also needed two twenty pound sand bags on the stand to keep my insurance agent happy. 

That takes care of managing the direct light but I also have found it a very good practice to put another 4x4 foot, black flag directly behind the camera so that the subject's eyeline is aimed at something that won't promote squinting. I don't want to get hit by a falling stand any more than the next person so I want to make sure there are  20# sand bags on that Century Stand as well. The third Century stand held up an Elinchrom S head, fitted with a 30 by 40 inch softbox. The softbox can also do a good "sail" imitation so that stand needed its own collection of sand bags. Wow. That's about 120 pounds just in sand bags and another forty in Century stands. 

I added a white reflector on a stout, Lowell light stand to the shadow side of my subjects to add a bit more detail to the shadows. Better bag that one as well...

I used the Nikon D810 at ISO 64 to squeeze out the most extreme image quality I could manage and also because the lower ISO allows me to get ambient exposures like 1/250th, f5.6, in broad daylight. This makes syncing up the flash easy and mostly problem free. The Elinchrom Ranger AS flash is rated at up to 1100 watt seconds of output power but I like being able to use it at half power because it recycles very quickly and I can generally get about 400 to 500 flashes out of one battery charge. I do drag along another heavy, lead acid battery as a back up but it's rare I need to depend upon it. 

I might have been able to make the smaller flashes work but not at ISO 64... No unless I pull a "Joe McNally" and gang a bunch of the smaller flashes together in tandem and add a radio trigger to each one. The way I figured it I knew I would have to cart and man handle the Century stands and the squadron of sand bags anyway, I might as well have all the power I needed at my fingertips. 

It worked well. And the gear went from the cart to a stout cart to the set up and back again. No carrying all this stuff up the steps solo. Not by a long shot. I know most people buy one type of lighting product and then get all dogmatic about their choices. They insist on shoehorning their paid inventory into every working circumstance. I come from a different age. It was a time when we customized our kits for the task at hand. It still works. 

The Elinchrom Brute Force Lighting Solution. 

The Ranger RX AS Two Head System. 

1100 ws. Two heads with modeling lights. Short duration flash heads. 

Big, stout, speed rings. The works. 

the filled case weighs in at a little over 40 pounds. 

Not the extremely portable solution for everything. 

Taking the Plunge.

Ben, mid Dive.

I learned long ago, on cold, dark mornings, that the hardest part of any project --- every project, is that first part where you are standing on the deck in the bitter, cold wind considering diving into the pool; the dread of embracing that first uncomfortable, wet chill, and the act of getting started.

That's what makes Summer swims more fun. It's already hot, the water is warmer, the chances of hypothermia remote. Even if you go to the early practice you're still pretty certain to start soaking up some solar-quality vitamin D before the workout is over.

I just got off the phone with a friend who is an exemplary photographer. He does it for money and he's a self-starter when commerce is involved. But he's been talking about his "art" project for so long that no one believes that he'll ever wrap his toes around the tile at the edge of the pool and launch himself. The cameras will never taste the rich nectar of something done for the challenge and not for the pay check.

There's always a reason for him to delay. He waited until full frame cameras hit the market, he waited until 20+ megapixel cameras hit the market, he didn't want to start his personal project when he was busy because he just couldn't stand to step away from the cash flow addiction. He didn't dive in when the markets and the economy tanked because he was too nervous to stray too long from his phone and his physical connection to the client space --- he feared he'd miss one of the few, stringy jobs to come through at the time.

Now he's waiting till he makes his first million. Next he'll be waiting till he makes his second million. ..

But his project is arduous. The one he talks about. It's a globe trotting trip that seemed so do-able when he was in his forties and even his early fifties. But the project keeps being put off.  Now his left shoulder bothers him after a day of working. He's walking with a little bit of a hitch because his right knee gets a wee stiff when he sits too long. He's waiting for the situation in Greece to get straightened out. He's thinking he needs to hold onto the money his project will cost in case an emergency comes up.

Part of the trip is a walk across a couple hundred miles to go from one sea to one ocean. It's a trek that one does through the mountains, on foot. But work and family have kept him busy and the few days a month he does get out to walk he realizes that the heat bothers him much more than it did ten years ago. He's tired now. And he gets tired more easily. The idea of camping out and not having a coffee shop nearby in the mornings seems like a much bigger impediment than it every did before.

