Just a thought: Epson has holiday pricing on its BIG printers... But it you get one, you have to print on it at least every other week, or you risk clogging. They have 24" and 44" models. The sale prices will be in affect for, as I recall, the entire month of December. Buying a big printer makes you into a digital lab.

Factory refurbished means the entire camera was checked out and re-calibrated, any missing or broken parts replaced, everything properly cleaned, and fully tested for all functions prior to being prepped for resale. That's what you HOPE has happened, and generally, it's true. There are "camera sensor cleaning services" which also bother to do a proper cleaning, with your camera returning like new.

If you want to see Mackinac Island lovingly photographed in a movie, including the hotel, check out "Somewhere in Time." The late Christopher Reeve, a young and stunning Jane Seymour, and Christopher Plummer star. It's a time travel movie.

The 6mm f/2.8 full frame Nikkor is very, very wide, very, very good, but a tad expensive. It is manual, but at 6mm that's fine. You can find it occasionally for about the price of a decent house, north of $200,000. If you stick your elbows out, you see them. It has more than a 180 degree view.

Both Nikon and Canon are supported by Metabones and their Speedboosters and Straight to Micro 4/3 adapters.

Because, in the cinema, manual focus is standard, this works out famously well. I have a ton of manual lenses, all the way to the Nikkor ED-IF 800mm f/5.6 which I use on with my Micro 4/3 Pocket Cinema and Micro 4/3 2.5K Cinema cameras. The good thing about Metabones Speedboosters is: they concentrate the light, increasing the useful speed of the lens up to 1 2/3 stops, and at the same time effect an improvement in the MTF of the lens, essentially making the lens even better.

Now, Metabones also makes M43 to C-Mount adapters, allowing you to buy full tone One Inch format C-Mounts and get things WIDE going. Like 6mm f/1.8.

Here is a shot of my Pocket Cam at the end of the 800/5.6. If you put the 800/5.6 next to the 300/2.8, the 800 is wider (as is has to be to get the 5.6.)

The Moon shot is what the 800mm does in terms of magnification. The moon is only a half of a degree across, and no longer fits in the 1080 frame. Oh, about the "Shaky Manfrotto Head:" This is a still photography, geared head. It is not for a movie camera, and has a lot of play. This is okay for stills, but a little frustrating for movies. I have a $500 Manfrotto tripod I use as a coat rack. It is not up to any standard. The Gitzo Tele Studex is no longer made, but it was in many rental houses because it has no bad habits and is very, very tough. One trip to L.A. and I will turn this tripod into a ball-leveling fluid head. I machine the ball level adaptor for this tripod. 75mm ball. The little Tele Studex Giant goes up about 6 feet. The standard BIG one goes up about 10-11 feet. And yes, they are heavy, as they should be.

(Download)


(Download)

My Nikon F2 has over a million frames shot. It is built like a tank, far beyond anything DSLR. The bet I will never do is: Take my 40 year old Nikon F2 with a million plus frames shot, place it next to any DSLR fresh out of its factory packaging spanking new, and just shoot them until the DSLR's shutter dies. Then get another brand new DSLR, and shoot the pair until that DSLR shutter dies. And so on. My wonderment is, how long will the F2 last? I had to replace the foams in the F2 for light leaking and mirror slapping reasons, but it just keeps on shooting. What I've heard is that most pro DSLRs are good for about 300,000 frames, which is about right in terms of needing to replace with the new and shiny.

Another test I'd like to do but won't: take the old F2 with motor drive and battery, and drop it from waist height onto a flight of concrete steps, letting the camera careen down the steps to the landing, and doing the same with a new, top of the line DSLR. The Nikon F2 will take that punishment, as I've had it happen. Just one small dent. My suspicion is the DSLR will be in pieces and not work after the fall. The F2 with motor and battery is about .5 to 2x heavier than the DSLR, so maybe lash some weight or put a lens on it to it to make it a fair test. How I had this happen: I had two F2 motor driven cameras, one on each shoulder, with a 30 pound camera bag also on one shoulder, rushing up the steps when the "O" ring undid itself. Down goes the camera. Knowing this can happen, I started soldering the "O" rings to make it a non-possibility. Later, when I stopped doing photojournalism, I just stopped using straps. Never again. They get in the way. These days, for location, I use a good camera bag, and lament the end of "The System Bag" which was about the best, ever.

The D500, as I recall, shoots 4K, or at least UHD video. This is a nice feature, until 8K becomes the standard.

Well, that's an age old question: when does an image turn from snapshot to photograph? In portraiture, it's all about intention, backed up by experience, and often some equipment. Unless the sun is low in the sky, basically up to an hour before sunset, or up to an hour after sunrise, the sun is your enemy. Controlling the sun is possible, but that involves equipment. Seeking shaded areas requires knowledge of color temperatures, because shade is REALLY blue. Having the right focal length for portraiture, starting at about double the "normal" focal length, is a good idea. Shooting no more than about two stops from wide open is a good ideal to maximize lens performance. The list goes on and on.

