Another version of Hatsune Miku by Angie.
I was invited by Linkin to do another photoshoot of Hatsune Miku cosplay by our lovely Angie. Other photographers taking part that day were Valho and Kuzuryu.
There was a slight change of plan as the guards at the Curve were efficient enough to get rid of us after we started on first pose, with Clow`s help we end up doing the photoshoot at Fullhouse Cafe in Petaling Jaya  and the commercial area near it.
I need to thank Linkin for inviting me, Angie for sacrificing her precious assignment rush time for the session and also to Clow for the road guide.

As always I will spam you with camera jargons but for this time I put the gallery first for those who read this just for the moe lol. Technical notes will continue after the gallery :P

[View with PicLens]

 

Angie was cute. She was soo cheerful and tend to play with a lot with props. She almost killed me behind my viewfinder with all her moe stuff lol :P

As always I was mixing the usage of my Nikkor 50mm and my Tamron 17-50mm, but in the end I end up choosing all the shots taken between the 17-20mm range. Typically this wide angle is used for landscape but using it for portraiture will give you different perspective and a lot of opportunities to make creative compositions. Breaking the rule of thirds, I put Angie on dead center of my frame on some of my shots whenever I felt that the background will lead the viewer to the center giving more impact to it. I also include a lot of background on this set instead of blurring them because the location got a lot of props inside and relating them to my subject looks better rather than seperating them apart. Another interesting stuff I found when using a wide angle for portraiture is you get a very dramatic effect when you are shooting either low or high. Shooting low will give a lot of background and if done with care you can change those surrounding into lines that will lead to your subject. Looking down at a cosplayer from a wide angle will make them smaller and rounder which will add extra cuteness to their personality. I also included some of the close-up with very tight framing which I like to do when I am shooting with my 50mm.

During post processing, it was quite a big let down because when I browse though them in Lightroom most of my RAW were underexposed and out of focus. I am not sure if the DOF were too shallow or the tamron autofocosing was a bit off but what I am sure right now I need to be more careful on next photoshoot ( now only I realized why D300 offers 51 focus points :P). Because I still hate the internal flash fill that looks very artificial I end up (again) depending on high ISO which resulting a lot of noise. With a lot of underexposed and noisy raws I had no choice to pump up the exposure and do noise reduction to maximum for most of photos resulting them to end up very soft and for the slightly OOF pics they looks bit hideous if you are those pixel peepers. Another tough lesson learned but this might be a good example for those beginners in photography to show that it is important to spend some money on extra SD cards and shoot your photos in RAW. Not to suggest that you can get loose on doing it right on camera but sometimes having chance to rescue some precious photos is better than dumping them inside your HDD forever.

I think that`s all I can write for this set. Thank you for reading and you can browse more photos from this photoshoot by other photographers by following links below.

My own flash gallery (got more pictures than this post gallery)
http://kusakabemisao.com/pics2/angie_miku/
My flickr set
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kusakabemisao/sets/72157622635686195/with/4086129862/

Linkin`s blog post
http://wakarimasenlol.com/2009/11/12/hatsune-miku-cosplay-gallery-by-angie/3709

Valho`s blog post
http://www.valiantho.com/archives/935
Valho`s flickr set
http://www.flickr.com/photos/toysworkz/sets/72157622644739079/

Kuzuryu`s blog post
http://kuzuryu.wordpress.com/2009/11/09/夢であるように　－　初音ミク/
Kuzuryu`s flickr set
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kuzuryu/sets/72157622643658159/

Also do check out Angie`s CURE page
http://en.curecos.com/profile/?ch=169741