Continued Motivation.

The boy. Kodak DCS-SLR/n camera. Nikon 135mm f2.8 ais lens.

I like to own nice gear. I am as avaricious as the next guy when it comes to cameras and lenses.  I like having options to work and play with. But if you are looking to the gear to inspire you as a photographer you might be trapped in a nasty closed loop that will inevitably disappoint. The gear should always work in the service of the subject. And your motivation should come from your interest, curiosity or love for the subject. The image exists in your brain as your art.  When it's stuck in your brain it's just for you. The equipment helps you make your ideas and inspirations physical and share-able.  That's the only power the camera has, to make art share-able.

A Post From January 2011 That Came Up Yesterday in a Discussion of the upcoming Photokina...

Your Focus Determines Your Reality. 

Perception and reality are intertwined.  And what is reality for one person isn't necessarily a reality for the person standing next to them.  The way in which you think about things determines the outcome.  If I know a technique will work, it works.  If I think being nice is hard then it becomes very difficult.

I find that many people have a thought process based on a search for a magic bullet or magic series of steps or charms or products that will unleash that person's creativity or allow them to live forever.  In their minds there is a need to do "research."  They cloister themselves in a library created from materials they find in the orbits they search and they proceed to read everything they can get their hands on.  They put off exercising or practicing or enjoying making art until they've accrued the "critical mass" of knowledge.  And it becomes like peeling an infinite onion because with every layer they peel back another layer of knowledge and detail is revealed.  And when that layer is dissected they move on to the next layer.  And when that layer has the juice wrung out of it they progress to the next layer.

The layer peeling in photography is prodigious.  And I find myself doing it in every facet of the business that I find frightening or unpleasant.  I don't like going out of the studio to show a portfolio.  Few people really do.  Instead, I spend time researching new ways of reaching out to clients.  We all do.  We rush to do e-mail blasts because it's easy and it gives us the impression that we're doing something smart.  We're reaching all those people on our list with an example of our work.  But we know that everyone else who fears rejection and face to face encounters to ask strangers for work first and then money is doing exactly the same thing:  sitting in their office, facing a screen and wracking their brains trying to think of something clever to say about a photo that's topical and hopefully interesting to a stranger.

When we finish with the e-mail blast we know we can't do it again for a few weeks so we "research" other ways to circumvent the stuff we fear = the face to face portfolio show.  Next we might turn our attentions to a postcard or start peeling the onion about presenting materials on our iPads.  We'll research which iPad to buy.  Which programs to make our portfolios in.  Which leather cover conveys the right message of coolness and affluence?  And, if we do our research right it should take up enough of our time and attention so that we've sliced thru a few weeks and we can now go back and start working on that next e-mail promotion without fear of saturating our audiences.  Of course we have no idea of how many people sent e-mail promotions to our intended victims yesterday or earlier today or the day after we do ours.  And, really, all marketing is contextual.

When we tire of the "marketing onion" there's always the "gear onion" to fall back on.  We might convince ourselves that our current equipment is no longer competitive with the rest of the photographers chasing the same clients.  We resolve to differentiate ourselves by "upgrading" which takes a lot of research....because, of course, we want to make the right investments....So back to the websites and the books.  Once that injection of courage is absorbed and we find ourselves still stuck by our own fears and our focus that tells us we don't know enough about the magic bullets, we take the next step which is to find a mentor.  Usually at a workshop.  We focus on the mentor's success and hope that by spending time and energy with him a process of osmosis will occur that causes the mentor's creative powers to undergo a mitosis that allows him to share that power with us.  We'll learn not only what the magic bullets are but also how to aim the creative gun and go "full automatic" on our prospective clients.

But that will drive us back into research in order to find a new order of clients who are perceptive enough to share the vision you siphoned from the mentor.  It's a cruel and endless loop.  And in the end your lack of success will probably lead you to reject the mentor and his arcane magic and go off in search of a "real" mentor.  And that might mean getting some new equipment which will, of course, mean new research.

But by changing the focus from "learning" to "doing" we change our reality.  We stop looking for subjects that will resonate well with our technical tool bag and start out with the magnetic attraction to things we love to see and love to look at.  And then we'll figure out, through trial and error, how to share, visually, the point of view we alone have that makes the subject magical to us, personally.

