The Rumors have begun. What can we expect from an Olympus EM-6 ( or EM-52, or EM-5pro)?

The rumors are starting to swirl like a light dusting of snow. The people who divine such things are pointing to a February announcement of a new camera from Olympus to replace the three year old EM-5. It's important to note that the EM-5 is, in many people's opinions, the prime driver of acceptance for high end micro four thirds cameras. It upped the ante in image quality, image stabilization and physical downsizing in smaller cameras aimed at professionals and advanced enthusiasts. This make the introduction of its successor seem more important to me than just another upgrade.

I know that a lot of people will point to the EM-1 as the logical successor but they are really two separate products; the EM-1 being bigger and fully equipped with chubby handgrips while the EM-5 is svelte and can be configured to taste. My hope is that they'll keep whatever the call the successor to the EM-5 equally svelte and allow users to add just the right combination of grips and extensions to personalize the camera for the customer's individual hands.

I'm expecting to see the following fixes and upgrades to the new model:

1. The eyecup. While the EP-11 (the bigger optional eyecup) fixes the "random falling off" problem of the stock eyecup it's not that great. The original eyepiece works well for me when it's on the camera. I hope Olympus has figured out how to reliably keep it in place.

2. I fully expect to see a new EVF that's as good as the one in the EM-1 and also adds more processor speed to the mix to cut down even more on any perceptible, visual delay. While they are at it they could slightly widen the entire faux pentaprism hump to make the EVF bigger and get a greater eye point stand off for people who wear glasses while shooting.

3. Since the EM-5 was introduced Sony has made much headway with the one inch sensors that we current find in the Sony RX10 and the Panasonic fz1000. I would like to see more pixel density in the EM-5. A step up to 20 megapixels while keeping the same high ISO noise performance would help ensure that users aren't as tempted to migrate to higher res options outside the brand. And we'd all welcome an increase in resolution as long as it doesn't come with any performance hits. 

4.  I don't necessarily want 4K video in the body but it would be nice to change the current codec to something like the XAVC-S codec in some of the new and firmware upgraded models, like the RX10. The new codec would go a long way to solving the less than stellar look of video from the camera and the newer processors should be able to handle the increased throughput with no problems. While some might feel like we need the addition of microphone and headphone ports I'm thinking that a new SEMA-type attachment that fits into the current accessory port (and could spill up into the hot shoe) would be the logical place for those attachments.

5.  I'm certain that whatever new sensor ends up in the EM-5x will have phase detection AF points. At least it should...

6. Finally, I'd like them to change the exterior wrapping of the camera to something thicker and rubberier. The camera is small, which is good, but I still want to keep a good grip on it. 

Push this camera out at $999 and maybe we can see Olympus profit and loss numbers at least start trending back into positive territory for their camera division.

The icing on the cake for me would be one more lens. I'd like to see a 38mm f1.4. Close to the 75mm Summilux that I enjoyed shooting with back in the Leica film days. Olympus made a manual focus 38mm f1.8 back in the days of the film Pen cameras and it was a great focal length there as well. It would nicely fill a certain hole that I keep stumbling across when I take the system out for shoot.

The rumor was mentioned on DP Review so I do give it a bit more credence than usual. I'm not sure about the February introduction but it certainly would spice up a boring time of winter and might make just the right Valentine's Day present.....

A Saturday walk with a firmware updated camera and an interesting lens. It was my day to shoot what I like.

After a tough workout at the pool this morning Belinda and I headed over to our favorite burger joint, P. Terry's. We were being sybaritic so we split an order of French fries. But P. Terry's fries are no ordinary fat sponges pulled out a deep freeze. They cut them by hand from fresh potatoes and dunk them in hot canola oil. Healthy? Maybe not but nowhere near as toxic as the run of the mill, fast food fries... I brought along a camera. I'd chosen it for the day.

I'd played with all my other cameras last week so as we left the house in a misty, forty degree midday I grabbed the Samsung NX30 out of its drawer and put an interesting lens in the front of it. This is a lens that Samsung sent me along with an NX3000. I passed that camera along to a retired from work swim buddy who needed a good, all around camera for art projects and I swapped out the lens that came with the NX3000 with an 18-55mm kit lens I'd been playing with since the Galaxy NX days. I'd heard good things about the new lens, the 16-50mm f3.5 to 5.6 collapsible power zoom so I kept it around. I would have loved a black version but I am growing fond of the zany whiteness of the copy I have. It gives the ensemble a zebra look.  So I put the 16-50mm on my pick of camera and decided to use the combo as my shooting tool for the rest of the afternoon. 

