A Perennial Conference Photographed with a Different Model and Brand of Camera Every Year for Nine Years.

Every year (except one) in the last nine years I have been hired to photographically document a very unique corporate conference that takes place here in Austin. It's unique because attendance is by invitation only, it's closed to the press and the public, and it's pure sophisticated social+economic content. The invited attendees come from banking, investment, demographic research and governmental agencies. The speakers include billionaires, thought leaders and best selling authors. The subject matter involves finance,  new investment paradigms, demographic trends, global financial trends and new industry creation. The actual content is protected by NDA.

But none of that is really important here. What I want to talk about is how I photographed the show this year, or, more to the point, what cameras I used this year. 

I opted to use two Panasonic GH5s and two Olympus lenses; the 12-100mm f4.0 Pro and the 40-150mm f2.8 Pro. This year I was able to forego bringing along a wider assortment of lenses because the two Olympus lenses covered every thing I needed, from wide stage shots to tight shots of speakers on stage. The robust image stabilization supplied by the 12-100mm (in lens) and the GH5 for the 40-150mm (in camera) meant that this was the first year I could drop any tripod or monopod from the gear inventory and not miss it in some situation or another. 

The system checked all the right boxes for the way I photograph these kinds of conferences. The conference doesn't want me to use flash in during panels or speeches. The system needs to be good enough to operate at ISO 800 or higher without issues so that flash is always unnecessary during "main tent" sessions. Since the show is fairly intimate, with only 250 attendees, and since I work fairly close to the stage, the camera needs to be very quiet or altogether silent. Since I move around a bit during presentations the cameras have to be light and mobile. Distilling down to 2 mirrorless bodies and two lenses is a major plus. 

So far I've done previous shows for this client with: 4/3 Olympus cameras, Nikon APS-C cameras, Nikon FF cameras, Canon FF cameras, Olympus m4/3 cameras, Panasonic GH4 cameras, Sony FE cameras, Sony RX10 cameras and now the Panasonic GH5s. With each system (except the RX10s) I tried to source the smallest number of lenses to cover wide shots of the main ballroom in which the conference was held all the way down to tight head shots of the speakers on stage. In terms of convenience the RX10iii was without peer. But it took tight control to stay right in the small zone of best compromise where subject motion didn't become an issue but neither did noise in the image files. Sometimes I was successful and sometimes not. Underexposed high ISO one inch sensor files can get a bit ugly in post. 

Overall the Sony A7Rii had the best image quality to date but was not my favorite for handling and daylong comfortable operation. The lowest image quality came from the earliest cameras; the 12 megapixel e-3 and e-5 Olympus 4/3 cameras. The worst fit for conferences came from cameras like the Canon 5Dii the Nikon D750 and D700. These were far too loud for any situation which called for a discreet, quiet approach, even when wrapped with neoprene. The shutters and mirrors, even in quiet modes, were just too loud to allow me to sit in the audience and work. This routinely limited the number and kind of shots I could take.

Last year I split the show between the A7rii and the RX10iii. My primary lens on the A7Rii was the 70-200mm f4.0 G series lens. I also used a battery grip on the bottom of the A7Rii to provide longer battery life. The combination became uncomfortable to hold and use during a full eight hours of on again, off again handheld photography. In addition, the A7Rii and A7ii electronic viewfinders didn't track as closely, in terms of color and exposure, as I hoped they would with my studio computer. Finally, it was burdensome to use them in their raw modes because of the enormous size of the resulting files; even with the 24 megapixel A7ii. The 42 megapixel file sizes of the A7Rii pushed me to use that camera as a Jpeg-centric tool since we ended up with nearly 3,400 files by the end of last year's show. 

The RX10iii was very convenient and easy to work with over the course of a long day but the files sat right on the edge of the pass/fail edge of image quality in dim situations at ISO 800+. 

