Photography

On festivals

Kaijuu — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 20:19:00 GMT

I finally got a great opportunity for breaking in my new camera; the Streets Festival was held downtown last Friday, so I took off with my cameras in tow.
Cameras? Yes, since I wasn't sure whether I could get close to the stages (not for safety, but due to various people in my way), I decided to take the 24-105 AND the 70-200. But switching lenses is a bit tedious in a festival setting, so I put the 70-200 on the 40D and the 1Ds got the 24-105.

The drawback is that you have 6 kilo's of gear to lug around, but the benefits outweigh that little horde, as you are very flexible in deciding to go wide or zoom. :)
The 40D's crop factor adds to the focal length, essentially turning the 70-200 into a 112-320, while the 1Ds gives you the 24-105 the lens provides. This gives you loads to play around with, and enables you to switch from wide to closeup to wide again in mere seconds, without having to resort to full-range lenses that will not make you happy in nightly conditions.

An example of what I shot:

It's kind of noisy, since I had to resort to a high ISO value, but I like the shot very much.

Now to sort out the rest of them. :)

Cheers, K.

On Full Frame

Kaijuu — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 21:40:00 GMT

Today, I finally bit the bullet and graduated to FF with a Canon EOS 1Ds Mark II.

This is a professional camera, and a little more than I initially aimed for (I was kind of waiting for a 5D mkIII to come out), but a friend of mine wanted to sell his camera body in favour of the lighter 7D, and was willing to part with it for a very reasonable price. Add that to the fact that a new 5D would be considerably more expensive and I'm working on some things that will be revealed later, so this quickly became a now-or-never decision. :)

It's a beauty, it's quick, it's sturdy (wheaterproof even; you can take a shower with this beast), it's kind of heavy and you can cave somebody's head in with it; it'll keep on working.
You can even put two memory cards in and have them act as a RAID 1-set; in the event that one of the cards dies, the other will have the same data on it.

The batteries need some work though; one of the batteries I got with the camera is fairly good, the other two are on the brink of death. I'm going to see whether the refresh-setting on the charger will help, otherwise I'm going to try and refurbish them with some Eneloop replacement cells, which is considerably cheaper than a new Canon battery for this type of camera. :)

I'm as happy as a Danish guy in a tax-free liquor store.

Cheers, K.

On coffee vessels

Kaijuu — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 22:15:00 GMT

Today, Thomas pointed me to this lovely tumbler, modeled after one of Canon's flagship zoom lenses (I happen to own the regular 70-200 L IS USM; this one is the new and improved version).
A brilliant lens, and to make a coffee mug in its image is just totally cool; I'd like to have one if I can. :D

Unfortunately, this gadget is kind of hard to find; it's probably a junket gift or something like that.

Still, a guy can dream. ;)

Cheers, K.

On virgin snow

Kaijuu — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 18:00:00 GMT

Looks like winter isn't done just yet; woke up to a fine layer of snow this morning and it was hell-ass cold this week.
I went for some pictures the other day after a particularly heavy snowfall, which got me the following:

I like the first one the best; the bushes at the center of the roundabout are pristine white and untouched.

Cheers, K.

It snows

Kaijuu — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 21:00:00 GMT

And I have been taking pictures. :)
I had the day off, last Friday, and planned on going out and about on the Veluwe. Unfortunately, the UPS-guy who was scheduled to deliver something to my house turned out to be a no-show; he was supposed to turn up somewhere between 13:00 and 16:00, but when 16:00 came around, still no delivery.
By that time, the sun began to set and I didn't get much done, apart from a few shots.

Saturday was already planned for other stuff, so today, I finally got to go and have a shot at nature in pristine white.

The best shots are taken when the sun sets. While the pictures appear to get a little too dark, you may be able to get what you need using the right equipment and a little tinkering with the colour slides afterwards, as shot of snow tend to turn out blue.
A steady hand also helps, as will shooting in RAW. :)
Shooting RAW may help you get the lighting back which might be a little off in the JPEG-compromise by the camera.

Cheers, K.

J-popcon Saturday

Kaijuu — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 09:07:00 GMT

Because of our late arrival on Friday, Michel and I decided to not go to Valby until Saturday morning, after doing some touristy bits like visiting the Little Mermaid near Copenhagen's Osterport and getting some typically Danish groceries to take back with us.

Once we got our VIP-badges, Nils of the J-popcon Staff was able to meet with us and have a little chat on the way to the venue where the Cosplay Competition was going to be held.
Cosplay is a major part of the festival, not in the least because of their participation in the preliminaries of Japan's prestigious World Cosplay Summit; basically the world championship of cosplay. The next WCS will be held in Nagoya, August 2010.

