(Nikon D4, 50ISO, Nikon 14-24F2.8N@14mm.  8 seconds @F14.  Manfrotto Tripod with Micro Adjustment head.  Inova Bolt flashlight flashed on the knit chairs and table with a 1/2CTO over the front during the 8 second exposure)

This is a room setting that I shot for Chatham Home Interiors here in Indianapolis.  Sort of a neat little designer furniture store just off the beaten path of Massachusetts ave here in Indy.  I’ve done various work for them in the past for their ads, direct mail, coupon, and various other photo related ventures.  In fact I also shot the owners wedding.  Very cool as it was a firefighter’s wedding, so there were a lot of photoesque opportunities.   Anyway, I digress as Chatham Home Interiors was given the opportunity to completely furnish a room in a mansion along with several other designers in town as part of a competition of sorts.  I never really got to see the rest of the rooms because I was called in towards the end, but Chatham won the KEY Award and this is their first year participating.  From what I understand this is pretty unheard of, and they wanted me to come in and take some photos of their space; which was admittedly pretty awesome.

(Nikon D4, 800ISO, Nikon 85mmF1.4D 1/160th@F1.4)

My instructions were simple.  I needed to show the room in it’s glory in the way that it appeared, and they felt that if anybody could do it; they thought I could.  Wow, what an awesome bit of praise, but that bit of praise also comes with a big side of pressure.  I decided to take the simple approach that came from shooting furniture showcases at John Kirk furniture here in Indianapolis.  An interior designer usually designs things to be seen in the way that they want, which means that when I walk into a room; no matter how dark the room is meant to be seen in a specific way before I get there.  Could I have added a dozen lights to this setting to make it what I wanted?  Absolutely, but that would not have made it appear in the photo as Chatham intended it to.  So bust out the tripod.  Then you have to decide between  HDR  Image Bracketing and Light Painting.  Wait, Lightpainting?  Yup, absolutely.  HDR (Hyperdynamic Range) Imaging has its place in the world, but honestly not in my photography.  So out comes the flashlight and gel kit, because I’d ventured a guess that in a few 10 second exposures I could get exactly the shot I want without having to use the computer for hours afterwards.

(Nikon D4, 50ISO, Nikon 14-24F2.8N@14mm, 8 seconds @F16.  Manfrotto tripod with Micro Adjustment head.  Single SB800 zoomed out to 14mm set to 1/1 with a 1/2GTO fired by hand from the table and knit chair from the left twice, Single SB900 zoomed to 200mm with a 1/4 CTO fired by hand at the hot air balloons for the last 5 seconds of the exposure)

The idea is simple, and very similar to using strobes whether big or small.  Decide what your base exposure is going to be, and then light around it.  For the shot above, I decided on the exposure for the background and looked to see where I needed to add light.  My Inova X2 flashlight is awesome, but it’s also daylight balanced which isn’t what the lights in this room were.  That’s of course not withstanding that it wasn’t powerful enough for every frame that I shot, and I had to supplement with some gelled blasts from my SB900s.  Any flashlight will do, or of course you can get any kind of light emitting device for light painting.  With long exposures there is also an issue where lights tend to “bloom” (where a light source gets bigger and bigger in the frame as the exposure runs).  This can be easily fixed by flickering the light switch in your room on and off.  It sounds odd, but trust me.  It works, and it doesn’t require anything special to do.

In the end, I shot a few frames that Chatham Home ended up being incredibly pleased with, and I did it without having to carry 5 cases of gear to the third floor of the mansion.  Just goes to show that sometimes things don’t have to be big productions in order to get beautiful results.  Speaking of things that aren’t big productions, I’ve got a review of the Rogue XL Pro lighting kit coming up, it’s the Indy500 this weekend which I always greatly enjoy, as well as I’ve got a post with some wedding photography.  My wedding actually .  More Soon.

(Photo Courtesy CamRanger)

Whoa.  Ok so it’s a third party.  Before I get into it all, I should mention that I”m not paid for this.  I am not being paid by Nikon, Canon, Roberts Camera or Cam Ranger.  What I say on here is my opinion, and I am prone to miss things or aggravate someone while I’m at it.  If you have any questions or comments, you can always feel free to email me or leave it in the comments.  Now, ONWARD!

Why would you buy this $299 third party unit vs the Nikon and Canon units?  Lets face it CamRanger realizes there is a price point thing here for functionality.  Exactly like when I’ve bought the Generic Ebay SB-900 battery packs for $20 vs the $200 Nikon versions.  The $20 chinese versions are junk though, and I know I get what I pay for.  Both the Canon and Nikon units depending on your level of camera can be found from $500-$1,000.  The Pro cameras are obviously the more expensive wireless units, but the CamRanger works with the D3, D4, 1Dx, 5D Mark II and almost every other camera in  both manufacturers lineup.  I say almost every other camera because my Canon 1D Mark II is not officially supported because the makers of the CamRanger wanted to stick with the latest and greatest, and that makes sense.  Their website says that even though the camera isn’t on the official list, doesn’t mean it won’t work; you just won’t have some functionality that the camera itself doesn’t have like live view or video.  That being said, My 1D Mark II doesn’t register at all, and I’m not surprised; nor do I care.  Here’s the list of supported cameras via their website.  So, this is a third party device that’s cheaper than the name brand deal, does it work?  Absofrigginlutely!

OK so lets go straight to the sports part of this review.  I shot that at the beginning of the Naptown Tornado Sirens Roller Derby bout last Saturday night.  I had my Canon 5D Mark II up on a I beam in turn 3 (as a reference for what you can see from the photo) with a 16mm lens.  I was curious as to how the CamRanger would work with 3,000 people using cell phones floating around inside of a giant metal structure.  The Box says it’s good to 50 meters, but I was using easily as far away as 70 meters while I was playing around and getting people to say how cool having a live birds eye view of the arena was from my cell phone.  I shot that frame with my iPhone from just about in my shooting position towards the end of turn 1.  Not much more to be said or done there since lets face it, once you get a wide remote set up like that you really only get one kind of photo unless you’re shooting with long glass; which I wasn’t.  I did notice that if you have a bunch of stuff between you and the cam ranger the range is affected, but how often are you going to be shooting something not in the same room as yourself?  (more on that shortly) Shot a little bit of video with the 5D2, but otherwise the camera in that corner was meant only for this shot, and for that it greatly succeeded.  I experimented with different camera settings while the camera was on the post, but none of them really mattered, either the shot was flat, too dark, or just had uninteresting subject matter.  Not the CamRanger’s fault, my own for not putting it in a more interesting place.

(Screenshot of my original placement test and test shot, This was great because I saw I had to rotate the camera about an inch to the left.)

The functionality of the cam ranger is pretty awesome.  I was able to control the Focus, aperture, shutterspeed, file format (RAW, TIFF, jpeg ect) along with the size of the image, I could decide if I wanted to shoot in live view, or shoot video and what video settings to do so at, as well as I could watch what the camera was recording in almost real time.  All on my iPhone or iPad.  How was connectivity?  Lets just say the biggest problem I had was the Superfan next to me taking my phone to play with it.  You should also take note, that the Canon 5D had a Pocket Wizard on it firing my lights.  So unlike Canon’s 6D’s built in WiFi Ability, the CamRanger can trigger a Pocket Wizard via the Wifi.  Bad. Ass.  It’s also worth noting that I wasn’t using just any Pocket Wizard, but one of my Nikon Pocket Wizard TT5′s on this particular Canon 5D Mark II.  You would figure that as a dummy trigger it would work, and it did flawlessly.  It also was able to give my Canon a sync above 1/160th, meaning the Hypersync functionality was preserved somehow.  Don’t know how, but like I said; it’s worth nothing.  Also, I shoot in RAW almost always.  For the CamRanger if you are using it as a remote it obviously takes a few minutes for the 30mb RAW files to flow through so I would recommend shooting RAW+Small Jpeg which makes the files appear on the iPad or iPhone almost instantly while keeping the RAW files safe on the card in the camera.  This is not something that I did while using the CamRanger as a remote, however I could have set the camera to do this at any time from my phone.  Honestly though once I had everything set up I didn’t really need to view lots of the images as I knew what I was getting at that point.  One thing that I was missing though was a battery indicator for the CamRanger.  I had the thing powered up on this Canon 5D Mark II from around 3:30pm until about 10pm and the battery lasted without a problem.  Would it have died 10 minutes later?  I have no idea.  It’s great that CamRanger designed the thing with a replaceable battery so you can carry extras, but there’s really no way to tell how much juice the thing has left in it at any given time.

