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| Revy from Black Lagoon |
The reason I don’t do private shoots very often? I don’t like carrying around a ton of equipment. It’s usually expected that a private shoot should be more involved and result in images that are something more than the average convention picture. That means more elaborate gear than I normally use. This time I kind of took the middle road and brought just enough to get more variation to the private shoot photos compared to the hallway cosplay photos I normally take. The negative was that I carried around more than I needed 90% of the time.
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| Female Fujimoto From Ponyo |
Equipment for hallway photos this year:
Pentax K-5, 31mm f1.8 lens, and Sigma flash.
Private shoots:
The K-5, K-7, 85mm lens, 14mm lens, 31mm lens, Sigma flash.
…A tripod and wireless flash triggers were also brought, but I ended up not using them. The tripod never left my car. Yeah, that’s how extreme I am about not wanting to carry around more than I need.
I also take photos at gatherings and events when photography is allowed. Most often I use an 85mm lens at gatherings because there is usually a lot of people and not much space near the people posing. For events like fashions shows, I’ll use the 85mm or a standard zoom lens like the 50-200mm I had brought with me.
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| Taken with the 85mm f1.4 lens. |
With all of that I ended up having to use my backpack for the entire convention. I went cheap this year, which meant my room was a mile away from the main convention area. Not using a backpack just wasn’t feasible. I did try to lighten up my bag a bit by removing some of the padding at least. It worked out pretty well.
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| Taken with the 14mm f2.8 lens. |
I’d actually like doing some more detailed photoshoots in my immediate area, but this area is sorely lacking in cosplayers!