Psychologists might call this a middle aged failure to launch but I'm calling it the sneakiness of progressive entropy. And I'm pretty sure it's sneaking up on a fairly large number of my friends and will overwhelm them before they realize it.

At times such as this, when I have had yet another coffee with my friend and heard another series of plaintiff excuses for delaying his adventure yet again, I come back to my office and pluck one little book off my shelf and sit down for a quiet and short read.

The book is: Andrew Marvell. A Selection of His Finest Poems. 

The poem I read is called:  To His Coy Mistress.  It is one of the first of a genre of poems referred to as Carpe Diem poetry. Translated: Seize the Day! I advise everyone who has a wonderful project in mind, but is consistently failing to launch, to stop and read the poem I've mentioned. I hope it's enough of an antidote to defeat that series of sensible spreadsheets one's mind is constantly constructing to put off anything risky, dangerous or imbued with the promise of too much fun.

The time to plunge in is while you still can. And the "sell by" date on that package is largely unknowable and unpredictable.

I have, once again, advised my friend to "Take the Plunge." Whether he will is solely up to him but each time I hear about the plans they are subtly diminished. Practicality is okay for some things. For art practicality is early death. Quit your job. Do your adventure. Write your book. Take your trip.

Let's not bury you before you've had a chance to launch yourself.

Tailwinds. An interesting chair.

Detail of a chair observed on my walk down Lamar Blvd. in Austin, Texas.

A fun and funny encounter at the bookstore.

We're lucky here in Austin. We still have a big, thriving, independent bookstore. It's called, "Book People" and it sits right across Sixth Street from the Whole Foods H.Q. I love to shop there because Book People carries a lot of titles and they have an extensive magazine selection. Last week I bought a copy of American Cinematographer Magazine and a copy of Photo District News there, along with a couple boxes of cool, photo-themed greeting cards to send as "thank you" cards for client. I find something new and fun every time I step in the door.

Today I stopped by on my way back to my car from the Graffiti Wall. On quiet Sunday afternoons I like to spend some time looking at all the magazine covers to see what's trending, what's current and what looks frankly passé. I was standing near the photo and design magazines, looking at a photo of Nick Knight on a cover, when I saw a man about my age over my left shoulder. He took at look at the hulking combination of the Nikon D610 and the Sigma 50mm Art lens over said shoulder and, with a nod as a greeting, said, "I used to carry something big like that around but now I'm really enjoying a smaller, lighter Olympus camera." We got to talking and he seemed interested in educating me about the attributes of the smaller system.

I mentioned that I too had several of the Olympus m4:3 cameras and liked them very much. I also mentioned that I had been writing about them for nearly five years on my blog. I identified the blog and the man broke into a smile. "You are Kirk Tuck." He said. I agreed. "Your writing is partly responsible for my migration to Olympus." We spoke for a few more minutes about the relative merits of particular lenses, and a lens acquisition strategy in general, before we shook hands and headed in our different directions.

The encounter may have been a little embarrassing for him but it damn sure made me feel like a rock star. At least for a few minutes. I appreciated being recognized. Nice to know people really do read the blog...

Thanks!

Lab Work.

Inside the MOS 13 Clean Room.

Before the turn of the century. 

Love the booties....

It's pretty much official that NXP is buying/has bought Freescale Semiconductor. I'm pretty sure that after the "merger" goes through NXP will take over executive operations, rationalize all the collateral and naming under the NXP brand and Freescale, as a brand, will dissolve. It's a bit sad to see for many here in Austin. At one point Motorola, Inc. was one of the largest companies in the world and employed 150,000 people. For one reason or another (or one bad bet after the other) the company is a tiny 12,000 person remnant and long ago spun off the Semiconductor business as a separate entity.

The separated semiconductor business started life as a publicly held company until the Blackstone group, the Carlyle Group and others took them private with nearly $17 billion in dept. Then, because of world economy in 2008-2011 and some changing markets, the company and their investors took some real hits but eventually took the company public again in 2011 with an underperforming IPO.  Now this new merger will take the resulting company in yet another direction.