My only complaint on the actual connectivity has nothing to do with the CamRanger but the iPhone itself.  Unfortunately when you are connected to the CamRanger network don’t expect to get any kind of data in or out of your phone.  The phone thinks it’s connected to WiFi, but really its connected to a dead end network, so picture texts, email, and web browsing is unavailable when you re connected to the CamRanger.  Not the end of the world, but kind of annoying depending on what you’re doing.

For the people that care about the sports aspect of this device, here’s a video showing it at work during setup:

Ok now for the Studio folks out there.  Being able to control the camera is great, but that really isn’t what you want when you’re shooting in a studio sometimes.  Giving the clients control of your camera in the middle of a shoot isn’t high on my to do list of ideas, so I’m guessing it probably isn’t on yours either.  The CamRanger App has a mode that allows you to remove everything from the screen except for the images popping up, and a rating system so that the person/people/art directors watching the shoot can select stuff on the fly.   Cool.  Basically it’s like shooting tethered, except your art director can only see the images as opposed to a tech pulling them in and cataloging them.  The images can be automatically downloaded to your device but that sounds like a wonderful way to fill up an iPad or iPhone now doesn’t it?  Again, this is an occasion where you would want to shoot RAW + Small Jpeg so that the images appear and can download instantly while protecting the precious RAW files on the card in the camera.

If shooting in a studio for people isn’t your cup o tea, then maybe the Focus stacking and HDR Bracketing is?  This is where I feel as though I was finally led a little a stray by the CamRanger (at my own fault).  The cam ranger app is capable of allowing you to set up increments of focus for an automated focus stacking. (taking photos of something at different focal points to put them into another image software creating an image with multiple items in focus, or a deeper focus, that would not be possible in camera).  When I first tried this on my Fiancee’s engagement ring I was sort of assuming that it would layer the images together for me.  Unfortunately I gave it too much credit because lets face it, this was a 5D Mark II shooting RAW files via an iOS app on my iPad.  Did I really think it was going to do the work for me?  Sheesh, I must have been high on how well this thing works at that point or something.  It automatically shot the images at a predefined change in focus, but no it did not stack them for me automatically which shouldn’t be surprising to anybody.  When I went to do the HDR Bracketing,  it bracketed the images beautifully, and I was under no impression that my iPad would layer them together for me (which it didn’t).  All that work needs to be done in the computer still which by far isn’t the end of the world.   You need to keep in mind what I didn’t, and that’s that this is a tool for shooting, not post processing.  As a tool for shooting, this thing is very, very solid.

For a more complete idea of how the CamRanger works overall, as well as a bit of studio related stuff, check out this next video below where I set up a ridiculous shooting scenerio.  I set up Shannon’s ring with the camera on a tripod in the livingroom, and then proceeded to do the photoshoot from out in my car in the driveway.  If that doesn’t give you an idea what this little device is capable of, I don’t have any idea what will.  The Ruby ended up a little pink since my Speedlight ended up shooting through it, but for demonstration purposes it does it’s just perfectly.  Also, the original idea was to do the video in one cut, but as luck would have it I ended up getting called by my dad during recording, and you’ll see where it breaks.  For the future if I record something on my phone, I need to remember to turn it into Airplanae mode to keep our photo/video conversation from being interrupted.

Is the CamRanger perfect?  No.  It’s damn close though.  For $299 you can get a device that provides just about all the functionality of the Nikon or Canon Counterparts; direct to your phone or iPad.  For a lot of people I’m sure it will be a dream come true.  For sports photographers that use a lot of Remotes this could be really great because they can look at their take from the sidelines without needing to get out their laptop.  Select an image, download it, and send it from your phone (after disconnecting from the CamRanger network of course).  You can even check the focus of your images in the app, without needing to download them and put them into photoshop touch, or snapspeed to check them.  The in studio client mode is fantastic, giving people the ability to see their photos but not touch them if you know what I mean.  Really I feel like the CamRanger fits into a spot that Nikon and Canon have attempted to get into many times but failed honestly due to price point.  I’d have bought a Nikon or Canon wireless transmitter years ago if the one I needed wasn’t $700 with reports all over the internet about being incredibly inconsistent…

I do however feel like I would like to see some things added/changed.  As far as I can tell, you can only use one CamRanger at a time on one device at a time.  Not a problem if you’re triggering your remote with a pocket wizard because the editor can still look at stuff, but if I wanted to trigger the cam ranger from a phone and have someone editing on an iPad I couldn’t do it.  It would probably be too hard on the WiFi signal that way, but I’d still like to see it as an option.  I’d also love to see you be able to set up your rangers all on one network and be able to manage several of them in a single running app on a phone or iPad.  Not sure if it’s possible or what it would take, but for the really hardcore sports folks, or folks that do a lot of remotes like my pal Andy Hancock being able to only use one at a time is kind of a bummer.  Maybe a CamRanger PRO or something in the future that allows you to name and specify parameters on your own network allowing you to put them all together as one?  Then you could just select which one you want to use and view from a menu in the App; or even to fire all of them at once.  Not sure, I will have to see what the CamRanger people say about something like that, I’m not a WiFi engineer so I could be breaking the laws of physics with that suggestion.

In order to use your ranger for the first time  you need to pair it to your device which is pretty simple, but seems like it’s 2 steps longer than it needs to be.  Once its paired it’s a function of turning it on and waiting for it to start up before you can use it.  Stupid easy, and I like that.  Every time you want to use a new device (iPad, or iPhone) to control your ranger you have to register your device online, so unless you have a WiFi hotspot, or 3/4G ipad, make sure you try to set it up at home first to make sure you can even use it once you get into the field.  Once it’s registered on one device, it should just be registered and you should be able to pair it with whatever device you have.  Not that I have a ton of iOS devices and would run into the problem of wanting to pair a device in the field regularly, but I hadn’t paired my iPhone to the CamRanger before the Roller Derby bout and it was annoying to have to connect, disconnect, and reconnect the CamRanger in order to get it to work.

Honestly.  Any of the things that bugged me about the CamRanger are minor, and none of them prevent the device from doing what it is supposed to do.  You plug it into your camera via USB and it works.  No joke.  I really was curious as to how this third party device would stack up, but honestly I’d be much more inclined to buy this than the Nikon or Canon counterparts, for quite a few reason other than the price.  The ONLY thing that the CamRanger doesn’t do (to my knowledge) is allow you to access the files via a Computer.  If they had an App that allowed you to connect your laptop to the cam ranger  (CamRanger Pro?) I could see them totally dominating the market in terms of Wireless Camera interactions.  There would be no reason for someone wanting that functionality to not buy one because lets face it, half the price of the competition for a product that works just as well if not better is tough to beat.

