Happy St. Patrick's Day from San Francisco

More:

At Least It's Green

Into His Own Parade

Ornia Republ

Leaving One Hand Free for Beer

Above: Two men wave flags at the St. Patrick's Day parade in San Francisco on Saturday, March 12, 2011. This was the 160th presentation of the annual event.

How to Calibrate the Sekonic L-308DC

Sekonic created a great new light meter. It basically updates the Sekonic L-308s with new features aimed at filmmakers using DSLR and hybrid cameras. Sekonic calls this DigiCine or Digital Cinema. In other words, they've added a cool new HD Cine Mode.

Great.

But the instruction manual ... is not so great. And it shipped with a typo, even.

So, here's how you calibrate the Sekonic DigiCineMate L-308DC (DigiCine) meter.

1. Turn the meter off.

2. Hold down the ISO button and the Power button (these are marked with red lines on the left side of the photo above).

3. Now the meter will start, and you'll see it say "CAL" and "0.0" in the display.

4. Adjust the amount you want to calibrate the meter using the buttons on the right side of the unit (these are marked with red lines on the right side of the photo above).

5. Now, turn the meter off by pressing the Power button.

6. Wait 6 seconds, just because. Now, when you turn the meter on again it will be calibrated as you've set it.

iRection

I really don't know what to say about this ad I photographed at Macworld in San Francisco yesterday. I had no idea Bruce Weber was even shooting for Apple.

In Love and Wha?

On my other blog on documentary photography I've been focused on photojournalism as a subject. So, lately, all of my reading has consisted of books written by photojournalists. I guess, if you think about it, that's not a great idea.

I mean, take people who are good at making pictures and ... have them write. Hmm.

That said, books about photojournalism don't have to be entirely about, you know, taking pictures. Sure, some photojournalists really consider that the important part. But if you want to sell some books, you might want to, you know, include other details.

Like, the specifics of your sex life.

Now, not everyone will be happy about that. You might get a mixed review here or there.

For example, here is Janet Reitman's review of Shutterbabe: Adventures in Love and War, the latest book I've finished reading.

Bang-bang girl
Perhaps the first "cowgirl" memoir was Leslie Cockburn's "Looking for Trouble," a reflection of her highs (and occasional lows) over 25 years as a foreign correspondent and television producer. While filled with amusing insights, Cockburn's book, with chapter heads such as "Dinner With Drug Lords" and "Lunch With the Ayatollahs," rubbed many critics the wrong way. It suggested a blue-blood Yale graduate waltzing around war zones in designer bush-wear.

Now comes "Shutterbabe: Adventures in Love and War," Deborah Copaken Kogan's memoir about her life as a roving war photographer. It's an unfortunate title, but I was willing to give the book a shot given how rare young female war photographers are -- let alone those who write about the experience. Alas, "Shutterbabe" is not so much a cowgirl memoir as a "bang-bang" memoir: a self-aggrandizing story of the lusts and yearnings of a bored, post-feminist bad girl with a hankering to "see war."

Now that you know ... read it anyway.

Documentaries in the News, Real Cash Edition

You know what I need? Fifty ... Million ... Dollars.

The New York Times has a little article on how I can get that. I mean, they didn't name me specifically ... but I could really use the cash.

Ford Foundation to Put Up $50 Million for Documentaries

The Ford Foundation’s program, called JustFilms, will dole out money in three ways. The first involves partnerships with organizations like the Sundance Institute, whose Sundance Film Festival opens on Thursday in Park City, Utah. JustFilms will contribute $1 million a year over five years to support Sundance’s documentary film workshops, for instance.

Short of that, I need to set aside a little more time to get a couple of films finished and out the door.

Ah, send the money anyway.

Actually

In case you haven't realized it, I'm in San Francisco, blogging at:

San Francisco Portraits & Documentary Photography

There will be more posts here once I sort out the role of each blog.

Meet the New Blog, Same as the Old Blog

Well, not really the same. The new blog I've started is focused on documentary photography -- but is really meant to cover the merging of the tradition with new approaches to documentary filmmaking and new media. The first two posts:

What Would Walker Evans Do?


Statement of Purpose

Shoot The Moon

Previously, I wrote about the new Panasonic GH2 using its new "tele conversion" feature for video: Panasonic GH2 Tele Conversion: Bagful of Primes?

Well, above is a video that purports to show the feature in action. Essentially, using the new Panasonic 100-300mm and a Canon 400mm the videographer gets amazing shots. The feature seems to allow a 3.6 multiplying effect if one shoots at 1080p or a 3.9 multiplier if shooting at 720p -- essentially turning the 300mm focal length to near 1200m and the 400mm length to almost 1600mm. When you translate that to 35mm equivalent, it is essentially double -- meaning you can essentially shoot as if you had a 2000mm or 3000mm lens.

Kinda amazing.

