A Total Immersion Week with the Panasonic GH4. Or, Kirk Does the Math.

It would seem that the big news around here is the launch of the novel, The Lisbon Portfolio. But as much as I wanted to sit behind the computer and send e-mails to everyone I knew announcing it, the day after our publication on Amazon's Kindle Store I was on a Southwest Airlines flight heading to Denver Colorado to work as the event photographer for what has become my favorite show. It's the RLM Math Conference at which Inquiry Based Learning is discussed in depth by math teachers and professors from all over the country. I spent Weds. through Saturday soaking in the math gestalt in a wonderful building that was designed by the architect, I.M. Pei, back in the 1960's. And I'm not kidding, I had a blast.

But to stay on photo topic part of my reason for being happy was that this was my first chance to deeply immerse myself in shooting a full on event with my completed Panasonic GH system. I shot well over 4,000 images and the bulk of them were done with the new GH4. The rest were created on two different GH3s. And I will say that spending a cumulative 20 hours with one type of camera in your hands is a wonderful way to find out what you like and what you don't about the system....

But first a photo that the Panasonic marketing people should really enjoy:

Kirk With Cameras.

Image ©2014 Stan Yoshinobu

Used with Stan Yoshinobu's permission.

The image above is a fair representation of how I equipped myself for my time in Denver. Three cameras with three different lenses, extra batteries and a small flash in the pockets of the jacket. Totally equipped without a camera bag in sight....

Let me set the stage: The project was to cover a conference about Inquiry Based Learning in Mathematics. My brief was to document all the "main tent" sessions, the dinners and the social components of the conference. But the most time intensive part of the job was the need to photograph presenters presenting in five different locations, concurrently. An almost continuous cycle of parallel sessions that lasted almost all day long each day. 

The conference took place in the I.M. Pei Building of the Sheraton Hotel complex is downtown Denver, Colorado. That's nice for me since Denver is quickly becoming one of my favorite destinations in the country. It's only two hours from Austin by direct Southwest Airline flights and the idea of embracing 50 degree weather each morning with coffee and a warm croissant in hand is enticing. Especially when the humidity and heat kick in for the Summer here in Austin...

All photo jobs are different and all the parameters are different as well. For about eight hours each day the conference ran the parallel sessions which lasted about 40 minutes each. The classes, filled with academic mathematicians were spread out all across one large area of the conference center. I would start the cycle by photographing the speakers and activities in the main ballroom and then move on to classroom A, the B, then C, and finally classroom D. I shot a lot of frames because I was trying to capture good expressions in which  subjects' eyes were open, hands were gesturing in a natural way and peoples' mouths looked as though they were caught, mid-sentence, saying something really bright and insightful. The important idea here is that I did this circuit, from ballroom to class to class a dozen or more times each day and I packed gear with a conscious thought to keeping my load of equipment as light as possible.

I did the same conference (here in Austin) last year with the Sony a99 and Sony a77 cameras along with some giant lenses (the five pound 70-200mm 2.8 comes to mind as a particularly painful thing to sport around on the front of a camera...) and a large camera bag packed with all kinds of stuff with which to support the "full frame mystique." The gear was heavy and many times the limited depth of field worked against me as I attempted to shoot in a documentary style using available light for small groups of people.

This year (as you can see above) I brought two Panasonic GH3 camera bodies and one GH4. (I wish I could wave a magic wand over them and convert all the cameras to GH4's....). For most sessions I actually carried only two cameras: the GH4 with the Panasonic 35-100mm f2.8 X zoom lens and a GH3 with the 12-35mm f2.8 X wide angle zoom lens. With one camera on each shoulder and a third sometimes draped around my neck (GH3 with 25mm f1.4) I barely noticed the weight or the bulk of the gear. 

Two things to mention here: I was happy to shoot wide open with any of the three lenses as they perform very well at their respective maximum apertures. This is something I was rarely able to do with my previous cameras since the edges and corners of the lenses for the larger formats were never as well corrected when used at their maximums. Lens designers have pointed out for years how much easier it is to design well corrected lenses for smaller formats----at least theoretically. 

The images I'm seeing today in Lightroom are sharp and well constructed and the extra DOF, even with the lenses wide open, is welcome. This selection of lenses really does prove to me that the smaller geometry of the sensors was quite welcome. It meant that, in most cases eyes and ears were both in focus but I could still drop backgrounds out of focus with the longer focal lengths of the 35-100mm lens. 

One of the way I kept the file management manageable was to shoot high quality Jpegs instead of Raw files. My take on the real, current reason to people prefer Raw files is that most people don't take the time to do really good white balances while they are shooting! Seriously, if you shoot without getting the color right--in Jpeg or raw-- correcting in post after the fact makes a huge negative difference in both noise and exposure accuracy. 