When we have a focus that comes from curiosity about the subject that focus drives our unique vision.  Impediments fall and we become so enthralled by being able to share our version of the story about that thing or event that we get over our reservations about showing our vision to the right people because we allow ourselves to become invested in the story not in the material reality of the book.  The book is just one vehicle for the story.

I guess this is my way of saying to many of my friends, and even to myself, that all of us have all the gear we need and all the research we need to be able to shoot just about anything we want to shoot right now.  We need to stop the endless cycle of research because it does three things:  1.  Our focus on "research" creates a comfortable pattern of procrastination from the actual doing.  2.  It robs us of our real power which can only come thru actualization.  Reaching out and doing.  Because it is within the process of doing that we evolve a feedback mechanism that allows us to learn and fine tune what we really like to see.  3.  Research, and it's buddy "the search for the magic bullet," rob us of our power by investing power into the idea that the people/artists that we aspire to mimic  operate creatively by a set and sellable formula and that the search for the formula trumps our search for ourselves.  But if we let go of the edge of the pool we could actually swim.

It's all about the doing.  Not the learning about doing.  I can teach someone to read a meter but I can't teach them how to feel about life and how to translate those feelings into art.  No one can.  It's only thru the process of exercise that the body becomes fit.  It's only thru the process of creating your own art that your creativity becomes fit.  And nobody wants a pudgy creative spirit.

Posted 4th January 2011 by kirk tuck

A re-posting of an article about shooting in the summer. Circa 2010.

Street shooting outside in the Summer? Do yourself a couple favors...

.... 

I know I'm probably being bitchy but the first thing to do if you want to have fun street shooting and you want to spend less time thinking and strategizing and logisticizing, just choose one camera and one lens and leave all the other crap at home.  This is me.  This is all I take.  One camera and one lens.  Why?  Because my brain works in mysterious ways and I'm going to guess yours does too.  If I bring two lenses my brain is constantly evaluating possible shooting scenarios and trying to wedge them into one lens profile or the other.  Wide? Long? In between?  How long?  How wide?  How in between?

If you have one lens on one body you certainly get to know that lens.  Especially if you are a "prolific" shooter.   Do it enough and the scenes appear like magic, ready made for the focal length you just happened to bring.  You know the old saw that goes, "When you have a hammer everything looks like a nail?"  Well when you have a 50mm lens on your camera everything looks like a normal lens shot.  Your mind likes formalist restrictions as much as kids love boundaries.  Wanna hedge your bets because you're a bit scared?  Bring a zoom as your one lens and then you'll have it covered.

But don't do what countless legions of rank hobbyists do.  They load up a Tamrac or Tenba bag originally designed to hold microwave ovens and assorted furniture, with every piece of camera gear they can find.  In goes the wide angle zoom.....because you never know.  In goes the mandatory 70-200mm f2.8 zoom (just the right aperture and weight combo for mid day street shooting).  And, just because people have an irrational need to "cover" all the in between focal lengths, in goes the 24-70mm f2.8 zoom.  But of course none of these is a  real macro lens so that's the next thing to go into the bag.  And having read someone's gear site recently, all the filters go in the bag.  Polarizers, "protection" filters, gradient filters,  and wild filters that I don't understand.  We're talking bags that tip the scales at a good 15 to 20 pounds.  Good news for chiropractors but bad news for photographers.  Adding weight to your shoulder is like adding bags of concrete to the trunk of a Prius.  All of a sudden the gas mileage goes down dramatically.  By the same token your imaging productivity also drops through the floor.  You'll want to rest more and leave sooner.  None of which is conducive to being there and making images.

I know all about the "Strobist" thing.  Love the little flashes.  Love the SB-900's and the 580ex2's and the fl50r's, but let's just go ahead and agree to leave them at home.  If you're fly fishing you don't generally dynamite the stream.  Let's use the same logic when shooting real life.  Just bring your rod and reel and some waders and go looking for images that fit.  Flashes work best when you have a photo in mind and you have the time to set it up and recreate your alternate reality.  Using flash for documentary or street photography is like "bringing a handgun to the opera."  (Credit to Henri Cartier Bresson for that one....).   

Tripods are only acceptable for street shooting at night or with view cameras.  That's all I'll say about that.  If you are hauling a 4x5 or 8x10 out and around your city you already know what you need and you probably don't want any advice from me.  

