Do you ever wish you could banish all the images you've seen in your life and start over fresh?

When we first start learning about photography most of us begin a voracious process of research. We want to know how to do stuff that looks "professional." We want to know who is at the top of the game in the specialty in which we're most interested. We start noticing the photographs in ad campaigns, in magazine editorials and on sites all across the web. When we're beginners we generally have two attributes: We're incredibly excited to learn the breadth and depth of photography and we are like sponges, soaking up so much of the visual environment in which we exist. Logging it away in our memory banks for future (mandatory) reference.

Many teachers have the idea that seeing works by masters and then having students imitate the works they like will help us to better develop as photographers. Almost everyone thinks it's a good idea to know the visual history of our medium. And we seem to go to that inspirational well again and again when we get stuck.

But all of this is a double edge sword that does two things: It teaches us how to make familiar images that look like everything else out in the photographic world and it corrupts the unblemished expression of our very personal approaches by implanting indelible, subconscious templates of the standards  which we carry around with us, unwanted and maybe unknowingly;  like a governor to our creativity.

Do you ever wonder what it would be like if we could erase the decades of seeing other work and go out into the world to see and to photograph in a way that would be absolutely and uniquely your own?  I do.  And I do because when I lift the camera to my eye I sometimes hear the jaded, internal, eternal conversation that says, "This is like a watered down Henri Cartier Bresson image meets that cool ad in Outdoor Magazine for Patagonia, combined with just a touch of Bruce Davidson."  And that's generally followed by the thought that,"everything has already been done."

I remember spending time at a progressive pre-school here in Austin when my son was very young. And for some reason I was remembering just this afternoon the way many of the children attacked their art with such passion and lack of judgement.  They marveled at how blue the blue was that came streaking out of their crayons. How deep and rich the yellow was as the paint spread across the paper from their chubby paintbrushes like flames from a rocket, and how dynamic and fierce the red was as they spread it around with their hands and let it soak into their imaginations.

And if they looked at another kid's art it was to admire, not copy. They admired without judgement and then stepped back into their own world of kinetic creation. They were their own audience and they weren't imitating something they saw in GQ or on Flickr.  They were pushing through their art just for unalloyed joy of getting covered with color and making shapes and images that resonated with the flow of life as they knew it.

I try to get back to that state of joy with my photographs but sadly I seem to know too much. I know how to do stuff. I know how it's supposed to get done and what it's supposed to look like when I finish.  And when I do finish a piece or a project my mind has a catalog of the acknowledged masters in the field and my work always seems to fall short in comparison to theirs.

Sometimes I have the idea that if I limit myself to one subject and try to do that one subject all the time, and in a new way each time, I'll produce work that surprises even me.  Sometimes I limit myself to one camera and one lens but there's always some rationale that upsets the apple cart and makes my mind start thinking about the "lost potential" of not having some other "perfect" tool at hand.

You've seen me bounce from camera to camera in a vain attempt to mix up the way I work in the hopes that a temporary incompetence with the gear will create a handful of happy accidents but it usually just slows down the process.

The only thought that always brings me back into a creative cycle is the idea that, "Wherever you go, there you are." That to make more exciting art you must be more exciting. Or better, your ideas must be more exciting.  In the end all the images are about what you think and what you select. If you've held firmly to the same ideas, notions, prejudices and tastes for the last decade or two or three it's little wonder that your or my creativity is sitting at the curb idling.

Sometimes it's good to take a deep breath and plunge into something we thought we didn't like or wouldn't like....just to try it.  Like the first time a college girl friend convinced me to try sushi.  The first time you paid for a massage. The first time you tried an alternative  art or photo process or the first time you played laser tag.

I feel this way about video right now.  I don't want to see anyone else's work in video. I want to start fresh. I'm purposely ignoring everything I don't already know about video because I think it's more important to know what I want to say than how I'll say it. I want to know how I see in video before I see how everyone else does it.

I think the way to original thoughts and impulses is to learn the bare minimum you need to know and then unplug yourself from the omnipresent visual grid, the matrix, and go off to experiment on your own. Chuck the books and educational websites. Turn off the galleries and the blogs and remove yourself temporarily from everything that works as a crutch to reinforce the unconscious standard and then--- just play.

My exercise for the week is to try to photograph "love."  What I love. Who I love. How I express love. How strangers express love and how best friends express love.  "It's the only thing that there's just to little off...." (songwriter, Hal David, who passed away recently).  It's a different idea for me because I always leave the house looking for the classic photographic inventory of physical subject opportunities like, beautiful girls, majestic skies, yummy presentations of food, interesting faces and all the other obvious stuff.  What does love look like? What does the taste of a perfect slice of pizza look like.  What makes me happy and how can I share what "happy" looks like.

Anyone can copy a technique or a look. But know one can picture your universe of feelings and thoughts the way you can, if you really do it your way. Maybe the most powerful art describes a feeling or a passion instead of a subject.

