Workflow

The Canon PowerShot G5. An archaic, small-sensor digital camera (before I knew, or cared, what a small-sensor digital camera was) that, looking back, had a lot of shortcomings. It was slow. The sensor, at 5 megapixels, was considered far too “pixel dense” at the time, and many people complained of chromatic aberrations and purple fringing. But it had a few things really going for it. Mainly, the thing shot pictures in RAW format. I decided I’d bring RAW files into the latest version of Lightroom (4.2 as of this writing) to see what I could pull out of the files.

It is interesting to see how much information was in these files, and to see how improved software can bring a lot out of them but it’s even more interesting to see how personal tastes in post production change, too. I’m glad I was shooting RAW back then–there’s a lot in these pictures that I just didn’t see those many years ago. For you EXIF peepers, the image dates state 2011, but these pictures were taken in June of 2004, and I sold the G5 to fund a purchase of my first digital SLR back in 2005 (a Canon EOS Rebel XT).

Here’s an example of the color checker in use as a reference.

In a nutshell, the question came up about the Color Checker’s purpose. It does a couple of things:

1) You can create DNG color profiles of each of your cameras so that color profiles match among multiple cameras (but that’s not what I’m illustrating here)

2) White balance reference (that’s what I’m talking about here)

So check out the example below (click on it to make it bigger)

The upper left photo is of my trusty friend Fernando, and this is the Camera’s interpretation of the scene’s white balance. In other words, the camera is capturing the scene in a native raw format and guessing at the white balance. The result? A decent picture of a human being. It’s good enough if you’re taking casual snaps. Sometimes the result is Oompa Loompa orange skin. Sometimes it’s Incredible Hulk green skin. Sometimes skin is a shade of purple, a la The Count. Point being, sometimes human skin tone doesn’t quite look like human skin tone.

Add to that the fact that a camera’s white balance is drastically different based on the lighting used–tungsten lights commonly found on movie sets and theaters have a deep orange hue, as to where fluorescent lights have a green tint, and open shade can be blue.

One solution is to take the photo into your editing software of choice, and mess with white balance manually, and make a guess of what looks closer to accurate for you. It could take a minute or two, or longer if you wanted to spend the time with it. One of my personal problems is that I will adjust a photo to my liking, then make corrections to a whole set from that session, then call it a night. I’ll come back to it the following day and realize that my tired eyes deceived me, and what looked fine the night before looks horrible after a night’s rest. Really, it’s a combination of taste and best guesses.

An easier solution that takes the guessing out of the equation? A calibrated neutral reference, like the the grey patch of a Color Checker.

All you have to do is take a picture of the scene with a color checker in it, bring the picture into software that can edit a RAW photo like Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw, take your white balance dropper and click on the Color Checker’s neutral gray patch. Done. That’s it. White balance is neutral to that scene.

You deliver the edit to the client, they pay, and you pay your rent for one more month and you’re known as the guy that takes decent pictures where folks don’t inadvertently look like Oompa Loompas.

ALERT: BORING GEAR TALK AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS POST

For the last year, I’ve been shooting with with the Micro Four Thirds system. Specifically, the Panasonic Lumix GF1, 20mm f/1.7 and 14mm f/2.5 lenses. Great camera and very fun to shoot with, without the size and bulk. It became a great behind-the-scenes tool when I was on film sets and was my carry-everywhere camera.

Primarily owning Canon SLR gear, I chose Micro Four Thirds and the GF1 for several reasons:

Size

Compared to the SLRs I use to shoot other stuff, M43 gear is absolutely tiny. It’s not super-compact digital tiny, like the Canon S95, but your back and shoulders won’t feel the weight if you have one slung around your shoulder all day. In fact, you’re going to want to carry one around all day because they’re so damn fun to shoot with. Paired with one of the pancake lenses, you’ve got a really great little package, even compared to the smallest Canon SLRs.

Lenses

The fast primes in the M43 system are the absolute kings of the hill. As of this writing, the zooms currently available for the system don’t even hold a candle in my book. The primes are small, fast, and they are optically amazing. I went with the pancakes: the 20mm f/1.7 and the 14mm f/2.5. Outside of their fast apertures and great optical performance, their size is right at the top of the list of reasons why I chose them. I owned the revered (by forum geeks) Panasonic 14-45mm zoom for a couple of weeks, and it was okay, but I didn’t like it because the slow apertures and relatively large barrel size when compared to the primes.