 I decided to test the GH5 in the conference arena by using two of them at this show. I'd done a series of tests leading up to the show so I was pretty confident that they would be adequate to the task. I also knew from testing that the two lenses I chose would be very sharp. They would not be the weak link in the imaging chain. (That would be me....). 

The GH5 checked all the right boxes for me. The EVF finder is the best I've owned so far. The camera's shutter is quiet enough to use in its mechanical setting with EFC but has a full-on silent setting if needed. The battery life, with review turned off, was excellent. I shot all day yesterday with one battery in each camera and no need to change. Yes, all day on location with the original two batteries. 

The image in the EVF tracked the reality of my calibrated computer screen much better than any previous camera I've used and the 12 bit raw files are small enough to allow me to shoot (for the first time) the entire show in a raw file format which allowed for much tighter color correction in post. I was able to use zebras to consistently get bright exposures without blowing out caucasian skin which also helped keep noise to a minimum. This year the stage set consisted of white leather couches and a center white desk so I had ample targets, in changing light, from which to set custom white balances. I maintained three custom white balances in three saved banks and was able to move through those presets quickly as the light on the stage cycled.

Having the right color balance and the right exposure means minimal noise in these cameras at ISO 800. Getting it right in camera meant I had less need to boost shadows in post, which is what usually makes noise rears its ugly head. 

A quick note about iPhone software for the GH5 camera. One of the speakers pulled me aside before he went on stage and requested that I get some great shots of him on stage and also asked if I could send them to his company's marketing team by end of day for use on social media. I assured him we could do that and then downloaded the Lumix phone app. It took me about ten minutes to set up a wi-fi network between the camera and phone (while continuing to photograph) and after that I started grabbing selected frames of the guy speaking and transferring them to the phone. When I knew I had a dozen good shots (all Jpegs) I sent them via e-mail to the exec's e-mail address and the e-mail address he'd given me for his social media team. The social media people had the images ready for upload before the speaker left the stage. They were just waiting for final approval as the behind-the-curtain production crew retrieved his lav microphone and body pack. 

Okay, so there are some phone apps that might be useful....

But let's get down to the stars of this particular documentation exercise: The Olympus Pro lenses. I'll go out on a limb here and say that I think the 40-150mm f2.8 Pro lens is the sharpest lens I've ever shot with from any maker, including Leica. I shot with it only at its wide open aperture setting and was amazed at the sharpness, contrast and detail in the final files. It may be that full frame cameras have advantages with their sensors but these lenses go a long way toward equalizing the playing field. The 40-150 is easy to handhold, the manual focus system (with hard stops at close focus and infinity) is elegant, and the performance in the final files is stunning. I'm in love. 

The second lens is one I've already gushed over. It's the 12-100mm f4.0 Pro. While I'll always wish every lens was one stop faster the lens is so nice to use that I know I'll get over that mental block. I was able to shoot about 80 % of the material over the last three days with this lens since it covers such a wide range and does so very well. 

This system is the best compromise across all the systems I've used for this kind of event and stage work. I can hardly wait to use it at the next theater dress rehearsal shoot. The lenses are just right in terms of range and (especially with the 40-150mm) speed. The camera is very surefooted when it comes to the S-AF focusing that I normally use and the handling of the body and body+lens is perfect. 

We get our first big video trial for a client on Tues. but the tests I've already done in studio have been so exemplary where video is involved that I have not doubts about the technical tour de force kit we'll have on hand for our CEO interview. The only thing I worry about now are my own skills at interviewing and operating all the moving parts correctly. 

Photo below: During the last panel discussion on the first full day of the program the show producers send out a selection of beers to all the attendees and all the panelists. We drink a toast before the last panel begins. Sometimes they change up the tradition and waiters come out with Champagne. It's a very civilized show indeed. 

This show, done at an Omni Hotel resort property here in Austin, Texas also gets high marks for routinely providing the very best food. I gained at least a pound this week. Thankfully we've had some killer workouts at the pool. I think I lost most of the extra weight at this mornings 1.5 hour sprint fest...