After I learn how to see what love looks like to me and my camera I would like to make a little movie about the idea of love as the ultimate glue for our human society. And none of these ideas really have anything to do with the technical side of imaging. If you're reading this blog you already know all the facts you really need to know.  Now we need to stretch and show ourselves what we love to see. Disconnected from expectation. Disconnected from the desire to do it "right."  Really.

Wow. That was so not a Kirk Tuck style blog. But it's out there. How do you make your photographs special? How do you banish the idea that it's all been done? How do you block out all the references and just make work for yourself?  No. Really.  I'm asking-----

Comments are open. Fire away.

The studio is a special place to make the photographs that your mind already sees.

Mad, Beat, Hip and Gone.

Here's what Zach Scott Theatre says about, Mad, Beat, Hip and Gone: Steven Dietz, the most-produced playwright in America who also calls Austin home, is creating this World Premiere specifically for ZACH's first season in the Topfer. In the late 40's and early 50's, Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady famously went "on the road." But what about Danny Fergus and Rich Rayburn -- the young guys in the car right behind Jack and Neal, the guys whose history never ended up in books?

It's one thing to go out into the world and to be open to whatever happens in front of your camera. It's whole other discipline to step into the studio and create the world that's already in your imagination. Neither method of shooting is more valuable or correct but they are both such different disciplines.

When I shoot dress rehearsals for Zachary Scott Theatre I'm concentrating on recognizing the special moments within the performance. I reach in and freeze the moments that trigger something immediate and emphatic in my brain. I'm engaged in a process of high speed sorting.  Not that I always make the right decisions but I make them fast enough and often enough to build up a catalog on a work that is useful to the people who will do the hard work of leveraging my images into marketing messages that sell tickets and get people into the seats.

My real joy comes from shooting in the studio. I get to create the look, the feel and the emotion of the shot in collaboration with the actor or sitter in the photograph. That's a whole different playing field in which we get to interpret the mood, feeling, inference or intention of the moment. It requires skills in lighting, posing, composing and directing. But most of all it requires a willing and equal collaboration with the person in front of the camera.

Over the course of the last last four blog I've included images that are meant to evoke four totally different moods, periods of time and points of view. The 1940's, 1960's and the 1970's. The shot above is meant to be evocative about the Beat Generation of the 1950's.  I may have been successful and I may not have been successful in my quick interpretations but in all four cases I've had a wonderfully fun time sharing the studio space with incredibly talented people and trying to absorb and reflect their talent.  It's so different than street photography, documentation and found photography in that  you already have a word poem in your head and now you are trying to piece together what that poem looks like as a photograph. It's a process of creation that's different than the process of discovery.  But at the same time it's a process of self discovery. Moving through the ego into non-ego to pull off something that must be a sharing experience to be successful.

I am keenly aware that I'm just an average photographer in a second tier market but I also realize that it's a hell of a lot of fun and that I never stop sharing the energy of creation with my subjects and I never stop learning. That's one of the most fun things about photography. No matter what camera and lens you use....

Camera: Sony a77, ISO 160, Lens: 24-85mm Minolta. 

Comments always appreciated.....

Continuing in a theatrical and retro vein...While Christmas.

I was shooting in the temporary Zachary Scott photo studio a few days ago and we needed to create a photograph for the musical, White Christmas. This was one of the shots I created and I wanted the lighting and the general feel of the image to harken back to the 1940's when so many images were lit with big, pan reflectors and lots of fill light. Our one formalist constraint was the white background, which became a leitmotif throughout the two days of shooting. To light the actors I used a large dish reflector just to the left of center and a large umbrella fill (one and a half stops down) just to the right of the camera. But, of course, the expressions make the shot for me.  It's always a collaboration.

Later, back in the studio, I was playing around with the image in SnapSeed and ended up with the image below. In retrospect, this is one occasion on which I should have considered a little bit of hair light.  I'll try it next year.

Camera: Sony a77, ISO 160

Lens: Minolta 24-85mm 3.5-4.5

Lighting: Four Elinchrom monolights

White Christmas will open on the stage of the new Theater later this Fall.

Getting ready for the emotional roller coaster that will be Photokina.

Mr. Martin Burke in Harvey. Coming soon to Zach Scott Theatre.

©2012 Kirk Tuck

Photographed with a nice big beauty dish to camera left, a nice, 

big 72 inch white umbrella just to the right of the camera for fill, 

and two lights on the background.

Camera: Sony a77 at ISO 64. Taking lens: 

Minolta 24-85mm

Post processed in SnapSeed.

From Sept. 18-23 we will all willingly or unwillingly participate in the fallout of one of the world's biggest trade shows dedicated to introducing new cameras that we just have to have. I've proved to have a shaky record on specific camera predictions but a good one on trends and I'm going to weigh in here in both areas so remember that these are my predictions and not facts or rumors...