Why do I care? I could trot out some tech nostalgia. I owned several very good Motorola cellphones (they invented the cellphone). I owned some very good Motorola radios (they kind of invented the portable two way radio, or walkie-talkie). And as a photographer I got to photograph a ton of very interesting stuff, including the first PowerPC chip to come out of the Somerset consortium of Apple, Motorola and IBM. It was the first RISC chip widely used in personal computers and was the bedrock of Apple's mid-era machines.

From the late 1980's through to 2006 I was commissioned to do a huge spectrum of imaging work for the company. I photographed lots of products, including chip dies, chip packages and every manner of pin configuration one could imagine. I also made hundreds of portraits of senior staff across a number of divisions. I was along for the giant conferences and even photographed their educational outreach. One fun day I remember was the event where high school kids were mentored in rocket building (proto-engineering) and we all took dozens of rockets and launched them in the parking lot of Motorola/Freescale's Oakhill location parking lot.

I still get asked from time to time to cover an interview with the reigning CEO or to make portraits of new, key hires but I have a feeling that we'll be starting over from scratch as more and more of the (non-engineering) staff are leaving under their own steam or being shown the door.

As a photographer I grew up with Motorola and then matured in business during the Freescale years. I worked conferences all over the United States and even wrote video scripts and trade show scripts for their marketing and events department. Through the years I came to enjoy the culture. They were (and maybe still are) a company that respected family time and understood the need for balance between personal life and business.

My first assignments for the company were done on 4x5 inch view cameras. Later we progressed to using mostly medium format film cameras and then a smattering of 35mm equipment also became acceptable. Since 2001 everything we've shot for them has been done with my ever changing roster of digital cameras. However the re-naming and reorganization goes down I hope that they are successful both in business and in retaining the best parts of their culture. There are more than enough soul killing corporations out there. I always thought of Motorola, and then Freescale, as one of the good guys...

Interesting how the business landscape changes with cultural change, and the relentless march of technology. You can try to swim for it and get rolled by a rogue wave or you can get up on your board and try to ride the crest. One way or another the waves always come.

Amazingly, the block buster novel of last Summer is still available to photographers everywhere.

The Kindle Edition of "The Lisbon Portfolio" by Kirk Tuck.

I know that thousands of my loyal VSL readers rushed out and bought my action/adventure novel the week it came out last June. One launch day alone some 750 were snapped right up, and over 5,000 people took advantage of the limited time, free book offer that happened in the Fall. But that still leaves thousands of you without the unique experience of "The Lisbon Portfolio" ownership. Sure, some of you are waiting for a copy with zero defects (sorry, artists will never achieve Six Sigma) so you can read in intellectual comfort. Others protest that this "is not the sort of stuff I read!" And others just don't read fiction at all (fiction??). But all of you who have not bought the book are misguided in thinking of this as just a more permanent and expensive alternative to the library for your casual entertainment. NO! This is a souvenir of our time together at the VSL blog site. It is the contemporaneous companion to the first 2300 delicious (and free) blog posts. It commemorates your pleasure in reading my posts and my pleasure in writing them. 

Many sites have a "tip jar" which allows you to leave a contribution to the sites that you value. Other writers endless flog workshops and DVDs that are priced many dozens of times higher than our Kindle edition book. But instead of thinking of the book as just reading material think of purchasing the book as a positive vote for the pleasure or knowledge you've gotten over the years reading right here on the Visual Science Lab blog. 

If you buy the book you'll be helping to support me ( financially and emotionally) as I write the next novel. The St. Petersburg Portfolio is already being written. Word by word, in dark coffee houses and during the downtime at shoots.  Seeing people embrace or support the first book gives me the impetus and courage to go on and finish the second one. It also helps me rationalize the time and energy I spend researching and writing for VSL. If you have some spare net worth rattling around please consider dropping a smaller percentage on the Kindle version of the book. If you have an enormous fortune in liquid assets then by all means, step up and buy the paper back version. Either way you'll have my appreciation! That's the end of the only novel commercial so far this Summer. Now, back to our original programming....

thinking about St. Petersburg....

Why, in fact, dynamic range really does matter. Even if you are only working for a web audience. Nikon D610.

