Header picture was my contribution for the WorldMovement. Was intending to take this shot at the moment on a wide green open field that morning but the sky was seriously overcast. So I had to take the shot at home. The Sign is wrong btw ^^
Be sure to catch comrade Wisefreeman’s awesome contribution for the movement!
Adorable and everyone’s favourite petit Kyouka displays some bad hygiene by digging her nose. I dig my nose sometimes too, but when no one is watching of course. However, I only do that when it’s REALLY REALLY itchy.
Drossel tries to draw out some magical power from a Volk’s Feito stand. Feito stand graciously donated by Yuki-to when he came over during the weekend with Scorch and MavericK for a photoshoot. Results of his awesome Feito shoot available at his Figure.fm post.
Nothing much to say about this pose. Konata steals cake.
Drossel’s helm is petit compatible too.
A testament to Drossel’s great balance. Will attempts to get Haruhi cheerleading ver. just to accomplish a better picture in the near figure ^^
Drossel doing amazing stuff as usual.
These 3 pictures were taken during a lunch meetup with some other fellow figure collecting comrades at a pizza place.
This picture is the first primed picture. Gorgeous sharpness. Can you see it? Konata is giving Kureha a lecture but she isn’t listening, much like what I do ^^
Nothing really impressive this week. Was doing other full post figure shoots and stories. Love the Mirim and Drossel photoshoot a few posts back. Will be doing a few more figure shots over the week end with some legacy figures which had really bad pictures. School is starting next week and the rate of posts will not be so frenzied anymore!
Also some people seem to be asking if I just pluck out the pictures off my camera and post them. I only do that for around 0.05% of my pictures. I usually increase the vibrancy and saturation of almost all the pictures, do cropping if the subjects are off focus and brightness adjustment via RAW editor. Give vignetting, lomography or sepia effects for overexposed pictures, some skills which I picked up through reading and trial and error experimentation. Probably do a post on what I do one day, but to me different types of pictures need different types of post processing, as I explained to comrade Scorch and Yuki the other day.
Whist these post processing does make your pictures look a little better and interesting, picture composition is probably the most important thing and you can’t do that on the computer!
The new lens looks great ^^. I noticed you liked to pump up the saturation. Konata’s hair looks like glowing neon lights sometimes but it all looks good in the end
Keep up the good work.
Haha, yeah, I love to pump it up. Dull pictures look so boring!
Primeeeeeee lennnnssseessss!!! do wana try it…. could i? =3
Great photos as always! Thank you so much for looking at and commenting on my new blog earlier. I’m a big fan of yours, even though I just started reading. I saw a link on tomopop and now I visit all the time
I really do want a prime lens now, looks fun. O_O
I have never done post processing until my latest post.. Haven’t touched PS since decades!
awesome photos, loving the quality of the new lens. i dont have a good cam but i do notice my pictures are always dull for many reasons >_< might try to liven them up in PS next time… sure must be a lot of work!
Oh it really isn’t any work! Don’t be daunted. It’s just moving a slider ^^
Thank you for the mention :3
Yep, day pics are easier to process, I find night shots a bit trickier to process ^^;
Night shoots area not trickier actually, it’s all the same. Probably do a little more work on the white balance for me.
yep white balance is trickier and at some points vibrancy and saturation not jus simply increase
Always amazed with what you manage to get Drossel to do. My Drossel just sits looking angrily at me on my desk because I haven’t paid as much attention to her as she expects.
I wish I could manage to get my pictures as sharp as yours. Using an old Nikon D100 w/ Nikon 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5 AF-S DX D70 kit lens. I have an f/1.8 50mm prime as well, but I always want to get closer to the figure than the lens will allow. I think the biggest issue with sharpness for me these days is my D100s starting to mess up focus too often, claims to be focused but when I check the picture it’s not
Anyway! Good work as always Kodomut!
-Aka
I have to use Manual Focus for my 50mm ^^. You should try it. Sometimes, being off focus makes a very interesting picture.
As for the issue of wanting to go close with a prime, I was un-used to it at first too, but the prime captures so much details that you can just crop the image to your liking!
I guess I’ve just always thought that cropping was a bad thing(tm). Through various readings on the internets I was told that you should always try and take the picture in the camera how you want it to look, instead of relying on processing later.
But I think in cases like these it just makes more sense to crop than to try and get as close as possible. I’ve even used smaller apertures to try and get more DOF to make up for the more mild issues with focus. But that also seems to change colours a bit sometimes, allowing more of an off colour to appear I guess.
I’ll give Manual Focus a try more often now I guess. I can never really tell if I’m in focus though… though I do often forget about that DOF preview button on the front of my camera, which would help sometimes.
Of course you want to do as little post processing as possible, but you have to know that taking outdoor shots isn’t smooth sailing most of the time ^^
As much as I want to frame my picture properly through the viewfinder most of the time, figures always are naughty and tend to fall! Which is why I have to shot quickly most of the time.
I find myself doing more cropping with my new lens though because nen-puchis are so small and the prime lens has a ~30cm minimum distance!
Yeah, my lenses are both around the 30 cm min distance as well. Which is why I use the 18-70 mostly due to that extra little bit of focal length.
Ah, and here I thought you were awesome at balancing them all, but you just cheat and take the picture before they fall! The illusion is ruined!
@Aka:
Haha, some balancing has to be done first but strong winds will blow then down eventually ^^
Tried out using just my prime and manual focus, I don’t think I’m gonna go back to auto-focus unless I need it. Takes a little longer, but so far I’m really happy with my results. Hopefully I’ve not spoken too soon though as I’m still processing them heh.
I tried out some balancing of my own today, I got some fun balancing acts in, but the one I really wanted was just too hard to get. I shake far too much and it’s hard to balance 3 items high…
Anyway, thanks for the tips kodomut,
Aka
Balancing 3 items? Sounds tough, you’ll probably need a solid base first. I had a quite a tough time balancing Dross and Yutaka.
Anyway, yes, Manual may take a little more work and getting used too, but the results are so worth it ^_~