I can feel it coming. This is the year of the full frame sensor for cropped the frame budget. Seems like Nikon will be the first ones over the wall with the nearly officially released D600 which many seem to think will come to market at around $1,500. Given the pent up demand for a big sensor at a lower price I think they'd safely sell as many as they can make even at $1700. The sensor is probably a Nikon tweaked version of the same one rumored to be stuffed inside the upcoming Sony a99. Thousands will rush to buy them. Lenses will be upgraded. Bragging rights will ensue.

If the rumors are true I'll be amazed not to see Canon stumble all over themselves to get a similar product into the pipeline by the holiday buying season. It might not be ready by Christmas but you can bet Canon will want to get the word out quickly to lock their customers and keep them from scurrying across the road into the Nikon camp.  After the two big players open the flood gates it's game on for everyone else.  If you can get a full frame camera with great IQ performance why would the average consumer look at anything else? (I know, you shoot wildlife, sports, etc and you like the crop....right).  Maybe full frame becomes the new exclusive domain of all traditional DSLR cameras while all the new innovation happens in other areas. Like the mirrorless space.

What will the introduction of the full frame sensor mean to all the people who've been thronging to the mirrorless cameras in both the Sony/Samsung APS-C space and the folks who are now happily nesting with their OMD's? Short term there will be a "disturbance in the force" but long term it won't really matter because Nikon and Canon don't get two underlying truths of the current world wide camera technology acceptance migration: 1. The EVF/constant live view is a driver all out of proportion to other considerations and it will continue to drive the sale of smaller, easier to use and easier to understand photography cameras.  Once people use a camera with a good EVF they will never want to change back. And mover-uppers from cellphones are more comfortable with the live view screen than the "clearer" but more (operationally) opaque OVF.  And 2. For most people the improvements in IQ between a cropped frame camera and a full frame camera will be immaterial for their use. Why pay for the difference? Another consideration is that people like the smaller size and lower weight of the mirrorless cameras.

That being said I'm pretty sure that the Nikon D600 and whatever Canon tosses into the ring will be the best sellers in the traditional full frame category from here on out. The real issue is whether or not a smaller, cheaper but no less capable (in terms of sheer image quality) camera like the D600 will nicely fill the needs of a huge swath of current D800 and 5Dmk3 potential buyers thus radically cannibalizing everything in the product lines above them.  The Olympics are over, who really needs to pony up for 12 frames per second and herculean weather proofing now? (Yes, I know you probably live in someplace where it rains all the time or you can't stay out of swamps because that's your chosen genre....but you already know you are special, right?).

I'm feeling the first rumblings of a trend that may not fully surface for a year or two and certainly not at this year's Photokina.  I think of it as the remedy for a pendulum that's swung too far. The relentless downsizing will end when people realize that dinky cameras aren't as comfortable to hold. Judging from the growing number of people (many of whom are camera veterans...) who are having a real dissonance to the Olympus OMD offering, camera have crossed the line and become too small to comfortably use without attaching prosthetics to aid in gripping and operating said camera. We are about to re-enter the Goldilocks period of camera design.  Not too big, not too small-----just right. I am reminded of Nikon's introduction of the FM film camera. Originally marketed as the camera for people who wanted the flagship F2as cameras but were on a budget it became the de facto pro camera from Nikon for several generations precisely because it traded off no imaging performance, only weight and price. And most of the top pros who used them raved about how well it fit their hands. How perfectly sized it was.

I think Olympus has carried the downsizing too far. It started with the skinny and hard to hold ZX-1 and the OMD seems to be the latest haptical blunder. Nice to try and downsize products to a certain point but only if you keep in mind that human hands are not infinitely (down)scalable. I'm hoping Olympus announces a new Pen style offering (along the lines of the EP3...) that incorporates the same new sensor. And I won't be upset if they make the body a bit bigger to ease congestion on the button spacing....

Continuing on. If Sony produces the camera that the rumor sites are predicting and the a99 really comes into existence, watch out Canon and Nikon! Sony is the one major company that really gets how revolutionary the EVF experience is and how it will drive the professional camera market going forward. All they need to do is stick the new camera in as many hands (reviewers and pros) as they possibly can and they will shift the hegemony in a new direction. Real time Live View, either on a back screen (for amateurs and studio dwellers) or on a state of the art EVF, with competitive phase detection AF and faster response times for shutter actuation.  The ability to dump the Zacuto and Hoodman vestigial loupes and monitor video in a professional manner, all built in.

My upgrade suggestion for Sony's current DSLT line is to introduce an a57mk2 which only upgrades one single feature: the EVF.  Give this camera the LED EVF of the Sony Nex 7 and a77 and it will dominate the sub $800 category. It's already a great camera.

If Sony continues to flesh out their DSLT lens line and continues to introduce user features that make photography more intuitive the only thing that can stop them from dominating Canon and Nikon will be their own hapless marketing...

