As soon as I looked at the first pics I shot with the GX1 on my computer, I got the feeling that the GX1 could possible be more than an even better always-with-you-camera. Therefor I needed to test it in a real life situation: a photoshoot that would require me to create several different looks in a short amount of time.

I had a shoot scheduled with Sofie and she agreed to do it all with the GX1. Sofie runs a great fashion blog called Bien Sucré and needed some images for her business cards and other uses. Lots of different setups in only a couple of hours, seemed like a good stress test for the GX1. We started outdoors but couldn’t really find good locations that went with her outfit. The few decent places we found were so exposed to the cold wind, that we couldn’t shoot more than a couple of minutes. Here’s one of the few keepers:

1/200 – f/5.6 – iso 3200 – 12-42 lens @42mm

The new Panasonic 12-42 vario lens came with the test camera but being used to fast glass with a constant aperture of f/2.8, this f/3.5 to f/5.6 lens couldn’t really convince me. It has an electronic zoom which is probably great for video but not as fast and accurate to use as a good old manual zoom ring. The fact that I wasn’t too crazy about it also has to do with the fact that this must be one of the ugliest lenses I’ve ever seen. But it has to be said that the optical quality is amazing, certainly for that price. So I’m not saying it’s a bad lens, but some nice primes are more interesting (and unfortunately way more expensive) for photographers who want more control over depth-of-field and low light shooting.

After this cold adventure we decided to head back to the studio to come up with something useful. We started with a very basic setup with one speed light and a shoot through umbrella.

1/100 – f/5.6 – iso 160 – 12-42 lens @42mm

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1/100 – f/5.6 – iso 160 – 12-42 lens @42mm

We moved on to a clamshell setup with the speedlite and umbrella straight above the camera and a silver Sunbounce mini under the camera as fill. I like how the clamshell light worked on Sofie’s face in the first picture but I wanted less depth-of-field. Therefor I switched to my Canon 50mm 1.4 with a cheap e-bay adapter. On the GX1, my Canon 50mm, becomes a manual focus 100mm f/1.4. It’s pretty hard to manually focus at that wide open aperture but with lots of shots and a bit of luck, we got the eyelashes in focus like I wanted.

For a bit of a retro look, I wanted to work with a white background. I could have setup a white seamless or my Lastolite HiLite but as we had little time, I just used my big Chimera Octa that was already setup in the studio. There’s an Elinchrom 600RX in the octa and it’s triggered by it’s optical slave. The main light is a speedlite. Some shots with an umbrella, some shots with just the bare flash.

1/100 – f/5.6 – iso 160 – 12-42 lens @36mm

1/100 – f/5.6 – iso 160 – 12-42 lens @36mm

For a fashion blog I thought it might be quite nice to have the setup included in the shot. And it helps you get an idea of how this was shot

I also played around with just the pilot light of the Chimera to see what kind of results I would get at iso6400.

1/125 – f/5.6 – iso 6400 – 12-42 lens @42mm

Looking for a different background, I saw one of my silver Sunbounces and figured it would make a nice background if I could get lots of reflections of it’s surface. I’m not a big ring flash fan and I must admit that I’ve only used my Orbis ring flash adapter one or two times since I got it a couple of years ago. But somehow it seemed like the right thing to do.

1/125 – f/5.6 – iso 200 – 12-42 lens @42mm

I just noticed I’ve written very little about the GX1 in this article and maybe that’s exactly the point. During this shoot and the post processing I hardly noticed that I was not shooting a pro DSLR. This got me thinking about my current gear setup, the kind of work I do, the kind of work I WANT to do more, budgets, investments, options, … but more about that as soon as I’ve figured it out.

And the GX1, I can be short about that: I bought one and made sure it got delivered before I had to send the test camera back

I picked up the GX1 with the new 14-42 lens and the EVF2 electronic viewfinder at Shoot magazine about two weeks ago and during the first few days I hardly shot any pictures with it. First of all, it looked ugly. That turned out to be the fault of the new 14-42 lens decorated with something like nine different fonts in three colors. With my good old 20mm 1.7 it looks fine. It may not look as retro-chique as the Fuji X100 or minimalistic design-ish as the Sony NEX but one of the main attractions of having a small camera is to be unobtrusive and that’s a lot harder with a piece of beautiful design. The GX1 is but  sober, maybe even a bit dull but it looks and feels very solid.