The first image here is a full-tilt 1940's style portrait I did, with professional hair and makeup, using a Hasselblad film camera and fine grain film. The glamor lighting was done with several lights. The key face illumination was, as I recall, from a 16" reflector. The hair lights were 11" reflectors. The strobe system: 2400 watt-second Speedotron, studio model which allowed asymmetrical power to its six flash ports. The light was balanced with a Minolta Flashmeter. I did the processing in my own lab, which was temperature controlled, including the wash water, using water baths and incoming cold water refrigeration, needed in the heat of a Florida summer. Scanning was done on a Flextight Precision 2.

One thing to note: amateurs hope for a happy accident, pros make the photograph happen, regardless. Learning to be a pro is to learn the pantheon of photo situations, and mastering them. Like, how do you light a piano? (You don't.) What you do is the stuff of photography.

The second portrait was shot at about 2 p.m. in the scorching L.A. sun, using no strobes, only sun controls and reflectors. The effect is an OUTSIDE studio shot. Why? I had about 15 such dancers to shoot. They cooled off in the studio (where they had their makeup done,) and came outside for their shots. A practical solution when everyone shows up at once.

The third portrait is all about soft light and soft shadows. Soft Boxes and Strip Soft Boxes were used, again powered by Speedotron. This was Hasselblad 6x6 cm film, processed in a make shift lab in a kitchen, tempering by plastic bags of ice. Dried by hanging with bottom weights in a steamed up shower (to remove airborne dust.)

Finally, at what cost? If you are shooting a common DSLR, this is the cheapest aspect of your photography business. Hasselblad DSLRs are the highest dollar per pound objects in the studio. Lighting will set you back thousands of dollars. Mola Beauty Dishes will set you back hundreds to thousands of dollars. Light Stands and C-Stands will be thousands of dollars. Backgrounds will be hundreds to thousands of dollars. Your makeup area will be a bit under a thousand dollars (just the right chair, the right makeup mirror, and the right cleanable counter space for the MUA,) your grip equipment, like aluminum pipe, SpeedRail, and hangers, will be thousands of dollars, your overheads and BIG light stands to hold them will be thousands of dollars. The list goes on... The point is, most photographers spend more on their business than they do on their car.

(Download)


(Download)


(Download)

Shutter speed is less important than sync speed, as most frozen wing hummingbird shots use a fast strobe to freeze the action. With a flash, 1/35,000 of a second, or faster, is possible. Even a fast camera shutter will not fully freeze the wings, unless the hummingbird is slowing its wings for a landing. Try 1/8000, if you have it, as an alternative. Maybe 1/4000. Just be impressed with how fast the wings really are.

Well, digital has caused a problem we never had in the limiting days of film, but the issue is still the same: most images are "snapshots" which to not rise to be "photographs." Thus EDITING is a good idea after every shoot. Keep the best, the sentimental, and the digital fodder shots (if you are a Photoshop person) and try, as viciously as possible, to erase the "also rans." Then, storage needs lessen.

Some people leave their hearts in San Francisco. Further south, I left my photo mojo in 40 foot containers on a mountain. I see a left coast trip, the first 4x4x6 foot shipping crate, and a lot of decisions as to "mojo to ship" forthcoming. I think I will build the shipping crate in my production truck (with liftgate) and just drive about to the containers. Then, drop the crate off to a freight forwarder before winging it east. The problem is, my lenses are 70 miles south of the mojo... Such a mess it was, leaving L.A.

I'd have to travel a long way to get a dark sky. Light pollution is EVERYWHERE.

Digital cannot compete with certain films with correct processing schemes. Sensor size is like film size, and smoothness of tone suffers between DX and FX. Bigger sensors equate to bigger film sizes, but film goes to sizes and qualities digital cannot. Take Kodak Technical Pan processed full tone. You could scan it at 10,000 dpi and the film would cry out for more resolution in the scan. Few scanners have ever existed which could interpolate Technical Pan's essential grain-less quality. And then there's 120 film, shot at 6x4.5cm, 6x6cm, 6x7cm, and 6x9cm commonly. Hasselblad shooters who scanned black and white saw tonal gradations and sharpness simply unseen in the digital world. And then, there's large format, from 4x5 inches to 12x18 inches, and larger. Nothing digital can approach, yet.

All that said, and with a whole lab of enlargers and what not in storage, would I look forward to getting back to that smell, those stains, all that water waste, and need to work in the dark? Digital allows instant review, and skips the lab in favor of digital printing. It is so much less smelly and cleaner than the analog past, and there are plugins which will adapt the RGB image to almost every black and white film type. It's not the same, but in a world ruled by millennials, this audience is raised on lowered visual standards. They shoot only with their cell phones, and mainly for the Internet. Photography in the classic sense, is becoming unfortunately archaic.

Freestyle also has film, chemicals, and photo paper.

http://www.freestylephoto.biz/

If you are shooting in manual, you should have an exposure meter. Then, you can calibrate the camera to the meter, as ISOs are not always what they seem. Then you can shoot in manual, with confidence. It used to be the way we did every shoot. Incident meters in front of model faces and bodies, testing the light. The pragmatic cost of film and lab was an issue, so every frame had to be spot-on.

Lighting could be pre-visualized. You could see, in your mind's eye, exactly what the shot would look like, if nothing screwed up.