The Sony Nex 7 is a great camera. I'm hoping the 6 carries on the same tradition instead of returning to the too small body configuration of the 5. What I'd really like to see is a new and improved (pancake NOT necessary) 16mm lens with kickass performance, and also a 70mm 1.4 lens for all us portrait nuts.  It could be an f2 or even an f2.8, as long as it's sharp and wonderful I'll buy it. If the Nex 6 carries on with the same EVF as the 7 it should sell well.

Along these lines are rumors that Fuji about to start rebating prices on the X Pro 1 because they are about to launch a less pricey body that foregoes the hybrid finder for a full on EVF and the new camera will come in under $1,000. They will certainly find a sweet spot for that offering if the sensor remains the same....

This is more of a plea than a prediction but would some manufacturer please have the balls to introduce a high resolution, interchangeable camera with a square sensor? Now that we have the EVF technologies quickly coming to the market place a camera maker can stick in a big, square chip and electronically give users any aspect ratio they want. Slavishly lashed to the 3:2 image? There'd be a setting for that.  Ready to experience the unleashed power and glory of the big square? There'd be a setting for that as well.  And everything in between. I'm hoping this is what Canon has in mind for the rumored 40 megapixel imager that's being rumored but Canon seems to be the one maker that needs to be pulled, kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

What will Panasonic bring to the table? I waited and waited to hear about a new GH3 this summer. Rumors abounded. One user and pusher of Panasonic whispered "insider" info to me that never came to fruition. Now I'm out of the system but I'm still curious because Panasonic could be a very powerful player in the hybrid, still/video space.  And the GH2 had a lot of promise in its time as a still camera.  I think they'll be the first ones to realize that relentless downsizing is for chumps and you'll see their GH3 increase in size over its predecessor.  And I'm betting they roll out a sensor that is at least as good as the one Olympus is using in the OMD. But I'm betting the real story will be improvements in the EVF and also in the interfaces for movie making. Rationalizing sound input and bumping up throughput and frame rates would make the GH3 a natural for a new generation of multimedia producers.

Will someone please make an HDMI interface for an iPad Retina? I'd love to dump all the proprietary tethering software for all the cameras and just take video out from the ubiquitous mini HDMI plug on my Nikon or Sony and get it into a nice, bright, PC-killing iPad. Wouldn't that be a great way to do a studio or controlled location shoot?  Your raw images would write to your camera's internal card while your monitor images would feed to your Retina screen. Amazingly simple.

Why don't we have this right now? Do we? Have I just missed it?  If you know how to make this work please tell us all!

What's in store for manufacturers like Pentax? Right now they have no pathway to full frame and their execution in the mirrorless space is----------interesting. I like the look and feel of the Kr-5 and it's predecessor but that's becoming a pretty small market niche in the whole scheme of things. An interesting bit of market sabotage would be to drop the price of their medium format camera to $6,999 and chomp up a ton of low end, medium format marketshare while also stealing share from the high end Canon and Nikon "pro" cameras.  They'd need to scale up production on the 645 styled MF body but they'll know within weeks of announcing the price drop if they have a sustainable market... I'd bet that driving sales of a halo product like a MF camera would also help drive sales of their DSLRs.

Where will the medium format industry go? I think we've seen some writing on the wall.  There's basically two markets and they're pretty separate. On one hand we have the very high end advertising studio (NY, LA, Chicago, Dallas, London, Paris, Berlin, etc.) who demand and will pay for the best possible imaging resources they can get. Mostly from rental houses. The cost of the cameras is a drop in the bucket compared to ad placement costs, production, etc.  The middle of the market for things like products and even model shoots is about to be eviscerated by CGI and photographic tools like the Nikon D800 and whatever Canon answers with.

The low end of the MF market is about smaller studios in second tier markets, well known portrait photographers and a legion of well heeled hobbyist who who want the differentiation and bragging rights of owning something bigger than what the masses can access. That means there's a market in the $9999 to $19,999 space that will probably keep its head above water. Users in this space typically want to take their cameras into the field, go on a workshop with Michael Reichmann and generally have the same working methodologies they developed using 35mm style cameras. Look for small improvements here coupled with falling prices.  Bigger, brighter rear screens, the addition of live view for focusing and perhaps even more economical lines of lenses.

I predict that Mamiya and Pentax will both work to increase their shares of the market by reducing prices on 40 megapixel models and the market will reward them. There will always be advantages to larger overall geometries and the character of imaging that the longer focal length (for the same angle of view vis a vis smaller formats) lenses provide.  That's why most of us crave MF in this age of already amble megapixels.

Finally, I predict a switch in the marketing mantras from all the major companies. Dynamic Range and "rich color" will replace the megapixel race and the high ISO fascination of the IT crowds. We'll see marketing that reminds us of why we used to use slower films= quality, quality, quality.

I'm sure there will be contenders to the current pocketable throne recently grabbed by the Sony RX100 but I think we all have our eyes on the good stuff.  The bigger stuff.

Can we please  see something new from Sigma with the Foveon sensors? I've seen some cool images, I just wish they'd focus on the product a bit more. More specialized lenses for the smaller sensor inside. More compatibility with industry leading raw conversion software, etc. 

