Right off, your subject has absolutely nothing to be sensative about. That’s a beautiful woman. Nice choice of background color to contrast the red jacket.

Now as for the focal length question, as many of my readers know, I’m a bigger fan of using wider-angle lenses for portraits than conventional wisdom dictates. For me it’s less about getting closer to the subject and more about including more of their environment in the shot, which I think gives context to the portrait and often ‘room to breathe’ visually. That said, a little distortion can also be a good thing. As an example I was looking at this picture of my friend Abby the other day with satisfaction. I think that was taken with a 35mm lens.

I agree that your 24mm image on the left is the better shot of the two by far. However there is a lot more at play than focal length. The light is off to the side giving her features more dimensionality and the fact that her body is turned into the camera helps that as well. It also feels like a more real smile to me, and authenticity is huge. I also agree that the vignetting helps pull your eyes to her face. The shot on the right feels flat in comparison.

So the wide totally works in this instance, but it won’t always. Depends on the subject and the situation. Also 50mm is a classic focal-length but it’s also pretty boring. Don’t get me wrong, I shoot 50 all the time, but it’s basically what you see with your own eyes and without the camera. It’s what people’s minds expect. Many portrait photographers go the other way and shoot 85mm, 135mm, even 200mm, in an attempt to distort in the other direction by flattening features as much as possible. This may sometimes give you more flattering results, but I tend to think they’re also usually boring.

Good on you to try something new. I think it’s successful. OK, part two:
 

Unfortunately it doesn’t quite work that way. Focal lengths are really only important in that they define your field of view. If you had the same 24mm on a Rebel it would be the equivalent of a 38mm lens (24mmx1.6 crop factor) on a full frame body. Acting closer to 50mm than 24mm. So basically you’d end up with something closer to the shot on the right than the one on the left. Cropped sensors are less expensive and give you an advantage in increased depth-of-field because you’d be further from the subject to take the same shot vs a full frame camera, but they don’t really effect the wide-angle equation in the way you ask. Plus because cropped sensors throw away the edges of the image coming through the lens so you’d also lose all that nice vignetting you’ve fallen in love with.

Thanks to John for the great question and example images.

We talk about the need for personal projects, the story behind my 365Portraits.com project, as well as how I approach taking portraits and working with the subject to get them to be a partner in the process. It was great fun to record and Ibarionex is a real gentleman. So go listen to my episode and while you’re there, subscribe to the whole series. It’s that good.

Spread the word and enjoy.

The Candid Frame

Link to iTunes page

In the running were the following:

• a Canon 5D Mark II with a 50mm/1/2L prime at ISO 100
• a 1972 Hasselblad 500CM with 80mm lens loaded with Kodak Portra 160 film
• the same Haselblad 500CM with a Phase One P65 digital back at ISO 100
• a Phase One 645 body with 80mm lens and a different Phase One P65 back
• and for good measure, a Cambo 4×5 with 150mm lens loaded with Fuji 160S

The low-res results can be seen here: http://ontakingpictures.com/2011/02/format-comparison-teaser/

This is a surprisingly hard thing to do for a number of reasons.  First is having the subject in the same position, and Chris did a wonderful job in this role. Though even subtle changes in the way the light hits his fact can effect how you perceive the images. Film speed is also very difficult.  I wanted to get the light set and shoot them all with the same power of light at the same aperture.  However if you look at the list above you’ll see that the film cameras were using ISO 160 film. Now, that’s only about a half a stop, and C41 negative film is fine with a little bit of over-exposure. So I let it slide. Plus, I was going to try to work a little curves action to get them in the same ballpark anyway.

Matching
It was also really hard to get the white balance of the pictures similar. To get the two MF backs to visually match the Canon at 5600K, they were at 5180 and 5860 respectively.  I’m not sure if that’s a matter of terrible calibration at the factory or if that’s the way these things always act, but a 600k shift between samples, and neither was correct, is a alot.  Somehow I trust my Canon more than the $40,000 backs on this respect.  I also had to scan two different formulations of film and try to get them to match. Nulling out the orange cast of the film substrate in the process. Ideally what I should have done was to shoot a frame of a color chart which would give me a reference for everything plus neutral grays.  But alas I didn’t think of it and therefore had to do it by eye.