I Would ... But I Need The Eggs

People behave in somewhat disheartening ways, sometimes. Okay: most of the time.

That's kind of a problem when your main interest is human nature. On the plus side: there's no shortage of subjects to make a film about.

I've been posting over on San Francisco Portraits a bit. It's amazing, if a cliche, how fast the weather changes in this city. Above: after one outbreak of sunshine and before the next.

Future of Photojournalism

On Friday afternoon, Mrs. Actualities and I went to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art to hear a panel on The Future of Investigative Reporting. On the panel were:

David Cohn, who founded http://spot.us -- essentially a "citizen journalism" site with a model based on bringing together freelancers, publishing venues and the public. In short: the public can support stories they feel are important, freelance journalists can get a little extra financial support to develop and research stories, and editors can get stories they can't support with their own publication / site resources.

Robert Rosenthal, a Pulitzer Prize finalist and journalism professor who is interested in the transition from traditional journalism to new models. He's connected to http://centerforinvestigativereporting.org but obviously well-versed in the existing models.

A.C. Thompson, who has worked with various San Francisco publications but is now associated with http://propublica.org and has received a Polk Award.

Lola Vollen, a physician who has shifted her work toward social justice and human rights, working with http://exonerated.org.

And, central to the panel: famed documentary photographer Susan Meiselas. If you don't know her work, look it up, and spend some time with it. http://susanmeiselas.com/. The important thing, for my discussion here, is to consider how Meiselas' model of going to a place, getting deeply invested in a story, and allowing a point of view to develop is purely documentary photography rather than photojournalism. Now, read that clearly: it isn't a critique, but praise. As well, it's an important distinction between the two fields.

The panel shifted a bit early on from what I expected -- after all, the context was an art museum, a show of Henri Cartier Bresson's work and the title "Future of Investigative Reporting" -- to more of a discussion of new models for supporting journalism. (Now, I'm quite aware of why this is on everyone's minds -- I've done a lot of freelance work in this realm and understand that it's clear the old models will change. Yet everyone seems unclear on how that change will stabilize or what models can be sustainable.)

So there was discussion noting that old support structures like "full time work" and "expense accounts" and "go to Central America for eight weeks, here's your ticket" were clearly gone, and that the new replacements are still developing -- and quite different in nature. Think of a blend between crowdfunding and NPR and you'll have part of the picture. Add YouTube, Digg and Twitter and you'll get a hint of the rest. But just a hint.

To my mind, this missed an important point.

Beyond the financial issues, the development of the Internet is important not just as a killer of the printed daily newspaper, but as a killer of one aspect of photojournalism.

That is, imagine an event happens. It's quite likely that a half-dozen civilians with cellphone cameras are there long before your contract photojournalist gets an alert email, and it's no surprise if there's a shaky video clip from a passerby on CNN immediately. Spot news? It's covered by a cell phone cam.

I'm not negating the value of a PJ here -- I just think the game has changed and that the role of the photojournalist has shifted toward documentary work. By this I mean that if there's a glut of "just okay shots" out there, and we can hand a DSLR to the reporter and have them come back with acceptable stills and video, then the role of photojournalist becomes about quality.

The role of the photojournalist becomes more like the role of the documentary photographer. Speed becomes less critical -- you've already been beat to the punch. But that leaves a ton of room for quality, depth, beauty, humor, accuracy -- all the elements the practice of documentary allows.

I want to see that first glance picture, yes, and I don't care that it's a sloppy picture without context. But I'm going to get much more out of a smart, deep, significant presentation later -- something only the best photojournalists can do.

So, for me, the question I see is not "how does investigative reporting survive?" but "how does an unknown Susan Meiselas find a way to do the work today?"

Panasonic GH2 Tele Conversion: Bagful of Primes?

Panasonic GH1 1080p Camera Test from Ted Fisher on Vimeo.

I have a hacked Panasonic GH1. It works great, and it's great to be able to work with a camera that's so small and light. The Panasonic GH2 is shipping soon, and it has a few key improvements -- it should be better for low light video, for example.

There's one advanced feature that's really intrigued me, though, that might end up a fantastic bonus for documentary shooters: the Tele Conversion feature.

The idea is that video on a DSLR is recorded at either 1920 pixels by 1080 pixels (1080p) or 1280 pixels by 720 pixels (720p) -- but the camera's sensor is really closer to 5000 pixels wide. So these type of cameras are reading the 5000 pixels and doing some number-crunching to downsize and output a frame 1920 wide or 1280 wide.

The Tele Conversion, however, seems to mean essentially cropping to a 1:1 ratio -- grabbing the center 1920 pixels by 1080 pixels rectangle -- and using that for the recorded frame. This results in a lens acting as if it were had a focal length 2.6 times longer (if you are recording 1080p) or 3.9 times longer (if you are recording 720p).