Next up.  Let's dress for success.  You won't be interfacing with clients so you can leave the pressed chinos, button down,  and dress shoes at home.  But you do need the willing complicity of various people you meet so you'll have to look a bit respectable.  If it's 95 degrees and the humidity is in the 90% range you need to dress right or you'll drop quick.  Let's start at the top.  If you don't mind looking like the kind of guy who still wears a calculator on his belt and makes his own trail mix at home you should go ahead and opt for the bucket hat.  It'll protect your head and the tops of your ears.  And you'll feel fine, fashion wise, about wearing it to Sea World or one of the fabulous water parks.  If this isn't you then let's go with a light weight and light colored baseball cap.  Black ball caps look cooler but they get a lot hotter and that pretty much defeats why you're wearing it in the first place.  The visor will keep the sun off your face while the rest of the cap covers the rest of your head.  Toss some sunscreen on those ears or your dermatologist will yell at you down the road.

Next up, let's talk about sunglasses.  My best advice here is to not wear polarized or colored lenses.  A pity too since I have a beautiful pair of Revos I bought in the airport on the way home from the 2000 Democratic Convention (I covered it for a newspaper) in LA.  But the glasses strike out on both counts.  Too much color tint and very polarized (are there degrees of polarization?).  Too bad because when I wear them everything in the world looks better.  But that's the point, your eyes should be calibrated to your camera.  Who cares if the screen looks sexy if it bears no relationship to the images you're capturing?  Same thing with the sunglasses.  It's like having a really great preview with no way to get there in the end.

I've got an old pair of RayBan Wayfarers that fit the bill.  They're neutral, non-polarized and they save me from squinting and getting those little lines in the corners of my eyes.

Next we're into controversial fashion statements.  I like shirts with collars.  They protect more of your neck and they look better.  So, if you are overcome with heat and exhaustion and you just happen to be down the block from the Four Seasons Hotel you'll feel better about flopping down in the Lobby Bar and sucking down a Margarita while you wait for your energy to return.  And the staff will feel more comfortable too.  Living in Texas and working outside a lot for the last twenty years I've discovered that time and research have largely made the cotton T-shirt obsolete.  Cotton sticks to your skin, is heavier and wick moisture much more slowly than some of the new, super lightweight nylon blends being used in what are being called, "technical shirts".  

I've gone both ways on successive 105 degree days and I'm here to testify that the synth stuff is miles ahead when it comes to breathability,  moisture wicking (and its attendant evaporative cooling powers) and general comfort.  I'm wearing a Columbia shirt in the photo but I don't like the styling all that much.  The sleeves are too long and I don't need two big pockets.  The medium sized shirts are also cut too fat.  Do the manufacturers really believe that everyone now is five foot eight with a 40 inch waist?

I've narrowed it down to one brand and one shirt.  My current shirt of preference is the Ex Officio Trip'r.  It's a short sleeve, blocks UV radiation, has a vent in the back and one sleek pocket on the front.  I just bought out their current stock on Amazon in white mediums.  It's wonderfully comfortable and I could put it under a navy blazer and go into a restaurant without a moment's hesitation.  It is also the coolest (termperature-wise) shirt I own.  I get white.  It reflects the most heat.  If I were heading to the desert I'd get the long sleeve version for more protection.  The pocket's not too big but will hold an extra CF card and your driver's license and Amex card.  Now you're all prepared.  Except for the bottom half......

Golfers know a bit about comfortable.  I wear thin, nicely tailored Alan Flusser golf shorts made out of cotton.  Somehow they're  just right.  The shorts variant I abhor are the ubiquitous "Cargo Shorts" which would even make a buff, 23 year old model look like crap.  Cargo shorts are sometimes given out as punishment in more enlightened societies.  Try not to be caught dead in them.  They scream, "I bought these at Costco/Sams/Sears/Old Navy because they are loose and hide my bulk, and I can bring a big fat wallet and all my batteries and my iPhone and my iPad and a box of matches and a flint and a flask and a screwdriver set and........"  They do serve one important purpose.  They keep stylish young woman from breeding with geeks.  Sometimes.  Just because we are photographers doesn't mean we need to look bad.  