The other big problem is that I was shooting at the same aperture, f/8, on all formats so that I didn’t have to reset the light value with every switch. The problem here is that f/8 gives a very different depth of field depending on the size of the sensor or film. Especially on the 4×5 where f/8 is just one stop away from wide open.  In retrospect, I could have used a lightmeter to set the light lever for each camera while trying to compensate by stopping down the bigger cameras, but then you get into questions of diffraction effects of the lenses at that aperture and such. The practical upshot being that these are all different beasts and in some ways it’s like comparing apples and oranges. All those qualifiers out of the way, I do think I did a relatively good job of weighing and mediating all of the factors.

So what did I find out?
In the end, these are the points that I took away from looking at the resulting images.

First off, all of the cameras did a fine job taking the picture. All of them are professional quality. And if you’re only going to be looking at them on the web or your average magazine size print, there is no practical differences in my eyes.

You all know what 20MP full frame files look like, and I’m sure that many of you have shot film, so I don’t need to go into detail on those.  The 4×5 looked suitably great. However I’d much rather use slide film or b/w in large format for some reason.  In fact when it comes right down to it, I really only enjoyed shooting Polaroid 55 with it.  That leaves us with the two MF backs.

In the ‘pro’ side for the MF backs is the fact that there is a sick amount of information in the files.  I’d say they have more in common with a 4×5 frame of film than a 120 frame.  This also extrapolates down to smaller digital where I think my 5D2 gives me a file that’s almost as good as my Hasselblad using film. Definitely way more than my Leica can.  The question then becomes “Do I need that much information?” and that’s a good question.  Like I said, if you’re not printing big, then to my eyes there isn’t the need. Another thing is that because there is no AA filter in front of the sensor, you also get an incredibly sharp image as well. Like poke your eye out sharp and detailed. See below. MF RAW files are also 16bit (most modern SLRs are now 14bit) which means there’s more data in each color channel for you to work with.  This results in extreme plasticity in manipulating the RAW data. Over-exposure of 3 full stops can be pulled back; similar results in pulling up the shadows, which are less grainy and quantized as well. You can do with with Canon and Nikon files, but not 3 stops in the highlights. Maybe 1, or 1.5 stops tops. This can be a lifesaver in very specific situations.

The ‘con’ side to all the above ‘pro’s is that your technique must be flawless. They are precision instruments and EVERYTHING you do is magnified.  You get 3 times the data of my 5d, but camera shake and focus errors are magnified along with it. I found it very hard to focus accurately enough on both the Hasselblad (manual) and the Phase (auto/manual). The viewfinders, while huge compared to 35mm, are still no large or fine grained enough to match the sensor that’s ultimately catching the photons.

Speed is also a concern as these backs max out at about a frame a second. So if you’re used to snap snap snapping away at a clip, you’re in for a awakening. The autofocus is also slow and hard to control.  Really there’s only the center point, which is fine for me since that’s all I usually use anyway, but if you’re trying to focus on the eyeball you may get the eyebrow instead half the time. I guess the answer here is to stop down the lens so that more stuff is in focus, but deep focus portraits are often not what I’m looking to take. Honestly, minus the backs, medium format cameras feel like 15 year old consumer film slr bodies. They’re also big and heavy.  Not the kind of thing you’re going to want to be holding for hours.

Oh and I should mention computers for a second.  Remember that these files are 3 times the size of the Canon’s. Which means they’re 3 times bigger when you open them up in Photoshop, which means you need at least 3 times the RAM to manipulate them at the same clip.  I’ve got 12GB of RAM in my desktop and these images are HUGE. The picture of Chris that I posted the other day, with fairly light retouching and editing for me, came in at around 1.6GB as a PSD.  If I were using one of these cameras everyday, I’d upgrade my RAM to 24GB or more without flinching.  There were times when my desktop felt like a laptop while working on them, and I’ve got a very fast computer.