Cost

Okay, so this M43 system isn’t exactly cheap. At the time of release (2009), the GF1 kit with a 20mm or 14-45mm (your choice) was $899. You can pick up a body on Ebay today for about $180, and the lens used for about $350-400. But you have to consider the target market of these “system” cameras: DSLR owners who don’t want to lug their DSLRs around with them all the time. A Canon EOS 7D with a 24-70mm lens is a 5-pound behemoth compared to a GF1 , and yes, once upon a time I was “dedicated” enough to carry the 7D on vacation with me, even though it was left in the hotel room half the time. Never again.

Build Quality

Not all M43 cameras are made the same; the GF1 in particular has a metal body and really solid construction, and it really inspires confidence in me to carry it wherever I go. From what I hear, the GF2 and GF3, and the lower end of the Olympus lines (PEN Lite) aren’t quite as confidence-inspiring in their construction, which is not to say they’re not sturdy. Recently Panasonic has introduced the GX1, the “true” successor to the GF1 despite the GF2, GF3, etc. naming convention.

Handling

The GF1 has dials and buttons laid out in such a tactile and logical way. The rear control dial has a click function which can change the function of that dial on the fly. For example, if you’re shooting in aperture priority, the rear dial controls the aperture, and if you click it in, it controls the exposure compensation. If you’re shooting in manual, the click switches between aperture and shutter. Logical, easy, and it works well. Menus aren’t crazy deep and the important functions have buttons assigned to them (ISO, metering mode, AF mode, white balance). It isn’t the all-dial-and-wheel super fast control you have with a DSLR, but this isn’t a DSLR and you’ve got less real estate to deal with. Considering that, the controls across the back and top don’t feel cramped in the least bit. Their is also a dedicated video button next the shutter button. Want to make a movie? There is no dial to turn or menu to dig into–just press the video button and you’re making movies. If you want, you can use the top dial control to kick it into video mode and disable the dedicated video button altogether–and this is only one example of how customizable this camera is.

Focus is quick, and from what I understand, at the time of release it was best-in-class. To this day, I still find it nice and snappy, but naturally not as fast as what you’d find on an SLR. Never at any point did I feel like it struggled for focus, and when pushed to its limit in, say, a very dark room, it still found focus pretty well. Shutter lag is negligible; I’m sure you can find a spec on that somewhere if you Google it.

It is worth pointing out that these cameras are not meant to replace DSLRs for those that actually need what DSLRs offer. Don’t expect to shoot a sporting event with one of these and end up with something that might grace the cover of Sports Illustrated. Compared to a DSLR, these are simply not as fast and responsive. But compared to most compacts, they are damn fast, and they sure as hell are responsive.

Pictures (duh)

The system takes great pictures. Not much more to say. If you want crazy dynamic range, go elsewhere. These cameras are digital and make no bones about it. But the aforementioned lenses are sharp and beautiful. They shoot RAW , and I shoot in RAW pretty much 100% of the time. I didn’t use any of the JPG presents–I like to get the colors I want with RAW files. High ISO is good, perfectly usable at up to the maximum 3200 for the GF1. There are cameras in this system, and in other systems, that shoot astronomically high ISOs, but jesus, what’s so shitty about taking pictures in good light that we need to take pictures in near darkness?

Goodbye (temporarily)

In all, I really found the system fun to shoot with, with no glaring drawbacks (personally). I couldn’t stop shooting with the system, and I like I mentioned, it made me want to shoot more and more. However, I’ve decided to part with it for the time being. One aspect that I love about DSLRs are the eye-level viewfinders, and I really missed that with this system. The GF1 has a viewfinder accessory which I owned for a couple of days. It absolutely sucked, so up on Ebay it went. Grainy, laggy, crappy color. It was like an EVF from a 1990’s Hi-8 Sony Handycam. So I went looking for a camera that had either a great optical viewfinder or a decent electronic viewfinder. Hello, Fujifilm X100–it has both an OVF and EVF. As usual, my late-to-the-party review on that camera is forthcoming.

Summary

Fun to shoot with. Responsive with just enough buttons and dials to keep things fast and under control. Great pictures, decent high-ISO capability. Viewfinder accessory for this particular system sucked, though I understand the Olympus viewfinders are much better. Go ask Google. Great camera to bring with you everywhere you go so you don’t have to use the “DSLR is too big/heavy” excuse.

