PhotographyBanzai.com

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...

EDIT: I suggest not going to this convention or other ones run by that company. Search Google for something like "animecons Kopf convention police report" .  This weekend a friend and I went to a first-run convention called “Anime Midwest.” It’s one of many small conventions that a group of people have been running around this area for the last few months. It has a very different feel than something like Anime Central (23,000 guests this year). With anime convention, more is better in my book. Some highlight images:  On Friday and Saturday I was using the K-7 with the 14mm f2.8 lens. I had used the 14mm f2.8 at AMKE this year, but without a flash like this time. My goal was to make images with light falloff as an alternative to small depth of field photography (I still ended up adding some fill light in post processing to some images). Lately I’ve been having focus issues with the K-7, so I was suffering from that a bit even with the wide angle lens.  This was probably...

I spent the weekend with a friend at Soycon taking photos. This is dubbed a “cosplay gathering” where a large group of people meetup for events and photography.  Edit: I removed the old video along with various similar videos. All of those were compiled into one video and placed on my Cosplay/crafting channel instead of the “Photography Banzai” one.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xH8CkEjKDTA A few highlight images: From a photography standpoint I did have a few issues. My newer camera, the K-5, is being fixed (It looks like I feel compelled to mention that in every single posting until I get it back…), so I had to use the older K-7.  That meant less dynamic range, poor high ISO, and fewer megapixels. For whatever reason the camera seems to back-focus at around 10 feet away from my subject, which isn’t something I remember happening in the past. I noticed a hint of it with the 55mm f1.4 when I looked at those model shots I took a few days ago, but on Saturday when I ...

A friend and I has a small model shoot on Thursday. Our goals were to generate some useful example images for a basic photography panel we will be running at a convention soon. While I’m not sure the shoot was successful from that aspect, I think I did get some nice images. I was using the K-7 camera body, the DA* 55mm f1.4 lens, a Sigma 530DG Super flash, and a custom bracket. Used the camera primarily in Av, but I also controlled the ISO along with the aperture. 

As I’m a believer in going to the source to make sure things go well, I just sent a general inquiry email to Ricoh Japan . For people who are actually good at Japanese, pardon my low quality letter. I think it good enough to get my point across though. If you see odd squares and such below in my letter to Ricoh, that means your computer can’t display Japanese because the proper fonts and/or system data isn’t installed. はじめまして、　スコットです。 メッセージはアメリカから。　　RICOHは日本の会社です、そして日本語を書きました。　少しが分かります。　すみません。　　私は頑張ります。 This message is from America. Ricoh is a Japanese company, so I wanted to write in Japanese. I only understand a little. Excuse me. I’ll keep trying. RICOHのPENTAX買収のニュースを見ました。　　良いニュースですね！　　RICOHは古いKーMOUNTレンズを作りました。　　GRーDIGITALも良いカメラ見たいと思います。 I saw Ricoh’s pentax acquisition news. It’s good news isn’t it! Ricoh made old K-mount lenses. The GR-Digital is also a nice camera I think. 私はPENTAXユーザーです。　「*IST　DS」カメラから。　（K１０D、Kー７、Kー５も）。　　そして、ペンタッ...

Pentax will be part of Ricoh by October… Huh? While not unexpected, it is a little abrupt. Ritax? Pencoh? Nope… Here is Ricoh’s full press release in PDF format. “On completion of the Acquisition, Ricoh will begin to use the PENTAX brand name for some of its digital camera products, and HOYA will continue to use the PENTAX brand name for their endoscopes and other products. Furthermore, with the Acquisition, both companies will cooperate with each other to increase the value of the PENTAX brand.” So it looks like they will use the Pentax name at least. I’ll assume that means the 35mm, 645D, and Q-mount will stay Pentax. The Ricoh release is pretty positive from my point of view (unlike the useless Hoya one). It sounds like they respect Pentax’s history and want to really improve and grow the interchangeable systems. Maybe that will mean full-frame Pentax in the future and some interesting glass? It’s also interesting how much they men...