Finally there’s the question of cost.  The Phase One setup was about ten times the cost of the Canon setup. Like in all things it’s certainly not a linear progression.  The Phase is not 10 times better than the Canon.  Maybe twice as good or three times as good in image quality, but only if you assume that everything else is perfect. The light, focus, tripod, etc.  On top of the initial cost of the camera is the cost of the lenses which are often thousands of dollars each. More than the price of the Canon setup.  Look, I’ve got a $8000 stereo, so I know the law of diminishing returns, but even I’ve got my limits.

Would I want one? Sure. Do I need one? No.  And that’s actually a surprising result for me.  I thought the results would make me speechless with awe, but in the end I was just really impressed.  My next big gig where I’ve got a budget, I’ll certainly be renting one. A rig like that would have been great for some of my personal projects, but I can’t really complain as I’ve still got a setup that most people would kill for.

If you’ve got any questions, feel free to ask in the comments and I’ll try to answer as best I can.

Yesterday was multiple passes of two color washes. Hopefully later today we’re going to regroup and get more daring. Whitewashing is in the air! In the meantime, here’s our progress and a shot of Hannah herself.

I did a bit of minor color work to get them all in the same ballpark, and though the focal lengths and angles are not exact, AND the images I’m showing you are small, I still think it’s an interesting discussion. More detailed post or posts coming soon, but I thought I’d put this up as a teaser.  Let’s see if you can guess which are which in the comments.

UPDATE: I’ve written more about this format comparison over here.

The first consumer digital SLRs were 6 Megapixel cameras.  I remember, I had a original Digital Rebel back in 2004 when they came out and I thought 6MP was a world of data.  Granted my previous digital camera was a little 2MP digital Elph so it real was a world of data.  Then I went to a 20D at 8MP and a 5D at 12MP and finally to a 5D2 at 21MP.  Now the average pocketable compact camera is 12 to 14 megapixels, which I think is just crazy.

DigiCams
First off, most of the people using these cameras are coming home from a vacation and dumping their 140 pictures of them and their family at the beach onto their computer. Probably into iPhoto or similar and then onto Flickr or Facebook. Both of which will involve throwing out 90% of the picture’s information to get it down to the 1000px that’ll fit on your average screen. Very few people print anymore. In fact, I don’t think I know anyone other than pro or serious amateur photographers who does. I’m sure there out there, but I don’t know any, and I think the days of having shoe boxes full of 4×6″ prints has certainly come to an end.

It’s not to say that I don’t think people should print.  I certainly think they should. Most of the online places will do 4×6″ prints for 20 cents or less. I think people should come back from their vacation, cull the 140 pictures down to 30 good ones and have them printed and put in a box or an album. No one needs to see 7 shots of that same sunset. Pick the best one or two and move on. In fact I think that’s a problem for photographers in general in the digital age. Digital lets you take a lot of pictures, but that doesn’t mean you should and it doesn’t mean you have to keep them all. It’s all about editing.

And even if people are actually printing; How big are they printing at?  I printed a couple shots from my 6MP Rebel at 20×30″ and they’re passable from a foot or two away. But how many people print posters? I’d say that 99% of pictures are printed 8×10″ or smaller, and a 12MP compact is overkill for that size print.

Now, lest you think that I’m just trying to take good tools out of the hands of amateurs, let me say that I want to give them better tools.  Or rather, tools which are better for what they use them for.  Canon lately has thankfully let off the race to pack in more pixels.  Their higher-end compacts were brought down to 10MP in this last iteration and I think that’s a good thing.  You see, the sensor in these little cameras is about the size of your pinky fingernail and it hasn’t gotten bigger in a very long time.  That means that the more pixels they pack in, the smaller each one gets. The smaller the pixels, the less light they capture, which leads to more amplification being used which amplifies the noise along with the image.  Manufacturers have gotten really good at employing a number of hardware and software tricks to keep things in check, but I suggest another line.

