Yeah, that song always pops into my head when I see these people.
This year's PCC somehow didn't seem as lively as last year's. The new 2-day format may have something to do with it, but other possible factors could be lack of promotion, desensitization on my part, or simply missing out on every event and cosplayer before 4:30PM due to oversleeping.
Or maybe cosplay, like disco, is already past its prime.
Keeping in mind the lessons picked up from last year, I went through the day with my camera on shutter priority mode, somewhere in the range of 1/60s to 1/30s. ISO was set to AUTO with the levels often hitting the user-specified upper limit of 1600. Image noise is annoying for the obsessive-compulsive, but that's a small price to pay for avoiding unwanted motion blur.
After the wide-angle shots of the venue, the Lensbabies stayed inside the bag for the rest of the day. Besides the effect being unfavorable for cosplay, using a manual focus lens at an event just isn't worth the hassle.
This shot could have used an f/2.8 lens to blur out the unnecessary details in the background. Unfortunately, the cheapest IS/VR/VC variant is beyond my current budget.
Compensating for the shortcomings of my (photographic) equipment, I chose to shoot from low angles (waist level and below) for subject isolation.
Sure, there's the risk of cutting the feet from the bottom of the frame, but I hope to rectify that with more practice. With this technique, only very distant objects are placed on the same level of the head of the subject within the frame. Basically, the face of the subject doesn't have to compete with the sea of faces of the crowd in the background for attention.
Granted, I wouldn't recommend using this outside of cosplay conventions or fashion shows. It's an awkward position for those with no other option.
I didn't expect these two to crouch down to the floor along with me though. A bit of a surprise there.
And here's the dedicated mister portable studio guy. I think he was also there last year.
I'd love to see the resulting images; maybe it's actually worth the effort of bringing all that equipment.
Free hugs courtesy of pedobear. ('-_-)
This is the corner where everybody went "DAWWWW".
DERP FA(E)CES.
Aaaaand somebody's selling dakimakura. Great. If we're lucky, they'll be selling mousepads with boobs too by next year.
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