I have finally begun scanning all of my 35mm photos, mostly taken between 2 & 5 years ago, a feat which I had intended to do nearly 2 years ago. Click the image beneath for a larger (1920 wide) version.

This was sometime last month, but I didn’t have any time to go through the photos & upload before now. I went along to see one of the bands that I like sound check, turned out they had canceled & I somehow ended up staying for the entire night… These were all shot on the 50mm f1.7 without flash, making great use of the vertical grip – really transforms the handling of the camera. My Etymotic ER20 came in very handy too, as with them in I could stand right up against the speakers to the sides of the stage to get a good angle on the musicians without risking a splitting headache or ruining my hearing.

Played around with a few senstivities but stuck to 800 for most of them – anything higher wouldn’t necessarily get too noisy, but wouldn’t capture the lights in a very realistic fashion.

The depth of field at 1.7 is so small I ended up with loads like this – instrument is in focus, but his face isn’t!

Everybody loves silly motions to go with the song!

Pity the colour of the guitar never came out quite right.

Got really lucky for this one, the spotlight pointed at him just happenned to come on at the right moment. Love the way the microphone stand is leaning at the same angle too.

The mic stands were a big annoyance for the most part though, as they would consistently get in the way of the shots, but there’s not really much to be done about that! This two in particular are rubbish, but fun just to see them hung in the air like that.

The harp was beautiful, but it was impossible to get a good shot of the harpist because she was ‘behind’ the harp – I couldn’t have gotten a nice shot of her from the right without climbing up on the stage.

Tried to get the guitarist through the strings of the harp, but could’ve done with closing down the apeture or focussing on further away.

This was about the only time I actually saw her face above the thing!

The t-shirt read “sex drugs & sausage rolls”.

Not a very good one, but proof that there were bagpipes :)

Full on fiddle solo~

Another gratuitous harp shot to end.

Not massively happy with most of what I took, still got a lot to learn about the new body, particularly with the old manual lenses. Still, practise makes perfect right?

Not an in depth review I’m afraid, as like always these days I’m short on time. Collected her from the Post Office a few days ago but have been so busy I’ve only today had a chance to unbox her. Purchased as an impulse in HLJ’s Christmas sale with free EMS shipping. Very impressive overall, the fluid pose is beautiful though I’m slightly worried about leaning as she’s only attached to her base by a single metal prong in her left foot that doesn’t extend very far into her leg.

I need to invest in a better tripod, as both the cheapo ones I have now aren’t sturdy enough for my new camera, particularly in portrait mode (that’s why none of these photos are portrait!). Also need some sort of dedicated lighting for figure photography, but I’ll probably make that myself. Cut a hole in the bottom of an aluminium bowl, mount a bulb & attach silk across the top to diffuse the light or something.

These photos were shot with old manual Pentax lenses from my 35mm SLRs, a 50mm 1.7 & a 100mm f4 macro. With the crop/zoom of the APS-C sized sensor in the K20D, those work out as 75mm & 150mm lenses respectively, which are great for figure photography – with the 100mm in particular though it feels a little weird taking such close up photos from several meters away!

I should be collecting Alter’s 1/7 Fate T Harlaown Shin Sonic Form from the Post Office on Tuesday, which is the one I’ve been waiting for since the summer (originally meant to be released at the end of August I think, she only actually shipped at the end of November!). I’ll try to upload a few quick photos when she arrives, but hopefully I’ll have more time later on once I’ve gotten a better tripod & lighting to take some decent photos of all sorts of figures.

(Expect a proper update about my recently aquired new equipment sometime soon, but want to get this & a few others out the way first otherwise I’ll never get them done!)

Went along to Musfund’s Sunday night event last week, Handmade Music, with the Pentax K20D+D-BG2 & the 50mm f1.7 M. The vertical grip makes portrait shots an awful lot easier, but the manual focusing was a bit hit & miss. Much harder to focus without a split image & because I was shooting wide open at f1.7 with very shallow depth of field I ended up with a lot of blurry shots as the performers moved back & forth.

Most of these were shot with a sensitivity of 800, but I played about a bit & the one beneath was done at 3200 & then put through Noise Ninja. Didn’t really make much of a difference as the focus was still out, but it altered the white balance somewhat.

A bit easier to focus when they were sitting down & not stepping back from the microphone all the time!

Framed this completely wrong with the lighting & the focus assist got confused, lockeding on to the piano in the foreground rather than the performer, but it would be rude to put up a picutre of all the others & omit this guy!

Still getting used to this whole white balance thing, never had that to tweak with film!