some dragons in my collection

[John_05]

i posted some pics i took with my Pentax, and received some comments from a few people that said they like dragons, so i figured i would post a couple of pics i took of a couple in my collection. when i have time, i will take a few more of the others i have and post them too.

this is a t-shirt my wife got for me this past summer.
#1

#2
this is a dragon i got as part of a "mega-blocks" set. and in case anyone is curious, yes i have dusted since this pic was taken. :lmao:

#3
this is the other dragon from a different set. i got this one with a dragon ship, but i havent taken any decent shots of that yet.

#4
this is one my wife got me from a swap shop. it was faded and scratched when i got it, so my cousin and i repainted it.

#5
same as above, but from the other side. i took pictures from all sides so i could send them to my cousin so she could use them in her work portfolio, but i havent found the other shots i took yet.

as i said before, i have a few more dragons that i will take shots of as soon as i have time. any comments/criticisms are welcome, and appreciated. if anyone has any tips that i could use to get better pics of them in regards to lighting and set up to eliminate the shadows a little more would be a great help. thanks for looking!

 

[JonMikal]

nice colors dude :thumbup: the last is my fav.

 

[LaFoto]

You seem to be a big fan and avid collector of dragons then?
And hey: it was on the tip of my tongue to comment on the dust in Photo 2. That could have been taken in my home (if it weren't for the DRAGON) - heehee. The housewife here spends too much time on TPF to dust... :roll:

I don't know what camera you use, but it looks like you let it focus automatically, so sometimes your focus shifts a little to where you don't actually want to have it. Like in that "famous" Photo 2 of the dust, erm, the dragon (oops! ) with the green eyes, you would have wanted to have the eyes in focus, I think... Or did you plan of having the figurine on the dragon's back on focus? Anyhow, personally I would have preferred to either see the eyes in focus or a less shallow depth of field to have both eyes AND figurine in focus.

The same thoughts (wishes, actually) I have for all the following photos, too, where the cripsest point is always in the centre, while what would have needed to be in focus would have been the head/eye areas of the dragons. Just my humble opinion.

You can achieve this using auto focus, too, if at first you shift your camera so it focuses (in the very centre) on that part of motif that you want in focus, leave the button half-pressed, move back to the FRAME you want like that and then release.

 

[John_05]

thank you JonMikal and LaFoto for the comments and advice.

when i shot those pics, i didnt even know the camera had a manual focus option. i am a guy afterall, and hardly ever read things like instruction manuals.:lmao:
just kidding, but i really didnt realize the manual focus option existed because i was too preoccupied in testing the different modes (shutter priority, aperture priority, landscape etc...). now that ive gotten "brave" enough to use the manual settings more, i plan on reshooting them to see how they come out.

i use a Fuji FinePix E510 for most all my shots here. i do have a Kodak DX7630, but i prefer the look of the Fuji pics better, and the manual settings on the Kodak arent as flexible as the Fuji. the only thing that bothers me about the Fuji is you have to use the LCD for manual focusing, and that can be a bit of a pain. you also have to hold the exposure compensation button on the left and then use the zoom buttons to manually focus. every so often i will think i am holding the exposure button and try to focus, only to find that i wasnt and end up zooming, which changes the aperture sometimes so i have to reset that and then frame and focus again. it gets to be a bother at times, but i do like to be more in control over my shots, and i learn more when i use my own settings.

here i go getting "long-winded" again, so ill just say thanks again for the comments/advice, and hopefully after i check some pics i took last night i will have more to post. after that, im going to try to re-shoot more of my dragons and hopefully they will be good enough to post too.

 

[Chiller]

Cool shots. Love the last one.

 

[Calliope]

Nice shots! I go with JonMikal & Chiller and say the last is my fav too! :thumbup:

 

[puzzle]

you have to use the LCD for manual focusing, and that can be a bit of a pain. you also have to hold the exposure compensation button on the left and then use the zoom buttons to manually focus.

Yeah, that is a pain - my little digicam had that manual focus option, and it is pretty unuseable.

You may have another option though to get more control over your area of focus - in your menus, under focus or auto-focus, there is probably an option for manually selecting the focus area. You will then have a number of bracketed areas in your LCD or viewfinder and use your arrow button to pick which of the areas you want the auto focus to settle on. So for example in your second picture, if you wanted the focus as LaFoto suggested on the head, you would select the area to the left.

That is a very cool t-shirt though