Adobe has just announced that a Beta version of Lightroom 4 is available.

Lightroom has been the center of my workflow ever since Version 1. My favorite thing about it is that I can get down to rating, keywording, and editing without having to deal with individual files, since Lightroom handles the individual files for me. I can import the pictures, make adjustments, and move on to the next photo without having to open, save as, rename, adjust, save, copy, etc. It’s also easy to go back to previous photo without having to browse for it and open it, which can get really hairy if you’ve made a duplicate version of the photo so as to keep the original in its unaltered state.

Lightroom adjustments are also 100% non-destructive, as it doesn’t actually alter your original photo; it loads a preview and makes adjustments to the preview (all behind the scenes without you having to save different versions). Such a huge time saver.

For any photographer wondering which picture editing software they should invest in first, I can say without reservation that it should be Lightroom 4. Apple’s Aperture is also a similar option, but I’ve personally never used it.

You can download the Beta version of Lightroom 4 here:

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom4/

NAPP’s Lightroom 4 Launch Center can be found at the link below:

http://www.photoshopuser.com/lightroom4

NAPP’s training and information is the most relevant and definitive, in my experience.

Vallejo Shakespeare in the Park presents "Othello"

Vallejo Shakespeare in the Park will be presenting “Othello” this summer and I had the opportunity to create some promo photographs for their show. The main differences with the promotional photography and production photography is that with the promo stuff, I light and pose the actors. With production photos, I’m basically a fly on the wall during a dress rehearsal–commonly during tech week, and more commonly during the very last dress rehearsal before a show opens–when the show is picture ready.

Theatre companies need the promo pictures well before a show opens so they can (you guessed it) promote the show with plenty of time before it opens. This is especially important because prospective audience members are more likely to go see a show if they have a way connect with the characters beforehand.

For the shot(s) above, I shot the actors separately against a green screen, lit them with small flashes with shoot-through umbrella attachments, and created a composite in Photoshop. I went into the shoot with a firm concept of what the final product was going to be, so I lit and posed each actor accordingly.

For Othello, I knew I wanted to bring out the contours of his face and create depth with strong shadows, so I placed my main light camera left at a hard 90 degree angle towards the subject, which fills in his face but also casts a distinct shadow to the right of the camera. I then placed a fill light at a 45 degree angle camera right. This gave me a face that was well lit, and shows us exactly what Othello looks like, but it’s not flat and evenly lit.

For Iago, I wanted his face more filled in, but with one side more  “lost” in shadow–almost as if he was being obscured by Othello’s shadow. I placed the key light 45 degrees camera right and angled his face just so that one side was almost completely obscured except for his eye–people always focus on the eyes, so I didn’t want to lose it. I had one more light behind and above him to give his hair a little depth, but I didn’t want a classic back/rim light scenario–just a tiny splash of light on his hair.

Finally, I wanted to give Desdemona the same light/shadow depth that I gave Othello. I had to walk the lights back a couple of feet since I shot a bit wider to get more body length. Due to the way she was posed, I noticed that the fill light being at 45 degrees was hitting her flat against her back, and the contours of her arm seemed to get lost, so both the main and fill light were placed 90 degrees on either side of the frame.

I took these shots using the Canon EOS 7D with the ST-E2 Speedlite Transmitterattachment. Even though the 7D features wireless flash control built in, there’s less digging into menus when I use the ST-E2. I used three 430EX II flashes on light stands, two of them with umbrellas.

After the shoot, I went through the usual workflow of Photo Mechanic > Lightroom > Photoshop to create the final composite image you see at the beginning of the post. Lots of fun, and more planning and post-production involved than a dress rehearsal shoot, but the end result was really worth it. One thing I regret is not capturing behind the scenes photos of the lighting setups themselves. Because of limited budgets, I didn’t have an assistant on this shoot so all the lightstand moving was done by yours truly. Hopefully next time I’ll have a bit more time to do so.

Make sure to check out the event here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=123487851078062

This was from a while ago, but I hold a special place in my heart for my hometown paper. They reviewed a show at Dreamweavers and used my production stills from the show.

http://beniciaherald.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/charming-%E2%80%98hay-fever%E2%80%99-continues-dreamweavers%E2%80%99-winning-season/

As always, Dreamweavers provided a great show with a lot of beautiful lighting for me to shoot. I never find myself going over ISO 1600 there.