Freshly fueled by a double burger on whole wheat with the works and a more than equitable share of the above fries I dropped Belinda back by the house, conferred in a serious manner with Studio Dog, and then headed out to see the world through the fifth or sixth model of camera I've used this week. I was not disappointed. While the weather could have been cheerier I was happy for the coolness and the clouds, and the camera and I decided to ignore the whisper light micro rain that was a constant companion for the afternoon. 

I've been in a black and white mood for the latter part of the week and it was my intention to shoot all day in black and white. The NX30 has a mode that they call, "classic" and it makes the frame black and white. It does a few other things like popping the contrast but I haven't really stopped to figure it all out. I just like the effect and it's so much of a "one stop" thing when shooting Jpeg compared with bringing color raw files back to the office, converting them to Jpegs and then using another program to make them artistically monochrome.

But of course the first place I dropped by was the giant graffiti walls with its riot of colors so my initial intention to be a black and white artist was shot all to hell. I switched back to the standard color profile, set the white balance to "cloudy" (because it was) and went back to shooting in non-monochrome. The best of intentions sabotaged by a cinder block wall smeared and sprayed with pigments.

I snooped around for a while and looked at the new art and played with the camera. I was a bit harsh on this camera when I first got it but that wasn't completely my fault. It wasn't the fastest performer in my collection and I had issues with getting the EVF to match the LCD and other problems getting the EVF to switch quickly and with assurance from the LCD when I put my eye to the finder in bright light. A recent firmware upgrade has turned the NX30 into a very, very usable camera for me. The addition of the 16-50mm lens gives me a little bit more on the wide side than I'd had before and, while there is some geometric distortion at the wide settings the lens is sharp enough wide open and very sharp one and two stops down. I hope it is marginally water resistant because I did have to wipe water off the camera and lens from time to time. 

Also, for the first time since I got the camera I played with the tilt-able EVF. I didn't see the value to it when I first got the camera but I was enmeshed in another system at the time and probably not paying attention. At any rate, the ability to use the EVF in a 90 degree fashion was really pretty great today. Everything at the graffiti park was wet and muddy but at the same time all of the art that I wanted details of was painted down near the ground. It was great not to have to "put a knee down" to get the head on angles that I wanted. Later, when shooting quickly on the street I came to realize that I could shoot with the EVF at a 45 degree angle, kind of like a prism finder on a film-era Hasselblad and that was a very quick and interesting way to shoot as well.  I'll keep that in mind the next time I'm shooting portraits with the 85mm and I want a lower camera position.

The NX30 body is smaller than I remembered. I have it here on my desk next to one of my Olympus EM-5 bodies wearing the top half of its battery grip. They are almost the same size when the EM-5 is used in that configuration. The 16-50 power zoom is small and light as well. Especially small when collapsed and closed. The one thing I've always liked about the Samsung cameras is their sensor tech. Different than their competitors. Not better or worse, just different. And as you know, I like different.

One thing I tried to do today was to check in and pay attention to what I think about when I'm walking around taking images. I know I am a sucker for contrasting colors, especially deep reds next to lighter blues. I also love pure greens. But today I was trying to figure out why. I can only say that color is like music for the eyes. My brain and eyes seem to love to find patterns based on shapes  and colors although I am not consciously looking for either. It's all running on some sort of brain sub-routine. I just end up responding by pointing the camera at the stuff I like and wrapping a composition around it. Someone wrote in last week to suggest that I should shoot in a more symmetrical and balanced way. I think the ceiling shot of the Alexander Palace bothered them. 

I could not disagree more. I can't stand to look at very balanced images because they seem static to me. I'm always a fan of a little tension in an image. Whether that tension is supplied by the emotional quality of the content or a little twist to the frame is inconsequential to my enjoyment. I just like stuff that's a little off. 

As I walked down the streets today I thought of the jobs I'd just done and what I might have done differently in each instance. Was I too concerned with the wind on Monday and not concerned enough with the finer points of subjects' expressions? Should I have used different modifiers on Tues.? I could have metered the studio portrait more accurately on Thurs. and I could have fine tuned my location and composition a bit more on Friday. I should have already made a custom preset if I'm going to use Nikon raw files in Lightroom. I have to remember to build in more test shots at the beginning of shoots and not rush to get started. Once I go through all the post op review I forget it, resolve to do everything differently the next time and then start fantasizing about the ultimate way to actually do the business.

