[Cosplay] Comic Fiesta 2010

Only to around recently to finishing these pics >.<, Comic Fiesta is a cosplay event that takes place in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, around December every year. I'm sure many of you will notice there is a inconsistency with the temperature or white balance of the photos. Did my best to counter it by getting the cosplayers to stand away from the tungsten lights and into where natural lighting is present. Some shots I didn't have the time to do so as it was crowded nor did I want to drag people a mile away from where they wanted to be. For some shots I used a yellow filter a friend let me for flash unit and switch my white balance to tungsten. I tried not to use flash unless absolutely needed. Please feel free to comment and criticize, it's the only way I'll improve

Full gallery can be found here. Didn't really want to flood the thread even though it probably is already :<


Comic_Fiesta_2010_Cosplay_03 by Shazzsteel, on Flickr


Comic_Fiesta_2010_Cosplay_04 by Shazzsteel, on Flickr


Comic_Fiesta_2010_Cosplay_05 by Shazzsteel, on Flickr


Comic_Fiesta_2010_Cosplay_11 by Shazzsteel, on Flickr


Comic_Fiesta_2010_Cosplay_12 by Shazzsteel, on Flickr


Comic_Fiesta_2010_Cosplay_15 by Shazzsteel, on Flickr


Comic_Fiesta_2010_Cosplay_20 by Shazzsteel, on Flickr


Comic_Fiesta_2010_Cosplay_23 by Shazzsteel, on Flickr


Comic_Fiesta_2010_Cosplay_22 by Shazzsteel, on Flickr


Comic_Fiesta_2010_Cosplay_25 by Shazzsteel, on Flickr


Comic_Fiesta_2010_Cosplay_28 by Shazzsteel, on Flickr


Comic_Fiesta_2010_Cosplay_27 by Shazzsteel, on Flickr


Comic_Fiesta_2010_Cosplay_31 by Shazzsteel, on Flickr


Comic_Fiesta_2010_Cosplay_36 by Shazzsteel, on Flickr


Comic_Fiesta_2010_Cosplay_35 by Shazzsteel, on Flickr


Comic_Fiesta_2010_Cosplay_43 by Shazzsteel, on Flickr


Comic_Fiesta_2010_Cosplay_49 by Shazzsteel, on Flickr
There was someone in the tank


Comic_Fiesta_2010_Cosplay_62 by Shazzsteel, on Flickr


Comic_Fiesta_2010_Cosplay_59 by Shazzsteel, on Flickr


Comic_Fiesta_2010_Cosplay_67 by Shazzsteel, on Flickr


Comic_Fiesta_2010_Cosplay_71 by Shazzsteel, on Flickr


Comic_Fiesta_2010_Cosplay_57 by Shazzsteel, on Flickr


Comic_Fiesta_2010_Cosplay_58 by Shazzsteel, on Flickr


Comic_Fiesta_2010_Cosplay_46 by Shazzsteel, on Flickr

 

great set there! love all of them.

 

Thanks thanks

 

Not sure what hardware gear and software you have but when it comes to white balance I tend to ignore whatever light there is and take care of it when I get home. This means things can be shot where they are or you can move them to get the best light angle regardless of colour.

Usual white balance workflow for me is to shoot in raw, load into Canon's DPP, find something that I know is white or grey and use the colour balance picker to let the software know about it

It works best if you locate a light grey section of the image that is facing the predominant light source. For example. I took a picture on a perfectly cloudy day but there was a red wall behind me. A standard grey colour balance made everything look too orange because of the light reflected off the wall and I needed to pick a bit of a white shirt that was facing the wall not the general direction of the sun for example.

If I don't have anything suitably grey in the image I have a calibrated wide gamut monitor and tweak the white balance until it looks right.

Amazing costumes! If I were any of the participants I would be very happy to have one of your photos of me

 

some nice shots here and some lavish costumes some people went all out

 

#20 is epic, man that is a costume....

 

Nice set of images. Certainly a lot of work has gone into "most " of the costumes. That girl with the bird wings #7 ? Looks pretty awkward to be walking around with

 

Ah yeah, normally for me that would be the case also but I can't quite remember before if I mentioned it in the first post that a lot of times there would be a clash from the tungsten indoor lighting and the white/natural lighting seeping in from the nearby windows. If the light was constantly tungsten or white I'd change the colour of my flash accordingly regardless of how troublesome.

Most conventions I will 99% of the time shoot in RAW as I have room for error. I wish I could shoot in JPEG cause it would make photo processing a lot faster, however I'm no where near that level yet. Most conventions the lighting is very suitable nor is it well controlled, well that's how I feel anyway, others may think differently.

There' weren't many areas that had grey walls ( well not that I can remember, since it was about 3-4 months ago) except for an area near an emergency stairwell which had perfect natural lighting. Picture 57 and 62 were taken near the stairwell. If it was possible to grab the cosplay and bring them there we would but it didn;t happen very often due to the crowds and short notice. As for my monitor its definitely not calibrated (I hope to get a spyder calibrator if i get a IPS monitor) and a unsuitable TN panel monitor right now, not exactly the best equipment to do photo editing with, but I'll make do with them. Usually I try to keep the white balance constant throughout each picture unless I[m going for a specific mood for a character, as characters from different series generally hop from picture to picture sometimes the white balance is completely different from the following pictures or sometimes if I'm careless. I try to put as much love and time into each picture, if I see a potential winner of a picture I try my best to make the picture shine beautifully especially if I see that the cosplayer has put their heart and soul into their costume.

I'm glad you like the photos, I strive to make people look their best when it comes to conventions. Always ready to improve and learn more.

Yeah, Malaysia and Singpaore are very passionate in their cosplay. The time and effort they devote to cosplaying is astonishing.

It is, the wingspan on that thing was remarkable. They had security clearing the way so she could slowly walk from one end of the convention to the other. I wish I had I wide angle lens to capture the entire thing. >.<

Thank you! She had to walk at quite a slow pace being careful not to bump the wings into the nearby pillars of the hall.

They can spend up to months making these outfits including careful planning and such. I wouldn't mind joining in on the fun but I find it more fulfilling to capture their hard work than attempting to create my own. xD