I was able to attend c2e2 (Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo) on 4/7/2018 thanks to my friend Kale. My two other friends Nick and Roger also went. It’s around a two hour drive, so carpooling is a great help as I’m not a big fan of driving around downtown Chicago alone.
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| Me at c2e2 (thanks to a friend for taking the photo) |
That gave me the opportunity to do some convention and cosplay photography. In this case I went with as little equipment as possible so that I wasn’t bogged down. Thanks to Roger also taking photos and being enthusiastic about asking cosplayers for pictures, a lot of the effort I have to usually put in was handled!
A few highlight images from the convention:
I ended up only bringing the Fujifilm X100F camera. No lighting or modifiers (see the linked Youtube video for details on that). That basically meant being at the mercy of the convention hall’s lighting. I had gone there in 2011 and knew about the carpets, but I didn’t expect it to be as bad this year. I was right, but still off on the lighting quality by a fair margin. Even the areas without carpet had a pretty strong yellow color cast.
The X100F does have a built-in flash, but I decided against using it. The enjoyment of taking things easy turns into time spent in post processing in an attempt to minimize the issues.
Light sources on the ceiling had a mixture of what looked like ~3000k and ~5000k color temperatures, resulting in a bright yellow. Add to that the red carpet that reflects up into people and nothing for clean bounce to minimize the carpet reflection… it’s less than ideal. All that said, I think the photos turned out alright after editing. I shot in what amounts to aperture priority with a f2.8 aperture most of the time.
The camera’s minimum shutter speed was 1/60th, which is above the classic focal length vs. shutter speed suggestion (eg. The X100F’s 23mm lens with an APS-C sensor means a 35mm equivalent focal length at 1/35th second or faster to avoid blur). I didn’t have any real issues with auto-focus and 1/60th shutter speed besides a small few that were unacceptably blurry due to my technique more than anything. The auto-focus was quick and consistent.
I finished a follow up video on the convention you can watch here.
It was nice seeing friends and the various cosplayers at c2e2. I should be at Anime Central for a day or two in May, but no other plans outside of that.