That's enough for now.

A modern black and white image of an actor.

The "actor" is Jaston Williams, the writer and one of the stars of Greater Tuna. This season he'll be revising a great role, playing the novelist, Truman Capote, in the play, Tru.

We did this photograph in a makeshift studio at Zachary Scott Theatre. Two lights on a white muslin background, a 28 inch bare matte silver beauty dish from the left and a 72 inch white umbrella directly behind camera for a little bit ( just a touch...) of fill light.

We celebrated the opening of the grand new theater at Zachary Scott last week.

I photographed Meredith onstage just moments before the house opened to welcome V.I.P.s for a stunning hour and fifteen minute preview of this season's shows. I used a Sony a77 camera at 640 ISO and a 16-50mm lens. The new Mort Topfer Theater is an exciting new space for Austin performers. And audiences. The first show of the year will be Ragtime. I can't wait.

A new plug for a great "how to" book.

I talked about this book last week. I'd purchased the Kindle version and was just knocked out at how great it looked on my iPad and how well written and illustrated it is. That, and a $13 price on Amazon prompted me to immediately order a printed version for myself. I found it in the mailbox today and all I can say is.....WOW!!!!!
It is so well designed, well thought out and well written that I'm going around showing non-photographers the book. The images are wonderful and ample, even better than what I saw on the iPad and, of course, much bigger and richer.

If you have any interested in food photography at all this is without a doubt the best book I've come across on the subject. The bonus is zillions of pages of really wonderfully done food.

A continued appraisal of the Sony Nex 7 and the cult of the mirrorless.

The lunch special at El Arroyo Restaurant at the ditch.

Cheese enchilada with chili con carne, rice, refried beans and a beef taco.

I've spent the last few blogs talking about the relevance of apparently disconnected photographs so I thought I'd take a mental rest break and talk a bit more about a camera that I'm really enjoying, the Sony Nex 7.  Some photographers are making the claim that there's a giant, mirrorless camera revolution going on right now and I'm not sure I disagree with them but I think the new revolutionaries are missing an important element and that is the electronic viewfinder, a relatively new development in cameras aimed at advanced photographers and one that I think was instrumental in hastening the onset of the revolution.  I first experienced electronic viewfinders in the eyepieces of video cameras I used back in the 1990's. They were black and white and rudimentary but they worked well and they gave videographers lots of critical feedback concerning exposure settings.  My first brush with EVF's in serious still cameras was the EVF in the Sony R1 (an amazing camera) and while that screen can't hold a candle to the current screens on the market it worked well when I would go out into bright sunlight to photograph buildings and people for advertising projects. I also loved the amazing articulated LCD screen.

While I enjoyed the different Olympus Pen offerings and several cameras from Panasonic the Nex 7 seems to be a tour de force that rendered all the other mirrorless contenders irrelevant for me. Three reasons: 1. A really detailed and richly color accurate imaging sensor.  2. The best EVF currently on the market. 3. The logical and straightforward operation facilitated by the Tri-Navi system of two control wheels and one meta-menu selection button. Basically, from both a file quality and an operational standpoint the camera is the best of the breed.

I've spent about a month with the camera. At first I found the menu a bit daunting but in reality it's pretty well configured for a shooter who uses the camera in pretty much the same configuration most of the time. I operate mostly in the aperture priority or manual modes and what this really means is that I only have to master the two control knobs that sit on top and protrude to the back of the camera. When I shoot in manual one control changes the shutter speeds while the other control changes the aperture. You are free to over expose or under expose as you desire but you can always check your exposure against the camera's recommendation on an exposure scale visible in the EVF or on the back screen (if you are doing "stinky baby diaper" camera hold).

If you are shooting in the aperture mode the left most control knob changes the aperture while the right knob becomes an exposure compensation control. 

The third leg of the stool  for the Tri-Navi control is a button positioned on the top right of the camera, just in front of the right hand control knob; it's just to the right of the shutter button. This button, in its default configuration, calls up several control screens. One push gets me to a screen with which I can reposition the autofocus sensor anywhere on the entire screen. I mostly use a single autofocus point so having the facility to use it everywhere comes in handy. The screen adapts depending on which focusing method you have selected. If you have it by group the screen allows you to move whole groups, etc.

The next screen that pops up when you push the Tri-Navi button again, is the white balance settings screen which gives you fine tuning control over warm/cool and green/magenta (hue balance). This is great for critical images that can use a little tweak.  It also allows you to set the color to your taste for global shooting.  Another push of the button gets you into the D-range settings which gives you quick access to in camera HDR (either "auto" or in six strengths, from subtle tonal enhancement to technicolor vomit) as well as the camera's user adjustable DRO menu which holds onto highlight detail while boosting shadow detail and levels. You get can set "auto" or six different strengths here as well. Finally you have a creative styles menu.  This allows you to fine tune any set imaging style (vivid, portrait, standard, etc. ) by giving you control over contrast, sharpness and saturation.

