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My Wish List & Pre-orders! |
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Overseas Otaku Buying Tips |
Making
online purchases/pre-orders especially for Jpop
CDs and anime/game PVC figures have always been
the best option for me (and many otakus who do
not live in Japan). Listed below are my wish list,
preorders and purchases from these reputable online
companies. Your purchase via these links supports
this site :)
• YesAsia
(Bought my Jpop CD/DVD here)
• J-list
(many 'weird' Japanese stuff)
• HobbySearch
(Comprehensive inventory
but no free shipping
and no shipping cost
provided upon placing
an order )
• HLJ
(very good alternative to HobbySearch)
• E2046
(many figures & rules in resin
kit)
• Play-Asia
(My #1 online shop)
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About This Blog: |
Shin-Otaku
is a blog site belongs to the author, Divine Fang
who is a super otaku wannabe. Here he shares his
thoughts just about anything related to otaku
in this very portal -figurines, anime, games,
computing, jpop, Japan e.t.c. As of time of writing,
he is especially obsessed with:
• Ayumi Hamasaki (since 2000)
• Tekken
6 (hard-core player)
• Suzumiya
Haruhi's figures (all
his figures)
• Learning
Japanese
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 | Figure Photoshoot Improvement
Posted: January 21st, 2009 12:14 pm (Wed) by Divine Fang
Last Edited: February 7th, 2009 12:46 am (Sat) Views: 2887 [Permalink]
Tag: Figure, Photography, Canon, EOS 450D, Macro Lens | | | Improving on figurine photoshoot have always been something I wanted to do in year 2009 and these are my precious figurines used as today's subjects. With better lighting, the results turn out to be better than all the photos I took before this entry but they were still quite heavily Photoshop'ed -I moved the Level slider quite a lot to achieve pure white background-. Camera: Canon EOS 450D DSLR
Lens: Canon Lens EF 50mm f/1.8 II (MF used, the lens AF is not accurate!)
Original EXIF Info: Manual Exposure Program, 1/6 sec, F11, ISO100, 50mm, Flash did not fire. While I'm quite happy with the current lighting condition, I couldn't not seem to improve on the image sharpness. With 50mm as my maximum focal length, overall sharpness became worse when I slowed (or stopped) my lens down to F20 as I had to move closer to my figurine for close-up shots. That has led me to consider investing on a macro lens for better close-up shots, particularly the Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Lens but I do not know if the sharpness will improve significantly -Google doesn't seem to return any excellent reference in this regards :(-.
| | | Above: Beat Angel Escalayer |
| | | Above: Beat Blades Haruka |
Update 2009-01-24: I moved my T5 tubes further and wrapped them with white papers and I got better results. Overall contrast has been greatly reduced as shown below:
| |  Read or post comment (12 Otaku comments)  | nanu
(USA)
Posted January 21st, 2009 2:15 pm (Wed) | These look good. It seems the source of light is very important—are you using high output daylight-temperature bulbs now?
|   | jusuchin85
(Penang, Malaysia)
Posted January 21st, 2009 8:21 pm (Wed) | I heard that macro lens improve figures photography by a milestone (although I have yet to try that). I asked Danny once what did he use for his figure-shoots, and he told me that by using a macro lens, you can reduce the grainy effects a lot.
Also, lighting plays a big part in these kind of shoots. I regreted using my room's lights for photography so now I'm keeping a budget on getting a couple of lamps so I can take shoots in a dark room. The lighting in your photographs has improved, but maybe you can play with different backgrounds with your new setup? Since the white background gives off kinda a bland outcome... >.<
Do you use a tripod, by the way? Since my photos ended up being -2secs shutter speed, I have to use a timer of 10 seconds and a tripod so that the images come up good...
Sorry for the *extremely* long comment! ^^
|  | ron~
(Australia, Melbourne)
Posted January 21st, 2009 8:38 pm (Wed) | hmm the photos still look unnatural, maybe the contrast.
you definitely need to play around with the lighting more. For sharpness, you may need to get macro lens :).
normal lens cant do this kind of photo http://www.otadesho.com/files/shuraki/02/w_y_01.jpg
|  | Dvine Fang
(Kuala Lumpur, MY)
Posted January 22nd, 2009 4:18 am (Thu) | @ nanu,
Source of light is crucial when it comes to figure photography! I was using 4 T5 Tubes for the above shots :)
@ jusuchin85,
Yes, another problem that I still have now is the grainy product. That might just be another good reason to get a macro lens. You can give T5 tubes a shot. They are damn cheap! As for now, white bg comes first, fancy setup will be last.
Of course, I did use a tripod :)
Loooong comments welcome!
@ ron~,
Yeah, still unnatural. I guess I placed my lamps too close to my figure. Will work more on lighting.
I just took my very own Shuraki Mei's photo and the difference was very significant when it comes to sharpness. Mine looked so bad when compared with yours!
|  | Rin
(Toronto)
Posted January 22nd, 2009 7:03 am (Thu) | WOW!!!!!!
Just amazing quality of photos!!!!!
I'll be expecting awesome photos from you!!!!!!
I'm still messing with the settings but I hope I get better soon...
| | Dvine Fang
(Kuala Lumpur, MY)
Posted January 23rd, 2009 9:07 am (Fri) | @ Rin,
ARIGATOU! Me too, it's all about lighting. I am going to diffuse my tubes with white paper and see how thing turn out (^_^)! Ganbarimasho!
|  | meronpan
(ca, usa)
Posted January 25th, 2009 6:28 pm (Sun) | ooo more inspiration for me ^^ your shots are way above and beyond anything i'm doing so it's hard for me to make any constructive criticism/insightful comments ^^;; as such, just leave it at, 'looks spectacular!' ^_^
i definitely need to give a lot more love to my lighting situation...
| | Dvine Fang
(Kuala Lumpur, MY)
Posted January 26th, 2009 12:57 am (Mon) | @ meronpan,
Thanks (^_^)!
|  | Leonia
(France)
Posted April 5th, 2009 8:06 am (Sun) | Melissa, Yumil, Haruka and Char are my preferred on this shooting. Great job!
| | Divine Fang
(Kuala Lumpur, MY)
Posted April 5th, 2009 8:46 am (Sun) | Leonia,
Thanks! I remember very well that I was having difficulties with Char. Getting light onto her face was quite a challenge.
|  | Tim
(California)
Posted January 23rd, 2010 9:13 pm (Sat) | Macro Lenses will make the photography 10,000 times better. This is speaking from one who has been shooting macro for about 2 years now. You will absolutely want to get a tripod though- especially if your camera/lens combo won't have shake reduction technology (I'm not familiar with Canon products- I shoot with Pentax gear for some weird reason!.
Here's my Photography Blog for reference (though no anime figure shots are posted there- I've done a few shoots myself): www.chayacitra.com
BTW though- your lighting IS fantastic! This is one aspect that I'm terrible at- what are you using to get the even lighting that you've so masterfully achieved. There are no shadows anywhere and I love that!
| | Divine Fang
(Kuala Lumpur, MY)
Posted February 10th, 2010 3:15 am (Wed) | @ Tim,
Many have suggested a macro lens for shooting figurine but I am just not ready to invest on one yet. I am quite happy with the kit lens (18-55mm) now. My next upgrade would most likely be the walk-around super-zoom lens 18-200mm.
WOW! You have breath-taking photos there!
I did not purposely eliminate the shadows there, it just turned out to be almost shadowless with my lighting setup -just some cheapo T5 tubes-.
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