While the effects are evident in both kinds of files (in my experience) it's obvious that there is less potential to make large corrections in Jpeg files because each color correction step introduces complimentary color shifts somewhere else in the spectrum (or usually at multiple points along the color distribution) as well as causing non linear shifts in each of the three color channels.  And some of those non-linearities are not correctable. 

THE ONLINE PHOTOGRAPHER MENTIONS "THE LISBON PORTFOLIO"

http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2014/06/im-impressed.html

Get your copy today before Amazon runs out of the Kindle edition!  :-)

I hate to travel with gear but I love getting out of town.

Jana. Canon 5Dmk2. 100mm f2 lens.

I'm a worrier. If there is something to worry about I'm on it. Murphy's Law is my mantra and Worst Case Scenario is generally the tune my mind is humming as I go about my business. But few things get me into the butterfly stomach condition quicker than packing for a trip, and the first and last legs of a trip. Don't get me wrong, I'm not wound up like a rubber band for the whole adventure, just the parts over which I supposedly have control: Getting from the house to the airport. Getting from parking to the terminal with two large cases. Getting in line at the Sky Cap station and getting the little luggage tags I forgot to put on earlier into position on the cases while the Sky Cap gives me the steely once over while looking at my unorganized paper work. 

The anxiety notches down from 95% to 90% once the guys have accepted my bags, confirmed my boarding pass and sent me on my merry way. We operate at 90% anxiety for the portion of the trip that requires standing in the TSA line as it zigs and zags through the little rope barriers, putting all my pocket stuff and camera bag into the gray plastic boxes and stepping through the back splatter/scatter x-ray machine for my own personal, hands over head scan. 

Once I'm out of the ingestion process and I'm putting my shoes back on, getting my precious camera bag, and re-orienting myself toward the right gate my negative excitement levels ratchet down to about their typical 40-50% levels and I'm okay with that.

What's the deal with my decided lack of enthusiasm for the first lap? Well, part of it is engaging the timing of the whole process. I know with absolute certainty that the plane will leave without me if I don't get every part of the initial timing process correct. My brain works like this: "Hmmmm. The plane leaves at 4 p.m. and if there is a big line at the TSA check in it might cut things close if I don't pad the schedule with an hour. So that means I want to be in the big, squiggly line by 3 p.m. So backtracking from there I have to make sure I get to the Sky Caps with enough time to spare. Sometimes there are crazy lines for both the outside check-ins and the inside check-in areas. Like when SXSW is going on or ACL Fest or F1. I better give myself a half an hour to get through that part of check in so I plan on presenting myself to the Sky Caps no later than 2:30 p.m.

But then there is the complex calculus of how much time to give myself to get to the airport. The traffic lights in the main intersection of my neighborhood could be on the blink again. The last time I drove to the airport the main highway had a detour for road work and the line of cars going through the two lane, traffic light controlled, intersection stretched back about a half a mile. Then there is the very real possibility that all the ground parking and garage parking adjacent to the terminals will be full and I'll have to head to an off site lot and wait for their interminable little shuttles to get me back over to the airport. Better leave by 1:30 p.m. to get there with a generous buffer......just in case. 

And so it goes. Remember my trip to Berlin last year? My wife teased me for getting to the airport two hours early but I was able to find out that all of United's flights to NYC and on to Berlin were cancelled that day and I was just able to snag the last seats on a series of American flights by the skin of my teeth! Being early saved my trip and reinforced my neurosis. 

But the last five flights to Denver had me considering dropping my guard a bit. With light traffic everywhere and TSA pre-check status I got to the airport and through the process so quickly that I ended up cooling my heels in the gate area for two, long hours. 

If I'm flying with carry-on only the anxiety load is never too great. And if I am flying on an opened schedule I can be totally relaxed. But the worst component is always the luggage. I still remember last year trying to fit two, large Pelican cases into a tiny Fiat rental car... No matter how you pack lighting gear, stands, tripods and flashes you're going to have a big load to watch out for and transport. Even getting from baggage claim to the shuttles is a pain in ass. Not to mention the aspect of Murphy's Law which clearly states that the one thing the TSA will destroy or "lose" is the one thing that's not replaceable and it will be the thing upon which all other parts of your job depend.

I did try shipping stuff ahead which everyone here rushed to advise me as the best course of action. The shipping charges clocked in (round trip) at somewhere near $600. I might as well buy the gear a seat on the plane.

But I do have a solution for some of this. There's a Hilton Hotel at the airport. I'll just give up and get to my own, hometown airport a day earlier and I'll have at least cancelled out the roadway and parking travel concerns. (Not seriously considering this. This plan falls under:  hyperbole).

