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LylibelluleLimit Gunz
Posted by meronpan on June 21, 2009
If my records are right it looks like I’m actually caught up for reviews of recent releases! Time to take a look at some older releases… Limit Gunz!
Also my first review with the new camera… haven’t quite settled into a standard work flow and such… gonna be a while before that falls in place ^^; Didn’t get all the shots I wanted and at the very least, looks like I need a new tripod. The cheapo one I had was great to start but there’s no way it can support things in a vertical orientation (though I suppose with the added resolution I could just crop down pics ^^;)
Limit Gunz was released back in January by Art Storm, sculpting by the fine folks at Cerberus Project. I actually didn’t get her until March since I got her from Kid Nemo (the last figure I ordered from them, in fact).
I suppose you’ve probably already read all about her if you were interested at the time. Perhaps I’ll keep the chatter down to a minimum ^^;
As I feared, it was rather difficult to get off a full body shot with the 100mm lens ^^; Required moving my setup around a bit which resulted in some non uniform background results like above.
Think I had a bit too much fun with the aperture settings.
Here’s a quick intro to aperture if you’re wondering what all the f numbers are. When changing the aperture, you’re adjusting the amount of light that is allowed to pass through the lens. More light == wide/fast == lower f numbers (i.e. f/2.8). Less light == narrow/slow == higher f numbers (i.e. f/16).
Wide apertures causes a shallow depth of field – i.e. the distances at which the object is in focus is a small range. Narrow apertures yield a longer depth of field – i.e. you get a large range in which the object will be in focus.
Now for some pics to make sense of all that mumbo jumbo.
f/2.8
Notice just the very tips of the barrels are in focus.
f/5
At f/5 a little more of the barrels and gun comes into focus.
f/10
f/16
At f/10 and f/16 even more of the gun comes into focus and, more noticeably, limit gunz herself.
f/32
Maxing out this lens at f/32 she still isn’t quite in focus but still sharper than f/16. Of course, if I was focusing on her I would’ve changed focus to her face rather than keeping it on the barrel.
You may be wondering why you wouldn’t just max out the aperture all the time to get your entire subject in focus. Well, you would if that’s your goal (sometimes you want other things to fall out of focus), *and* if you have enough light. The problem with smaller apertures (larger f numbers) is that it requires more light to get the same brightness. For example my f/2.8 shot required an exposure time of 0.5s. At f/32 I needed 30s! As such, unless you have a tripod for all your shots, you need to make some compromises. No way you’re going to keep your camera perfectly still hand held for 30 seconds ^^;
f/2.8
That’s not to say shutter speed is the only parameter you have at your disposal. There’s a complicated dance of variables you can tweak to achieve exactly what you want. Distance of light sources to your subject, and ISO levels can also be tweaked to get you an ideal aperture & shutter speed.
f/9
In the f/2.8 shot you can see I don’t even have her whole shoe in focus. It’s been quite a change having to deal with such a large aperture range. My old camera went from f/2.8 to f/8 so my options were much more limited.
Oh yes, another reason why you’re not always using every extreme aperture you can get your hand on is the image quality. Lenses often behave differently at the extremes so you may be giving up some sharpess or something at certain apertures. When reading lens reviews you’ll often read about how the lens performs “wide open”. This refers to the lens at max aperture (aperture opened as wide as possible == lowest f number). A lens may experience some vignetting at the edges at wide aperatures or need to be stopped down to achieve higher sharpness, etc.
Well, enough with apertures for now ^^; The 1:1 magnification of this lens is amazing. You can really see (for better or worse ^^;) every last detail of your subject.
That reminds me… I had the hardest time figuring out what was meant by 1:1 magnification ^^;; Lifesize… how so? and at what distance? Not sure how obvious it is to others, but here’s what I eventually found out:
For the 100mm macro lens, you achieve 1:1 magnification at the minimum focus distance (which is ~1ft/0.3m). I believe that equates to a working distance of ~6 inches/0.15m. Now what that means is your subject will be projected life size onto your camera’s sensor. Since the sensor is 22.2mm x 14.8mm on the 40D, I will fill my viewfinder with an object of that size at that distance.
A forumla I found was M = FX / D.
M = magnification
F = focal length (mm)
X = crop factor
D = distance to subject (mm)
It seemed to be accurate – 1 = 100 * 1.6 / 160 – i.e. 1:1 magnification is achieved for a 100mm lens on a 1.6 crop factor sensor at 160mm. (well, actually they mention in the thread that it’s off for some macro lenses but for 100mm it seemed to work out about right).
So to calculate how far back I need to be for a full body shot… assume subject is 6 inches / 150mm, so I need a magniciation factor of ~ 1/10 to fit the figure in the 14.8mm of the camera sensor. Solve the equation and D = ~1.5m. Similarly I’ll need to be ~3m away for a full body shot of a 12 inch/.3m figure? I’ll have to test that later.
You can see above I got the shoe on the right in focus but the left one wasn’t. Forgot I was on f/2.8 -_-
Ok well perhaps I should talk about the figure at least a little ^^;
If you love big guns… well, I think it’s obvious what you need to do :P Neat concept and pretty well executed.