Amazing thing is that decent short pants cost about the same as monstrous short pants with hundred of pockets.  The Swiss Army knife comparison does not apply to all things.  Your pockets really only need a credit card, a small bit of paper cash and,  if you live in a police state, your ID card.  With current cameras you're good with one battery in the camera and a nice 8 or 16 gig card nestled in the right slot. Don't make walking a chore by loading up your britches.

I won't even mention go into the folly of wearing "photographic" vests, especially in the Summer and especially over a nice,Ex Officio shirt.....just don't do it.  Not for street photography.  Save it for the Outward Bound adventure or the software engineering team building exercises.

What should your assistant wear when you are out shooting in the street?  I don't know.  I guess it depends on how she'll be spending her day because she shouldn't be traipsing around with you if you are out shooting your art.  As Elliott Erwitt, Lee Friedlander, and Garry Winogrand would all tell you, shooting art is a solo gig.  (Guess Gregory Crewdson didn't get the memo...).  Maybe the assistant has gone to a career fair.  And you sure don't want to bring along your spouse or your kids......

Now we've come to the shoes.  This part is tricky for me.  I'm a sandal wearing southerner who loves to feel the hot breezes on my feet.  Also kinda goes with the rest of  the outfit but feet are infinitely varied and somewhat fragile so I'm willing to compromise and sanction the wearing of running shoes or cross training shoes with short, appropriate socks.  Nothing over reaching.  Whatever you wear on your feet should be comfy and discreet.

I know that artists as a rule hate to hear this, and photographers wedded to their dark, cool caves, even more but;  shooting great images in the streets means moving around alot,  paying attention and being ready physically.  Not only ready to carry gear and pounce but ready to be socially conversant.  And all of this means you should be in good shape so you're not panting and sweating buckets while asking polite permission to invade someone's space and steal their soul with your magic box.  If you are wavering from the heat there's no way to nail a great shot.

Even though I'm a swimmer and stay in pretty good aerobic shape, when the thermometer heads skyward and the grass starts to turn brown I add two or three days a week of three to five mile walks to my exercise schedule.  I do it during the hot times.  I always carry a camera.  I want to be in good enough shape to spend time in the heat looking for people and stuff I want to photograph.  That way the physical stuff goes to autopilot and the looking and shooting are unfettered by discomfort.

Now, admittedly, this is my personal take on shooting in the Austin Summer.  Everyone will have their own fashion point of view and, as long as I don't have to stand next to you, I really don't care what you wear.  The stuff I've picked works for me on a wide ranging social level as well as a survival level so I'll stick with it.  Funny that this particular blog got started when a famous photographer e-mailed to let me know he'd passed through Austin on a plane change.  He was amazed that it was 95 degrees with very high humidity.  He mentioned that murders rise the closer you get to the equator.  I think we could cut down on the hot weather murder rate just by changing people's shirts.  But as you no doubt know by now I'm pretty opinionated and you have to take everything I say with a grain of salt.

The Fed Ex man was here earlier today delivering two more white shirts.  Just in the nick of time.  I'm photographing a swim meet that starts on Friday afternoon and goes till sunset.  Should be in the mid 90's with enough water in the air to fill a pool.  Might have to break out the soaked bucket hat for this one.  That way I'm sure my kid won't want to come up and ask me for money for junk food.

Marketing Note:  If I survive the swim meet I'll be meeting people and signing books over at Precision Camera in Austin .......

Be sure to drink some water and save the beer for the end.

   

Still feeling my way around the Sony Nex 7 but getting more comfortable with it by the day.

One of the reasons why so many experienced photographers are drawn to mirrorless cameras is the short distance between the lens mount and the sensor. This smaller distance allows for users to mount many different lenses from a large universe of camera systems to their mirrorless cameras. One of the reasons I bought the Olympus EP2 was the ability to mount my large collections of very good Pen F manual focus lenses to the camera and to be able to continue to use them and benefit from their unique capabilities.

The Sony shares this short flange to sensor attribute and has become a very popular camera/vehicle of using Leica M series lenses, various Zeiss lenses and a raft of Cosina/Voitlander lenses.  I recently discovered that several companies make Pen F lens to Sony Nex adapters so I bought one and I've been testing various lenses from the 1970's on the camera.

