Contax G to NEX AF Adapter Tests

Posted on April 14, 2013 by admin

DeoTech Art and MX Camera have put a serious of Contax G lens tests on YouTube. No big surprises but it is a bit disappointing how slow the AF is at shallower apertures. What do you think will you buy one?

Nieces & Nephews

Posted on April 6, 2013 by admin

Nieces and nephews are in town. Yay! New photography models!

JOEL_VO_Studio_

Color Running in Greensboro

Posted on March 30, 2013 by admin

Checked out the Greensboro Color run this morning. I didn’t find out about the race until late so I decided not to enter; however, hanging out at the finish line and snapping a few shots of the crowd was a lot of fun. The harsh light and flying colors (dyed cornstarch) made the LCD on NEX-5N virtually unviewable! So I mostly used my Zeiss Contax G 28mm and followed the “f8 and be there”rule of thumb. Considering I had no idea if any of the shots turned out until getting home, I feel that despite the lack of subject isolation there were a number of keepers. Here are some of my favorites:

"Superheroes" Copyright 2012 Joel Richards

"Purple Rain" Copyright 2012 Joel Richards

"Conversation" Copyright 2012 Joel Richards

"Pink Cloud" Copyright 2012 Joel Richards

"Face in the Crowd" Copyright 2012 Joel Richards

"Ascension" Copyright 2012 Joel Richards

"Color Me Bromance" Copyright 2012 Joel Richards

"Cowgirls of Color" Copyright 2012 Joel Richards

"Tough Guy" Copyright 2012 Joel Richards

"Swimming in Pink" Copyright 2012 Joel Richards

How to Enable Native XAVC Editing in Final Cut Pro X

Posted on March 29, 2013 by admin

Yesterday Apple updated Final Cut Pro X (FCP X) to 10.0.8. A largely maintenance release that adds a few new “under the hood” features, chief among them support for Sony’s new XAVC video format. XAVC is essentially an optimized, high-profile MP4 codec wrapped in MTS–which means it can be a pain to import to Final Cut if you’re like and you just want to test your system to see if it can handle the new format. I’m happy to report the clips play and color grade extremely well on my Mac Pro Quad 2.66ghz–although I think the GTX 570 graphics card helps with that. Here are a few tools that can help:

A link to Sony’s plugin to edit XAVC footage in Final Cut. I would have thought it was already supported in 10.0.8 but since it requires 10.0.8 I’m guessing not. I installed it just to be safe.

Here are a few short XAVC clips. These are note mine (thanks Omega Broadcast whoever you are) but as of this moment the download works, the clips are encased in the proper folder structure so they will import into FCP X, and they are work-safe.

Why is this important? Because still and videos are increasingly convergent and I believe some flavor of XAVC will be supported on upcoming NEX cameras. If not the NEX-9 then the updates FS100/700 rumored to be announced next week at NAB 2013. Who knows, since XAVC is a variant of the same tech behind AVCHD perhaps the FS700 will receive a firmware upgrade. I doubt it but then this is the new Sony!

Tilt Shifting in Greensboro, NC

Posted on March 15, 2013 by admin

Last weekend I took a little photo walk around Greensboro, NC in the evening. I am just getting around to processing them. I am still getting used to my tilt-shift set up and there are several things I wish I’d done differently (the brick building is over corrected for example) but overall I am pleased with how these turned out. What do you think?

Sony NEX-9: Innovate or Fizzelate?

Posted on March 6, 2013 by admin

If you’re reading this then you are a Sony camera fan. And you probably already know about the stir over at SonyAlphaRumors.com. I’ve added my thoughts there but I wanted to expand briefly here.

It was surprising how the A99 (after so many years of development) failed to take full advantage of the SLT tech. The 1DX is hitting the limit of FPS with the mirror box slap (it gets 2 more FPS with the mirror locked up) but the A99 doesn’t have this to worry about. So why not increase the buffer and processing power to show off what the tech can do?! Admittedly that isn’t really my shooting style but as a Sony user I feel some investment in the success of their flagship products and was disappointed by the few, glaring shortcoming of the A99 (IMHO): FPS, center-heavy focus points, and soft/moire’ed video.

The problem with the A99 isn’t that it is too expensive. It is that it is not better enough than the D600/6D. Your marketing team may like expensive, incremental improvement Sony but your customers don’t. Sony needs to impress and lately the seem to be doing it (when they do it) mostly be accident. I feel the early success of the NEX caught them off guard. The biggest selling points was not necessarily the size it was flexibility and image quality. If the NEX-9 is priced that high it will be the flagship camera and it must perform as such. It must out perform the A99 both in image quality, video quality (very important!), and handling speed.

In my opinion the NEX-9 needs to, at any price point:

improve the EVF and screen slightly (nothing major, just to show they care)
maintain the body size/style close the NEX-7 with no overheating
keep a 10fps “speed shooting” mode for bragging rights

To justify a high price tag it will need:

excellent compatibility with symmetric/rangefinder lens designs (this would open up a range of possible biogon-type lenses which are both compact and very sharp)
blazing AF speeds with hybrid AF available to 3rd party adapters
professional video capabilities: 1080P XAVC is a must, 4:2:2 color space would be amazing, clean 4K 24p output from the HDMI would go a long way to justifying the price. I don’t think 4K XAVC will be possible in camera, but I’m willing to be surprised.

While $3k+ would price me out of the market in the short term, I would save to pay that IF the camera had the feature set to match. Many, many others would as well. Remember a lot of the small production companies now buying Canon DSLRs used to buy Sony video cameras not that long ago. Sony, build the camera your customers want and can afford, not what your managers think they can sell. Build “insanely great” and people will buy, build “almost great” and people will just continue to compromise for Nikon and Canon because they have brand recognition you don’t have … yet.

Urban Exploring

Posted on February 9, 2013 by admin

Well, my current bout of gear lust is just about satiated. I now have a complete 3 lens Contax G set (28mm, 45mm, 90mm) and I love these lenses! They are my “straight” lenses to compliment my Nikon primes (24mm, 35mm, 50mm) which are primarily for my Mirex tilt-shift adapter. The problem is making time to use it all.

This week I was feeling a little blue. Being self-employed is hard on your ego and your health. A steady stream of work seems to never happen, I am either flooded and fighting to keep my head above water or things are dead and I am left wondering, “is it me? is it something I said?” Still, I am blessed with a few regular and honest clients so I know the the lull will only be temporary. My weekend salve was going to be a photo walk today. The only problem is I didn’t know where … until my sister happened to stop by with my four nephews in tow. They were going to do some “urban exploring” and did we want to come along?

They waited long enough for me to grab the Contax 28mm & 45mm (my newest arrivals)