I wish for the slower pace of life that we enjoyed at the beginning of my career. I once did a cookbook for Texas Monthly Press that had me in all the major cities of Texas and I did it all in a little, un-air conditioned, Volkswagen bug. Leisurely driving. Seeing the scenes. Ice chest full of Gatorade by my side. Rest stops located strategically. La Quintas where you needed them. 

Sure, the car broke down once or twice but nothing was such a rush back then. We'd just use the phone at the gas station and tell the restauranteurs that we'd be a day late. Didn't seem to matter to them...

On the flip side of this whole mental health equation I absolutely love getting to new places and I love conferences like the one I'll be attending for the next three days. Lots of fun people, good food, straight forward event photography and all the usual trappings of staying in a nice hotel. Also, I love Denver. It's nothing at all like Austin and that may be what I love most about it. That and the altitude. Nothing beats the free buzz of being oxygen deprived for three whole days!

On another note, I thought I'd be calmer and more at ease when I finally got my amazing-blockbuster-rivetting-can't-put-it-down novel uploaded and published on Amazon.com but now I'm on pins and needles waiting for the first reviews...  I think I've chosen all the wrong careers for a person as nervous as me.

I wrote this novel to open up a new writing category: Photo Fiction. It's all about stories for people who love the practice of photography. Action/adventure/Photography. Seems natural. Hope you enjoy it.

Dear VSL Readers, Belinda and I clicked the final boxes and uploaded the long-awaited Novel, The Lisbon Portfolio, to Amazon.

The Lisbon Portfolio. A Novel by Kirk Tuck.

It takes about 24 hours for a book to upload and go through the Amazon process to become a Kindle book. We should see it show up on the Amazon.com site and on my Amazon Author's Page by tomorrow evening (Tues. the 17th of June). I'll post the link as soon as it becomes available.  The link is now live: The Lisbon Portfolio.  We are publishing it first as a Kindle Book and as soon as that goes smoothly we'll start formatting the printed version and get it up onto Amazon as quickly as we can. We'll branch out from there. 

Here's the elevator speech: Our hero, Henry White, has been earning his living for the past seven years as a professional photographer specializing in documenting corporate events and shows. In his previous career he was an intelligence field researcher, working for a government agency, until his anxiety got the better of him and he resigned. His cover as a researcher was: a corporate photographer. The difference now is that he needs the money and the assignments and--- there is no safety net.

While on assignment for a multi-national, technology company in Lisbon, Henry White gets pulled back into a web of danger and intrigue by his old boss from the agency. After stumbling into the middle of a bloody and dramatic confrontation between multiple bad guys he'll need all of his wits and training to make it out of Lisbon alive. And he'll risk life and limb to keep a terrible new technology off the underworld weapons market before it makes nuclear war a very local issue for everyone.

The story takes place in 1999, just at the moment when digital cameras started to replace film cameras in the weathered shoulder bags of the first few adventurous, professional photographers. Henry must balance his need for this paying job, and his need to keep a few demanding meeting planners happy, with his duty to help prevent an escalation in miniaturized weapons technology from hitting the marketplace. 

The story weaves a very authentic look at the everyday life of a working photographer, on an assignment in a foreign capitol, with an action-packed, fast moving, deep dive into a thrill ride of fictional action and adventure. 

The book will be available for only $9.99

I'm so thrilled that I'm finally able to share this story with all of my friends. Thanks to everyone who encouraged and prodded me to resist resistance and to finish it. And thanks to Steven Pressfield for writing The War of Art. His book made all the difference in the world to me. 

I hope you'll buy a copy of The Lisbon Portfolio, read it and comment about it. I'd love to hear what you think!

Best to all my readers, Kirk

edit 6-17-2014: We've been live on Amazon.com for less than a day and we've already cracked the top 10,000 books for Kindle. Thank you!

Packing for a shoot. Getting everything into two cases and a camera bag.

Noellia. Sony Nex-7. 50mm lens.

I have a fun job lined up this week. I'm heading up to Denver on Weds. and I'll be there until Saturday evening. It's a conference and I am one of the photographers who will document the people, the speakers and the events. Normally, I'd just head up with a small carry on case with some changes of clothes and a small tripod. That, and my camera bag. 

But this time we're replicating something we did last year when the same conference was held here in Austin. We're setting up an on-site studio with a nine foot wide canvas background, three lights and all the trimmings. We'll spend the first morning of the conference making portraits of organization officers, speakers and other event nobility.  Last year I was able to stuff as much as I wanted into the capacious back end of my Honda CRV, including my magic cart, and I could park directly under the hotel and drag up everything into the hotel meeting room. 

I brought four or five A/C powered, monolights, a posing stool, big light stands, a robust and intimidating tripod, and back up stuff for everything. When you can bring the kitchen sink why not also bring along the gas grill and the mini-fridge, just to be comfortable?  We had fun last year and we inadvertently trained the client to appreciate the fully implemented, studio portrait treatment.  