I understand that the button that controls these menus can be reconfigured with different combinations that call up different setting controls but I think Sony made some good choices for me so I haven't changed anything yet.  My two most used controls are ISO settings and WB settings and when I start to modify buttons I'm sure these two will be configured in. I'm coming from the Sony a77 DSLT cameras so much of the menu uses the same nomenclature and logic. After about a week of intermittent use I felt pretty much at home.

There is one other control that I find myself using when I shoot under low light. That's the switch on the back of the camera that chooses between AEL and AF/MF.  In the center of the switch is a button and when the switch is set to AF/MF you can push the button to toggle between manual focus and auto focus. When you choose manual focus turning the focusing ring of a Nex lens brings to bear both a magnification of the frame to facilitate fine focusing as well as the focus peaking indicators.  Your ability to accurately fine focus both manual lenses and what are usually AF lenses is very much enhanced. Buried in the menu is the ability to toggle or hold your switch between AF and MF. A toggle means on switch gives you one frame and then reverts to the preset configuration. Hold means it sits there on the configuration you've chosen until you hit the button again or turn the camera off and back on again.

With the inclusion of focus peaking into the Nex 7 it becomes, among the mirrorless offerings, the ultimate camera to use with legacy and current manual focus lenses from Leica to whatever. I've been using the camera extensively with several of my favorite Pen lenses and it's very easy to achieve accurate focus. Much easier for me that the process of enlarging the frame, fine focusing and then reverting to the shooting frame as on the Olympus and Panasonic cameras. The speed comes in not having to enlarge the frame but in being able to trust the focus peaking indications in the EVF. The only downside when using non-Nex lenses is the loss of image stabilization which, in the Sony Nex family, is built into the lenses.

El Arroyo corn chips.

In its basic configuration the camera is both a perfect "take anywhere" camera and a solid commercial tool. It's small size and all black treatment, with the kit lens, give the Sony Nex 7 a small and discreet profile. When I'm in the coffee shop or on the street the people that I meet and photograph seem to think it's just basic "hipster" photography and they are happy to be included, for the most part. But I've used the Nex 7 side by side with my DSLT a77 cameras and they are both equally good in getting professional quality shots of food, portraits and architecture. In fact, with an inexpensive lens adapter or one of the Sony adapters you can use most (if not all) of the Sony Alpha lenses on the Nex 7.  

The cheapest way to go with with an adapter from Rainbow or Fotodiox. These are pretty much the same product and are available for under $30. The allow you to focus right on out to infinity but you lose auto focus and automatic diaphragm control. If you use the camera in "A" it will still automatically figure out corresponding shutter speeds for you. You stop down or up up the aperture with a ring on the adapter that interfaces with the stop down lever on the Alpha lenses. It's nice not to have to buy duplicate lenses for focal lengths that you might rarely use on the Nex but which are used daily on the DSLT's. 

A pricier option for mounting Sony Alpha lenses on the Nex is the Sony LAEA-1 adapter. This unit will give you total exposure automation when using the Alpha lenses but it lacks any ability to autofocus any lenses (not usually a hassle given the value of focus peaking).  If you want full bore automation and you'd like to supplement the slower contrast detection AF of the Nex system with the aggressively fast phase detection AF of Sony's mirrored cameras you can get a Sony LAEA-2 adapter for under $300. This adapter contains a fixed pellicule mirror and the required electrical interfaces to give you full bore, fast PD autofocus with selected Sony Alpha lenses. The only lenses that won't AF with the lenses are the older lenses that use the little screw driver connection between bodies and lenses to effect AF.  It works well with the SAM lenses I've got.

But focusing on getting Sony's bigger AF lenses to work on the small body isn't nearly as cool, in my mind, as using adapters to couple weirder lenses to the elegant little black body. On my desk right now I have the camera set up with an adapter ring and an Olympus Pen 40mm 1.4 lens. It looks cool and performs very well once I've stopped it down one stop or more.  Michael Reichmann did a comparison between the Nex and the Leica M9 that's interesting.  His point? Now you have a choice of two top resolution cameras on which to mount your collection of M series lenses.  

So, if the performance of the camera was no better than similar offerings from Panasonic or Olympus then my transition to the Sony system (and this article) would be pretty much meaningless. But here's the deal, if you shoot the way I do you'll likely find the performance of the Nex 7 better. I shoot a lot of controlled stuff. I'm happy to be in control. It means I can use the sweet spots of the cameras I choose. And for the most part I'm selecting for high resolution and high sharpness with rich color and low noise.  And no matter how you slice it low ISO's and careful technique beat the image quality of most other working methods. One of the reasons I embraced and still use the Sony a77 for my portrait and food work (hell, almost all of my work) is the fact that the camera does ISO 50, 64, 80 and 100.  And if I read the charts and graphs on DXO Mark correctly the ISO's under 100 are not "pulled or faked" ISO's but provide meaningful reductions in noise with no change in dynamic range. Go look for yourself before you slavishly believe what you've read elsewhere...). 