Practically speaking though, there is no "right way" to do the business because that would mean shooting the same stuff in the same way over and over again. Trying desperately to have the most efficient and repeatable methodology I could construct. Figuring out the intersection of cost/client acceptance and profit by commodifying everything. Then I would be nothing more than a template of a photographer. An accountant's dream. And I'd quit in a week. I love the challenge of shooting differently nearly every time I go out the door. I've come to believe that if you aren't a bit nervous, not just going out to shoot paid jobs, but every time you go out to do your art then you aren't doing it right. The whole circus is nothing without the stimulation of uncertainty and the thrill of discovery. The challenge is the challenge. The fun part is hitting the wall of fear and anticipation and going over the top to the other side. And I'm sure that's what the folks were also thinking when they painted this dumpster:

And this re-bar.

Next week I start all over again. It's almost like starting from scratch. I have some clients who are knee deep in an ongoing campaign. I've changed cameras systems during the project twice but no one seems to notice. I guess as long as we keep the images in the same aesthetic ballpark no one should care. 

So the NX30 was a delightful surprise today. With the unobtrusive 16-50mm f3.5 to 5.6 it was almost weightless and near invisible. I hope it dries out well. 

Commodification / differentiation. It's a choice. 

Color, Texture and Glow. Things you can find in Marathon, Texas.

Eve's Organic Bed and Breakfast.

©2010 Kirk Tuck

Into every life a little bit of architectural photography is bound to fall....

It was a freezing, arctic day in Puskin, Russia. It was in February of 1995. I was hauling around a view camera case filled with tungsten lights, cables and plug adapters. I had a big bag of Hasselblad cameras and lenses over my shoulder. I was about to enter the Alexander Palace for the first time. But first we had to convince the head of security that everything would be okay. We were some of the first Americans to enter the historic building in a long, long time as it had been repurposed from "palace of the czars" to "headquarters of naval intelligence" sometime after the revolution.

The first thing I saw was this ceiling. I thought it looked wonderful. I loved the details and the colors. So I grabbed the battered and scarred Gitzo tripod and assembled a Hasselblad Superwide camera on top of it. The Superwide was legendary among architectural shooters. The 38mm Zeiss Biogon lens permanently grafted to the front was supposed to be absolutely rectilinear and used at f5.6 and slower the sharpness could be breathtaking.

Once I had the camera set up and position and roughly sighted in via the wonky optical finder that came with the camera I grabbed a Polaroid back and made a test frame on the black and white instant film we used at the time. My brain did some subconscious adjustments based on the Polaroid and then I loaded a back with 12 frames of Fuji Provia 100 in it onto the camera. As was the custom at the time I shot three frames. One at the exact setting which I presumed was the optimum exposure and then one frame about 2/3rds of a stop under that exposure and one that was about 2/3rds of a stop over that exposure. I took one last look at the ceiling and then pulled the camera off the tripod and caught up with my translator, our restoration architect and our armed, military escort.

I am pretty sure the last czar didn't have a strip of electrical conduit running along the wall next to the ceiling in his day but I am happy that I was able to see some of the glory and design of the time.

A trip to Pushkin rewards one with a chance to tour the (very fabulous) Catherine Palace and to also see the exterior of the Alexander Palace. If I could though I would give the traveler a couple pieces of advice: First, don't plan to go in February. It's cold, snow-covered and cold. Unimaginably cold for a Texan. Second, don't take 500 pounds of lights unless you are going on assignment (we were...) they'll just slow you down. And third, be sure to listen to your military escorts when they tell you that a certain view is forbidden. They really mean it.

I know what the tests say but what is my high ISO limit with APS-C? Oh golly, another "real world" look.

When I photographed by friend, Fadya, last month I was captivated with the idea of using HMI lights to do the lighting. In retrospect it was well founded excitement. I am very happy with the way the lights work, their color balance is pleasing and the continuous light source leverages portrait shooting with EVF cameras in a very satisfying way. But the shot above wasn't done with an EVF camera, it was done with a traditional DSLR, the Nikon D7100. I wanted to use the camera to see how it compared with the Olympus and Panasonic cameras I had been using. According to the folks at DXO (DXOmark.com) who test camera sensors the APS-C sensor in the 7100 is the highest rated sensor in it's class and, according to their scale, is a good ten points ahead of the OMD EM-1 or Panasonic GH4 sensors in the various parameters that DXO uses for their evaluations.

