Katsucon 19 (2013) photography

I attend Katsucon with a friend. This convention is located in National Harbor Maryland, which is at least a 13 hour drive from Northern Illinois. The main draw of this convention has been cosplay making it a good convention to visit. My decision to go was really abrupt, but it worked out pretty well.

Check out my convention report for more general talk about the convention!

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• Thursday
• Friday
• Saturday
• Sunday

National Harbor

Katsucon is a convention that is appealing to a person who likes photography. The event location is amazing with both great indoor and outdoor locations. The hotel has a large open area with a glass roof, so sunlight is amply available and the outdoor harbor location is also great for photos (as long as the weather hold up). Cosplay is especially big here, which means you have a large number of potential photo ops and should stay busy throughout the entire convention if that’s what you like doing. 

Nice weather on that day!

I spent the majority of my convention taking photos. I did buy a badge, but it didn’t get much use besides gaining access to all of the convention areas. Most of my photography consisted of impromptu hallway cosplay, but I did a few little photo sessions throughout the weekend.

Equipment wise, I stayed pretty light. This convention is a long ways away, and my hotel was off-site, so I wanted to be as mobile as possible.

• Nikon D600
• Nikon 28mm f1.8
• Nikon 85mm f1.8
• Nikon SB-800 flash (with a cloth diffuser and two color correction gels)

Super Sentai (Power Rangers). Wide angle gathering shot.

The gear worked pretty well, but I did have a few quirks. The balanced exposure mode of the flash/camera doesn’t work quite as I would hope in extremely dark situations. The camera tends to avoid high enough ISOs in that situation to get enough background exposure for my liking. The camera’s high contrast LCD exasperates the issue in the field because I can’t use it as a guide. To get around that while still keeping simplicity in mind, I was able to control ISO by hand and that appeared to help (very similar to what I use to do with my Pentax gear). 

If you are not unfamiliar with the balanced exposure setting on the flash, it works by combining camera settings and flash power, for the most part automatically, to equalize foreground and background exposure. In my case, I use the camera in aperture priority with that BL flash setting so that I’m free to only do basic power control as needed. You can control flash power on the flash and camera exposure compensation on the camera pretty easily. I usually had -2/3 to -1 flash power and -0.3 to -0.7 exposure compensation on the camera. In the night time, manually jumping up to ISO 800 helped get the background brighter. 

Sailor Moon cosplay. It’s hard to go wrong with and 85mm on full-frame.

After the switch to Nikon, I really had not had much time with the 85mm lens. This convention, I quickly gained a preference for that lens over the 28mm. Portrait style has always been appealing to me, and 85 is a great focal length for that. For a lot of the time I was using the 85mm over the 28mm, but I did switch off as needed. 

On Saturday it was so busy that I did spend a lot of time with the wide angle lens just based on necessity. Don’t get me wrong, I like using wide angle, but it isn’t the easiest focal length to use on people. I think in time, I will have a better grasp of using it to its fullest capability.

Magi cosplayer. Some of the action photos turned out.

My main failing for the convention was in action photos. Normally, I’m pretty good at it, but I didn’t have things configured quite right to get the best images. I had a few photo ops where some action was present. One I did alright at and the other I didn’t capture what I had wanted.

Magi cosplayers. Wide angle for a group photo with limited space.

Result wise, I’m pretty happy with how things turned out. You can’t go wrong with great prime lenses and a full-frame camera. I hovered around f2.8 a lot for this convention. It provided enough depth of field and nice sharpness for the majority of what I wanted. I did switch things up aperture wise for group shots and a few other situations.

Here is a copy of my "CVFTA" article I wrote as a companion to this. Adding it here just in case: 

Scott S. (aka. Robot, aka. Saihawkeye) and I took the long road trip from northern Illinois to National Harbor Maryland last week to attend Katsucon 19. It is a large convention that is kind of a little sister to the largest convention in the area called Otakon. I had attended Otakon in 2011, so I can at least provide a little perspective on how they compare. I'll say right now that I liked Katsucon more.

The main convention hotel.

I literally decided to attend around a week before the convention. Without a room, I ended up finding one of the lower cost options around 1.5 miles from the convention on Oxon Hill Road (Clarion Hotel to be specific). The hotel itself was pretty nice, but I still kept my gear with me at all times throughout the trip to be on the safe side. Ideally, I would have much preferred a hotel on-site, but it was good enough and didn't hinder me too much. There is a bus called the NH1 that travels to National Harbor and has stops near the hotel making it workable if you time things right (the bus hits each stop on a 30 minute interval). My days were from morning to late evening.

Katsucon registration price spans from $35 to $70 depending on when you get your badge. Given my last minute trip, I ended up paying the full on-site price of $70. That price is a bit over the top considering my home convention called Anime Central tops out at $60 and is a much larger convention. I can't really comment much on the level and quality of panels, but the schedule shows 24-hour programming, which is nice. Registration on Friday morning wasn't too bad. I ended up waiting a while, but nothing too extreme.

The best thing about Katsucon, at least to me, is the cosplay. If you are interested in cosplay and photograph, this a convention you should plan on attending. The location is amazing and the cosplay quality is high. National Harbor and the main hotel called the Gaylord have some really amazing backdrops that help make your photos even better. The one negative is that you should expect the best locations to be very busy and difficult to access at times. The other negative is that February on East coast can have large fluctuations in weather. Friday had great weather above 50 in the daytime, but Saturday and Sunday were cold and windy with a little snow at times. I did buy a badge, but ended up spending the majority of my time just walking around taking photos of cosplayers. The convention is so packed full that it isn't difficult to spend all day taking up photo opportunities if that floats your boat.

Weather on the harbor isn't really an issue in regard to getting nice light because the main hotel has a large open area with a gigantic glass top. This hotel alone is worth the trip. There are multiple levels with even a few little slanted roof buildings inside.

Inside the Gaylord (convention hotel)

I ended up with over 1000 uploaded photos this time, with from 1 to 5 photos per person. As you might know, I spend most of my time doing hallway cosplay photography. This time I took a few photos of friends and friends of friends quite a bit on Saturday.

Impromptu Magi Shoot

The convention went pretty smoothly, but there were a few quirks. On Friday, the popular gazebo area was blocked off due to a youth convention that was happening at the same time. There was said to be various problems with them over the weekend, but I was personally pretty oblivious to any issues besides the access restrictions. The Gazebo was eventually split into to parts, allowing us to get our photo ops, which was nice.

The popular Yaya Han at the Gazebo on Sunday.

Katsucon and Otakon have a different feel. I like Katsucon a bit better due to the location and 24 hour feel to the convention. I was off-site so I can't say from first hand experience, but if you manage to get a room at the Gaylord, you should be able to experience the convention all day or night without having to worry about the weather or your safety. As I also said, they have programming that spans the early hours meaning there should always be something to do. At Otakon, the place gets a bit unappealing after dark, so it isn't quite as fun in my opinion (though August daylight hours are longer, which is good for Otakon).

A great location for constant convention action.

I personally had a nice experience at the convention and would eventually like to return. The expense of big trips like this makes it difficult though. Overall, if you have an interest in large conventions and want to see some great cosplay or even just want to stay at a really amazing hotel for a weekend, Katsucon is worth checking out.