Nimbleosity v2.0

I think this title is in need of a little context.  Back in 2009, I was introduced to the wonderful world of hybrid digital photography and filmmaking by the Canon 5D MkII.  Over the next couple of years I built up my Canon system to the point where I didn’t enjoy carrying it.  Many airlines seem to feel the same way when I tried to get it in cabin baggage.  My solution was to change to Micro Four Thirds.  I soon had a system that was as comprehensive as my Canon one but only half the bulk and weight.  This was Nimbleosity v1.0.  It seemed that I was all sorted but then along came Sony...

I had a big trip with New Zealand in 2014 planned with my grown up kids.  This meant I could take a bit more gear.  I was taking a Lumix GH4 as my main camera but persuaded myself that the A7S would be good for some low light activities I had planned.  It wasn’t going to add much bulk as I only had the kit lens and a couple of old Zuiko primes to fit it.  My daughter took charge of it for stills duties and I used it occasionallyfor video when the sun went down.  Now the GH4 has many areas were it is a better camera than the A7S but there was just something about those full frame images that was undeniable.  Hopefully you can see it in this little film I made on the A7S.

When (after what seemed about 5 minutes) Sony announced their MkII A7 series bodies, the A7Rii stood out for me.  Here was a camera that seemed to combine the best features from my old 5D, Lumix and Olympus cameras while doubling resolution yet still in a compact body.  I waited another 5 minutes to see if Sony brought out a Mark iii but they must have been on lunch break so I tool the plunge.  It’s not a cheap camera and I had to trade-in so much gear I had to literally use a trolley to get it from the car park to the shop.  Now some of you may already may all ready be thinking “Hold on a minute Andrew, haven’t you forgotten something quite important”.  The truth is that, though the A7Rii has eaten a few less pies than the Canon 5D, there is still the small matter of physics, light and sensor size.  Overall the body is not the biggest contributor to your backache or check-in arguments.  How am I going to avoid being back where I started pre-nimble?

My Nimbleosity v2.0 plan is simple - it’s called Take Less Stuff.  Those of you who know me will be sniggering at the moment because I am an Arch-packrat and have a Masters in Just-in-case.  I am going to try and rely on the 2 P’s: pixels and percentage.  If that fails I may try hypnotherapy.  Playing percentage is a sporting term meaning to stick to the simpler shot until you have a high probability the more difficult shot will win the point.  I have often carried 10Kg of gear around all day and only used 3Kg of it.  So, niche gear stays at home unless niche is the main point of the shoot.  Compared to anything I have used in recent years, the A7Rii has a prodigious number of pixels.  This means I can afford to throw a few away without going backwards on image quality.  If I use APS-C mode or crop images 1.5X I still have as many pixels as a Canon 7D or 1DX.  Even going up to 2x I still have a similar pixel count to the A7S or LX100.  This means that any lens I take has an effective doubling in range.   

100% Crop

Original Image

Many people who shoot 4K video do so with no expectation of outputting in more than HD.  They do this with a view to having the same option to crop in without losing image quality. Having internal 4K is a big advantage for the A7Rii over the A7S, but the A7Rii has an advantage over the GH4 too.  This is a Sony technology called Clear Image.  This is separate to the APS-C/Super 35 mode in video (which is the one recommended by Sony for best video quality) that already gives the option of a 1.5x crop.  Clear Image is a digital teleconverter and on most cameras those should not be touched with a very long barge pole.  However, in this case, Sony is doing some special magic behind the scenes which results in a very useable picture at a preset 1.4x or 2x crop.  Clear Image works in 4K in both FF or APC mode, so you effectively have a choice of 1.4, 2 or 3x magnification.  That’s even before you do any cropping in post.

Frame grab from 4K video with Clear Image off in Full Frame mode

Frame grab from the same spot but with Clear Image set to 2x and APS-C mode on giving effective 3X magnification

That’s a lot numbers to take in so lets think about it in lens terms.  The Sony Zeiss 24-70mm F4 is premium midrange option in the Sony FE mount line up.  Its compact and weighs in at a very reasonable 426g - only slightly more than my MFT equivalent.  Without sacrificing resolution this is equivalent to a 24-135mm F4 on the A7s.  The equivalent 12-35mm f2.8 MFT lens I owned was a faster lens but the A7rii is more than a stop better than the GH4 in low light and the depth of field advantage of FF over MFT is 2 stops.  I can use crop mode and extend the range to 105mm and still have more resolution than the GH4.  For 4K video, the 24-70 turns into a 24-210mm f4 by using different combinations in Clear Image.  That’s enough to deal with most situations.  Sony do have an actual 24-240 f3.5-6.3 in the line-up.  I did consider this, especially after Trey Ratcliffe recommended it, but its bigger and bulkier and slower than f4 after 35mm.  It’s that percentage thing again.  This lens will be on the camera 90% of the time and I need it to work well for me in that main 24-70 range.

If I am travelling light, then then I can fit another 3/4 compact lenses in my small bag.  These would be primes or a wider zoom.  I have a bigger messenger bag or backpack which can swallow my Canon 70-200mm f4 if I need to go longer.  Even then, I should still be well within what my ageing body will withstand never mind airline limits.

I am still experimenting with my new gear but if you want a great review of the Sony A7Rii then I recommend Cameralabs or Mirrorlessons.  On nimble photography in general, The Digital Story is also a great resource.  I have posted a few first pictures with the A7Rii in this gallery.