Shot with a Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L, and I set a custom white balance to the key lights to nail accurate colors. I always shoot RAW when shooting theatre (or pretty much anything, for that matter).

I shoot in RAW for a couple of reasons: It lets me fine-tune white balance, even though I set a custom WB at the beginning of the shoot. It also gives me latitude to bump up shadows and tame highlights where necessary. Theatrical lighting, by it’s nature, is quite hard and directional. Where one portion of the scene can be perfectly exposed, another portion can be either lost in total darkness or overexposed and too bright.

To set a custom white balance, I use a standard Kodak 18% Grey Card. There are much fancier white balance systems out there, but this one is simple and accurate. These cards were originally meant for determining exposure, and they work great for that, but the grey is perfectly neutral in color and works beautifully to set white balance for digital cameras.

Here’s the link to the whole gallery.

I recently took part in Theatre Bay Area‘s annual Vendor Conference in San Francisco where I had an opportunity to show my best work to the Theatre community. This facilitated a heavy edit of my current portfolio of theatrical images where I made selects and post-processed from scratch every show I’ve shot, from the beginning. It was a long process but the results were worth it, and it made me realized how much my taste, and ability to post-process an image, has changed. I used an X-Rite Eye-One Display 2 (tip: Pantone, GretagMacbeth, and X-Rite versions of this product are all the same thing) to calibrate my monitor so I could make sure that the colors displayed on my monitor, and eventually printed, were accurate, taking the guesswork out of the equation.

Having to edit many thousands of images down to about 100 to show at my table, and down to six to print large on my display, is not easy, and better left to professional editors, but just not feasibly in the budget for me so I had to fire up the coffeemaker and hunker down for about a week. As always, I used Photo Mechanic for it’s speed to make selects and add ratings, and then Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 to adjust exposure, tone, and color.

I added Photo Mechanic to my workflow about a year ago because it’s just plain fast. I use it only for selection and rating–basically editing down a take to the best photos to then process and deliver. It is a huge time saver for me, because a single show will, on average, yield about 1000 – 1200 photos. Of those, only 40-60 will be delivered, and they need to be delivered fast. I’ve made it a policy to deliver selects within 24 hours; the clients need the photos to publicize the production on their website, Facebook, and send photos to news outlets.

Take a look at the newly edited (and ever-changing) portfolio here.

I’ll lead off with the important part. You can buy Photo Mechanic right now for $60. I wouldn’t blame  you if you didn’t read the rest of this post. But if you do by chance remember to come back here, it would be much appreciated.

Remember when you first got a digital camera, and importing that first group of 2 Megapixel photos to your computer’s 40Gb hard drive was magical because you didn’t have to deal with film?

Well, if you’re like most photographers nowadays, you have to deal with a day’s take of 500-1000 12 or 18 Megapixel RAW files. In addition, you have to review them, rate them, keyword them, and caption them. Then you have to upload them to an FTP server for a clients review, or place them into a web gallery, or export proofsheets and email them.

Well, I had gotten to a point where I had dreaded that potentially hours-long process. Then Zack Arias introduced me to Photo Mechanic. What used to take me anywhere from 3-4 hours in Lightroom (no offense Lightroom, I love you and you will forever be part of my workflow) took less than an hour when going through Photo Mechanic. I was initially skeptical about adding another piece of software to my workflow. Lightroom was revolutionary when it was released, but the time it took to render previews made the selection process slow to a crawl with the huge RAW files today’s cameras produce. Enter Photo Mechanic. I won’t go into specifics too much–you can always watch Zack’s video if you follow the link above if you want the nitty gritty, but essentially Photo Mechanic only deals with the RAW file’s embedded JPG preview, and consequently, it is fast. Crazy fast, even on the damn near ancient workstation where I do my selections.

Photo Mechanic is not for pixel pushing, or even making global adjustments. No curves, saturation, levels, healing brushes, dodging or burning. It’s for editing and sorting only, and when you see it in action, you’ll see why it’s the go-to tool for a majority of press photographers and newspapers in the country.

If you deal with hundreds or even thousands of pictures per assignment, and you want a lot of your time back, get it today for $60 instead of the regular price of $150.