Well, this has been mentioned in the previews of the camera, and generally the reaction is "Great. That will provide amazing telephoto reach." That's true: the long end of the HD zoom is 140mm, and that would now act (in 1080p) as if it were a 364mm focal length. (The equivalent, on a fullframe 35mm camera would be a 728mm lens.) Or the Tele Conversion results in your 14-140mm now acting like a 546mm lens if you shoot at 720p/60 (typical for sports shooting), which is equivalent to a 35mm fullframe camera with a 1092mm lens. Hmm.

That's all well and good. But here's what I think is exciting:

You get your Panasonic GH2. Tiny, light, ready to travel. Now, buy the Panasonic LUMIX G 20mm f/1.7 Aspherical Pancake Lens and the Panasonic Lumix 14mm f/2.5 G Aspherical Lens for Micro Four Thirds Interchangeable Lens Cameras.

The 20mm goes for about $333 these days, the 14mm is about $400.

They are both tiny tiny tiny, light light light. The camera and these two lenses will fit in a very very small bag and will hardly weigh anything at all.

Here's what happens if you use the Tele Conversion feature, assuming it works well.

Put on the 14mm f/2.5 lens. This is great for wide shots -- equivalent to a 28mm lens on a 35mm camera. But if you turn on the Tele Conversion while you are shooting 1080p / 24, suddenly the lens acts like a 36.4 mm lens (72.8mm in 35mm equivalent).

Put on the 20mm f/1.7 lens. This is great for "standard" shots -- equivalent to a 40mm lens on a 35mm camera. But if you turn on the Tele Conversion while you are shooting 1080p / 24, suddenly the lens acts like a 52 mm lens (104mm 35mm equivalent).

So that means you could travel with a tiny camera and two pancake lenses, and have the equivalent of these prime lenses (considered in 35mm equivalent focal length).

• 28mm f/2.5
• 40mm f/1.7
• 72.8mm f/2.5
• 104 mm f/1.7

So: a bright wide, a very bright standard, a bright medium portrait, a very bright long portrait.

Check out Elliott Erwitt's Camera Case, Circa 1974 and you'll find out what he carried:

"Inside the case: two Canon F1s, a complete set of prime lenses (17mm, 24mm, 28mm, 35mm, 35mm tilt/shift, 50mm, 100mm, 135mm, 200mm and 300mm), a cable release, a Minolta light meter and an Eastman Kodak "Pocket Guide to Photography."

Hmm. Getting there, with just two tiny pancake lenses. (Erwitt's case must have weighed a ton, no?)

So add a Olympus 17mm f/2.8 Lens. These are going for about $260 right now, and again: tiny and light.

So the Olympus is 17mm, which acts on a Micro Four Thirds sensor about the same as a 34mm lens on a fullframe 35mm format camera. Hit the Tele Conversion button, and it acts 2.6 times longer, or as if it were a 88.4mm lens. This brings your range of primes to:

• 28mm f/2.5
• 34mm f/2.8
• 40mm f/1.7
• 72.8mm f/2.5
• 88.4mm f/2.8
• 104 mm f/1.7

So: with two Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH2's and three tiny pancake lenses -- all extremely small and lightweight -- you can get a broad range of focal lengths in bright, high-quality prime lenses.

Now, Erwitt's got some longer lenses there as well, but so consider adding Panny's new Panasonic Lumix 100-300mm f/4.0-5.6 G Vario Aspherical MEGA OIS Lens for Micro Four Thirds Interchangeable Lens Cameras. That provides a range, including a 100mm / f/4 end (the 35mm equivalent is 200mm) that Tele Converts to 260mm / f/4 (in 35mm equivalent, that's 520mm).

Now, remember: this Tele Conversion feature is brand new. No one has reported on the quality yet, though in theory there's no reason it might not actually be better than "regular" video recording. And that's the key factor: it works on video, not stills.

Still, it's fairly amazing to think of what a documentarian today could pack into a small case or backpack. And when the new Voigtlander 25mm / f0.95 ships....

Zoom H1 Lavalier Test with Audio Technica ATR-3350

I had to record a voiceover, so I dragged out three lavalier microphones for a quick test, plugging each into a Zoom H1 and recording a snippet of normal speaking. The results? While the audio quality won't match a high-end microphone, the recording is fine for use in documentary interviews on location.

(By the way, for those times when your wireless mic is likely to run into interference, this could be interesting: clip the lav on your subject, stick the Zoom H1 in their pocket. Hit record, then lock the buttons on the H1.)

Comparing the three microphones, I believe the Audio Technica ATR-3350 Lavalier Omnidirectional Condenser Microphone has a more pleasant, natural sound than the Audio Technica ATR-35s and is significantly higher in quality than a cheap Radio Shack 33-3013. (I'd post a sample, but Blogger is not exactly cooperative with my attempt to do that....)