So to make a long story even longer; I dig it.  I dig it a lot.  I don’t know what the price increase might be for some of the features I suggested for a CamRanger Pro (or if a price increase is even required for my suggestions), but even if they had it at $400 for the Pro version I’d see it as a very reasonable price for what you get.  I feel like CamRanger really nailed it with this product and I really look forward to seeing what they do in the future.  The CamRanger I have will be going back to Roberts Camera for people to play with in the showroom so if you’re curious go check it out in person.  It’ll be there for anyone to play with, so just go in and ask Phil about it.  If you’ve ever thought about adding wireless functionality to your camera this is the product without a doubt.   Roberts Camera here in Indy has them in stock, so check them out online, or go visit the guys in the store.  Good people there.  Happy Shooting, and More soon.

(Nikon D4, 80ISO, Nikon 14-24F2.8N@20mm.  Nikon SB900 set to iTTL bounced from a closed 32″ umbrella on a stand to above camera right, Single Nikon SB800 on the table to the far camera left (you can actually see it in the frame back there on the table) set to 1/4th power with a 1/2 CTO, Single Nikon SB900 Speedlight set on a chair behind the 1/2CTO flash with a 1/2CTB set to 1/4th and zoomed to 200mm to throw the shadows of the IV bags on the wall.  All flashes fired by Nikon SU-800 Commander from the Camera’s hot shoe).

There are several different categories, which include: Educator of the Year, Lifetime of Compassion, Advancement in Nursing, Community Outreach, and last but certainly not least Inspiration in Nursing.  Of those five categories the Indiana Nurse of the Year is selected, and will be honored for a year as such.  There are over 1100 nominations and the State Board of Nursing goes through them one by one.  It’s a heckuva honor!

(Nikon D4, 500ISO, Nikon 28-70F2.8D@62mm, 1/160th@F4.  Single Nikon SB900 set to 1/8th power bounced from a 32″ umbrella to above camera left, single Nikon SB800 set on the top of the storage bins above the sink to camera right set to 1/16th power.  Both Speedlights triggered by a Nikon SU-800 Commander unit from the Camera’s hot shoe.)

Each individual displays quite a talent and capacity for compassion, caring, and strong stomachs in all conditions.  Most of the nurses that have come through the Salute awards banquet have been in the ER at some point in their careers and all have commented on seeing some pretty terrible things.  Each one though has loved being a nurse for as long as they can remember; including the ones who became nurses on a whim like Beth Kueper above, who became a nurse after a friend convinced her that Nursing school had all the things she wanted.  None look back at any of their time with anything but fondness, even if they were working nights or even if they served during Wartime in the Military.

(Nikon D4, 200ISO, Nikon 85mmF1.4D, 1/200th@F2.  Nikon SB900 bounced from a 32″ umbrella to above camera left set to 1/8th power, Single SB 700 sitting on the floor aimed at the wall behind Liz with a 1/2CTB set to 1/8th power also for a little bit of separation.  Both Speedlights triggred by a Nikon SU-800 Commander Unit from the Cameras Hot Shoe)

Some nurses work in very remote locations.  Liz O’Neil above works in Monon Indiana.  She works for Purdue University thanks to her late husband who was Faculty there at one point.  He got her started there, and she hasn;t looked back.  She won our Community outreach award this year and a reach it was!  Monon Indiana is roughly a half a square mile in size.  She treks up there in order to help everyone and anyone in need, and a lot of times even has a Purdue Intern with her in the clinic.  It’s a thankless job, and she doesn’t even notice because of how much she loves it.  Monon must not be all that bad though considering there is this Medical Clinic, a Post Office, a Family Dollar, a single stop light with no street signs and a Ford Dealership.  You’d never know it, but the Ford dealership had two Mustang Shelby Cobra GT500′s and a Ford GT in the showroom.  Remember what I said too.  Monon is only a half square mile in size…

(Nikon D4, 50ISO, Nikon 50mmF1.4, 1/25th@F2.  Single SB-900 Speedlight shot through a Rogue XL Pro Lighting kit set to Strip Softbox mode on 1/16th power.  Single SB-700 shot into the ceiling in the background with a Rogue Red Gel over the top set to 1/8th power.  Both lights fired by a Nikon SU-800 Commander from the Camera hot shoe)

Renee Twibell from BSU though was selected for the Advancement in Nursing award and no amount of “half square mile in size” could keep her down.  She works at IU Health part time, and Ball State University full time.  She won the Advancement in Nursing award for repuprosing one of those internet sensations known as “Second Life” for school purposes.  The students are given an account and must go into the hospitals to diagnose patients using the information they are provided.  Quite a clever little teaching tool if you ask me.  The first photo on the blog is of Janice Watts who is the 2013 educator of the year.  Imagine all the possibilities if you put something like that in the hands of the Educator of the year right?  Crazy Talk!

(Nikon D4, 100ISO, Nikon 28-70F2.8D@52mm.  1/200th@F7.1.  Nikon SB900 Speedlight above camera left bounced into a 32″ umbrella set to 1/4th power.  Single Nikon SB900 behind Jayne on the table pointed into the wall for separation set to 1/8th zoomed into 200mm to control Spill.  Both flashes fired by Nikon SU-800 Commander from the camera’s Hot Shoe). 

That’s Jayne Emrich from the VA hospital here in Indianapolis.  She was this year’s Lifetime of compassion award winner, and also was named our 2013 Nurse of the year.  She was in the military as a nurse for 25 years, as well as she worked almost as long at the VA hospital as a nurse.  I figure she musta liked it or something right?  It was a tough thing to take her photos knowing that she wouldn’t be able to attend the event where she would be named Nurse of the Year for 2013.  At the time of this writing I know that her daughter and son would be there to accept her award in her place.  Little do they know they need to go up to the stage twice.  When you’re reading this the event will all be over.  Smiles will be had, lunch will be eaten and warm caring nurses will receive the respect and admiration they deserve.  This is truly one of the best events I work each year.

(Nikon D4, 100ISO, Nikon 85mmF1.4D, 1/160th@F2.  Single Nikon SB-700 Speedlight bounced from a 32″ umbrella to above camera left set to 1/8th, Single Nikon SB900 speedlight on the practice bed far left of camera set to 1/2 @14mm with a 1/2 CTB to give a little background separation.  Both Flashes triggered by the Nikon SU-800 Speedlight Commander unit from the Cameras Hot shoe)

One of the fewer known awards at this event is the Student Scholarship winner, Shelly shown above.  As of the time of this writing I don’t know how much the scholarship is for, but I know it’s ranged between $2500 and $8,000 in the past thanks to sponsors.  Shelly’s story was one of the few that I actually heard someone read to me, and I fully and whole heartedly know why she received this honor.  Her Husband was diagnosed with cancer a few years ago and during his time in and out of hospitals she was nothing but blown away by the loving care that all of the Nurses provided for her husband.  In fact he even commented as to how she would make a wonderful nurse.  Unfortunately her husband didn’t make it, leaving her and their two children behind.  She soon decided to take that jump back to school that he and her had spoken about; to become a Nurse.  Her eyes lit up when we made the announcement about her award, and that’s one of the things that makes this one of the best projects I work on.  Seeing something like this affect the lives of the people who affect so many in so many thankless ways.  It really is a great thing to be a part of.  Lots of photos that I take will be on billboards, posters, websites, and even in magazines throughout the next year and each time I look at them I don’t see the photos I took in the time I had with these wonderful people.  I think of their stories and how they got there, and I think of how honored I was to be able to help tell their story to the world.  More Soon.

(Canon 5D Mark II, 160ISO, Canon 70-200F2.8L@90mm.  1/160th@F2.8.  Single Canon 580EX Speedlight set to 1/8th in a 32″ umbrella above and camera left of the subject.  Single 580EX Speedlight on a pile of fabric to camera  set to 1/16th left aimed up and into the bolts in the background for kind of a rear fill. Both speedlights fired by Pocket Wizard Plus II’s from on the camera). 