You'll see the difference in the choices camera designers make if you put competing cameras on good tripods and make use of some of the slower shutter speeds. At ISO 100 the files from the Sony look better, in terms of color and dynamic range, that what I've seen from my old Canon 5D mk2 files at the same magnifications.

The heart of the Sony Nex 7, beyond looks and ergonomics, is that sensor. Many argue that cramming 24 megapixels into such a small space was a mistake and that Sony should have chosen a 16 megapixel sensor instead. If your overarching metric is low noise over ISO 1600 I guess I'd have to agree but if your tastes lean more to "just how good can a file be..." than I disagree. I guess different people are attracted to different cameras for a reason.

The 24 megapixel sensor in the Nex 7 is apparently the same on that sits in my a77 cameras and I find the performance in the Nex 7 to be outstanding. The noise is manageable up to 3200 and the lower ISO files are wonderful.

Lenses: This is an area where I don't have much depth of experience in the Sony Nex system. I've been told by anyone (except Trey Ratliff) who can grind out a review of the camera that the "kit" lens is unbearably bad but I haven't found that to be the case at all.  At all the middle apertures it seems sharp, well behaved and color rich. One disconnect is that camera users tend to focus on things (real photo subjects)  between 100 times the focal length of the lens and infinity and they mostly shoot three dimensional objects while lens testers tend to shoot flat, two dimensional, charts from three to five feet away... That basically means that testers and users are applying to totally different sets of demands to every lens. 

The 18-55mm is supposed to be sharp to very sharp in the center areas of the frame but is supposed to be icky in the corners and on the extreme edges. Really?  I find it convincing over most of the frame for the stuff I shoot and even at 100% enlargements (which are huge, relatively speaking, with a 24 megapixel camera) I see good detail and sharpness in the critical parts of the frame.  If you require a flat field lens you might be in the market for a macro lens. Unlike general purpose lenses they are constructed to shoot flat objects. That's why they uniformly test well in the tester world.  In his review of the camera Mr. Ratcliff seems to agree that the lens in question is in no way a "dog" of an optic...

I like the 18-55mm because it is a good universal lens but I also like it because, in black, it looks so good on the black Nex 7 body. But when I shoot portraits I have a new favorite. It's the Sony OSS 50mm 1.8. I couldn't find a black one but by this time I just don't care anymore because I like using this one so much I wouldn't want to take any chances on a different sample...

The lens is nicely sharp as opposed to "bitter" sharp. It feels like it's resolving more layers of stuff that I see on the "surface" of the files. I think of it as a portrait lens but many times I leave the house with just this one optic for the day. Some people gravitate toward wide angle lenses and some to short telephotos. I think the ones who choose wide angles have problems distilling their vision down to the essentials...(that was meant to be a joke.) I always want to get in tighter and tights.  Along the same lines one of the Pen lenses that seems to really resonate for me on the Nex 7 is the 70mm f2.  While the lens has some "old school" optical characteristics the focal length is very satisfying for portrait work.  The full 35mm frame equivalent of a 105 mm lens.

There are two things about the Nex 7 that are almost universally unloved.  One is the movie actuation button on the upper right side of the back of the body. It's mentioned everywhere. I've hit it a couple of times but it's so obvious that you've done so in the viewfinder that I can't think people are letting the movie recording go on for too long. Some have tried "fixing" the problem by glueing rubber grommets around the button to ward of their errant thumbs. I spent some time doing thumb exercises to prevent unintended thumb actuation. You'll have to find your own approach.

The second fault of the camera will most likely only resonate with people who use shoe mount flashes or need a universal hot shoe for radio triggers and the like. Here's the deal: All the current Sony cool cameras still use a Minolta hot shoe that came in to being when they launched their Maxxum AF cameras back in the 1990's. No one else uses it. No one. Sony should have changed this the minute they bought the company but sometimes Sony soldiers on with odd crap. You can still use many Sony cameras with a Sony Memory Stick. Kinda nuts. But for only $11 you can buy a Seagull branded converter  that turns your propriety Minolta/Sony hot shoe into a universal shoe. The converter has a handy lock so it doesn't slide off and it also gives you a PC plug on the side for sync cords. Remember those?  Order four or five and keep them in all your camera bags. Or reconcile yourself to the idea that you use flash with other cameras and creativity and ingenuity with the Nex 7....

Lately I've become aware of just how "last century" my way of thinking about cameras usually is. Here I am focusing manually and exposing manually even when I have in my hands a camera with enough computational power to do a lot of day to day stuff for me with a high degree of proficiency. So I let go of my control freak ways and set the camera to the dreaded "green zone." Sony calls this setting, "intelligent auto."  It takes away almost all of my decision making power. No compensation, no control over AF areas, etc. I walked around and shot stuff for about an hour yesterday afternoon just to see what the camera could do and.......I was fairly impressed. It's an alternative methodology for street shooting.  If you set the camera to use "eye start AF" the camera will start focusing the minute you bring the EVF up to your eye. The computer in the box examines hundreds of areas within the scene and makes a series of educated guesses, most of which turned out to be right. I find it very usable in good light. Where it falls down is if you need to focus on something that isn't necessarily in the center of the frame or the closest thing to the camera. 