Last week I talked about photographing two actors on white for the upcoming production of "Singing in the Rain." Here's the first use. A printed post card...

I love to show finished projects. I worked with Rona Ebert who is the in-house design director at Zach Theatre on this assignment. We met before the shoot to brainstorm and plan and it paid off with dozens of photographs of this talented couple that the theater will be using leading up to, and throughout the run of the show.

I really like the way this ended up. In any professional photography job the client pretty much takes things like able camera operation and lighting competence as unspoken, required basics. You wouldn't be in their facility working with paid talent if they didn't assume you had those things managed. The things that keep you on their team are your ability to collaborate with the talent (and the creative team)  to get good expressions, gesture and presence.

Just as a technical reminder, I shot this job with a Panasonic GH5 and the Olympus 12-100mm f4.0 Pro lens. I used a couple of cheap speed lights on the white muslin background, a monolight to the right of the frame in a huge white umbrella as my main light, and a second mini-monolight, at half the relative power, over to the left of the frame, in an even bigger umbrella. I used one tiny speed light to light the talent from the back. That light was used directly and was dialed down to about 1/16th power. It's just the barest twinkle of backlight....

I just had to go out and do a quick test of a lens I'll probably use less than most of my other lenses. It's the Panasonic/Leica 8-18mm.

As most loyal readers probably know I think of wide angle and ultra wide angle lenses as an afterthought. But when shooting commercial work there are often requests to, "get the whole lab, from side to side, in the shot." Or, "Can you get this entire group in the shot from about 10 feet away?" Or, "Let's shoot this scene from inside the car/truck/plane/boat." And in those situations client retention does call for some focal length flexibility. In my full frame Canon days my widest lens was the 20mm f2.8 and I used it whenever I needed to do architecture. With the full frame Sonys I try to make everything fit into the 24mm wide end of the 24-70mm zoom but use the Rokinon 14mm when I know I'll have time to spend correcting its massive distortion...(a lens profile in Lightroom is a big help). 

So now that I've dived into the Panasonic cameras and am putting together what I think will be a video centric imaging system I've decided not to dance around the need for some wide angle coverage and to buy a lens that simplifies that kind of photography. There were really two choices: the Olympus 7-14mm Pro series lens and the Panasonic/Leica 8-18mm. I chose the Panasonic/Leica for three reasons (of which only two are cogent and only one is a deal maker....). First off I liked the industrial design of the lens. It looks cool. Don't discount cool looks entirely. Design is, by nature, somewhat sneaky in that it makes a certain statement. The Panasonic/Leica says, "Well integrated with the camera." 

My second reason for buying it is my theory that while Olympus and Panasonic cameras will read each other's lens firmware maybe Panasonic camera has some special sauce sprinkled in that allows it to optimize the wide performance of the lens just a little bit more. And finally, most importantly, I can stick a 67mm variable neutral density filter right on the front of the lens while the Olympus requires a whole new, fumbly apparatus with which to use filters at all. 

I didn't want to wait until the 30 day return privilege at Precision Camera passed me by to check out the lens performance so after a meeting about a video project with my favorite producer/director I headed downtown to shoot random wide shots of random stuff. I also stopped by Whole Foods to pick up a couple of Lemon Hazelnut Scones (LHS) for afternoon tea with my favorite art director/designer and to have some sushi for lunch. 

I came home and put four dozen files into Lightroom and looked as them dispassionately. The lens is sharp, the software correction works well. There's no discernible loss of sharpness in the corners at f5.6 (which is a good f-stop at which to shoot wide images) and the lens resolves nice detail even at the widest setting. In short, the lens is perfect for the limited use it will probably see on my cameras. But it's good to have it in the bag for those "just in case" moments. Not what I would consider a sexy lens but one which will round out the image capabilities of the Panasonic package. 

Conjoining a GH5 camera body with a Contax/Yashica Zeiss 50mm f1.7 lens and then throwing caution to the wind and shooting mostly at f2.0 and f2.8.