Some of the stuff coming up includes a new light modifier by Rogue called the XL Pro Lighting kit.  Had it for a week now and it’s pretty sweet.  Can create a strip softbox out of it the size of my forearm which is large enough for an individual portrait, or a tabletop product shot in most cases using a speedlight on the fly.  Actually if you’re a repeat reader you might remember my review on the Rogue Master Lighting kit.  My only complaint with the kit was that it only came with 1 heavy duty rubberband to attach the Gels to your flash.  My point was that most people that are going to be doing off camera flash have more than one speedlight, and while I had the kit I found myself using tape like I normally do.  Well, to make a long story even longer; recently I’ve emailed back and forth with Rogue and in an exciting turn of events they have decided to include more than one silicone band in the Master Lighting kit, and Portrait kit from now on.  I’m not sure who all was part of the decision but I commend Rogue for listening to the suggestions of their consumers!  Win one for the little guys!

(Nikon D4, 400ISO, Nikon 70-200F2.8VR2@130mm.  1/100th@F2.8.  Single Nikon SB900 Speedlight set to 1/16th inside of the new Rogue XL Pro Lighting kit in Strip Softbox formation to camera right slightly above our subject.  Single Nikon SB700 set to 1/8th shot into the flags from the top of a Piano between the subject and the bacground.  Both Speedlights triggered by a Nikon SU-800 from the cameras hot shoe). 

Also working with my buddy Brad whom some of you should remember from the SKB hard Case video.  We’ll be working with the gizmo called the Cam Ranger.  Going to try to sweet talk Brad’s father into letting us do something neat video related with his 1973 Big Block Corvette, but we’ll see.  Lets also not forget the Indy 500 is right around the corner here in Indianapolis and more importantly, I’m getting married in a few weeks.  Keep your eyes peeled.  Some really neat stuff on the way.  More Soon.

Some of these nurses have done this all their lives.  In fact the nurse that I’m finishing this year’s video of tomorrow morning has been doing it for over 50 years.  She is now retired, but still volunteers at the clinic to work with children that need extra care.  It’s absolutely mind bending as to what some of these nurses have done in their lives, but consider to be not such a big deal because they love it.

I shot that firefighter photo for our Nursing magazine a few years ago.  I knew at the time that he was our Nurse of the Year but he didn’t.  One of the wonderful parts of my job is that even assignments that might be boring to a lot of people I can use as practice, or I can drag out sometimes depending on what I want.  Nathan Deserved the Nurse of the Year title.  He managed the emergency secction of the hospital, was a volunteer firefighter, and ran the farm that his family lived on.  He didn’t pay someone to run the farm, or lease out the land.  He did it himself.  During the floods of Southern Indiana last year he got onto his 4 wheeler with his emergency kit, and rode across his property to get to people that were trapped in a car.  Yea.  he’s that guy.

The other two shots on here are from Nurses past.  This one is this year’s Scholarship winner.  Wow did she have a story.  To put it short her husband was diagnosed with Cancer, and during his care all the way till the end she was more than blown away by the compassion and care the nurses he had provided him.  She had wanted to go back to school anyway, and now she is in school to be a nurse.  My short version of the story doesn’t do the essay justice, but holy wow Batman!  This is by far one of the coolest most feel good things that I work on for the Indy star newspaper.  Shot a bunch of neat stuff with her in the hour that I had her.  Actually my friend Paul D’Andrea was there shooting for the school and I can only imagine the cool things that he shot that day since he had much longer at the school than I did.  Keep your eyes peeled as I’ll do a post at the end of April when all of this stuff finally comes to fruition.  Until then though, keep checking HERE for updates if you’re a nurse, or you just want some excellent feel good stories.  More Soon.

Shot that last year at the state fair, could the D3 or D3s have gotten it?  Absolutely, in fact Shannon’s D7000 probably could have taken a nice version of it too.  Nice bright sunny day, but for seems like the first time I don’t recall one frame being out of focus.  At all actually.  Wanted to get more peak action above the Coliseum sign, but the ramp was at such an angle that there was a telephone pole blocking out some of the letters, and this was the best angle I could get.  Shot this during a break in the storm clouds, as that day had some nice sunny skies, mixed with some really nasty clouds.  In fact I was supposed to cover the Hot air Balloon launch that night but it was cancelled due to weather.  Bummer.

Shot that at a high school football game last year while watching my friend James Willis’s son play.  For re-peat readers, yes I was at the superbowl too; but not in the game due to an unfortunate timekeeping issue with the Indystar.  Anyway, as I said in my original D4 review; every Nikon camera I’ve owned has been the best camera I’ve ever owned.  A year later, this camera doesn’t change that even though I’ve learned a few more things about it since I got it; including things like the removal of ‘Lock’ button on top of the command dial on the top left of the camera.  The fact that this is  missing; annoys me greatly.  Many don’t realize that the little “L” on the top of the camera will allow the photographer to lock the Shutterspeed and/or the aperture in place while in Manual Mode.  It’s easy to walk around and change your settings, only to lift your camera and miss the shot because you’re shooting in broad daylight at F2.8 1/30th of a second.  Nice white frames for sure.  It’s an easy fix as you can make one of your function buttons the lock, but then you give up one of the function buttons.  Your call on that one.

You can learn a lot about a camera at just over 40k clicks.  I know that my original assessment was that the D4 was better to auto-focus in low/awful light; and that was absolutely spot on.  That’s especially with  my fast (F1.4) Primes.  That shot above was with the 24F1.4 back lit horribly while using a speedlight to reveal Brier and her husband to be.  My D3 and D3s always made me wonder a little with the focus in awkward light; but not my D4.  Low light, back light, bright light makes no difference it’s where it needs to be.  This camera has been there for me for the last year and it hungers for more.  Not only does it do what I want it to do; but it’s fast at it too.

Shot that on top of a parking garage last year (as should be evident by the concrete wall).  I had hoped for a more epic sky when this shoot was planned out as there had been much more epic skies out there almost every night prior to this one; but this is what was there the day of the shoot.  You can verify that with this test shot from a few days prior taken with my iPhone.  One thing the D4 can’t do is make something appear more epic than it actually is, like with the sky above.  White cars are exceedingly difficult to photograph too, in fact I’m planning on making arrangements to try this shoot again since it didn’t quite come out close to how I had hoped.  I guess that’s where the photographer matters more than the gear anyway right?  I had to use a bunch of my Formatt HiTech Graduated ND filters for that shove above, and the camera focused through the ND filters in low light for that frame as the sun was setting.  Light was low enough I’d venture to guess the D3 would have had a little trouble, but not the D4.  I’ve used my ND filters lots of times on my Canon 5D Mark II, and it just won’t grab focus.  The D4 does with no problems.  Speaking of things that other cameras can’t do (actually at the time of this writing NO other camera can do this); the D4 has an XQD card slot.  Lot of Skepticism over this considering that no other camera uses these, but there’s got to be a market out there since Lexar announced and has released their line of XQD cards.  That besides the point; the XQD cards are fast enough that I’m hooked.  I did a test after I got the camera.  As I recall at 10fps, I was able to get to 82 RAW+L-JPEG before I filled the buffer; then roughly 3 seconds later I had enough clear to blast away a little more.  I never shoot like that, in fact not even remotely close; it’s just nice to know that you can sometimes though right?   I’ve got one in my D4 every time I’m out “Capturing moment like they are endangered species” as Shannon likes to put it.

David and Stacy got married yesterday in what was a beautiful day for both of them.  Lots of shots in brightly lit areas, and a few in some not so brightly lit ones.  They had a beautiful venue named Laurel Hall which is now owned by the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity but was previously a mansion belonging to the Lilly family here in Indianapolis, so it was pretty epic.  In low light and autofocus the D4 can’t be beat as far as I’m concerned.  I haven’t spent any great amount of time with the Canon 1DX, or the Canon 5D Mark III, but personally I think that the 16mp files are the sweet spot in terms of High ISO noise to go along with it.   That being said, another area where the D4 really shines is video.  I’ve shot quite a few videos with the D4 to this point, and the implementation of the video to this SLR is right where it needs to be.  I’ve had a little trouble with the video record button up by the shutter release, as it’s where the mode button used to be; but that’s minor.  Here’s a video I did last year using primarily the D4.