Keep the resolution at 10MP or even bring it down to 8MP. Then allow the engineers to instead increase dynamic range so the sand doesn’t blow out to white when I take pictures on the beach or the shadows under the rim of my mom’s hat go to black.  Also speed up the camera so when I hit the shutter, it’s instantaneous.  These are the kinds of things people will actually notice.  They’ve got no idea what the extra 2MP gets from when choosing between a 12MP and 14MP camera.  Mostly because it doesn’t get them that much. This is one of those areas where less really does get you more.

Digital SLR
I on the other hand would love more megapixels. On the high-end side we’ve got much bigger sensors so they’ve got plenty of room to try packing in more pixels. Though there are even limits to that which involve the physics of light and limits of diffraction that no engineering will be able to work around. We need bigger sensors for that, Leaf and Phase have introduced 80MP backs lately, but that gets into the world of medium format digital which we’ll talk about some other time.

I like to print big. When I showed my Drabbles series at SoHo Photo in Sept, I printed them at 20×30″ and people were getting right up in them.  Those prints used every pixel of my 21MP camera and there were times when I would have liked more.  That said, I recently printed and showed a 30×48″ black and white landscape shot I took of Half Dome in Yosemite and the print is looks gorgeous. And that was essentially a hand-held snapshot. I’d like more pixels but I’m not sure I NEED them in a true sense.

The problem when you start packing them in is that your lenses become much more important.  You can record all the pixels you want, but that doesn’t mean the image they recorded was sharp and contrasty and in focus. This is where lenses come in and where prime lenses, that is ‘not zoom’, really shine because they tend to be simpler and designed to do one thing really well versus everything just ok.  All of the drabbles where shot with a 28mm prime which is a good lens but not nearly as sharp as the 50mm prime I shot Half Dome with.  That’s probably much of the difference between the ability to print that big.  If you’ve got a good camera that’s 12MP or more, upgrade your glass before you go getting a new body.

Conclusion
The practical upshot of all this is that for the vast majority of people and uses, we’ve got all the pixels we need.  I remember reading somewhere that good 35mm film could hold around 18MP. While that sounds pretty good it’s alway somewhat misleading to me.  I’ve shot plenty of 35mm film and can tell you that you’re not going to blow it up to 20×30″ or 30×48″. No way in hell.  That’s medium format and if we’re going to honest here, large format territory on film. I make 11×17″ prints from my Leica frames and that’s the furthest I’ll push it.

Moore’s Law marches onward as always and things will only get better, and we’re now far past the point where digital has surpassed film in measurable quality (One can certainly still make an argument for un-measureable quality). We’ve bested the resolution of film, color is good, dynamic range is as good.  Personally I think they should be better as well. Digital has gotten to the point where it’s done being a teenager and has to grow up a bit.  To me it should now be about the quality and not quantity from here on out. Give me tools that allow me to do things I couldn’t possibly imagine with my current camera.  The ability to print bigger is no longer enough.

Well this little green bag has proved to be a pretty great photo bag as well. I’ve got a couple expensive Crumpler bags (I really like my Crumpler bags, they’re not cheap but they hold up and look cool) which I use much of the time (one backpack like this one and a shoulder type like this one), but sometimes I need to carry a bit more than just my camera and a lenses or two with me.  The setup that can fit in this bag is what I used for most of the Drabbles shoots, which gives you some idea of it’s versatility.

So what is it that I can fit in here?  Well you might be surprised.  Here’s what I’ve got.

Canon 5D Mark II body
Canon 28mm f/1.8 lens
Canon 35mm f/1.4L lens
Canon 580 EX II Speedlight
Canon 550 EX Speedlight
Canon Speedlight Transmitter
Manfroto Nano Light Stand
Speedlight umbrella bracket
36″ Photek Softlighter
5 in 1 Reflector/Diffuser

As you can see, a pretty potent little system. 21MP camera with a couple lenses. As well as 2 lights with a wireless transmitter with a stand and umbrella.  Plus if you’ve got an assistant you can have them hold the other light and shoot it through the diffuser as a second soft source.  This is great stuff and these speedlights are surprisingly powerful, especially indoors. Sure I’ve got a Profoto AcuteB which might give nicer light. And I’ve got a crazy powerful White Lighting x3200 which can give a ton of light. But sometimes what you can carry with you is more important.

