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~

• Exelica Meteor
• ELTWorld
• Kyouran Kyodai

以上！

Quick shots without my usual setup... m(_ _)m

Limit Gunz’s arrival marks the end of my Kid Nemo saga.  They were the first store I ordered from so I didn’t really know what to expect… after getting a few orders in I figured that everything was fine.  Fast foward almost a year later… out of 28 figures preordered, 10 were canceled… over 28% -_-  In each case, I had to e-mail asking about order status… they never notified me when they were unable to fill my order.

For in stock items (if you can even figure that out) they were ok and seemed to deliver.  But please beware when preordering from them.  They have serious issues filling preorders.  Gweh.  At any rate, glad to have that off my chest.  All Kid Nemo orders now closed, no more worrying about receiving my orders! ^^

In today’s preview… we have that unsightly mass underneath Limit Gunz’ box… 一体何でしょう？！(What is it?!)

じゃ～ん！　(tada~)

Err sorry about the lousy pic… was just free handing with flash -_-  Lessee how about…

Mmm a little better… meh, you can get a much better look in my loot post if ya want (without pillow).  Anyhow, a dakimakura pillow!  Now I just need a cushion for the erika cushion cover ^^

Now that I think about it, I might’ve saved some money had I taken Len-Vesper’s advice on some online stores for pillows… Was preoccupied placing my replacement order for limit gunz at the time though (yes, my final open order was for limit gunz, who was canceled on me.  In stock @ hobby search, had her a little over a week after placing the order.)  Hobby search just gotta buncha dakimakura pillows in stock if you’re looking for one… but lemme tell  ya EMS shipping ain’t the best deal for ‘em ^^;;;;  I’d go for something local if ya can find ‘em (or at least a store that offers SAL).

Anyhow couple more limit gunz pics before wrapping up…

New bg :P

Airi’s new neightbor.  Actually ended up swapping Limit Gunz and Airi since the gun was encroaching on Nyx ^^;

Couldn’t stand the hard shadows and limitations working with the flash so I stacked up some books to get at least one long exposure shot off ^^;

Not sure where I’m gonna put her in the review queue, but most likely sooner than later.

orz why is it this late already?  Well, I gotta get some sleep.

以上！

It’s always bad when an older figure I’ve been eying gets re-released.  Bad because I always go into, “Oh, maybe I should pick up so-and-so while I’m at it… and her… and her…”  Today it was Alter’s KOS-MOS.  My wallet escaped only after sustaining the following casualties… ^^;

Yuumiru from Queen’s Blade…

Airi, also from Queen’s Blade…

As mentioned, Alter’s KOS-MOS Ver. 4…

And the recently announced Limit Gunz…

[images from the official sites. Megahouse, Alter, Good Smile Company]

As you may have noticed, I have a weakness for babes wielding weapons…

Reviews of the first three for those interested:
KOS-MOS @ foo-bar-baz (one of the uncommon 5/5 star reviews… i’ve found the ratings there to be fairly similar to my taste), wcloudx, panther
(next two are cast off and reviews are nsfw)
Yuumiru @ akibahobby
Airi @ akibahobby, vision of vixon, foo-bar-baz

Oh… and I nearly forgot. Earlier this week my last defense against Chizuru finally gave way…

[img from Akibablog]

Worst part is, I kind of want to get the fox edition too… orz