Cosplay Meet-up at 3MiStudio

On August 23, I attended a DC Cosplay Photoshoot group event at 3Mi Studio in West Virginia.  The group has used this studio before, and it is known for its rain room set, which I believe was the main draw for several people attending this event.   While I like the rain room (not as big a deal since I've made my own), I do appreciate the availability of sets the studio has and try to maximize their use.

For this event I used:

• Canon R6
• 2 Speed light
• Trigger
• 24 - 105mm lens
• 1 light stand
• Umbrella
• Gels

Camera Settings:

Even though this shot was in a studio, I still varied my camera settings based on the set design, set lighting, and minimizing interference with other photographers.    My ISO varied from ISO 100 to ISO 1600, with ISO 100 being the most common, followed by ISO 1600 for shooting the rain set.  My aperture ranged from f/4.5 to f/9, with f/8 being the most common.  My shutter speed varied from 1/60s to 1/320s, with 1/200s being the most common setting.  Finally, my focal length ranged from 24mm to 105mm, with 24mm being the most common.

The Photos:

I am going to start with this image of Skirted_galleons in a revolutionary war era dress, which she made.  The studio mostly has modern set designs, and very little that would work with the era of the dress, so I opted for the Western set.  The Western set has nice wood boards/exposed planks that could be used to represent a barn or old house of the time.  For this image I place the light to my left in line with the model’s face.  In post I did the standard adjustments, of white balance, slightly increasing the exposure, and adjusting the tone curve.  I used mask on the model’s face to brighten it slightly to account for the hat and finished the image off with a heavy vignette.   

ISO 400, Aperture F5, Shutter 1/160s, Focal Length 47mm

This next image is of Something_wild_cat I was going for a Tokyo street vibe, with using paper panels and black brick wall.  In this image I used two lights, which are obvious due to shadow patterns.  The first light was on the ground perpendicular to the model and had a blue gel on it.  The second light was in line with the model next to the wall raised up and pointed down at the model’s face.  I narrowed the beam on this flash, so the light was focused on the model’s face.  In this image I adjusted the white balance slightly, increased the exposure slightly and used a medium contrast.  I also put an adjustment mask on the model’s face to brighten it slightly.  I then finished the image with a heavy vignette.  

ISO 100, Aperture F8, Shutter 1/200s, Focal Length 24mm

This final image is of Mirrored Moth as Mitzi from Lackadaisy, which is about cats running a speakeasy.  Since the studio had a nice bar set, I used it to meet the theme of cosplay.  For this image, I placed a flash with a rust-colored gel behind the chair, and the second flash was positioned on a light stand with an umbrella to my left.  I did not change the exposure of this image and only focused on adjusting the clarity, vibrance and saturation of the base image.  I then crushed the black in the tone curve to give the image the faded look.  I also applied an orange/orange color grade to give the image a warm feel and have seem like it is light by old amber lights.  I then finished the image off with a heavy vignette.  

ISO 100, Aperture F8, Shutter 1/200s, Focal Length 24mm

Wrap Up:

Overall, the images from the event turned out well, though I don’t think I was 100% committed to the session.  This was probably due to coming off a convention the weekend before.  While I took rain images, those were not my ultimate goal, and I let others be in the prime spots for the rain images.  I wanted to focus on getting nice photos in the available sets that were hopefully unique before everyone got wet in the rain set. 

You can see all the images from the meet-up here: 3MI Studio Meet