PhotographyBanzai.com

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:...

Besides private photoshoots, I just finished going through the pictures I took on Friday for the Sixh.OPERA event. This was an event where the Japanese designer named “Sixh” had a fashion show that was also mixed with his own live band music. It’s an interesting combination. Here are a few photos from the show: Equipment wise I was using the Pentax K-5 and FA* 85mm f1.4 lens. EXIF is visible in the gallery link above, but basically I was shooting around f2 with an ISO of 800. I tweaked the photos a bit in Adobe Camera RAW for color and contrast. No noise reduction was performed. 

I recently went to ACEN 2012. This is my 6th ACEN I’ve attended (first in 2003, skipped 2008-09). If you are unfamiliar with these events, they are Japanese Anime/culture events. They also include other topics like sci-fi media, comics, video games, Internet spawned forms of media, and costuming. I took quite a few photos, but it will take me a while to go through them (potentially a few weeks as I’ve been doing some contract work lately). Check back here for updates. Thanks!  Here are a few photos from Friday: One of my photoshoots. She was cosplaying Revy from Black Lagoon. A nice Japanese girl from the Angelic Pretty company. It was fun trying to throw a few poorly thought out phrases in Japanese to her. She tried to get me to go to their fashion show. I went and it turned out they didn’t allow photography. There was a second fashion show after the Angelic Pretty one which I assumed also meant no photography, so I didn’t go. It turns out I was wrong when a fellow photog...

In my previous post I showed a few photos I had taken downtown after a photographer meetup. They were a few quick snapshots. A few days after that I went back downtown with a friend in the late night for a walk around the most interesting areas.  A few highlight images:  I was using the Pentax K-5 and DA 14mm f2.8 lens handheld. Setting wise I was in program or aperture priority most of the time around maximum aperture of f2.8 with a negative exposure compensation of around 0.3 to -1.7. 

I went to a photographer gathering today. The main goal was to talk about potential photo workshops, and also to just meet each other. On my way back to my car, I took a few downtown city shots. 

I noticed on PentaxForums about a unilateral price scheme in the USA. This pricing scheme just increased the price of many Pentax lenses, most especially the DA* line. No lenses went down in price. Pentax is certainly unique. My opinion would be… What on Earth could Pentax USA/Ricoh be thinking? I wouldn’t normally post about the frequent fluctuating cost of camera equipment, but when a lens like the DA* 60-250mm goes up around $800 in day, there is a big issue. Even if they plan to eventually set the prices to something more reasonable, why damage your customer relationship by allowing retailers to set their price at full retail that is significantly more than the cost the day earlier? Most Pentax lenses are designed for the smaller APS-C imaging sensors, yet with these increases, they are not even competitive with full-frame lenses from someone like Canon. A good example of that would be the DA* 16-50mm, now at $1499. The Full-frame Canon 24-70mm is even $1400, so why would som...

I’ve been spending a lot of time on my Youtube channel. It’s a great way to put photography information out there that appeals to people who prefer video over reading articles like I have on this site. I really enjoy video, so it’s a great match for various reasons.  Photo set reviews on YouTube. My most recent videos are about photo excursions I’ve been going on: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL73E46A6CCCA62A9C   Here is the most recently of that playlist (night time Lightsaber trails and Peace Plaza HDR): I also have a bunch of other playlists: Camera setting and control Photography Learning Series Videos The rest can be seen here . Please let me know if you have any suggestions or things you would like me to cover in future videos.

My family and I decided to attend an event Mitt Romney was hosting in Rockford, Illinois at the Machine Shed Restaurant. I took my camera along and tried to get a few decent photographs. This isn’t a political blog, I consider myself someone who is not fond of the 2-party system and not especially fond of either party’s policies. I’d like to see a lot more cooperation and understanding between people. My photo results were not that positive, but it’s good to get some practice in a situation like this regardless of the result. I shoot with fixed focal length lenses most of the time, which makes things like this a big challenge. For this event I brought along the Pentax K-5 and 31mm f1.8 lens. Inside the restaurant it was dark with strong light flooding in through the windows. Without the use of flash, there isn’t a set way to counteract the large difference in light intensity. In addition to the difference, there is the issue of lens flare, which the 31mm suffers quite a bit from. This...

I talk about camera flash communication methods (TTL vs E-TTL i-TTL p-TTL) as well as thyristor sensor based auto mode.  Flash talk Diagram for TTL and pre-flash based TTL methods: TTL and more advanced methods. Standard TTL: This was the original method of flash power control. It happens as the film/sensor is being exposed to light. There is a dedicated sensor near the film that monitors the reflected light off of the film/sensor and eventually tells the flash to “quench” (stop) outputting light. The nice thing about TTL is that it works with any lens and was generally pretty reliable. p-TTL, E-TTL, i-TTL, and similar systems that use pre-flash: This is the newer method that all of the camera manufacturers use now. The flash sends out a pre-flash burst of light (or multiple bursts) and records the results with the standard light meter built into the camera. So this all happens even before the mirror has been flipped up and of course before the sensor Thyristor auto flash: Some flash u...

A friend wanted to try out his new Sony NEX-5N camera, so we went out today to take some photos. I decided to go light and use the K-5 with FA 31mm f1.8 lens. That lens is one of the best lenses for most situations because the focal length equates to around 46mm on APS-C. EDIT: I'm keeping this article live for the sake of history, but know that walking around train tracks is a very bad and dangerous idea. Especially if you are preoccupied with something like photography.  Graffiti covered structure Don't do what we did, it's dumb and dangerous. A bad idea to take a photo like this.