The competition is being held in a separate venue, since Valby's Kulturhus isn't large enough to hold it in, not by a long shot.
We talked to some of the tech crew, and got to see some of the rehearsals, which were quite pleasant to the eye. ;)
As the afternoon progressed, everything came together and once the crowd was let in, the competition started.
I managed to take heaps of pictures, but had to resort to a high ISO-setting, due to the fact that flashing isn't allowed, and the lighting was less than perfect. Thats why you will see some noise here and there.

The jury consisted of four women who all had earned their marks in the cosplay scene. Nadia, a cosplay artist from Italy, 2008 candidate for WCS; Andra Tan, a cosplay artist from Singapore; and two WCS candidates from Germany (their names have slipped my mind, sorry).

Andrea Tan kicked everything off with a song. She's a really good singer.

This Full Metal Alchemist-act was really good:

As were these two ladies. They had their skit pre-recorded, but they had practised so well that it was hard to note the difference

This Wedding Peach-act was very good as well; lovely dresses:

And lovely battle outfits as well:

Metropolis:

Some things I didn't recognise, sorry:

Magic Knights Rayearth: Mokona ate all the chocolate and will be facing the consequences

Revolutionary Girl Utena also packed some heat:

A girl with big cigarettes:

This was an act played fully in Danish. Couldn't understand any of it (neither did the judges, so Morten of J-popcon Staff did live translations), but they were funny as hell, if the laughter and applause is anything to go by.
It got them a prize as well.

This act started late due to technical problems, but they didn't lose their concentration.

This Mononoke-act missed out on the trip to Japan by only a tiny bit. They got Best Cosplay instead.

Ranma 1/2

Quite a few acts.

Halloween version of Kingdom Hearts. They plucked the WCS candidacy away from the Mononoke act by only a tiny bit, according to the judges.

More acts.

This act was quite original; an argument between WWII-versions of Germany, Poland and Italy.

Final two acts:

Now, due to size issues, most of the pictures had to be cropped through HTML, so I invite you to the J-popcon Cosplay gallery for better versions.

Let me tell you; the acts were really amazing. I rarely see such dedicated amateur performers on a cosplay stage. Their English was splendid, their timing as right on the dot and the outfits were stunning.
A joy to watch.

That said, it was a long ride. Due to the large number of contestants, the fact that the jury needed over two hours to reach their verdict and the lengthy award ceremony added to the mix, the whole event lasted well over four hours, which is much too lengthy for my tastes, and I guess I wasn't the only one.
However, I wanted to see Trio de DS10, which would perform after the cosplayshow, so we had to stick around.

Trio de DS10 is a group of Japanese producers which make their music on nothing else but seven Nintendo DS-es with the Korg DS-10 cartridge.
Sadly, the venue was nearly empty when they started to play; I kind of felt sorry for them.
The three of them do, however, make a mean bit of house music, and we eventually had to go and eat something, otherwise we would have stuck around a bit longer.

We ran into our friend Kai back at the Kulturhus, so we invited him to a late dinner (it was close to 22:00 at that moment) and talked a bit.
After we helped him put together a video room for the next morning, we decided to go back to the hotel and get some rest.

Cheers, K.

Zoom Experience '09: I love my mobile phone

Kaijuu — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 18:44:00 GMT

I've been the proud owner of a Sharp 903SH camera phone since 2006. Since Anime 2006, to be exact, since I bought the phone during that weekend.
It's a bit bulky, but I don't mind that; the keys are nice to the touch and not overtly small; the screen is nice and big, and it takes pretty pictures.

And today, it landed me a digital photoframe. :)

I visited the Zoom Experience today; a photography fair organised by Zoom.nl magazine.
It wasn't much of an experience, though, as the usual kind of people at these venues showed up. The kind you can sum up with only three words; beergut, backpack and toe-stepper.
Many interesting subjects (like scantily clad and bodypainted women) were obscured by clouds of photographers, the catering was overpriced and sucked, and there weren't many special offers I was interested in, so that extra Canon Speedlite 580 EX-II flashgun I wanted will have to wait a little bit longer. :)

I got the photoframe in some sort of sweepstake; there was a guy from Hama, claiming that they had accessories for pretty much every modern gadget people had on them, and if you could produce something they couldn't cater, you'd get a digital photoframe.
So I whipped out my trusty 903SH.

They tried Sharp (not in the brand list) and Vodafone (that was in the brand list, but no 903SH in the model list), so they gave me the frame as a reward. :)

I also managed to pick up a few coloured backdrops (nice to have during Anime 2010 photoshoots), a reflector screen and an Expodisc at reasonable prices before I had enough of the crampt venue the event was held in and fled the scene with my prize and purchases.

Cheers, K.