In conclusion, there is very very little that I can’t do with this set of gear, AND I can carry it around all day while still keeping my hands free to pick-pocket people on the subway.

Many of the camera makers will make similar lenses at different price points. People ask me if it’s worth it to get the next one up.  That is a very difficult question to answer, but I’m going to try.

Let’s start off by offering the fact that almost all modern lenses are really good compared to the past.  Sure there are those people who swear by their dad’s ‘72 Nikor whathaveyou and 1950s Leica and the T* Zeiss stuff for Hasselblad glass is gorgeous, but for the most part, older 35mm lenses in particular, are not as sharp as modern lenses.  They’re soft at the corners, have serious vignetting, and often much less effective lens coatings to control lens flare and such. Of course some people like these distortions and think they give their pictures a certain look, to which I say good for them.  For me, I’d rather stick with modern glass when I work.  So even a crappy zoom lens they throw in when you buy a cheap body is pretty good optically as long as you stop down the lens a bit.  Lenses tend to get sharper as you stop them down (to a point, most hit their peak at f/8 or f/11).  That said, a nice lens with a fixed focal length, or ‘prime’ lens as they’re called, can really up the image quality ante. Being a bit of a 100% pixel peeper myself, image quality is next to godliness.

Ok, now back to the issue at hand. There are a million examples of what I’m talking about, but I’m going to choose one easy one. 50mm Canon primes.  Canon makes a 50mm prime lens with apertures of 1.8, 1.4, and 1.2.  The last one being one of their L line of high-end glass.  I happen to own all three of these, so I’m in a good position to talk about them.

My father bought me the 1.8 at a store in Danbury, CT after picking me up from the train on the way to my parent’s house about 6 years ago.  It’s very light, somewhat fragile feeling, and has a strange focus ring which is on the front rim of the lens.  You also can’t focus auto and manual at the same time.  That said, it’s got two redeeming characteristics. One, it’s very sharp, especially when stopped down a tad. And it’s crazy cheap. $120 at B&H.  If all you’ve got is a single zoom that came with your camera, this is the next lens to get. 50mm on the cropped sensor in a Rebel or 7D will act like a nice 85mm portrait lens. Very nice for the price.  One additional thing about the 1.8. The current incarnation is the second and is made entirely of plastic right down to the mount. Apparently the first version had a metal mounting ring and a better focus mechanism. They’re prized on ebay from what I hear.

Next up is the 1.4 which has been out in it’s current incarnation for just about as long as the EOS brand has been around, so over 20 years.  It let’s in another half stop or so of light, is about the same size as the 1.8 but a bit heavier. This is one of the last remaining lenses with the first generation ultrasonic motor. It’s not the smoothest or quietest focus, but you can do both auto and manual at the same time. For a couple decades, this lens was one of the photojournalist staples. The lens they put on the front of their new bodies in the magazine ads. It costs about $350 at B&H.  There are constant rumors however, that they’re going to replace it with a more modern design any day now.  That said, they’ve been on that rumor for years.

A little side story about the 1.4  I was on my way into the Time-Life building for a shoot a couple years ago and they’ve got airport like security where you put your bags through a scanner and walk through the metal detector. Well I picked up my camera bag on the other side and had forgotten to clasp it closed.  So as I pick it up, there goes my 50mm 1.4 prime tumbling out of my bag, falling 3 feet onto a concrete floor. After a quick cringe I picked it up and threw it back in my bag since we were late to setup. I had dropped it before, it happens when you’re around them all the time, and it had been fine.  However, this time in the middle of the shoot I took off the 28mm prime I was shooting with and clicked on the 50, only to find that the focusing mechanism was locked up.  The fall had apparently push gears out of alignment. $160 to get it fixed and I had to shoot the whole shoot with a single wide-angle.  It worked out ok in the end, and is not really a dig on this lens as I’m sure it would have happened to any similar glass.  Just a good story.

