Welcome to the November Blog.
As the year rapidly approaches winter, and days get shorter and colder, we transition to doing more indoor pictures. However, I do my best to film outdoors when possible, and living in a region that rarely sees much cold, I spend a lot of time outdoors. Here's an outdoor set we did recently with my TAYU girl. She is called QingZhi, after her official name, and she is really a special doll. Not only is she a perfect companion, she is also perfect for getting difficult shots done. For example, getting her to stand in 5" heels is simple, and she only needs a 3rd point to balance. I can also use her back hook to have her do more intricate poses, and in one of the pics below, she is standing in those high heels, no other doll I own can easily do. I think this is due to her hardened silicone feet and low weight. With that head on, she weighs roughly around 45lb at 148cm.
For many of these shots, I used natural lighting and hand held shots. Most of the time, I will use an 85mm portrait lens set to f1.8 so achieve that blur effect, but I sometimes miss critical focus when doing so. When I set the camera for face recognition, then it usually works well. For these shots the sun was past peak, and starting to set. This gave me a perfect balance of light and minimal shadows. For most shots, I shoot at 400ISO, and go higher in exposure - around 1/3 stop over exposed - this helps minimize (low light sensor) ISO noise, and what little noise remains is reduced in post production. This works for me most of the time. However, when lighting is too low, I will usually redo a set, and try again the next morning, or set the ISO to 800 and shoot wide open aperture. Of course for commercial shots, I shoot F5-6, so this low light would not work.
Anyway, enjoy the pics
Mishka
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