This year I'm flying up to Denver to participate and I'm bringing along a version of the temporary studio. But this year everything has to fit in two cases that weigh under 50 pounds and are the correct size for Southwest Airline's baggage restrictions. Oh boy! Condensation packing! How to do the same with less!

I immediately went into research mode and consulted the acknowledged expert in the field of Minimalist Lighting. In fact, I was able to pull down one of this books on the subject from my bookshelf and start wading into the information. 

Seems that with a little ingenuity you can put together a portable, battery powered system that will give you the same look as a monolight system with a few compromises. My portable system won't have modeling lights so I'll leave the room lights on while I shoot so the camera and I can focus. And I won't really be able to shoot through big modifiers and get f16 on a subject ten feet from the front of a soft box---but I never do that anyway. 

So here's how it's coming together on late Monday afternoon. I have a 48 inch long, 10 inch by 10 inch Tenba light stand case with wheels on the end and on the bottom. In that case I have two background stands and cross poles. Three Manfrotto Nano stands with cold shoe/umbrella adapters on the tops. A bigger stand for the main light and a back-up stand, must in case. I also have packed four 43 inch umbrellas. Two silver and black, two shoot throughs. 

Also wedged into this miracle case is a little Pelican sub-case with wireless triggers and receivers along with a "carefully folded" muslin background. The same one we used last year. Love the idea of continuity, right?

Well, what about the lights? I looked around to see what might be cheap and new and fun and I decided on the Yongnuo YN-560 II Speedlights. On the day I bought these flashes they were $46 a piece. I couldn't help it. I bought three. What are they? Basically they are fully manual flashes with built in optical slaves that have two modes. One mode is a straight ahead slave while the second mode delays the flash assuming that your on camera flash will do pre-flashes for stuff. I don't care anything at all about the second mode but I bought the units for the first mode.

The 560's bounce and they can be turned all the way down to 1/128th power. Did I mention that I bought them because they were cheap and had built in optical slaves. I immediately stuck batteries in and hit the power button but nothing happened. So I did what 313 reviewers on Amazon.com did not do---I sat down and read the manual that came with the units. Hey, guess what? You have to hold the button down for about four seconds as the flash goes through a start-up cycle. I can imagine this is a great feature which will prevent accidental ignition in the camera bag and the resulting battery drain. 

I tested the flashes in the studio and was happy with color and performance. I added a Sunpak flash which also has a built-in slave as well as my giant, ungainly and ready-to-shut-down-at-the-slightest-hint-of-heat, Sony HVL-60 flash (which I keep, stupidly, in case I need to use it with the Sony RX10).  Just to add a cherry to the top of the pile I added the little Panasonic DMW-FL360L flash. I figured this one would come in handy on the GH4 when I'm walking around taking spontaneous social images...

That's it for the lighting. And the camera packing is straightforward: GH4, GH3, 12-35mm, 7-14mm, 35-100mm, 45mm 1.8 (Olympus) and done. Five batteries and a charger. Two super fast 64 GB SDXC U3 cards (which give me 7,000 shots per camera --- more of less) and an iPad. 

The two equipment cases roll up to curbside check-in and are well under the weight and size limits. The camera bag is lighter than with any previous system. Now I just need to remember the deodorant and to trim the nose hairs and we're ready to party. 

Hope your father's day was great. I got to "snake out" the air conditioner condensation hose before we ended up with an inch of water on the floor. Much fun.

in other news: Belinda and I finished working on, The Lisbon Portfolio. The photo/action novel I started back in 2002. I humbly think it is the perfect Summer vacation read. And the perfect, "oh crap, I have to fly across the country" read. It's in a Kindle version right now at Amazon. The Lisbon Portfolio. Action. Adventure. Photography.  See how our hero, Henry White, blows up a Range Rover with a Leica rangefinder.....

Remember, you can download the free Kindle Reader app for just about any table or OS out there....

A very well done blog post (also available as a podcast) from Mats Andrén called "Five Thoughts on Being a Photographer.

http://the-walk.se/five-thoughts-on-being-a-photographer/

I liked reading this and enjoyed it even more when I went back and listened to Mr. Andrén present it via his podcast.

Andrén is a photographer and a walker and right now he's walking across the U.S. He should be in Austin by the end of the month and I am looking forward to having lunch, dinner, coffee or whatever he would like in order to spend some time with him and listen to his stories.

Andrén got in touch with me because of the blog and it's one of the wonderful benefits, to me, of throwing the doors of my mind open to the world. Sometimes (usually) you get some great stuff back.
I hope Mats has some images of the American South he wants to share with me...

Please enjoy his blog post while Belinda and I spend the day uploading the novel to Amazon.com and getting all the kinks worked out so you can really enjoy it.