Ok, finally is the 1.2L. This is a big, heavy, crazy fast lens which is built like a tank. Not the kind of thing you want to carry around on the front of your camera all day if you don’t have to, but for what I do, it’s lovely. Focus is silky smooth, though not the quickest since the motor has to move a lot of glass around in this design. Some people say that it’s not very sharp, but I say they’re crazy.  At 1.2 if you get the focus right, it’s amazing. At 1.4 you need to wear gloves while editing because it’s so sharp it’ll cut you. The problem is that it’s also expensive, $1500 at B&H for example. I bought it for myself as a present after completing a big job a while back and have no regrets.

So here you’ve got 3 lenses, all within a stop of each other at $120, $350, and $1500.  Is the next one up worth it?  Well that depends on you and if you’ve got the money I suppose.  That said, there are a number of other factors involved.  For example, the 1.8 has 5 blades making up it’s aperture, where the other two have 8.  And while both the fancier lenses have 8 blades, the ones on the 1.2 are curved more so that they make a more perfect circle (see image below). You’d notice this in the smoothness of the out of focus areas, or bokeh as the japanese say it, of the picture. The 1.8’s bokeh is nice, the 1.2’s is creamy.

Another place you’ll see a difference is in contrast.  Not all lenses transmit the light similarly. Different designs of the various elements, composition of the glass in them, and even the coatings they put on the glass change the picture. Better lenses tend to leave more contrast in the image, both across the whole image, so-called macro-contrast, and within small sections of the image, so-called micro-contrast.  Yes, you can do work in PhotoShop to get them close, and it’s really hard to measure this stuff in any meaningful way. But it my opinion, it’s definitely there.

Lastly is the obvious difference in aperture. It may not seems like a lot, but having the ability to capture an extra stop of light when it’s dark can really help.  Plus as a creative tool, the plane of focus at 1.2 is crazy thin. Like when you’re focused on the eyeball, the eyelashes can be soft.  Stuff further than a few inches off becomes a blur.  This can be useful creatively, especially for a portraitist like me.

Now whether all of that is worth over ten times the price is debatable. My camera is my livelihood and so I tend to buy the best because they’re my tools and I want them to last and feel good in my hands while I use them.  For other people it’s different.  If you’re a street shooter who walks around stopped down to f/8 and hyperfocal distance, then by all means get the 1.8 and shoot the crap out of it.  It’ll be much better than that kit lens you’ve got and may open your world to the wonder of prime lenses.  Next up will be my favorite lens of all time, the 28mm/1.8

I shoot in low light almost all of the time.  In fact, it came as a revelation a couple years ago when I realized how much freaking light you need to take good pictures most of the time.  Figure you’ve got 400 speed film and want to stop down to f/5.6 or so to get some depth of field, and then you’re hand holding the camera and shooting people, so your shutter speed needs to be 1/60th or a second or better. That’s of course, in the old days when super grainy fast film was your only other option.  Now on digital, many of the new cameras do really well at 3200 or 6400 iso or even higher.  An order of magnitude better than just a few generations ago.  This opens up lots of opportunities where in the past you would have just put your camera away.

Ok, enough nostalgia. First off, a few facts. All things being equal, the bigger the sensor, the better, because if you’ve got a cropped sensor and a full frame one which are both 12MP, each pixel on the full frame sensor will be bigger and thus capture more light with less need to amplify the signal and all the noise that comes with that process (man, long run on sentence).  This really only applies to 35mm cameras right now.  Medium format backs use larger sensors, but as of now, they’re using CCD sensors which are terrible in low light.  This is the same technology that Nikon used up until the D3 and why their cameras sucked at high-iso before.

Fact number two, depth of field is related to the size of the sensor or film.  So a lens at f/2.8 on a cropped sensor is going to have more stuff in focus than the same aperture on a bigger sensor. This is why the depth of field on large format cameras is so crazy narrow even at f/5.6 or f/8 and why they needed to stop them down to f/64.  Talk about needing a lot of light!