I’d have loved to put up a much newer video that I produced using the D4, but unfortunately it is yet to be released and I can’t scoop my publisher.  Keep your eyes open for the Adventuress stories at the Indystar though.  Most of the Adventuress videos that I have shot were with the D4, and can easily say that I prefer to use it over my Canon 5D2.  Supposedly the D800 is aimed more at video shooters. I don’t know as I don’t own one and only have a limited experience with the one my friend Brad owns.

So how am I going to tie this all up you ask?  With that shot above.  That photo is a test shot for this one of Stacy and David that I posted on my facebook page last night.  Good friend Mike Guio was back in town from Seattle as David’s Best Man and he couldn’t help but be part of some photo sheneganry.  Nikki has worked with David in various Indy Fashion Wrap up projects and both of which were eager to oblige as models in a test shot.  The shot is pretty close to straight out of camera, but I was pleased with it to say the least.  David really wanted a shot on the stairs and I told him to give me a few minutes.  This is what Mike and I came up with.  Ambient light in this location was 1/100th, F2.8 at 25,000ISO.  3 speedlights later we had the shot above at 1/80th F5 at 800.

The D4 has definitely kept Nikon’s tradition of keeping the furthest reaches of creativity in the hands of photographers.  When I use my D4, I feel like there is no photo I can’t make without a little bit of planning or work.  That’s the way it should be.  Any camera is going to be different than the last one, and there will always be changes that annoy you going from one camera to another.  That’s the nature of change.  A year later and I haven’t sold my D4 for two D800′s which is what I thought I would do if I didn’t like it, and to me that’s a big sign that the D4 is the right camera for me.  I never have any doubts about it’s capabilities when I am using it, and when I’m done shooting one project it’s always  ready to come back for more.  If I could afford several more of them I’d have bought them already.  In fact, my experiences with the camera have even pushed others like my friend Mike from Hilton Head to make the jump; and he had a D800 to start with!  Since Mike traded up he hasn’t looked back either, and who can blame him?  The D4 is just that good.  I’m still interested in a D800 with it’s 36 mind bending megapixels even though I have yet to actually put one through it’s paces.  I wouldn’t get rid of a camera for a D800 though, it would be to add to the gear instead of cycling out like I’ve done the last several cameras I’ve owned.  Before I can buy one though I’ve got something and someone much more important to spend the money on.  May 4th is closing in quickly.  I’ll tell you what; I’ve done a lot of neat things for work, for fun and otherwise.  I’m looking forward to my wedding in May more than anything.  That’s how I know it’s right for me too.  More soon.

(Nikon D2x, 200ISO, Nikon 28-70F2.8D, 1/400th@F11.)

I went on this trip with a couple of old friends from the Purdue Pistol team that I shot on while I was in school there.  Coolest thing I ever got to shoot in that was a match against Ohio State, but I didn’t do all that well.  We should have known what would happen based on the fact that Ohio state had uniforms for their team and we didn’t even have a set schedule during our regular  practices.  That’s another story for another time though, just like trying to walk onto the Purdue Golf team.  James and John both owned Subaru’s and in fact as I recall, John’s Uncle worked for them so he regaled us with stories of “things to come” thanks to knowledge he had of stuff happening at the proving grounds.  I don’t remember if any of those things actually appeared in the market though, I was just as amped to be out looking at  and photographing the the cars.  The temperatures were pretty low since we were so far north in Michigan we might as well have been in Canada.  I learned a lot on this trip about the care of my cameras in sub zero temperatures, and putting them in plastic bags when back inside to keep condensation off of the sensors.  It’s not something you need to do on the regular if you’re outside when it’s cold, but when you’re outside all day and it’s negative temperatures; you’ll want to bag em when you get back inside.  If you don’t, the moisture in the air will cause condensation on the internal components of your camera which can cause problems.  Easy way to take care of it is to put your camera(s) in a ziplock bag and press all the air out of it.  That way the camera can warm up without the water in the air turning into condensation on the pieces and ruining your expensive gear.  No, you won’t get all the air out of the bag, but whatever you do get out is sure to be better for your gear than not doing it.

(Nikon D2x, 200ISO, Nikon 28-70F2.8D@70mm, 1/400th@F7.1. Shot from the passenger seat of James’s WRX)

I’ve actually owned two Subaru’s in the past; neither of which were anything terribly notable.  Both were 06′s and the first one I bought brand spanking new.  At the time it seemed like the right idea but I ended up putting 100k miles on it by 2009 which is when I got rid of it. The mileage didn’t scare me, I just got a great trade in on the next one after doing a bunch of photo work for an auto dealer here in Indy.  The second 06 was the bigger Forrester model and I bought it used with 40k miles on it.  That was a fun car.  Automatic, but had the big turbo in it making it an almost full sized station wagon that could go 0-60 in just above 6 seconds; which was right about as fast as my  Uncle’s 87 Corvette the last time I checked.  Unfortunately my Uncle’s Corvette was probably better on gas since the Subaru was getting only 300 or so miles out of a 16ish gallon tank while on the highway.  You can say it was my driving, but even if it was a straight highway trip the best I ever got was 350 miles out of a tank before I needed to fill it bringing it’s highway mileage to a solid 23mpg.  That made it sort of an uneconomical car for what I do and sadly I got rid of it once it hit the 100k mark, even though I knew full well that it would have driven much, much, longer.  Shannon once drove my Forrester to the store, and at home I noticed it was taking her a really long time to come back.  When she finally got home she admitted that she had just been driving around and had considered running away with it because of how much she liked driving it; but it sank in that sooner or later she’d want to see me again which is when she came home.  I only imagined her driving it around like I saw at the drift race in Michigan that this whole blog was started about in the first place:

(Nikon D300, 400ISO, Nikon 28-70F2.8D@40mm, 1/3200@F3.5)

The drift race was really cool to watch but being there with spectator credentials the photos only ended up being alright.  It wasn’t a race as you’d imagine it to be with all cars going at once.  It was more about getting the best time on a certain course, so a car would go past every two minutes or so each on their own on the course to try to get the best time they could.  Every so often one would get stuck and some of the fans would break the rules to run out and push them out of the drift to help avoid an accident from the next car two minutes later, but otherwise it was the same thing with car after car.  I’m not even sure anybody notable raced in this race, except for maybe Tanner Faust who also stunt drives for the movies when not racing including films like Iron Man 2, Fast and furious and lots of others.  More of you would probably know him as the host of Top Gear America.  Turns out he raced for Rockstar Energy at this event, and placed 6th.  I had no idea until I was checking facts while writing this blog, and why should I remember?  All I remember is being blown away by my reasonably new D300, as to how well it tracked using the Autofocus for a $1700 camera.  To that point the only way to get that kind of AF was in the D2x and that cost me $4400!  The D300 was also the Bee’s Knees when it came to low light, second to only the D3 which had been announced at that point but wasn’t yet available; not to mention out of my budget at the time.  The D300 made ambient light shooting truly possible later into the evening for me for the first time at this event, and being able to catch photos of the people who came to see it easily was truly a joy even though a lot of the environments I was shooting in were environments the D2x was capable of shooting as well.   Everybody’s got to warm up right?  I had to shoot the D300 in light I knew it would be good in before taking it somewhere that would really challenge it.

(Nikon D300, 400ISO, Nikon 28-70F2.8D@70mm, 1/3200@F3.5)

Of course eventually the light fades so that the challenges for drivers and photographers can begin.  What would a drift race be if it was all in the daylight right?  Drifting cars through the snow on a race course surrounded by people and trees to see who can get the fastest possible time only seems right when it’s done in the dark doesn’t it?