1/60 – f/3.5 – iso800 – 14-42 lens @14mm

At first I used the GX1 pretty much like my GF1 (and it’s limitations), meaning I shot mostly black and white up to 800 iso. The GX1 performed flawlessly and the extra megapixels are nice to have (but not a reason for me to upgrade). It wasn’t until I reviewed some really high iso test shots on my computer that I got blown away. That’s right BLOWN AWAY! It immediately became clear that Panasonic has concentrated on a better sensor and processing engine because the image quality took a massive leap forwards.

1/100 – f/1.7 – iso3200 – 20mm

With the GF1 I’d rather not go higher than iso 800 but with the GX1 I won’t hesitate to take it two stops further to iso 3200. Another thing that struck me is that the colors are really good, even at high iso’s. The color rendering in the GF1 was not very impressive.

1/100 – f/1.7 – iso3200 – 20mm

The first shots I took at iso 3200 were just taken for testing purposes. I didn’t believe it would be usable. But I was proven wrong. So let’s try to go even higher, iso 6400.

1/80 – f/1.7 – iso6400 – 20mm

Noise becomes pretty visible at iso 6400 but with just a touch of noise reduction in Lightroom, the pictures are actually usable.

1/80 – f/1.7 – iso6400 – 20mm

When you do a lab test, the images out of the GX1 may not be the cleanest when it comes to noise. There’s even some noise visible at lower iso’s. But it never becomes disturbing to me. It’s more like film grain than noise. It may be very personal but I really like the “look” of the GX1’s images.

With every images I looked at on my computer I’ve grown more enthusiastic about the GX1. To the point that it’s probably going to play a key part in some of my future work and projects. But that’s for part 2 of this review.

So style is important but to me it’s also a dangerous thing to have. You can get too confident and too experienced. It’s at that point that your style stops evolving. I can only talk for myself but I’m pretty sure a lot of my friends face the same problem. We’ve build a large comfort zone and the larger it gets, the harder it is to get out of it. It’s the been-there-done-that-got-the-t-shirt disease. But it’s an imagined disease. You may have been there and done that but there’s always another higher level at which you can be there and do it.

A long introduction to tell you that I did a test shoot which contained pretty much all things that I already knew how to do and a number of things that I don’t like. The inspiration to do this anyway was the Creative Live class by renowned beauty/fashion/celebrity photographer Matthew Jordan Smith.

The first part of the course is build up largely about a relatively simple beautylight/clamshell setup (see above): with a beautydish above the camera and a silver reflector below. This setup gives you very even light that makes every woman shine. The background is a white seamless and is let with the same single light source We moved our whole setup (including model) back and forth until we got the right amount of light on the background.

I’ve never been a big beautydish fan, it’s not that it’s bad but it’s just not my taste … or haven’t I tried hard enough to master it? The answer is … YES. It’s just easier to go back to the umbrellas and softboxes I know so well. It took some time of experimenting with all the possible variations in the setup but eventually we settled for the small Elinchrom white beautydish with the white deflector and the diffuser fabric (aka “sock”). I needed to push myself hard to try to make it work and I needed to push myself even hard to admit to myself that the beautydish can actually produce a kind of light that I like.

Does that mean a beautydish always works? Hell no, it depends on the model, the make-up, the story and the feeling. And that brings me to the TEAM. Most of my assignments (and budgets) dictate me to work alone (or with one assistant), without make-up artist, hair stylist and usually I work with “regular people” (no models). I’m good at getting good results by improvising. But if I want EXCELLENT results, you sometimes need to assemble the best possible team around you. So I called out for help on Facebook and got myself a real dream team.

I’ve been working with models Lucie Goossens and Sylviane Alliet before and experienced their combination of a great personality with great modeling skills. Both are very experienced models but they are still driven by a passion to create better and different images. It’s that passion that got them to drive over 100 kilometers to an unpaid test shoot with knowing any decent pictures would come out of it.

