Second CMV! This is  a much more relaxed attempt, it’s not the fast-paced sequel to the first video that I was aiming for due to lack of time, crowding and the outside area being absent most of the con, and me messing up a lot :P    So that will have to wait for AmeCon.

Instead I picked a different track and made the best I could – I still enjoyed making it in the end, there are some great moments I’m glad to have caught!

Expo is a different kettle of fish to a more close-knit con like Kita, and with the rather packed crowd it’s difficult to explain what you’re trying to capture and some pretty awkward video comes out of it – as a result the default is usually resorted to, as it’s hard to misunderstand the instruction: TWIRLING PEOPLE IN DRESSES EVERYWHERE, so there’s a somewhat large amount of that.  If you are allergic to twirling dresses I would have to offer the medical advice of giving this video a miss.

Thanks to all who got involved and hope to film plenty more of you at AmeCon!

New addition to the album list – London Film and Comic Con – taking place in a temporary venue due to the almighty Olympics.  It’s a far more Western media-focused event than I usually attend but as it’s not far from me thought I’d take a look-see.  Can’t pass up chances to take more pictures now, can I?

LFCC boasts a guest list the likes of which I’ve never seen before, including several people I’d have quite liked to meet which is rare!  Of course this is me so priority goes to people in daft outfits over actual celebrities.

Only attended for the Saturday so the gallery is a little light, it’s also not as cosplay-heavy as many events I cover, and the temporary venue has little in the way of photo-taking-space so apologies for that.

Did one for Aya so here’s one for the next summer con, AmeCon!  Set once more at the picturesque Keele University it has the most gorgeous location for cosplay photos and video out of any of our conventions so if you’ve got something special lined up – this is the event to show it off at!  To help, and possibly inspire, here’s a blatantly-thieved Google Maps image overlaid with the Keele Uni conference map and then covered with arrows  showing where I got all my photos last time, for people looking to find the perfect backdrop for their costumes.

Blue buildings should be the main areas of convention-happening (Keele Hall for breakfast, Student Union for evening events and the other two for panels and day events) – as I understand them anyways.

Green are other buildings, marked so you don’t try to walk through them I guess, thinking they’re on the map as some sort of squareish tree.

Purple are accomodation blocks, I don’t know which ones we’ve got access to but they’re the ones marked on the conference guide.  I was in Lindsay Halls last time hence why there’s plenty of reference shots from there ;)

Click here for a ridiculous-sized copy.

(Updated: 09/07 – swapped the top right image of the SU building as it’s under major works – thanks to @demonkeyz for the replacement and letting us know!)

I keep almost losing the one I’ve already made so I decided making a spare would be prudent; while I was at it, might as well document, right?  Also my site is kinda dead outside of convention times so might as well gap-fill!

So here’s a quick DIY project for a rotating bounce shield for flashguns – it’s a dead simple design and I figure could be adapted for most types – except those that don’t angle up I guess. It looks daft, it stands out, pro camera people will either mock you or acknowledge you with sage nods. Probably the former.

Continue reading DIY flash bounce shield…

Another Expo, the first one I got to experiment on with the steadicam, unfortunately also the one interrupted by another event double booking the entirety of the useful outdoor area, sigh. Dragging people to calmer areas (quite the walk!) took an annoying amount of time and I didn’t get to catch remotely the number of people I was hoping to. Still, made the most of it and hopefully got some good footage. Won’t find out until I check of course, but first come PHOTOS!

Kinda slacked on the photo front to accommodate videoings, outside of the masquerade at least, so apologies for sparseness. I’m hoping whatever I churn together on a timeline will make up for it! This is mostly due to the outside area being offlimits nearly the entire weekend, inside kinda sucks, the loss of space meant everything was packed tight, the weather didn’t help, and I pretty much had to drag people down the entire other end of the ExCeL to find space.. Even doing it every waking hour of the day before the masquerade I only got a fraction of the people I usually do.. Apparently the tree garden was opened up late on Saturday but by then I’d considered it a writeoff and patrolled the other end, and Sunday I only get a few hours of expo time between doors open and masq start T_T Normal photography service should resume next event, as long as EuroCosplay doesn’t keep me busy anyway!

As always, if you spot photos of yourself and want nicer copies, throw the NertCam number at me in private via whatever means you wish! Use ‘em as you will, uploading to whatever social media of your choice is perfectly fine, credit’s not a requirement as long as they’re photos of yourself.

I’ve also set up something of a Facebook page now, I’ll be uploading some of the highlight photos from each event there as well as here so they can be tagged and be all web2.0 and I can pretend I’m popular! XD

So throw all your love and likes at: ManyLemons on Facebook

Updates can also be found on some other social networky thing called Twitter over at ManyLemonsUK

Since the first Cosplay Cascade video went down well I’ll likely be making more! I’ve had the odd request to be in the next one from various people so I’m making a general post on the topic.

Continue reading Future Videos!…

So this is a bit of a breakdown of the toy I’ve been playing with the last few weeks. Inspired by cosplay fanvideos around the world I noted the video mode on my Canon 550d and set about doing some research on whether I could do anything similar!

Usual disclaimer, this is all my understanding of things and how they work, I could well be wrong or misguided, feel free to throw in comments if you know better! However for now this is kind of a layman’s view on things, I got a LOT of enquiries about the steadicam while running around with it at KitaCon and I promised I’d do a detailed writeup of how I abused the poor thing.

There’ll be a later post on actually using the thing and considerations for the filming itself, but for now this is the techy side of fixing up a cheapo steadicam.

This rig, of course, is all I used for the first Cosplay Cascade video, so the results are already out there!

Continue reading The NertCam Steadicam…