This image was shot at ISO 3200 with the camera set at 1/640th of a second and the 85mm 1.8 G lens set at f2.8. I zoomed into 100% and did some pixel peeping and I was pretty impressed by the low noise and the high amount of detail present. It's a bit ahead of both the GH4 and the Samsung NX30 cameras (which I also own and use) but the difference in noise only shows up at 3200 and above so it's hardly a deal killer unless you only shoot in low light.

Here is a "100%" crop from the image with noise reduction in Lightroom set to zero. You can see some noise in the shadow areas but it's also important to know that the original file is 24 megapixels...

I'm always curious how this stuff all works but I'm pretty sure that if you expose well you can get away with a lot of craziness at high ISOs. I am also interested in how this sensor does so I have a baseline of comparison when evaluating the Samsung NX-1. It should be an interesting comparison of sensor with two very different design technologies...

More to come.

Photographic ADHD. Why I light everything I shoot in a different way than the last time.

Noellia with Ring Light.

On monday I shot eight portraits outside. It was fun because it was challenging. There was a brisk wind and some gusts. The client really wanted the images to be outside and we already had rescheduled due to weather so we went for it. I discussed the packing in a post over the weekend but to review I used a medium (3x4ft.) soft box with an Elinchrom Ranger RX AS powered flash head. I set up the gear and positioned the camera so I could include out of focus trees in the background, behind the subjects. The main light came from the right. On the other side I needed to block the direct sun but when I put up a solid, opaque 4x4 foot flag the wind kept pushing the frame over. The stands didn't go anywhere. I was using high rise C-stands that each weigh about 25 pounds and I draped sixty pounds of sandbags over the "turtle base" of each C-stand (C-stand is short for Century Stand, a standard of movie sets the world over...and much more durable and stable than most photographic oriented light stands). 

I solved the issue of the windblown frame by replacing the opaque and sail like flag with net material instead. I use a two stop net and a one stop net to drop the sunlight down into irrelevance but the secret is that the nets let wind come through so they don't act as "sail-like" and they stay in position. 

At any rate, that was the lighting configuration for the day. Big ass electronic flash through a traditional soft box with some light cutters and the aid of a neutral density filter. 

Yesterday I found myself on another location. I was in a medical practice making portraits for the practice's website. We set up to do 12 people but this time I used four fluorescent light banks instead of flash. I wanted to create a look and feel similar to a ring light which pushes down unflattering skin details and lines. I used one of the fixtures on the background, one over the subject's head, just above camera and one each on the sides. Totally different than I usually light stuff but it gave me just the right look for images that will be attached to a dermatology practice! The fixtures are the Fotodiox Day-Flo-Pro models. I find them to be easy to color balance, provide good output and to be reliable. (and cheap). Since they are heavier than electronic flash heads I did bring along bigger light stands and a sand bag for each. I used diffusion right on the lights which made for smaller sources that I usually shoot but the three different fixtures used together gave me a nice, soft images which will stand up to some contrast boost after quick retouch.

Two days, two shoots and two totally different lighting set ups along with very different lighting tools. What next?  Well, I had a portrait of an attorney on the schedule for this morning so after I unpacked the gear yesterday evening and ingested all the files from the medical practice shoot I started mulling over how I would shoot the next day. What lights and what modifiers?

I decided to go with one of my favorite looks and use a 6x6 foot diffuser over to one side. But what to light it with? I went for two K5600 Lighting 200 watt HMIs. One was the open face and the other a fresnel unit that they call an Alpha. The light was perfect and the multiple fixtures let me move the lights a bit further back from the rear surface of the diffusion to elongate the fall off a bit more. 

I used a white bounce modifier to the opposite side and finished the whole thing off with a Fiilex P360 LED light fixture as a background light. Both the LED and the HMIs color matched perfectly and since they were all daylight balanced I didn't have to worry about ambient light leaking in the windows of my studio and causing a color cast. 

Funny that the Elinchrom electronic flash mono lights that seem to be a type of standard working tool of photographers everywhere were not even on my radar. 

Why all the different lights? Why all the different looks? 

I guess I should confess that I get bored easily and using different lights makes every shoot more interesting to me. It's just my prejudice but I think shooting things the same way, with the same tools, over and over again is just mind numbing. The theories of lighting are the same no matter which tools you end up reaching for. You aren't really creating new paradigms of lighting but you are taking advantage of the various strengths each tool conveys.