The same is true for make-up artist Inge Van den Broeck who performed her magic on Lucie and Sylviane. And she brings so much more to the shoot than just a case full of expensive make-up products. She brings vision, style and creativity to the shoot. Stylish and fashionable as I am, my directions didn’t go much further than: “uhm, yeah … I want that kinda sorta commercial beauty look … but not really commercial, you know … just a bit different … uhm … edgy without being edgy …” But Inge somehow understood my idea and did truly amazing things.

The last crucial member of the team was assistant Steve Bayens (who also assisted and shot video on the 70 EUR Studio shoot). Steve is a young photographer who’s just starting out with studio work. What he lacks in experience, is easily made up with spirit, a good eye and his ability to ask questions that challenge me.

I should have added another member to the team to really pull this off: a professional retoucher. I’m sure I could have found someone to retouch these pictures to perfection. But I just needed to get some quality time in Photoshop. I’m pretty good with Lightroom and about 95% of my work is Lightroom only. It suits my love for the beauty of the small imperfections and it allows me to work really fast.

But I wanted to go for this crisp commercial look and it requires lots of small corrections in Photoshop. I figured it would be a good challenge to brush up on my rusty (and limited) Photoshop skills. On the commercial jobs I can rely on professional retouchers but I have some personal projects coming up which will require me to do my own Photoshop work, so this was a good exercise.

I pushed myself so far out of my comfort zone for this shoot, that I was actually pretty nervous at the start although I would be working with all people that I know and like. But in the end I’m pretty pleased with the results. It’s not that I will suddenly shoot nothing but this kind of pictures but I learned a lot that will certainly have an impact on my work.

This was just the first part of the shoot. I’ll keep the second part for a future blog post.

Until now the Pentax 645D was the only MF camera that kind of fitted my requirements. That’s not to say that the other medium format cameras are bad, on the contrary, but I need near DSLR productivity for it to work for ME. When I talked about my requirements for a MF camera, the guys from Servix told me that I wouldn’t be disappointed  with the PhaseOne IQ140. So I borrowed one with an 80mm 2.8 Schneider lens for a personal shoot that would test the camera in a run-and-gun improvised kind of shoot.

We used the PhaseOne in combination with my favorite Elinchrom Ranger Quadra and a Lastolite Easybox and the Quadra Adapter. There will be more technical and why-the-hell-I-choose-this info in the video. But let’s just say that I thought it would be a high end equipment package that fits my shooting style.

I didn’t have time to test the camera or even read the manual before this shoot, but it all felt very familiar. There are no complicated settings, just all the basic stuff I need. The camera is a heavy beast but it didn’t get tiring. It sits very well in my hands and I had no problem shooting handheld for a couple of hours. The IQ140 back is also easy to operate and has a nice iPhone-ish touch screen. And finally I found a MF back with a more than decent LCD-screen. I can really judge my pictures on this screen. Which is an absolute must if I should want to use a MF camera on a daily basis.

When it comes to handling, speed, ergonomics, battery performance, autofocus, … this is probably as good as it gets these days in MF land. It’s not quite as snappy as your normal high end DSLR but good enough for me not to get frustrated about it after an hour of shooting. In fact, for my portrait work I found the camera slowed me down just enough to make better pictures than with a DSLR. I sometimes feel shooting my Canons is a bit like eating at McDonalds: even if you have plenty of time, you still shove your meal in your face way too fast. I know that nobody is forcing me to shoot (too) fast with my Canon, but I can’t help doing it too often.

The huge sensor and the great glass, give you incredible files. I was blown away by the look and the detail of the pictures. It also seems like you can pull and push the RAW-files incredibly far and still retain great image quality. This is the main reason why I’d considering shooting MF and the IQ140 certainly delivers. I think I’m going to have a couple of really big prints made because the small web size certainly doesn’t do the images justice.

Before this shoot I was pretty convinced shooting digital MF was something I’d only do for my high end jobs. But now I’m not so sure about that any more. It’s still not a replacement for my 5D2 when it comes to reportage but I’m going to rent a Phase One more often for portrait and commercial assignments. The big issue is still: can I justify the much higher price for my work and my clients? At this point, I don’t know the answer, but I’m certainly going to give it some more thought.