That's not a surprise -- the 3350 is basically the updated replacement for the 35s. It's also essentially the same as the mic included in Audio Technica PRO88W-R35 Wireless Lavalier System with ATR3350mW Omnidirectional Mic, 170 MHz. 

So, the ATR-3350 works fine. And it's ultracheap now:

Film Courage

It's Sunday. I'm in San Francisco. That doesn't mean I can't listen to a radio show in Los Angeles. In fact, I recommend that -- if you are interested in film -- you do exactly that:

Today at noon PST, check out Film Courage on LA Talk Radio. You can listen live, or check out the archived shows. Definitely look through the archive list -- there's some great stuff there, including a session with John Sayles.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that our short doc 12th and 3rd in Brooklyn is tentatively set to screen at an upcoming "Film Courage Interactive" on October 11. Details on that soon. No connection, really, it just reminded me to mention the radio show.)

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday

When I was growing up, I lived close to Pomona, home to drag racing events of all kinds. (Well, the kinds with cars, nothing involving cross-dressing. As far as I know.) During the season, there were endless ads promoting the big events -- and that darn "Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!" announcer about every 15 minutes.

I feel a bit like that, as I've been promoting our next screening a bit heavily. Hey, I just want the tickets to sell out.

So, here's the spiel:

This Sunday, 1 p.m., our short documentary Hoop Springs Eternal will screen at the Coney Island Film Festival in Program 12. A fun time will be had by all. Advance-sales tickets are available for $6 so buy them now.

Don't make me come over to your house and act out the TV commercial version of this post.

Dowser Interview Edits, Part Three

Dowser Video: Joan Sullivan, Bronx Academy of Letters from Dowser on Vimeo.

A while back, I edited four interview-based pieces for Dowser. Three are now online, so here's the third one.

Dowser Interview Edits, Part Two

Dowser Video: Elizabeth Scharpf, Sustainable Health Enterprises (SHE) from Dowser on Vimeo.

A while back, I edited four interview-based pieces for Dowser. Three are now online, so here's the second piece.

Dowser Interview Edits, Part One

Dowser Video: Maura Minsky, Scenarios USA from Dowser on Vimeo.

A while back, I edited four interview-based pieces for Dowser. Three are now online, so here's the first one.

GH1 1080p Camera Test (After Firmware Hack)

Panasonic GH1 1080p Camera Test from Ted Fisher on Vimeo.

Previously, I posted a one-minute video showing a "Stress Test" of the Panasonic GH1 in video mode.

For that, I shot 720p / 60 footage in Central Park -- and found generally great results, but that the camera clearly had its limits. A sharply-focused shot of highly-detailed trees combined with camera motion could hit the limit of the codec -- resulting in "mud" in the shot. (That is, poorly-resolved digital smearing. Think of a low-resolution JPEG.)

On the plus side: most footage turned out great, and if you planned your shooting you could get excellent HD video without some of the issues (moire, for example, and false detail) that the Canon HDSLR cameras were reported to be experiencing. (And the Panasonic allowed twice as much footage per gigabyte of memory, had no need for a specialized add-on viewfinder, could autofocus during video, presented a live histogram -- and so on.)

Since moving to Los Angeles I've applied the supersecret firmware hack to the camera. (Google it. I'll post more on the details soon.) So I decided it was time to test out the 1080p / 24 mode as well.

For this shoot -- purposefully handheld, shaky, and shooting subjects that tended to bring out "mud" in the stock GH1 -- I used lpowell's "40Mbps AVCHD High Reliability Patch" settings, recording 1080p/24 AVCHD clips. I then processed the MTS files using Voltaic and edited those transcoded clips with Final Cut Pro. I exported a 1080p QuickTime file, then used compressor to create the 1280 by 720 file I uploaded to Vimeo.

My thoughts: the "40 reliability" settings are excellent in quality and stable enough for documentary shooting. As well, all clips play back in camera. Follow the link to Vimeo if you want to download the 720p version -- but trust me that the full 1080p file is even better.

But What I Really Want To Do Is...

Are documentarians the new cool kids?

I dunno. But the Los Angeles Times, once again my hometown newspaper, seems to think so.

Word of Mouth: Documentaries are proving grounds for feature film directors

Every filmmaker stepping up from a different background brings unique skills, but documentary directors may be better equipped than most to deliver something that's frequently missing from narrative movies: emotional truthfulness. What's more, nonfiction storytellers directing narrative features are comfortable shooting in the increasingly popular verité style that mashes extemporaneous camera moves with scripted action and dialogue.

Of course, one could ask: "What happened to 'dance with who brung ya'?"

Take the D Train

Our short documentary Hoop Springs Eternal -- made with Linda Goldman, Chris Corradino, Maya Mumma -- is scheduled to screen at the Coney Island Film Festival September 24 - 26.

More details soon.