(Nikon D300, 1600ISO, Nikon 18-35F3.5-4.5, 1 Second@F4.  White balance set to 3200K to give the image the nice blue)

When it gets dark as a photographer you have to start getting creative.  Without light there really are no pictures.  Yea, my D4 will take me up to 100,000 ISO, but if you’re in a cave with no light you won’t get a photo at that setting; it’s just the way photography works.  The D2x is the reason I had to take lighting so seriously, because it really forced me to think at below 250ISO standards, where as my D4 allows me to shoot at 1600ISO without hesitation because the quality is still there.  Not so with the D2x, where anything over 400ISO was a Hail Mary.  Yea, I had the D300 with me, which was really good to 1600 and was pretty useable at 3200, but 6400 was a last ditch effort with that thing.  In fact it didn’t even say 6400 on the readout when you got up that high, it simply read as H1.  6400 now a days is a reasonable ISO if you need it and it was back then on the D3.  Shannon and I have shot several things with her D7000 at 6400 that would have simply not been gettable photos in the past.  If this race had been a paid assignment this is when the panic would set in a bit because gosh, how would I get the shot?  Really it was a good exercise in out of the box thinking, and in the end having to learn photography with the good old Nikon F4 and Ricoh KSX Film cameras and eventually with the D70 and D2x sporting their low light capabilities, creativity came through.

(Nikon D300, 200ISO, Nikon 18-35F3.5-4.5D@18mm, 2.5 Seconds@F14.  Nikon SB800 Speedlight held about 30′ down the road on daisy chained SC28 Off camera cables stretched out as far as they would go held by John, who pointed them at the cars as they came past)

It’s a little abstract and probably not something that would go into a magazine, but I was the only one really attempting pictures at that point including the folks hired to shoot the race wearing the yellow safety vests who at that point had already turned back to their hotel rooms to edit for the night.  The rule was that if you wanted to take a photo, it had to be after the cars came past with the flash.  I really felt as though with my rear curtain sync I could get them coming, going, and still freeze them which you can see in this shot kind of happened.  I had a couple of them with the car in it multiple times in multiple sizes thanks to a few folks with their point and shoot’s attempting photos of their favorite cars as they came down the road too, but for whatever reason this was the one in the selects folder.  I really should go back and dig through these more as it looks like my tastes have changed a bit since I made all these selects in 2008 (big surprise).  May have to go look, but who knows.  I always start to look for cool cars on the roads when the weather starts to get warmer, as you always see the really cool ones out on the nice days (for obvious reasons).  Thinking about starting a personal photo project dealing with more classic cars since I enjoy them so much, but trying to nail down as to what.  I know where I can find a 73 Big Block 454 Corvette Stingray, a couple 65 thunder birds, a 71 Charger, a 73 Grand Prix, 84, 87 and 92  low mileage Vettes, and a few others…..There’s got to be a photo project in there somewhere right?  More Soon.

(Photo courtesy the Olympus website)

Anybody that’s read the blog has seen some of the gear reviews that I’ve done, and this is the next installment.  Let me begin by again saying that I’m not paid to do this, I just love playing with new things and it seems that when Roberts Camera gets new things they enjoy hearing what I have to say.  That being said; Lets begin.

(Olympus TG-2, 200ISO 1/50th@F2, @ 4.5mm(25mm Equivalent)

To me, the TG-2 is a conflicted camera.  It’s got a 12mp sensor that shoots stills and HD video.  It’s crush proof to 220lbs, drop proof from 7ft, and waterproof to 50ft without a special housing.  It’s made to go anywhere and initial impression about that is that I like it.  You never have to be worried about putting it in your pocket and having your keys scratch it up, or sitting down and cracking the case.  You never have to worry about taking it on a hike or to the beach and shooting the things that you want to shoot; while worrying that you will break it or get water in it.  Even worse than that you won’t leave it at home for fear that you’ll break it, which would completely defeat the purpose for buying the camera in general.  In terms of size the thing is stellar.  Many occasions over the last two days I put it in my pocket and went without a second thought.

(Olympus TG-2, 800ISO, 1/20th@F2.3@5.5mm, (30mm equivalent)

So for two days I’ve had this after Jody over at Roberts thought it was a cool little camera and asked me to play with it.  For two days I’ve carried it around and snapped photos of things here and there.  The photos that this camera takes can be either really great, or only just ok.  Let me Clarify.  The camera has an F2 lens at it’s widest, and that’s awesome.  Too few point and shoot’s have a really wide aperture at the wide end for use in low light.  Big plus here. I found though that as the camera zoomed in the image quality seemed to decrease, causing a very muddy image in some cases.  Not the end of the world if you just adapt how you shoot to use it, after all the camera has no moving parts on the outside.  All said and done, most of the difficulty I had with the TG-2 was user error.  There is a Scene setting, which snaps a few frames in the span of a fraction of a second to make sure you get a sharp image.  This setting is what made the most sense to me to use for the way I like to shoot until I realized it was only shooting at only 3 megapixels…..Turns out the Scene setting can only shoot at 3mp (or VGA) since it’s first the burst in order to capture the image.   Frustrating since a majority of the time that I was shooting, this is the setting I was using.  Once I figured it out, I went over to Aperture Priority, which you would assume would be my go to since Manual wasn’t available.  The Issue here is that the Apertures went from F2, to F2.8, to F8.  Nothing between.  So Aperture Priority gives you a 4 stop range in 3 steps.  What? Why even include Aperture Priority like that?  So As a Pro there’s a big strike against this camera; No Manual mode with a terrible Aperture Priority mode.  The camera’s imaging capabilities are as you would expect from a point and shoot as you can see by clicking here for a full resolution version of that image above, so it’s got that going for it.  At 25mm F2 its a little soft around the edges as you can see here, but that’s not the end of the world.  Before anybody asks though; no it does NOT shoot in RAW.  You figure that’s all ok though right?  It’s just a point and shoot?  Think about that as we look at the next couple images…

(Olympus TG-2, 100ISO, 1/1250th@F18.  18mm (100mm Equivalent).  Had to dull the light a bit by putting a Formatt HiTech 100mm ND filter on top of my iphone because the camera couldn’t shoot fast enough to capture the focusing grid otherwise).

This camera comes with a 10 step past absolutely cool feature called microscopic Macro Mode. In fact one could say that the Macro mode on this camera Takes it to 11 when it comes to macro functionality.  You can think it’s a gimmick, you can think it’s just marketing, or you can think whatever you want.  What I can tell you is that it’s BAD ASS.  I spent a good majority of my time with the TG-2 shooting things in “Super Macro” because it’s just awesome.  Monday afternoon I posted that image to my facebook page and asked people to guess what it was.  There were a lot of good guesses including my favorite; “Iron Man’s Chest”.  The closest though was from my buddy Matt Dial who thought it was the focusing lens to a stoplight.  Great guess.  The image above is actually a FULL FRAME UNCROPPED image of the LED light/flash on my iPhone 4s.  Yea, flip your phone over and look (or your friends if you don’t have one).  See that tiny little light next to the camera lens?  The TG-2 wasn’t even zoomed in all the way when it took this.  How bout them apples?

This is a shot of a paper Towel.

(Olympus TG-2, 250mm, 1/400th@F4.9, 18mm(100mm equivalent).  Paper towel lit by a Inova Bolt LED flashlight laying on it’s side as a raking light across the texture of the Bounty Paper towel). 