The huge stand of the gun was a pretty snug fit so I assume it’s providing more than enough support to prevent leaning.
Gathering all the big guns ^^
The much more petite exelica wields a similarly huge weapon.
I think ‘cuz of the reviews I’d read I thought I’d already done my own review ^^; Check ‘em out~
以上！
Magna said
My Gawd! I don’t really know what to say about this figure… I just stare at the BFG and ask myself “how? why?”
Could you tell me a little about the character? I have absolutely no clue about who she is and where she is from.
meronpan said
mmm i really don’t know much about her either… but looking at various sources, she’s an original character by the mangaka yoshizaki mine (who does sgt. frog). as such… unfortunately i’m not sure there is anything else to her ^^;;
Orcinus said
May I know what lens you’re using? Just wondering about your magnification limits that’s all.
meronpan said
i’m using canon’s 100mm macro lens… i guess the full name is Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro?
YuKi-To said
Ah, thanks a lot for the explanation! now I really understand what aperture and the shallow of depth is! ^^
anyway, yea it’s quite a nicely detailed figure :3
meronpan said
my pleasure!
i was happy she pretty much lived up the prototype shots, seeing as how i don’t have any other art storm figures. and the gun’s just awesome ^^
anonymousobject said
Very nice photos with your new gear :) Just a word of advice about the extremely narrow apertures; On most lens, anything smaller than about f/11 will result in lens diffraction. The light dispersion beyond that point will become so great that image quality will deteriorate. If you compare your f/10 image with the f/32 one, you will see it on the area of focus.
Also, I am really wanting a lighting set up like yours >_< Indoor figure shoots are pretty difficult for me since I don't have a good lighting environment :( I'm thinking about getting some light umbrellas like yours ^^;
P.S. Nice figure xD
meronpan said
ahhh i knew i was forgetting another detriment to using extremely narrow apertures. thanks for the tip!
for the lighting you can definitely get pretty good results with stuff around the house… but after spending so much time trying to tweak my lamps to do what i wanted the umbrellas just made things sooo easy. if you can spare some cash, definitely pick some up ^^ (though you may want to investigate light tents too, which i haven’t gotten around to yet…)
lightningsabre said
Oh man… I’m pretty much lost in that whole lens focus talk 0.o Ok I guess if I have a DSLR then I would know, but right now I’m just effing lost. Anyhow… the figure is something I was tempted to get… I’m a sucker for blue hair and Yoshizaki Mine’s stuff. I was so close to getting one last weekend because they were selling it a bit cheaper. Alas I was short on funds so I had to pass her up once again. So now I have to ogle your pictures :P
meronpan said
some point and shoots have aperture control too! you might already have the ability to mess with those settings if you’re interested ^^
too bad you were short on funds. glad to ease the pain with some pics ^^;
Leonia said
Great shoot ! But she isn’t loli :(
meronpan said
non-lolis need love too! :P
optic said
I got bored reading half way. I kinda understand the concept but hard to digest it all in. It’s not u it’s me. lol
meronpan said
guess that goes to show photography’s not for everyone. no worries, hopefully the pics helped ya thru ^^;
Nopy said
Gotta love girls with cool-looking weapons ^.^
meronpan said
will be a long time before i tire of ‘em ^^
T.I.P. said
Nice figure. I like girls with big guns; but this gun, for some reason, doesn’t tickle my fancy. ^^;;
I remember reading all these mumbo jumbo when I was thinking about getting a DSLR last year, but have forgotten all about it…might have to read about it again soon. ^^;; Since this review covers your macro lens, I was wondering how much you paid for yours?
meronpan said
yeah, honestly i think i woulda preferred a more traditional large caliber barrel for something of that size … ah well ^^;
got the lens at b&h photo – $490. though they seem to keep a pretty small stock of it so i had to sign up for the waiting list.
T.I.P. said
The price is a little steep, but I think it’s “cheap” considering the price for some other lens’. Thanks for the info.
Roy said
I love blue and girls with big guns so this has to be the perfect figure for me ^^ If only I had money -_-
The camera works great and the level of detail achieved is awesome, don’t know much about all the f # and depth of field so can’t really comment their ^^ but looks like you had fun jingling with the settings xD
Great job with the shots, Sasuga~ ^^
meronpan said
thanks! too bad you haven’t been able to pick her up… still in stock in hlj if you get the funds ^^
glad you liked the shots. i still having a blast just picking the camera up ^^;
Divine Fang said
Maximized your photos and saw dust! You really need to dust down your figure before shooting with the powerful macro lens ^_^!
meronpan said
the thing is… i do dust them before reviews ^^;; perhaps a bath is in order ‘cuz the brush i’m using obviously isn’t getting everything orz
Blowfish said
I am still waiting for my Limit Gunz….T.T
Shes build around the formula that will catch any Blowfish in the wild ^^
Thanks for the Info on the Aperature and stuff.Its always good to know a bit more about the stuff behind it.Im still doing more or less everything without knowledge
meronpan said
still waiting? yikes, hopes she comes soon ^^;
always happy to put up informative posts, especially since people are very good at letting me know when i’ve made a mistake or left something out. everyone wins ^^