I didn't really have a mission in mind but I'd been working on a project in the studio and I wanted a reason to go out and bake for a little while in the intense sunlight that's finally come (late in the Summer) to Austin. I had the EM5.2 on the front seat of the car (random heat testing) and after I started the engine I had second thoughts so I brought the toasty little camera into the studio and grabbed one of the Nikon 610s instead. The one with the 50mm Sigma 1.4 Art lens welded permanently on the front. I double checked on the two buzz kill parameters before I left the driveway: Does the camera currently have a (charged) battery inside? And, Does the camera currently have a memory card, with space, installed in one of the slots? If the answer is "yes" then the trip to downtown proceeds. The answer was "yes."

I'm usually pretty flippant with my own, fun work. I use the cameras in the large, fine Jpeg mode a lot. It works well for lots and lots of stuff. But I'd been bouncing around a few operational ideas in my head and wondered just how much of a difference it would make if I "upped my game" and started shooting at the very high edge of this camera's potential. I set the camera to Raw, Lossless Compression, 14 bit color. I set the ISO to 100 and I set the lens aperture to f3.5 or f4.0 --- theoretically the sharpest zone for that particular lens.

I strolled through the yellow heat of the day from my car to the Graffiti Wall a half mile away. The camera dangled over my left shoulder. I got to the wall and sat on a bench, in the shade of a line of trees that sits on the street side, east boundary of the park and watched the Sunday afternoon throng. In the middle of the bench was a man who had come to the park with his kids. They came all the way from Arlington. Their final destination was Fiesta Texas (huge amusement park) in San Antonio, Texas. My bench friend had heard about "the Wall" all the way up near Dallas and wanted to see it for himself. The kids were off spraying paint and having a blast. The father and I both agreed that every city should have a big wall that anyone can paint on. Any time. Any day.

After my brief respite from the heat I got up and starting looking for photographs. I let the camera strap dangle and I hold the camera in both hands when I am walking around. My left hand around the lens and might right hand wrapped around the grip. I shot some details and then walked up to the North corner of the wall. That's what's in the image above.

I looked at the scene in front of me. I wouldn't have tried shooting it with an older generation of camera; digital or analog, because the left hand side of the wall is in full, 3 p.m. sun while just around the corner the conjoined couple is standing in full, open shade. f16 versus f5.6? Cameras with much lower dynamic range would presumably either block up the shadow areas or blow out some highlights as I tried to straddle the two vastly different exposures. I decided to make the exposure for the sun drenched side of the frame and let the shadow side fall where ever it intended to land.

But here's the interesting part: when I go back to the frame, select the couple and then recover the shadows this is what I get....

This is a normal exposure with the Active D-Lighting turned off. No HDR. No special handling other than the settings I talked about above. But it is a perfectly good frame in and of itself, other than being enlarged to about 100%. What this shows me is that the ability to recover shadows had benefits in post production that are amazing. To really make a "scientific" comparison I would have had another camera, representing the "lower DR" camp, set up on exactly the same spot and I would have shot an identical frame. Well, that's not going to happen on my leisure time but my memory for camera performances is pretty good and I can't remember using a digital camera (other than a D810) that comes close to this kind of shadow recovery performance. 

This is one of the reasons I come back to the D610s again and again. According to DXO tests and comparisons the D610, at 100 ISO, yields 14.4 stops of DR while the D810 at ISO 64 yields an outrageous 14.8 stops of DR. The closest Canon (5Ds) comes in at 12.4 stops; two full stops less dynamic range. The D610, based entirely on raw file performance, is the 4th best camera on the DXO test grid and it's only a hair under the performance of the next three top cameras. Not bad for a camera which one could pick up, lightly used, for just $1200 as recently as a few weeks ago.

While I can plainly see the results of the wide dynamic range in the initial shot at the top of this blog I can also tell you that in print, when printing to photographic printing paper, or when going into color separations, this dynamic range is a visible tool that allows you to play with the contrast and representation of your images. 

You want a killer, full frame camera to play around with? Need some ultra wide dynamic range for your work? You can pick up a trouble free Nikon D610 with a USA warranty for about $1495. Taking a chance on a lightly used one? Think $1200 for a good price point. Just thinking out loud here but sure am happy to have a couple of these as back-ups for my D810...