So far, the 60mm 1.5 and the 40mm 1.4 have come through with flying colors.  Or really good colors. Once each of these lenses is stopped down at least one f-stop from their wide open aperture they become competitive with current lenses.  Once they are stopped down two or more stops they become premium quality lenses for most applications.  I liked working with the lenses on the Pen digital cameras but it was always a process of framing, enlarging the frame for focusing, reducing the frame to shoot.  With the Nex 7 I have the  focus peaking feature engaged for manual focus lenses so it's really just a matter of focusing and checking to see where the color outline occurs to confirm focus. Bravo. That make things a lot easier.

I decided today to test a lens that I've had mixed results with on the Pen digital cameras. It's the Pen F manual focus, 25mm 2.8 lens. Hitting sharp focus with it on the Pens was always problematic and, at a certain point, I began to suspect that the optic itself was just sub-par. I thought today would give me a make it or break it finality with the easier discretion of the focus peaking.

I've re-evaluated the lens in light of the three photos you see here and from many other samples I took during the course of a hot and sweaty walk this afternoon.  When accurately focused the lens can be very sharp.  The colors in the lens are more muted than modern lenses and I don't know whether that is a difference in coating or a design philosophy in lens making that's evolved over the years.  I do know that I can take a "quieter image" and do quite a bit of manipulation to it before the manipulation becomes obvious.  In some ways a flatter and more neutral image rendition gives you more latitude to make changes in post without suffering much.  The files don't seem "fragile."

The adapter I got came from Fotodiox and it's much more accurate at infinity that some other adapters I'd gotten for the Olympus digital Pens.  That means I can use the depth of field scale on the lens to calculate a hyperfocal distance. In bright light, at f8, I can get a field of focus that's relatively sharp from about 5 feet to infinity when set to the correct hyperfocal distance.  That's a real plus for street shooting.  With the electronic front shutter curtain of the Nex 7 and using manual exposure control, I can bang out an image with absolutely no lag time whatsoever.  And if I've metered correctly (and who couldn't with a camera that "pre-chimps" for you???) and set the correct distance I can shoot without making any adjustments and be sure of a sharp and well exposed frame every single time. Old school meets new tech.

The Pen 25mm does have a few issues when shooting a wide shot with uneven daylight across the frame.  I shot a bridge and noticed some color shift to magenta from edge to edge.  Other than that the lens is a good, straightforward performer.  If you can find one cheap you'll have a nice 35-37mm equivalent focal length for a really high performance camera.  That being said, I'm happy with the performance of the kit lens in that range of focal lengths.

Nice day in Austin. Everyone was at Barton Springs pool.  Ahhhhh. 68 degree water on a 102 degree day. Perfect.

Projection, reflection.

I was all packed up to spend my afternoon walking around Austin, making photographs with a Sony Nex 7 and a small bag full of interesting lenses and adapters.  I stopped by my favorite sandwich shop for a tuna sandwich on whole wheat with jalapeños and cucumbers, lettuce and tomatoes.  In the early afternoon the over head sunlight bounced off the windshields of the vehicles parked out front and projected all the lettering from the windows onto the ceiling of the shop. I liked this very much.  So I took a photo with the Sony and a 40mm 1.4 Olympus Pen F lens.  I set the camera to black and white.  Being the nerd that I am I will admit that I looked at the file at 100% just to make sure I could see all the crisp detail in the acoustic tiles. Then I headed out for a long, hot stroll...

An insightful look at what may be happening to the world of art. A video. Not by me.

I'm not particularly relevant to photography anymore but I take consolation in knowing that no one else is either.  Have a look at this very powerful, very thoughtful video about the changing nature of popular art and tell me what you think.  http://vimeo.com/34608191  

It's called PressPausePlay and it was produced by House of Radon, a creative agency in Sweden. I happen to agree with nearly everything in the video but I am especially interested in the idea that we are in a "crisis of democratized culture" that could lead to a new, creative "dark ages."

While it's true that more people than ever before have access to the tools to automatically create art what it's given rise to is a tsunami of mediocre work the sheer volume and noise of which hides the very few truly talented artists. It's not enough to "up one's game" unless the intended audiences for your work are savvy at the rigors of data mining and are hell bent on finding shining needles in vast, oceanic haystacks.  One of the interviewees in the piece states, in a matter of fact way that, "most people don't have talent."  But because of the outpouring of work in every genre "People start to become comfortable with mediocrity."  At some point we lose our ability to discriminate between genius and hollow imitation.  