If there was one reason and one reason alone to say to buy this camera the Super Macro function is it.  The image quality is good enough that you could easily print the images at 8×10 glossy if you don’t go into the Digital zoom portion of the zoom range.  In a lot of cases you can even crop into the regular zoomed images for online or print use.  That will get you to about 8x. (Click for a full res sample of a Penny at 8x)  You can go to 14x digitally, (Full res sample of the same penny at 14x digital). but that will cause the camera to digitally enhance the image in size creating a lack of detail similar to increasing your ISO (more muddy, less noisy though; just a lot less detail period despite the claim that it doesn’t effect the image quality much).   Either way makes no difference.  Time for what seems like a strange transition.  I mentioned video earlier (trust me this ties in here).  This camera can shoot at all your standards.  1080p 30, 720p 60, VGA 120, and even QVGA 240.  Wait 240?  Yup.  Only at 320×240 pixels though so it’s practically worthless as you’ll see in the video below but that’s besides the point.  The camera can still do it which is pretty cool.  It will also shoot at 60fps Burst mode at 3 megapixels for if you’re trying to catch that instant where timing is important like a golfer just about to hit a golf ball right when the club is bent from the force of the swing.  Most cameras I’ve tested with those capabilities have been the POV cameras like the Contour or the Sony Action Cam.  While they have better resolution at the higher speeds they also have a 170 degree field of view which doesn’t exactly put anything you want to watch in slow motion large in the frame now does it?  You need a lot of light in order to get the 240fps to really be effective, especially at 320×240 but that’s besides the point.  It’s pretty badass.  Speaking of badass, I told you that the video part of this fit in here right?  Remember that Super macro mode?  This camera records video while in Super Macro Mode.   Holy What?  Check it out with some other video clips to show you the quality of the video this camera produces.

(Quick apology since some of the footage is a little shaky.  Finding a tripod to shoot in super macro mode is tough in some of the situations you find you want to shoot it in, especially only having the camera for less than 48 hours.  The shots in particular I’m talking about are the melting snow shots where I was cold…)

Pretty awesome amirite?  Think of all the possibilities.  Super Macro Mode plus 1080P video?  From what I understand this Macro Lens will render things at 5:1, as opposed to my trusty Nikon 60mm macro, or even my Canon EF100mm Macro will only produce things at 1:1.  With a 5:1 magnification it’s easy to see things like never before (as the video above should demonstrate with the pen on the paper).  The Possibilities are virtually endless if you’re prepared; which I wasn’t with the little bit of shakey video in the clips.  really I’d recommend buying a Gorillapod for this camera if you don’t have one already.  It’ll give you the flexibility to move around while shooting macro video mode, or just super macro in general.  Super Macro Mode is where Manual mode would have been awesome.  Depth of field was hard to control with the camera set to auto, being able to crank the aperture and add light as necessary would have been a dream with this camera, but the results turned out pretty awesome never the less.

(Olympus TG-2 in “Drama mode”, 800ISO, 1/25th@F2 @4.5mm (25mm Equivalent)

The camera has all the other Olympus special features like “Magic” mode which gives you 10 hipster artsy filters for the camera to apply to your images as you shoot (drama is what is seen above from dinner last Tuesday night).  I personally feel somewhat indifferent about these as I’d probably never use them (my E-PL1 has them too), but they are there and they do work as you would expect except for Fisheye, which really creates kind of a weird distorted image.  You just can’t fake an optical fisheye.  All that now said, this camera does exactly what it’s supposed to do and that’s why I like it.  It shoots the random photos that you want to have a point and shoot for, it shoots them with reasonable detail and quality for a point and shoot to be printed up to 8×10 if you really want to, and it fits in your pocket with the durability of being shock proof, freeze proof, waterproof and most importantly life proof.

This is the Retina Display on my iPhone 4S.  These pixels are 1/326th of an inch in size each.

(Olympus TG-2, 800ISO, 1/100th@F4.9.  18mm (100mm Equivalent).

Whew that was a lot of information wasn’t it?  What’s my final verdict on the TG-2 I suppose is really the only thing left to get to.  Honestly it’s probably the best point and shoot I’ve ever used.  As long as you know that it’s a point and shoot and you aren’t expecting D4 quality images out of it in terms of detail and low noise then you’ll be more than pleased.  The 100% crop detail is about as you would expect from a point and shoot at low or high ISO and that’s just fine.  The camera REALLY shines with it’s video, and especially Super Macro mode.  This camera is worth buying if you only use it for macro stuff.  100%.  It’s $380 retail, which if you’re just looking for a camera to shoot random photos with is a bit expensive (especially for a camera that has no Manual mode), but the Super macro is worth the extra money without any doubt.  You should head over to Roberts website and check it out, rumor has it that they should have them within the next week or so.   UPDATE: They have the TG-2 In stock RIGHT NOW, not next week.

Before I end I’d like to say that 48 hours with this camera wasn’t nearly enough to really show what it can do and I haven’t been this excited about a point and shoot in a very long time.  I hope that in the future I’ll have an opportunity to really put this, or a camera with these capabilities through it’s paces.  Maybe if Olympus comes out with another model featuring the Super Macro Mode I can get one for a week or so to really do it right, you know, without the shaky snowflake stuff in place of things like bugs or something.  There are TONS of possibilities out there for this feature set just waiting for the creative world to take it by storm.  This camera is worth it’s weight in gold just for the 5:1 Macro capabilities as nothing can come close for the $380 price point.  I want one to use for nothing but that.  If you like Macro stuff, it’s the only place you’ll get 5:1 for less than $1k; and that $1k is just for just the lens.  Go get one.

More Soon.

I didn’t know it at the time, but the house that I shot for PJD was actually owned by one Tim Durham, who unfortunately has now been convicted of stealing a boat load of money from a bunch of people and is going to jail for 50 years.  Too bad really that someone would do something like that.  I met the man while I was there but I had no idea who he was, I really didn’t care, and he seemed nice enough.  I even got to see the Delorean in his car collection which as I recall was housed in his multi level garage.  As I sit here about to make a phone call to a student at the local college who left me a message about interviewing me for their portfolio class, I have started to think about how much I’ve learned coming from that world years ago.  I’m not exactly a rockstar photographer like Joe McNally, Tim Wallace, or Dave Black by any stretch of the imagination.  I’d like to think I’m ok though; definitely better than I was although probably not by much, and that I’ve learned a lot over the last several years doing this full time.  If you’re just getting started, photography is a scary thing!

That photo is from my very first assignment at the Indianapolis Star.  The Indiana Ghost Hunters.  I remember sitting at my desk after making the appointment thinking I had hit the jackpot.  BEST JOB EVER.  To this day I generally have that mentality, but this was different since my position still had “new job smell”, and I had no idea how much other work went into being a shooter.  I had no idea what I was doing on that assignment, and the photos show it.  They were Terrible.  I was so nervous that I didn’t even notice the guy almost eclipsed by the lady on the left side of that photo.  The rest of the shots? Lots of blown out highlights, Virgin Mary Shadows, mostly just horrific photos.  Yup.  My first assignment at the Indianapolis Star was to take my cameras into an incredibly dark space where they were using flashes to try and see ghosts; and make them appear like they were doing the voodoo that they do. While they were doing it and I was out of my mind excited about it.  I failed.  The Article ran, everybody went on like it was just another day, and honestly nobody said anything about how they turned out one way or another.  Looking back at the photos from that day makes me as sick now as they did back then.  Just goes to show that you have to start somewhere, and nobody knows what they are doing right out of the gate.  Even though I went to school for photography and had been shooting for some time by that point, I still felt like I was behind the curve when it came to getting started.