I had to use flash on Monday in order to compete with the ambient sunlight. I wanted to use the fluorescents on Tues. because they could be used in close, in multiples and not drive the room temperature up. They were the perfect tools to create a ring light effect with tight control. And I used the HMIs today because they make me feel as though I am on a movie set and I can see every little change I make to the lighting as I'm shooting. Couple HMIs with EVFs and you may have the single best combination for shooting portraits in the studio. So it's not just boredom, there is some method in my madness. 

I'll go so far as to say using the same tools every day, over and over again is akin to making a uniform product. That puts the whole photographic endeavor into the realm of being strictly for the money. The desire to play with all the tools means to me that I'm still engaged in the actual creation of photographs, separate from the commerce side, and that keeps me interested, engaged and constantly learning. You can do it either way. But to my mind it doesn't make sense to be a photographer if you aren't a little scared and excited every time you walk in the door to start a project. 

Stay tuned as I finally circle back for a revised review of the new LED panel.

Please buy a copy of my book.

Thank you!

I seem destined to learn the same photographic lessons over and over again. And subsequently forget them.

Taken and enormous number of years ago 

with a Canon TX and an ancient 

Vivitar 135mm f2.8 lens. 

I owned one light at the time.....

I had another re-satori exercise happen to me this week. By that I mean I re-learned something that I already knew but the knowledge of which had been pushed down by my rampant consumerism. I've been very busy lately and that usually means there's a higher than usual cash flow which, sadly, generally means an increase in overall gear lust. 

I was about to embark on yet another wonderful and well paying job and I headed to my favorite consumer electronics "candy shop", Precision Camera, to buy a needed three stop neutral density filter. Of course, while I was there I just had to take a look at the used equipment (which seems to be flying into their door quickly and in bulk). Knowing I was in the middle of a lukewarm flirtation with Nikon gear my sales associate put two interesting, low mileage, cameras on the counter in front of me. One was a Nikon D800 and the other a Nikon D610. Both were in amazing shape and both were priced at almost half their original selling prices. Overwhelming temptation! I had the store put one on hold for me while I sorted out my feelings overnight. 

That's one part of the universe speaking to me through gear. But here's the other half....

I was asked by Craftsy.com and a website called, Pixoto, to judge a portrait photography contest. All I had to do was pick the grand prize winner and to write  short few paragraphs about why I had selected the winner. I looked through about 5,000 images over the course of a day or two. One image kept jumping out at me, over and over again. It was well seen. It wasn't processed to death. The expression of the subject was perfect and riveting. I went through the exercise of narrowing down images into a folder of selects but every time I opened the computer up and started looking again the same image drew me in. It was an easy choice. And writing the "whys" of selection helped me understand (again) what was important in a portrait.

So here we mix the two events....

Once the judging was done I went back to my weightier problem: trying to convince myself that a D610 or D800 full frame camera with a spiffy-ass sensor would hugely improve my portraits or, conversely, talking myself out of spending yet more money on yet another placebo camera.

Since the portrait of the contest winner was fresh in my mind I decided to go back to the site and see what marvelous camera and what spectacular (certainly German) lens had be used to channel that image into existence. I did. I went back and looked at the camera info (and I'm a bit ashamed that with my age and experience that I would still do that). Well, the universe seems to enjoy balancing stuff.

The camera used was an EOS 600D. In U.S. parlance that's a Canon Rebel T3i. And the focal length is listed as a 90mm which I assume is the actual focal length on a zoom. Not a prime (although he could have used a 90mm tilt/shift....). So, here I am thinking this is a wonderful image: http://www.pixoto.com/images-photography/babies-and-children/child-portraits/raphael-5592685093060608 and I have to also understand that it was done with mundane tools and a total regards for, or an appreciation of, the subject. Not the camera.

Yes, yes, I abandoned any thought of getting the new camera(s). It's amazing in this situation just how quickly the universe came back around to correct my thinking.

Now....I am packing for another daylong portrait shooting assignment/adventure and I noticed that a certain big name fashion shooter does a really nice job with Broncolor strobes. Maybe I should look at picking up a set of those lights. It might really help my work.   Right. Not.

To bring it all the way around I love the image I posted of Belinda at the top of this blog post. I did it back in the late 1970's with a camera that only had shutter speeds to 1/500th, sync'd at 1/60th and had a creaky, used lens on the front. I owned one particularly nasty Novatron electronic flash and a photographic umbrella that I found in the trash behind an old studio in downtown (don't ask!). But I love everything about that portrait. Could it be that our skills become inversely proportional to our abilities to buy gear? I'm beginning to think so....