These seem to be almost universal beliefs among both artists and critics. Don't argue with me until you've watched the video.  It's very well made and I think it's worth your time....

Sony Nex 7 meets Olympus Pen Glass for a brand new synergy of Power and Glory !!!

FrankenSony.  OlympenStein. Fun via the U.S. Mail.

Even I have to admit that the headline for this particular blog is way over the top. Hyperbole taken to a new level. But it's a quiet Friday and I'm temporarily stuck inside due to violent yet welcome thunderstorm. Something's got to give.

I've had good luck with the mail this week. On Monday I got my Nikon Lens to Sony Alpha camera, lens adapter. I'm using it to connect brilliant old Nikon F macro lenses to my a77's.  They work on the camera and the lenses are quite good despite their age. I plan to use them for a food shoot next Friday. Testing all next week.  On Thurs. I got a nice check from my publisher.  Delayed gratification for projects finished long ago...  Then today, just before the thunderstorm struck and scared the crap out of my dog (not literally) I checked the mail box and found another adapter I'd been anxious to put my hands on:  The Olympus Pen F to Sony Nex body adapter. Woo Hoo. 

I ordered the Fotodiox adapter from Amazon and I'm happy with it.  For about $40 I can mount all the cool Olympus Pen F lenses on the front of my Sony Nex camera, manually focus with righteously good focus peaking and then slam away with 24 megapixel, state of the art files. 

The first lens I put on the rig was my favorite, the 60mm f1.5. I can hardly wait to get out and shoot with it. With the APS-C sensor the lens becomes a 90mm (e) portrait lens with a wicked fast maximum aperture.  And in my experience it's plenty sharp.  I'm heading out to pick up Ben from a video project he's shooting today and I think I'll put one of the 38mm's on the camera. You know how much I love a fast 50mm (e) on my street shooting cameras...

So, now my poor, optically limited Nex system has, in addition to the Sony lenses, a 20mm f3.5 (nice 30mm e), an f4 and an f2.8 25mm set (37mm e), a 38mm (57mm e), a fast 40mm 1.4 (60mm e),the 60mm 1.5 (90mm e), 70mm f2 (105mm e), the 50-90mm zoom (75-135 e) and a 150mm f4 (225mm e).  If I add something wide, like the 16mm I guess I'll be set.

Test images and walking about images coming soon to a blog near you...

Summertime in Austin. Hot and lazy. It's all good.

Here we are in the middle of August and everything is going according to history and precedent. The jobs have fallen off to zero, the temperatures have gone through the roof and everyone left in Austin is burrowing down somewhere cool like the frog that lives under the faucet drip in the garden outside my front door.

This image of Noellia was taken at a popular spot in the middle of Austin. It's the stream that comes from the Barton Springs spillway and flows on to Lady Bird Lake, which runs through the center of downtown Austin.  The water is from an underground spring and is a constant 69 or 70 degrees.  People come with dogs, picnic baskets, little kids and whatever else to spend hours frolicking in the stream and staying cool.

We headed to the Springs because Noellia wanted some new images for her portfolio and she wanted "outside."  Okay by me.

This was taken with the Sony Nex 7 and either the kit lens or the 50mm 1.8.  I just don't remember which. Too hot to remember.  I knew I needed a little bit of fill flash but I'd never cracked the flash menu on the camera before and I've only used the Sony HVL-58 AM flash on a few occasions and then on complete automatic with a Sony a77.  What the hell.  I gave it a try.

I put the flash on a short, off camera cord, put it in ttl-auto, dialed it down a couple of stops and shot.  I had the camera set to manual exposure, 1/250th of second and in the territory of f 5.6.  I chimped a couple of times to fine tune the flash ratio and then we moved on.

My big mistake of the day was not tossing the cameras to one side and throwing everyone into the water.  That would have been even more fun.

According to all the test reports my (fill in the blank) lens is not sharp in the corners.

Hmm. I'm a portrait photographer.  Do I really need ultra-sharp corners?

I love manufactured conundrums.  How could I not? I was in the ad business for years before becoming a full time photographer.  We thrived on finding the "pain" for consumers and then giving them a "solution".  "The Malls are too crowded?  We've got acres of free parking!!!"