I’m sorry if I gave away how one of the upcoming videos will end but I really like shooting with the PhaseOne.

This was basically a press trip but I don’t consider myself to be a journalist so don’t expect me to give you a series of double checked facts. In this post I will only share my personal first impressions based on the specs, the presentation at the expo and my brief hands-on time with a pre-production sample.

For a blogger/photographer like me, a couple of beers and the use of a sofa can be considered a luxurious trip, but in the world of serious journalism there are hosts who hold up cards with your name upon arrival, nice hotels and “informal” dinners. Usually that’s not my kind of thing but I really enjoyed myself during the pre-event activities. All the people from Canon Europe, Worldwide and the different countries were very approachable. The usual hollow marketing talk was left behind in favor genuine discussions and conversations, nice!

The next morning we got up pretty early to attend a presentation about the 1DX at the Business Design Center before the doors opened for the general public. After reading the specifications of the 1DX a couple of days ago, I was really anxiously awaiting the presentation. Judging from what was known I thought Canon made some brave decisions that would really benefit today’s working professional photographer.

Let’s face it, without having tested the camera for a considerable time in real life situations, we just don’t know how it will perform in the field. So let me make it clear once more that everything I write at this time is purely based on specs, theories and a couple of minutes with the camera in my hands.

But as I said, I felt pretty positive about the camera and the presentation only made that feeling stronger. The presentation was kept short and highlighted features that are really important to working photographers rather than useless high tech bells and whistles.

Here is what I think:

The 1DX is an all-rounder without too much compromise

I think this is the most important thing for most modern day photographers. In the past I’ve seen lots of high end cameras that were made for a kind of specialized professional photographer that doesn’t really exist anymore (or very few). I know that most icons in the photography business advocate specializing. I agree with that … in theory. But the reality is different. Financial recessions, technological evolutions and the speed in which markets move have changed the game. Once you are an established household name, you might be less affected by the speed of changes. But I know excellent photographers who did very well for 20 years and then suddenly had to find a new market in order to survive. I can only speak for myself and I can say that I would have been bankrupt many times if I didn’t combine commercial work with teaching, portraiture, corporate events, … So I need a camera that I can use in these very different circumstances. At this moment the Nikon D3 is probably the best all-round pro camera. If my expectations about the Canon 1DX are fulfilled, Canon has said the new benchmark.

Oh yeah, before I forget, Canon also has a new printer: The Pixma Pro-1 but I don’t know much about printers, so I’ll leave that to the people who do.

Because, I had a train to catch and little time to spare after the presentation, I was the first non-Canon employee who get to play for a couple of minutes with one of the pre-production models. Without going into too much technical detail, here’s the most important points, I remembered. And the reasons why I think it will be the best all-round pro camera when it hits the market (expected in April – May):

ISO performance
Less megapixels, means better high ISO performance. The camera also packs heaps of processing power and advanced algorithms to reduce noise. If I understand it right there are no more gaps betweens the micro lenses on the sensor which should make each pixel receive more light too. We were not allowed to put our own CF-cards in the camera (which is common with pre-production cameras), so I haven’t seen a real file. But I did shoot some shots at ISO 51.200 and zoomed in on the LCD and it seemed usable for weddings and reportage work. It’s in no way a scientific approach but I think we can be pretty sure, this camera will have great ISO performance.

Image quality and resolution
I have nothing bad to say about the image quality of my 5Dmk2, so I’m pretty confident the 1DX will not disappoint. At 18 megapixels, found the perfect middle ground between resolution, image quality and noise.

Autofocus and speed
12 Frames/sec is fast enough to satisfy the sports shooters, so it should be fast enough for pretty much anything. And the best thing is, that you don’t have to give up image quality for that speed. The autofocus system is completely redesigned and seems to be adaptable to the needs of individual photographers and individual needs. I did some testing in the low and flat light of the press room and deliberately choose the 50mm f/1.2 because it’s not exactly know for fast focussing. I was pretty surprised by how fast and snappy it locked focus and followed moving subjects.

Video
There are no real revolutions maybe but Canon has build upon the great video capabilities of the 5D2, 7D and 1D4. They must have realized that these cameras are widely used in the video industry and they build in new and improved features that make the 1DX a tool that fits better into the world of professional video.