So, now how to use this information?  Say you’re at a bar with your camera for a karaoke birthday party and for the sake of the story you’ve got a fast prime lens on your camera.  Well you’ve got 3 things that will effect your exposure.  Aperture (how big the hole is), shutter speed (how long the hole is open), and iso (how sensitive the sensor is).  Since we’re in really low light, there’s no chance you’ll be shooting at 1/1000th of a second.  So let’s figure you lock down your shutter speed to 1/50th of a second.  So that leaves aperture and iso, and these are two somewhat conflicting controls.  Sure you can keep the noise down by keeping iso at 1600 by opening up your lens to f/1.8 for example. But if you’re trying to get a bunch of faces in focus, you’re going to be in trouble.  So you stop down to f/2.8 or so (still not great for depth, but what are you gonna do) and up your camera to 3200 or 6400 and deal with more noise.

Unfortunately the effect of aperture on depth-of-field and shutter speed on blurred images are part of the physics of the universe, so there’s not much you can do about them.  So camera makers coming out with better and better sensors and noise reduction is the only way to improve the situation. There’s a brick wall there too though, since a pixel needs a certain amount of light to work and light is in packets called photons, there is a point at which a pixel needs at least 1 photon to register anything at all, but I don’t think we’re near that yet.

Another annoying thing is that while a cropped camera’s smaller sensor gives you more depth of field, allowing you to use larger apertures, it’s also inherently more noisy due to the smaller pixel pitch.  No free lunch. Or use a flash, though flashes kinda suck in situations like that.  I know a wedding photographer who swears by one of those little Sony camcorder lights.  He sometimes uses it mounted on the hot shoe, but also uses it to backlight or hairlight a subject in a pinch.

Personally, I vote for a full-frame dSLR and some fast primes which would give you the most options in such a situation.   I hope I answered the question. 

Question #1 – Do you have a rep? If so why did you feel you needed one and if not why don’t you feel you need one?

I don’t currently have a rep, but I do have some pots on the fire.  In my opinion a rep is a double-edged sword.  They find you work, but they take a cut.  Then again, you probably would not have had the work if they hadn’t gotten if for you.  I also worry a bit about losing control over the direction of my career and the jobs I do, but I think that’s just spliting the hairs of my deep nerosyis.  I’m doing ok with the editorial work, but I would like to do more ad work and that’s where a rep would help.

Question #2 –  How do you estimate pricing for jobs, corporate and portrait work?

Oh, that’s very very tough and I’m terrible at it.  Some people like to use that software, quotepro or something like that.  Living in NYC, the numbers are not always right from my limited exposure with it.  For editorial work, most publications have standard rates that you’ve got to work within, and personal portraiture is a gray area between how much you want the shoot and how much your time is worth.  Personally, I’d rather shoot people I want to shoot and charge them a little to use the photos rather than have them pay me for real and then I’m tied to making them happy.

Question #3 –  What type of marketing do you do?

Not nearly enough.  My friend Meg printed and sent out hand numbered postcards a couple weeks ago.  I need to be much more like her.  I do however hear mixed messages on whether mailers work.  Some people get so many they just throw them out and say they prefer to be able to just click on a link to a website.  Others want something they can pin up on their wall if they like it. Art buyers offices are like mini-museums in this respect. On top of all this, I’ve found that people in this industry move around so much that address lists are out of date and 20% of your stuff bounces back.

I guess you could say that my 365 Portraits thing was marketing, though I didn’t mean it as such.  You could consider this blog marketing, though most of the people who read it are photographers themselves, so I guess that’s a moot point.  Marketing is expensive and I’m a procrastinator, and that’s probably a bad combination.  I’ve also got a weird opinion of my own work. At my worst, I’m almost embarrased to send it out for people to look at.  I don’t want to waste their time.  That is a really bad situation.  I need to buck up and be prepared to look like an ass for my art.  I’m working on it.

—————————————————————

By the way, I like this question/answer stuff.  If anyone has any particular questions, feel free to email me at bill at billwadman.com