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I don’t often do private photoshoots. I generally like just walking around and randomly asking for photos of cosplayers. However, I don’t mind and will usually take them on if someone contacts me. ACEN wasn’t a definite plan until very soon before the convention started, so I only really had two people contact me within the time that I knew I was going. 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.  Female Fujimoto From Ponyo Equipment for hallway photos this year:...

I’m thinking about what to bring to the “Otakon” Anime convention. As this is going to be a big trip for us, I wanted to bring my A-game. The K-5 body is still MIA, but I wanted to have two camera bodies available. I purchased a used *ist D camera body. That blurred coin in the image is a nickel, not a quarter! I just had the camera delivered a few days ago. Really great. The small size is amazing. Guess which lens I instantly put on it? Yep… the DA 40mm f2.8 Limited. The grip is better than the old *ist DS I had, but it could have been better with some extra room for finger tips. Surprising number of advanced controls and settings. Three custom setting saves. Timer button, green button, flash control button, af button… I started by turning off all of the extras such as noise reduction and instant preview. With my 16gb CF cards a single RAW writes in around 9 seconds based on one test. Once the image is written, I can press the review button and the image comes up instantly. While I...

I’ve been interested in insuring my camera equipment for a while now. Considering online retail value, my gear is getting up there in total cost. So much so that in my current situation I would not be able to replace much of it if something were to happen. I’m personally focused on just insuring my equipment as I don’t really do much that deals with professional liability like a photographer that owns a studio. My research so far brings me to a few companies: Zurich North America They are said to be one of the insurance companies that is open to photographers, but there site doesn’t say anything on the subject. Hill & Usher They seem to be one of the most open companies toward photographers as their site includes a lot of information on the subject. The policy they show on their site seems geared toward professionals with studios or people that derive a lot of their income from photography State Farm I have general insurance from them, so I thought they would be a good option. ...