And I figured that, while I was at it, I might as well play with and report on the various "picture effects" in the menu. The one above is called "posterized." It's pretty obvious and not one I'd use a lot. Especially not for portraits, unless I was trying to go all "Warhol."

I'm not a very organized tester so I don't even recall what this one (above ) is but it doesn't hurt my brain too much... (just figure it out; this is "pop color").

This one (above) is, of course, "toy camera." Hmmmm. Seems like we just went nuts with the vignette menu in Lens Correction...

And where would we be without "contrasty black and white."?

I skipped "soften" and "high key" but I did want to see what "retro" looked like (above).

Those settings are different from the menu called, "creative style" which includes what I would basically call "camera profiles".  We have all the usuals like, standard, vivid, neutral, portrait, landscape but there are also some called, clear, deep, light, sunset night scene, sepia, and black and white. But the one I am drawn to, as much for it's prosaic directness is "autumn leaves." Autumn Leaves does something to the camera to make it sharper, crisper and warmer in certain color areas.  Silly, but I really like it.

The real power of this camera is that it can be small, unobtrusive, and  and at the same time immensely powerful for real image making. No excuses image making. No more, "isn't this a great picture from such a tiny camera?" In the guts of the camera is an unhobbled 24 megapixel sensor that I consider to be state of the art. When the camera was tested by DXO in April they judged it to be among the top ten or eleven camera sensors they had tested to date.

If your technical and aesthetic skills are up to it the camera will match you. From ISO 100-800 it's all you might want in a digital file. I can see noise start to creep in after that but I still think it's usable up to 3200 with good results if you use noise reduction in Lightroom or PS. It will give you the flex to shoot just about anything you need, with two caveats: I wouldn't feel comfortable shooting field sports with it. The CD AF is good but when it comes to following fast action and offering some level of predicative AF I just don't think it's ready to go toe to toe with PD AF cameras like its sibling, the SLT a77.  If action runs parallel to the camera there's a lot to be said for its burst speed; it will do 10 fps for a second or so... But life on the big playing fields is too random and kinetic for the current AF tech in mirrorless (non-PD) cameras. This will all change this year as hybrid focusing system cameras hit the market. The Nikon V1 led the way in that regard.  

My second caveat is one that I don't care about but thought I would mention: If you shoot weddings you won't be impressing cousin Sheldon or uncle Frank with your shooting rig. They will most probably best you in both weight and cubic inches with their tog tools. We've stopped thinking about that in the advertising world. The machine either works or it doesn't.  

I used this camera recently on a shoot with the very art director who moved me from an Olympus E-3 to the Canon 5Dmk2 several years ago. We did a shoot and, plainly, the small, overly AA filtered, small pixel count encumbered E-3 just didn't resolve enough detail for a big output. When we shot with this little camera on the most recent shoot he was flat out impressed. 

A couple of weeks ago, in the middle of August, I took the camera out with me for a long and dusty walk. I ended up getting my sweaty hands all over the camera and I felt like it needed some more protection. Now, in the old days I always thought the little cases that fit over cameras, which were called, "Ever Ready" cases, were dorky and unnecessary. Oh judgemental me. How my point of view has changed. I went on line and started looking for a cool case, passed by the "must be gold plated" incredibly expensive Sony case and found a "no name" case on Amazon, here.

I got some sort of lightning deal price and the case came out to a whopping big $10. I love it. I keep the bottom of the case on the camera and it enhances the feel of the system. I pop the top on when I'm heading out for a long walk to give the camera some protection from the heat, dust, rain and the perspiration of its intrepid owner.  Never thought I'd own one. Now I'm thinking about getting them for all my cameras....

Last week I was a guest at the first preview of the new Mort Topfer Theater at Zachary Scott Theatre. I took along the Nex 7 and the kit lens. I was seated up in the middle of the house and I took images of some of the short previews. This one is for the upcoming show, Rag Time. I was shooting at ISO 400 and nearly or at wide open on the lens. I include this because I was happy with the 100% crop below.  You can click on any of these to see them bigger, in their own windows.

To sum up this chapter of my flowing and intermittent reviews of the Sony Nex7:

Better overall image quality than all the other digital cameras I've owned up to this point in time. Slightly better high ISO image quality than my workhorse Sony a77's.  Not a high ISO champ but certainly better than the middle of the pack. 

If I'd shot with this camera before trying the a77's I would probably have been quite happy going with two Nex 7's, a small shoebox full of lenses and nothing else. I can do and have done demanding and professional work with this camera!  I can hardly wait to see how Sony improves it.