It's fun to mix and match. I've been playing around with the Panasonic GH5 cameras for a week or so and have found the Olympus Pro series lenses I bought to be amazingly sharp. Same with the Panasonic 8-18mm lens, but I felt the need to fill in with some speed in the portrait/short tele area of my lens kit for these cameras. Having already dropped kilo dollars on the basics for the system I was reticent to drop more cash on something stop gap (saving up for the Nocticron...) so I rummaged around in one of the equipment drawers and found my Zeiss 50. I just happened to have an adapter to mount it onto m4:3rds cameras and in moments we were all hooked up and on our way. 

Early on I decided that I'd like to try shooting the lens close to its maximum aperture because that's where I thought I'd get the most use out of it on real shoots --- as the lens to grab when I need an extra stop of light, or a little less depth of field, when shooting available light. I pretty much stuck to f2.0 and f2.8 and enabled the GH5's automatic shutter selection. This would allow the camera to switch to the high speed, electronic shutter when the light levels maxed out the mechanical shutter's 1/8,000th. 

Most of the sunlit shots sent the camera into electronic shutter territory. The one just below, shot at f2.0 required 1/32,000th of a second exposure. I hardly worried about subject movement with this shot.... But what I was interested to see was the lens performance on a sensor much smaller than the original 35mm frame for which this lens was originally designed. 

I was pleased....

The camera and lens handled each other beautifully. 

Lighting Mr. Hooper.

It's always all about the big, spot main light. For this portrait of a very accomplished theatrical talent I used a large softbox over to the right side of the frame. I realized though that getting the light in as close as I wanted it (approximately the same distance to subject as the diagonal measure of the light itself...) I would risk burning out his left shoulder. I used a Westcott FastFrame with a two stop net between the bottom, rear quarter of the softbox and his shoulder, feathering it so it would not cause an obvious drop in overall exposure. This allowed me to get the soft transition across his face and not worry about over lighting my subject on the main light side. I used a 50 inch, round, pop-up diffuser on the shadow side as passive fill and one light, dialed way down, on the background to bring it up just a hair.

The frame is cropped down from a 3:2 aspect ratio. I used a Sony A7Rii and an FE 85mm f1.8 to make the image. The camera was set to uncompressed Raw.

The main light is the Neewer Vision 4 battery powered monolight and the background light is the Godox AD200 using the standard reflector with its front diffuser.

If you don't like the expression on this image (I do...) then I have 519 others to choose from. Across four wardrobe changes.

The GH5. What does it really look like at ISO 3200. One quick example shot in murky conditions.

Leslie as the evil queen in a Zach Theatre production of 

"The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" for kids.

My friend, James, and I have views about camera noise performance that seem to sit on opposite sides of some spectrum of visual aesthetics. You have to beat me over the head with noise in a photograph before I protest. If I can't see noise in a file at the resolution at which I'll be using the file it just doesn't exist for me. In early days of digital the noise always consisted of color splotches and random color crap but now everyone's camera seems to deliver a nicer (to me) monochrome, film grain-like noise that effectively mimics film grain from black and white films overlaying a color file. James, on the other hand, seems to have a severe allergy nearly as strong as a deadly peanut allergy to the presence of moving noise in the shadow areas of video files; and by extension, still image files. He's usually on the search for a video camera (or still camera) that's more or less devoid of noise. 

I'm pretty happy with the general control of noise I get out of one inch sensor cameras and most micro four thirds cameras; as long as the detail and color are there. 

We've lately been having coffee and sharing resources about the GH5 camera since we are both interested in it. My interest bleeds over from video and into the photo realm. He would use the camera strictly for video production. I think the high ISO noise presented by my Sony RX10iii or Panasonic FZ2500 is quite acceptable for most productions. James considers cameras like the Sony FS-7 or A7Rii to be the more appropriate tools with which to create un-noisy video files. 