Not everything was terrible though, I had at least a few images that were passable by some standard.  Not a lot though in my opinion even though nobody really seemed to complain with what I provided.  I never had much of a mentor here at the Star to point me in the right direction though, which really was discouraging.  At that point in time there was an incredible divide between the News side of things, and the Advertising/Marketing/Custom Content side of things which is where I primarily reside.  There still is a divide between the departments, however it’s much different today which is another topic for another day.  Really I just did my best to replicate what my other department coworkers did, but that side of the staff even has a Pulitzer prize winner; I was just a kid with a camera and nobody to tell him the way to do it right.  Then on top of that I was using Canon equipment, which isn’t what I had ever owned, or even used at all to that point in time.  There’s nothing wrong with the Canon gear, in fact I still have it and use it daily.  But having been a Nikon shooter previous then being thrown into a non stop real world shooting environment with gear I wasn’t familiar with was terrifying.  Throwing the camera into Aperture Priority, Motor Drive and 800ISO was sort of my go to for most assignments because that’s what I’d seen other shooters on the news side of things do.  I had been to formal schooling, but it was nothing like this and I was really starting to feel the pressure of the real world sink in.  I needed to be saved.

I remember shooting this photo of Mike B.  You would think I remembered his name because I did all kinds of work to get information from him but that isn’t really the case.  I remember his name because years later we became friends as sort of a random happenstance.  Eventually I got to know who is now one of my best friends in the world; Brad who during our time when not lighting things on fire frequented an establishment named Howl at the Moon where Mike here actually was the General Manager at that point.  Eventually I went on to do some work for them, not including the 13″x19″ copy of this image I printed to give him because we were both excited about it and it never went anywhere.  I’m not sure where Mike is now, but I know Brad and I have remained close and in fact I stood in his Wedding (and he will in mine).  Brad’s got a set of Twins on the way now too, which he’s already started charging his camera batteries for.  Only person I know with a 128gb SD card for his D800 so he doesn’t miss a moment.  I’ve always loved Brads enthusiasm and really appreciate over the years him asking all the photo related questions that he has.  Honestly his always asking questions about photography is probably a big reason as to why I started to push myself the way I did knowing that I couldn’t always just point the camera and hope for the best. Just like in golf don’t hit the ball and see where it goes; learn to hit the ball where you want it.  Funny to think that Brad and I met at a party where he and I were the only two that showed up out of everybody; including the person that threw the party in the first place…

My first year at the paper I’ll just never forget though.  Trying to swim when all my gear was trying to sink me to the bottom of this pool known as the photography industry.  There were little victories here and there; but nothing that I would consider to be substantial; or really a turning point.  I just couldn’t help but feel like I wasn’t very good at it, nor was I ever going to be and it bothered me.  I remember setting my 400 watt newspaper provided lights up in my apartment every night and trying to get them to do the things that I wanted.  You may think that was good practice but honestly in a 500 Square foot apartment it was almost pointless.  All I was doing was scaring the neighbors with 400 watt blasts of light followed by the beep of the capacitors chiming to notify me of their charged status.  If I have any trouble with my eyesight to this day this is probably why, but that’s besides the point.  I always knew photography was tough, but I had to figure it out.  I still have to figure it out because unfortunately it hasn’t gotten any easier.

That piece of Jewelery there was probably the first photo that I took for the newspaper that I had done right.  In fact 7 years later it is still in my screensaver montage on the Mac Pro at our downtown office.  The photo ran lots of times too, in the now defunct magazines that the Indianapolis Star once published; as well as in zoned special sections of the Carmel Star and on direct mail pieces.  I still have a box of those magazines and newspaper clippings to show that I had accomplished something with my photography.  In fact I am pretty sure I even took one to show my Grandparents when I saw them next.  I was so proud, but the battle had just begun.  What had I done?  How did I do it?  Just because I had done it once doesn’t mean I would ever do it again.  I was terrified.  What if I had taken the only reasonably decent photo I would ever take?

Fast forward a bit.  I still haven’t figured it out.  I shot that photo of Mike in the beginning of 2011, and while I really like it and I feel like I’m getting closer along with being more consistent; I’m still not there.  I’m still not as good at this as I want to be, and for that I’m going to keep trying.  Every day is still a battle where I learn something new.  I still believe that the best photo that I will ever take has yet to be taken, and I plan on hunting for it like it is a legal to hunt endangered species.  I taught two classes at Ivy tech last year and one of the questions that is asked most often is, “how can I work to improve my photography?”  A lot of photographers like to say to shoot anything you can.  That’s not enough.  “how can I work to improve my photography?”  You need to realize that it’s work.  It’s not going to happen overnight.  You need to WORK to improve it.  Taking classes at the local college, or even classes at Roberts Camera can help, but you can’t just do that.  Seven working years later I feel like I’ve improved a little, but not enough.  There’s still work to be done though and it’s not getting any faster.  I don’t ever expect to be one of those “Rockstar” photographers that people travel far and wide to see, or subscribe to on KelbyTraining or ect.  Honestly I smile knowing that I’ve come this far.  I can only pray that I have a long way to go since I’m still working towards taking my best photo ever; and I can only hope that it’s still a long way away.  More Soon.

Those are the hands (and rings) of Joe Theisman as seen at Radio Row here in Indianapolis at XLVI.  One of my big jobs was to photograph and shoot a video at the event where celebrities come to the media.  Any celebrity is welcome at radio row and they know that the press wont chase them.  If they want coverage, this is where they go.  It was a really neat event and I got not only to see quite a few Superbowl rings; but I also saw how tall Adam Sandler was.

Originally my assignment was to go with friend and coworker Michelle Pemberton to set up a video booth including that red background pictured above.  After we did all the work and got it set up, the blonde interviewer showed up with the now friend Guy Rhodes to do all the video work.  Without being said, this left Michelle and I in kind of a weird place as our assignment had been pulled away from us after a bunch of work by USA Today.  At the end of the day Michelle had been pulled away from the event, and I had been assigned for the rest of the week.  Partially as support for USA today, and otherwise to tell the story of what was going on at Radio Row in my own Stills and Video.

Even though there was a week hob nobbing playing paparazzi with celebrities, at Radio Row, that wasn’t the only place you could find celebrities during Superbowl week.  Right now in New Orleans people are preparing to party like there’s no tomorrow.  Millions have been spent to rent out and transform hotels and other venues into the ultimate Superbowl party.  Last year saw even more celebrities than I expected at Radio Row, but then I was assigned the Celebrity Basketball game followed by the MAXIM Superbowl party here at the fairgrounds.

  Various people that came through the party included Jim Irsay (above), Patrick Warburton, Kyle Busch and Jeff Gordon from Nascar, several other actors, Rappers including Ludacris, and a few others.  Despite what seems like a decent starting list; the attendees were really somewhat disappointing.  I say that as who attended (which you can see here), not that I had an 8×10 inch sheet of paper to stand on at the red carpet, and for all intents and purposes was told not to move.  That was expected; honestly the number and caliber of Celebrities at the MAXIM party weren’t the same as apparently found at Rolling Stone that year.  What’s that you say?  First World problems?  yea you’re right, I’m just still tickled to have been there without having paid $1500 for a ticket to get into the MAXIM party in the first place.  There were a lot of other things done that week as well.  One of our most vocal and most followed writers went on the zipline constructed in downtown Indianapolis that week.  I was there to see, and shoot video of that as well.

That photo is admittedly not Bob Kravitz riding the zipline.  It is however absolutely Michelle Pemberton and Bob Scheer, who were also there shooting the event.  In retrospect, I should have stuck with them and ridden the zipline at the Superbowl, but saw something that I wanted to photograph and got lost and left behind.  The photo I took wasn’t even really worth it, but that’s ok.  Now I have a shot of them doing it, and I feel strangely good about that; just like helping cover the event as a whole but not being credentialed to shoot the game due to a scheduling error.

As of right now, still one of the coolest things I’ve ever done; inside or outside the newspaper.  I can only hope the future holds even cooler things; but until then.  Time to go take some photos of a realtor holding a sign.  After all; not everyday can be Superbowl Sunday.  More Soon.

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