Ergonomics, build quality and “feel”
An often underrated parameter when it comes to choosing a camera is the “feel”. It’s a tool you’ll have to work with every day, so it better feels right to you. This is a very subjective thing that only you can judge. But to me the camera felt familiar yet somehow less bulky and heave that the former 1D-series. The layout of the buttons and dials is very logical and even better than the previous versions.

It sure is way to soon to come up with conclusions. I hope to do a real test with the camera soon, so I can decide if I will sell a kidney to get this camera.

A big thanks to Canon Belgium for inviting me and the great working relation we have developed. On the (by the way excellent) Canon Professional Network site, you can find a lot of info on the 1DX. Very soon there will be a whole series of videos about the camera too.

Piet really has a way to accumulate lots of information and then distill in into a clear e-book. When I started out using off-camera flash, the challenge was to FIND the information. These days all the info is readily available on the internet but the challenge is to find the right information and connect the dots between all these fragmented snippets of information. These two books can certainly save you a lot of time and frustration by giving you a shortcut in your learning curve.

All the Craft & Vision E-books are only 5$ a piece which in many cases is a steal. For the next couple of days Making Light 2 will only be 4$ if you use the code MAKINGLIGHT4 when ordering. Or you can temporary buy both books together for 8$ by going to this link.

I’m proud to be in this well written book together with some of my friends and fellow Belgian photographers. The guys at Craft & Vision also allow me to give away 10 copies of this e-book. I only need to figure out some kind of silly competition to determine who’ll get them. Any ideas?

I’ve only had time to take some quick test shots today but until I got some time for a decent review, here are already some snaps and my first impression.

It’s a pretty heavy lens with a  rather strange shape but it balances nice with the GF1 and doesn’t look too weird.

It’s a manual focus lens but even at f/1.6 it’s not really a problem to get it focused fast. I even managed to take a picture of our very energetic dog Mika and my German friend Josh who becomes equally energetic when he gets to hold the Phase One, we’ll be shooting with tomorrow.

Josh also had a go with the GF1 + Noktor Hyperprime and took a shot of me in my extremely tidy office.

If I’m not mistaken, you can focus as close as 4cm from the lens. Wide angle macro is certainly something that opens up a lot of creative options.

I’ll leave the pixel peeping to others but at first glance, I think the optical quality, sharpness and distortions seems to fit my needs.

It’s too soon for a final verdict, but for now, it looks like the Noktor is here to stay.

The lens should be available soon. I’ll keep testing and let you know how I feel about it.

Learning to light is a long and intensive process but when I started using off-camera flash the real challenge was to find information on how it works and what you need. These days, there’s almost too much information available for anyone who wants to get started in off-camera flash. The amount of information can be so overwhelming that it seems like lighting is only for rocket scientists. But hey, if I managed to learn off-camera flash, any 10 year old can. All you need is to get the basics sorted out. That’s why I’m doing my Speedlight Portrait Techniques 1 workshops (new dates will be announced soon). In his e-book Piet did a great job in focusing on the basics and explaining them well, illustrated with inspiring travel pictures.

For anyone who’s new to off-camera flash or feels like he’s missing some of the basics, I can really recommend this e-book. It’s available on the Craft & Vision site for the crazy price of 5 dollar. All the Craft & Vision e-books can also be bought (for the same price) from within their iPad app.

This e-book isn’t my first from Craft & Vision. I really like their e-book format. They are not full size books but go beyond what can be explained in a magazine article or blog post. I think the price is right and the layout is usually damned beautiful. When Piet interviewed me, he got me thinking of writing a couple of e-books myself. There are lots of subjects I would like to write about more extensively than would be practical for the blog and probably too short for a “real” book. So I might see if I can find some time in the near future to write a test e-book. If you have any ideas, hit me in the comments.

Communion shoots might not be what medium format manufacturers have in mind when they design their cameras but I think they better should if they want to reach the younger generation of photographers. I don’t shoot that many communion sessions and I don’t think MF is required for these shoots. But this kind of work requires the same speed, portability and flexibility as a big chunk of my commercial portrait work. Locations and time doesn’t always allow to shoot tethered to a computer, our subjects don’t always stand perfectly still and often there are no assistants around to carry all the gear.

