Joe Mcnally
Joe explains why his kit bag has two permanent new mirrorless residents – and all that jazz
Joe uses ambient light and Speedlites to capture strikingly intimate portraits of a passionate jazz musician
There’s a lot of emotion out there in the photographic reaches of the internet. Some of it warranted, I’m sure, and some of it just reconfirming to me that photographers can be fascinating and strange creatures indeed.
Lots of feverish prose out there about mirrorless, or no mirrorless, or savvy cameras with life-altering capacities, or the merits of fast glass and debates about the shape of particular pixels.
To me, when I open my camera bag on location, it’s like opening a tool box, and it is perhaps akin to an old-school doctor on a house call; opening their traditional leather bag, and peering inside, hoping to find the right remedy. All while reassuring the prospective client/patient, in the best avuncular fashion I can manage, that everything will be okay. The photographer is here! My toolbox is pretty simple… I’ve got a few DSLRS, maybe three or four, depending on the extent of the job. A variety of lenses, and, most of the time, not a very exotic collection thereof.
And now, after three months of shooting with a mirrorless camera, I can say that a permanent addition to the bag is the Z7. I bought one and have been banging on it hard, and now, convinced of its worth, I ordered a Z6; a mirrorless will now always be in the bag. It gives me another wrinkle, another angle of attack.
I just worked with The Atlantic to produce a small story about a Manhattan-based jazz saxophonist, Les Goodson. He plays for cash out on 5th Avenue, and also every Wednesday night at The Paris Blues Club in Harlem, which is his neighbourhood. I shot it using available light, high ISO, with Speedlights, with big flash, in dim conditions, handheld, with the native glass and my F mount glass and the FTZ adapter, and, you know, it’s a good tool.
The lightness and unobtrusive hand-hold quality of it are intriguing to me. Great resolution and in-camera body stabilization are also excellent. Z-series glass is super-sharp, and there is the promise of more to come. The ‘i’ button gives me a heads-up display in the EVF, which enables me to make significant changes in approach while never taking my eye away from my subject. The image review factor in the EVF is a gift on a sunny day.
Many thanks to Les, first off, who let me into his life, and to the editors at The Atlantic. It was fun, and this new mirrorless expedition to me is simply another turn of the pages in the ongoing adventure book of being a visual communicator. It gets better and better, not to be confused with getting easier – that won’t happen. But the gear, and the options, and the machinery of doing this is nothing short of remarkable.
And that, dear reader, is as emotional as I’m gonna get.