I wanted to see if I was in the self-delusion mode (happens from time to time) about the amount of noise in GH5 files at various settings so I did what I usually write about here at VSL. I took the camera out on an assignment and tested it in the kind of situation I find myself in from time to time.

I was at the Zach Theatre campus to shoot a children's play in their small, theater-in-the-round stage. It's a theater that seats about 140 people. The walls are painted black as is the high, high ceiling. Since all the productions in this auditorium are presented in the round there is no effective front fill for the lighting. It all comes from catwalks high above the stage. This means that every face has bright highlights and unfilled shadows. There is very little fill from any direction. This small auditorium will also be the last one updated to use new LED lights. The lights currently hanging from the rafters are ancient tungsten spots and floods. This means that when they are filtered heavily you can only get so much power down onto my subjects. 

While the lighting looks dramatic and fun for audiences it's not often optimal for camera work. In the film years we routinely dragged in huge amounts of flash and set up the scenes we wanted to capture and lit for them. We tried to match the "feel" of the theatrical lighting but with all the proper ratios, and an ample amount, to make slow film emulsions happy. We don't do that now. There's no time or budget to get too fancy now. 

With all this in mind I dragged a Panasonic GH5 and an Olympus 12-100mm f4.0 to shoot a dress rehearsal of the play ( without an audience; thankfully). When we got rolling I realized that my base exposure/working exposure was going to settle in at 1/125th of a second (needed to have even a chance of freezing motion) at f4.0 (my widest available f-stop) at ISO 3200. Several of the parameters are fixed. I couldn't drop below 1/125th without having too many images blurred by subject movement. I couldn't shooter at a faster aperture than f4.0 because the lens I brought doesn't have a wider aperture setting. I couldn't change the lighting. That left ISO. I started out at 1600, which I consider to be safe for the GH5 sensor. I migrated to 3200 to keep the shutter speed up.

I shot for an hour and tried a number of strategies but in the end it all boils down to the fact that sensors of various sizes and generations have various noise limits. The noise generated is also dependent on the subject matter and lighting. Even, well filled light situations seem to yield less noise while low key, unfilled lighting situations tend to pump up noise. Nailing exposure is a big help. If you have to push up the exposure in post you invariably push up the parts of the image that are most subject to noise generation. Over use of the shadow slider in Lightroom or PhotoShop will affect the noise in shadow pretty profoundly.

Here are my personal takeaways from my shoot/test yesterday: I am okay with most of the noise I saw in the files; given how the files will be used. I would not want to go above 3200 ISO in low key situations with the m4:3 sensors, even the latest 20 megapixel versions, if I could prevent it. The noise reduction controls in both programs can be very effective but take experience and trial and error to get right. The camera's implementation of noise reduction is better for generating large numbers of nicely less noisy files than trying to batch a "one size fits all" setting in post. There is a caveat to letting the Jpeg engine do your de-noising; the default NR setting in the standard profile at ISO 3200 is too aggressive and blurs too much fine detail. I back off one or two notches in the parameter settings now. 

Even in situations with ample light you can run into noise issues if you are basically underexposed. Camera meters tend to compulsively protect highlights and they do so by pulling overall exposures down by anywhere from 2/3rds stop to a full stop. Sometimes even more. Recovery costs noise. 

Finally, if you read the information about the GH5's "improvements" over previous models you'll find that the new types of noise reduction use formulas to decide whether an area in a frame is detailed or flat and the camera applies different kinds and amounts in each area. There isn't such a thing, in camera, as uniform noise reduction. Which means that sometimes the camera gets it just right and sometimes it leaves you with the question: "Dear God Camera! What were you thinking???"

My noise abatement solution for the next dark show in the all black theater? Bring fast primes! I probably could have done a good job covering the show with two lenses: the Panasonic 15mm f1.7 and the Panasonic 42.5 mm f1.2. Maybe I'd toss a 25mm f1.7 in as well. I think all of them could be used wide open which would get me either two stops more of shutter speed or the ability to shoot at ISO 800. 

It's all part of my continuing experiment with photography...