Working with the Mamiya and the DM28 digital back is pretty straightforward. All buttons and menus are clear and usually easily accessible. Although the camera and the back work together well, this is a modular system and I found it sometimes a bit cumbersome to change the iso on the touch screen on the back instead of having a dedicated button on the camera. The camera + back + 80mm 2.8 Schneider lens, isn’t a featherweight but it sits well in my hands and I wouldn’t mind lugging this camera around all day.

The LCD screen was a bit of a disappointment. The touchscreen interface works rather well but the resolution and quality of the screen are simply way to low to judge your images. I prefer to shoot tethered most of the time but sometimes it’s just not possible or handy. And in those cases I want a decent LCD on the back of the camera.

On a brighter note, the auto focus felt pretty snappy even in challenging lighting conditions. I also never felt like the camera slowed me down in any way.

I can’t compare the image quality with other MF systems but up to iso 400/800 it’s certainly a step up from a full frame DSLR. Especially the larger dynamic range is very interesting. I probably didn’t even got the most out of the files since it was the first time I used the Capture One software.

I’ve only shot for 20 minutes or so with this camera, so I haven’t used it enough to come to any definitive conclusions. For now I’d say that the Mamiya certainly seems to be a good option for portrait/commercial photographers who want to get an improved image quality for a decent price.

I’ll be probably using the Mamiya more extensively on a bigger shoot soon, so hopefully that will allow me to give you some more hands-on info. In the near future, I’ll also be testing some toys from Phase One.

The HiLite is developed to be a self standing white background that is lit with one or more strobes from within. It’s designed as a simple and fast solution to produce an even white background on events and stuff but I immediately saw it as a giant softbox. I’ve always likes extreme lenses, lights, and modifiers so I went all out and got the biggest HiLite, which is 2,50m by 2,15m. They come in four sizes. Coming from the company that have turned collapsible reflectors into an art-form, it’s no surprise that this huge HiLite folds down to a circle with a diameter of about 1 meter. It’s incredibly easy to setup and pack down again. See how big it is:

I powered the HiLite with a single Elinchrom 300RX strobe. I’ll blog about my new Elinchrom equipment soon. For now, let’s just say that I love it and that the guys from Servix & Partners were extremely helpful and knowledgeable when choosing the right equipment to turn The Barn into a full blown rental studio. The HiLite is equipped with zippers on both sides, so you can put a strobe on each side. Two strobes will definitely be better if you want to use the HiLite as an even white background. But I found that the HiLite does a really good job in evening out the light from a single strobe too. Despite the huge large source and the rather low powered strobe, I had no problem to shoot at small apertures and the Elinchrom wasn’t even at full power. My guess is that you could even power it with a Speedlight (or maybe two).

Here’s the Elinchrom 300RX in the HiLite:

I tend to use this kind of very soft light mostly for female subjects but when Stijn volunteered to model for a test shoot, I figured, why not try it on a male subject? Here are a couple of the shots we did:

This one is done with the HiLite only inches behind Stijn and a silver California Sunbounce Mini above the camera as fill. When I shoot on white, I usually don’t let the background light blend in with the exposure of the subject but I found it pretty cool here.

We then started to use the HiLite as the main light and added another Elinchrom monobloc with a Maxi Spot reflector behind Stijn. Here’s how the setup looked (all setup pics by Ioannis, who happened to drop by and helped us out):

I really enjoyed the freedom of working with such a big light source. It was more like working with natural light, where you change the position of your subject rather than changing the light source. It feels more natural and you don’t keep breaking the connection with your subject every time you need to move a light. Such a big light is also very forgiving when it comes to position and exposure.

Here are some more pics:

The HiLite is a big, soft light source just like my shower curtain setup but the light seems more “marinated” by bouncing around inside this big box. Sure, the HiLite is way more expensive than a shower curtain but I’ve got a medium size softbox that costs more.

Conclusion: I still have a lot of experimenting to do with the HiLite but I already know that it’s going to be one of my goto-modifiers from now on.