I was thinking about this after I caught myself mindlessly reading a lens review of the Sony Nex 18-55mm lens on SLRgear.com. They have a nifty-charty thing that shows the performance of the lens you might be considering. It uses colors to show you how sharp a lens is at different apertures and different focal lengths and in different areas of the frame. But here's the issue for me:  I think that the only lenses that test really well on flat charts are macro lenses meant to do well when photographing flat charts because they are made to photograph flat charts.  The rest of the lenses that I'm interested in don't really need to do that, do they?

But the test sites need us to be fearful about picking lenses so they can get eyeballs.  The information can be useful but only if you apply it to your ways of working...

When I looked at the performance of the kit lens for the Nex system I at first was excited to see that, even wide open, it was very sharp and performed very well in the center of the lens.  The air was let out of my balloon when I read on and did all the interactive stuff with the cool graphic sliders. Seems the lens is not as sharp on the corners.  In fact, you've got to stop it down to f8 to get really good corner performance.  Most reviewers tell me that the kit lens won't come close to providing enough performance (across the full frame of the sensor) to work well with the 24 megapixel sensor in the Nex7.  And then there's all the fringing I might find when I do high contrast photographs of little, naked tree branches against the stark sky.  Oh my.

I let my sometimes rational brain take all the information and put it into my mental processing blender and it came out giving the lens a big C+. A snob like me would never consider shooting with it.  Never mind that I actually love lenses that have a high core of sharpness wide open and then gracefully devolve on the edges and corners.  And that includes most of the portrait lenses I have used to best effect, as well as nearly every 50mm lens on the market.

Oh the damage we do to ourselves when we have too much information and not enough theoretical depth to process the information optimally for our own individual needs.

All lenses have curvature of field.  Some are corrected for this and they make really good optics for people who need to photograph stuff that has straight lines.  These might be architectural photographers, still life photographers or technical photographers.  The overwhelming majority of the lenses we buy are used to document life around us.  And the majority of the lenses I buy are pressed into the service of photographing people.  We generally don't need stringent edge to edge sharpness and total lack of optical faults when we use lenses wide open.  We need optics that are crispy enough to do the job.

Many years ago Leica made lenses that the best photographers in the world absolutely swore by.  They still do. But strangely enough, when the lenses from Leica were tested in conventional, flat target ways, they never seemed to put up numbers that matched what we saw on film (or now on our monitors).  Then I read a white paper on optimum design for lenses based on their intended use and I got it. To make a fast, high aperture lens you need to make some compromises.  To make a zoom that's consistent across the zoom range you've got to make some different  compromises and if you want a flat field lens that does good single planes of focus and even illumination you've got to make still other compromises.  The trick is to test the different kinds of lenses and find the ones that work for your style of shooting.  There a few perfect lenses that I can actually afford.  The designers can correct for a lot but would you be willing to pay $10,000 for a 10 pound f4 prime lens to hang on the front of your tiny camera?

And you have to know what compromises are involved.  For example, the 85mm Zeiss 1.4 lens is a super duper optic but in order to make it fast and sharp Zeiss sacrificed corner sharpness wide open and also the design of the lens means that you'll get appreciable focus shift as you stop down from f1.4 to f4.0.  Especially at closer (portrait) distances.  The work arounds are to only focus and shoot at f4 and smaller or to do all of your fine focusing for close up work with a magnified live view image and with the lens stopped down to the actual shooting aperture.  And Zeiss and Lloyd Chambers will tell you that.  You can't have it every which way.

So what am I getting at?  Only that the two lenses I bought for the Sony Nex 7, the 18-55 and the 50mm 1.8 are both more than sharp enough to make wonderful portraits in my style.  Even when used wide open.  The "nifty 50" that everyone loves for the Canon has pretty atrocious performance on the test charts as do most of the 50mm 1.4 lenses from the major makers.  The thing that makes them popular though is the sharp center core and the ability to use them at faster apertures than most zoom-only users ever dream of.  You can't have everything in a lens.  That's why I have separate Macro lenses for those special moments when I find myself longing to shoot test charts.

Measurements are great but interpreting correctly is the part that counts.

Yes, I've gone crazy with the Lightroom presets today.  I'm sure I'll recover.