Lexar Workflow DD512 SSD

OK, I'll admit it - I am a little paranoid about backing up images when I am travelling.  I probably take more precautions than many pros.  In my defence, I quite often travel alone and the photographic record is my travelling companion.  It is almost like that, if I lost it, it would be like I never went.  So I am always on the lookout for new backup tools that make this job faster and more secure without adding a lot of weight.

Lexar Workflow Hub

I had already invested in the Lexar Workflow hub.  I have the USB3 version but they also do it in Thunderbolt.  The hub has 4 slots and you can buy different slot-in modules with different kinds of interface - I had the SD and XQD readers.  The modules are also capable of being used as stand-alone reader as they have a USB3 slot which you can use with a cable.  

Recently, Lexar added SSD modules in two different capacities: 256GB and 512GB.  At first I didn't pay these too much attention as the price/performance at launch didn't appeal.  However, I stumbled on the 512GB model for £105 (including VAT) which was much more attractive.  The DD512 arrived formatted as exFAT which is a good option for cross system compatibility and large file handling.

At just 7cm x 6cm x 2cm the DD512 is very compact and, at 64g, very light.  Can it really be as fast as a "proper" SSD?  In truth, its not really as quick as the best 2.5in SATA drives.  Its scores using the Blackmagic Disk Test were still very respectable at 354MBps read and 237MBps write.

To put this into perspective.  I put this up against a 1TB Lacie Rugged drive which I have taken on previous trips.  This is a traditional spinning disk and, with its plastic armour, runs in at a lardy 334g - five times the wight of the DD512 (but with twice the capacity).  The ruggedness and the thunderbolt interface comes at a price too: £138 for the 1TB and £184 for the 2TB.  Do you need the ruggedness?  I told you about my paranoia right?  An SSD has an immediate advantage being solid state.  Do you need thunderbolt?  I tested the Lacie with the Blackmagic Tester and found no real difference in speed.  Using both interfaces the read speed was around 100MBps and the write speed about 95MBps.  So thunderbolt is not really valuable for performance.  It is really handy to have dual interfaces though.  I use a MacBook Air 11in for travelling and this has no built in card reader.  I typically will copy my cards to 2 different drives simultaneously using Shotput Pro and so I use one USB3 for the card reader and the other, plus the thunderbolt, for the target drives.  If you have a Windows laptop or a built in reader you could save some cash sticking to USB3.

Using the Blackmagic benchmarks, the DD512 has a clear lead in performance and in dimensions.  A spinning disk still wins on price per GB but the lead isn't as massive as it once was.

I decided to do some more real world tests.  For this I did what I usually need to do in the field which is to copy cards.  I used a card which contained 12.5GB of mixed media shot on the Sony A7s.  This contains a nice mix of chunky video files and raw images along with the plethora of small files that XAVC seems to like to produce.

Test	Time	MBps
Thunderbolt RAID to SD Card	3m17s	64
Thunderbolt RAID to DD512	56s	224
SD Card to DD512 (Workflow Hub)	2m22s	89
SD Card to DD512 (MacBook Air)	2m22s	89
DD512 to SSD (MacBook Air)	49s	257
DD512 to SSD (Mac Pro)	37s	340
SD to Lacie HDD	2m32s	83
Lacie HDD to SSD (Mac Pro)	2m01s	104

Let's analyse these results and try and add some perspective.  The SD card is a Transcend SDXC UHS1 Class 3 card which claims 90MBps read and 60MBps write.  My Blackmagic tests confirm this claim.  The first test was just to copy the card image back from my fast RAID array onto the card.  The card matched its claims in this real world test too.  I did the same copy to the DD512 out of interest.  Again it seems the Blackmagic tests are close to my real world scenario.

I copied the SD card onto the DD512 whilst both modules were in the hub.  I then repeated this test with them connected into separate ports on the MacBook Air.  Both tests scored 89MBps which is as fast as the card can read.  There was certainly no evidence of using the hub causing any contention - at least not at this data rate.

The next tests are the kind of thing you need to do back at base, copying off onto your primary machine.  For this I tried copying onto the Air's SSD and the more recent one in the Mac Pro.  The Mac Pro managed the full speed predicted by Blackmagic, the Air couldn't quite keep up but is still pretty speedy.

Finally, it was the Lacie's turn.  It was only slightly slower than the DD512 copying from the SD because the HDD write speed and SD read speed are similar.  Back at base though and its going to take you over three times longer to off-load the footage.  A full DD512 should take about 25 minutes to off-load against 82 minutes for the same data on the Lacie.

In Summary

For my own personal use case, I think the DD512 is a very good fit.  I already have the hub and the modules are going to be much easier to travel with.  In the triangle of performance, price and capacity they seem to be a good middle ground.  I will probably pair it up with a tried and tested HDD like the Lacie for its first trip while it proves itself in the field.

You could argue that the SD card is the limiting factor and I am not really gaining much performance.  The SD cards I use are top end cards but there are always some faster at the bleeding edge of performance at a hefty premium,  This tends to trickle down with time.  In the video field, 4K and RAW are pushing manufacturers onto newer platforms like XQD and Cfast 2.  When you are chewing up cards at upwards of 60MBps the ability to backup these expensive cards and reuse them can be important.

The DD512 is also quick enough to be used as an edit drive being on a par with a dual drive RAID0 HDD for speed.  If you were really confident in your ability to keep track of drives you could take the hub and build a mini RAID setup with something like Softraid.  At some point I think USB3 would start to give you diminishing returns though!