 phoenix |  October 3rd, 2010 When I was a child, like many others, I had some small die-cast cars toys. While they are fun to throw around and play with, I never really paid too much attention to them. Back then it was just a yellow car, or a red truck that rolls around the floor. As I grew older, what these die-cast toys can be became more obvious: they can be a representation of a your dream car or rather dream cars. So everyone can have a tangible Ferrari or Lamborghini in their collection and everyone can have a dream garage filled with whatever their heart desires. For one reason or another, throughout all these years, I never bought my dream cars in their die-cast toy form. It seems that I actually prefer to have toys of the cars that I actually own no matter how lousy it is rather than a great fantasy garage. And so here’s my latest addition to my toy cars collection:
2008 Porsche Boxster S 1/18 scaled die-cast car by Welly. I searched for these (or any other Boxster die-cast toys) for a long time, it was hard to find these Boxster S (the 987 model) die-cast in red color. I was finally able to find some old stock at Kevin’s Hobbies. And best of all, I actually found two of them, one with the convertible top up, and another with the convertible top down. And here they are in their typical clear window box.
 
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phoenix | September 20th, 2010 I don’t own many male figures, and I don’t own any other Gintama (銀魂) figure. But after seeing the pre-order picture for this Hijikata Toushirou PVC from the Gintama series, I placed an order for him. Maybe it’s his cool looks, or maybe it’s the extravagant mayonnaise display (see details below). Either way the Shinsenguimi number two now joins the rare group in my figure collection. MegaHouse isn’t exactly known to make really great figures. For the Gintama series, they have previously released Sakata Gintoki in April of 2010. The Gintoki figure really did not impress me. I thought they have really done a poor job on the series’ main character. But this Hijikata figure seems to be much better than Gintoki especially in terms of the face sculpture and the paint. Another figure in the same series Sougo Okita is slated to be released in October 2010.
G.E.M. Series Gintama Hijikata Toushirou 1/8 PVC by MegaHouse (銀魂 土方 十四郎).Original Sculptor Moriwaki Naoto (森脇直人). Released on June 2010 with an MSRP of ¥6,600.
Still in the box, front and back.
 
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phoenix | September 6th, 2010 This is another one of my figure/doll photography 121 post. A few months ago, I’ve posted an article on how to produce a true black background without the use of any black background material and/or image editing software. I wrote about the black background because I find most people does not know how light works its magic in a photography sense. The people I talk to tends to instinctively come to the conclusion that if a photo’s background is black, then there must be something black behind it. If you have read my article, then you would see that a true black background actually resulted from a lack of light coming towards to your camera. Today I want to look at the opposite side of the gray scale — how to produce a white background?
Well again a lot of people instinctively think that a white background is the result of placing some kind of white material behind the subject. Below is a photo that I took in front of a white fabric backdrop. However, when compared to the white frame that borders the picture, you can clearly see that the actual background is not 100% white. In fact if you load it into an image editing software, you will see that the background is somewhere between 96% – 92% on the gray scale. On the gray scale there’s only one white point which is at the very end of the gray scale. Anything that’s not 100% on the gray scale, or 255, 255, 255 in RGB value is not pure white. And 255, 255, 255 RGB value is what the background must be if we were to call it a true white background. Anything less is just a different shades of gray.
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phoenix | August 19th, 2010 Last night the sky was clear with no cloud coverages. My friend and I drove to a farm near Pickering and did some star gazing. I brought my camera gears along to do some simple astrophotography.
First easy target for the camera is the moon. I’ve posted my photo of the first full moon of year 2010 before. Beautiful as the full moon is, it is actually too bright and does not have enough contrast on the moon surface to see some of the craters. A new moon will actually offer much better details than a full moon because of the contrast provided by the shadows on the moon’s surface. Last night is 2 day past moon’s first quarter, the moon is actually about 57% full. However it still offered enough shadows on the moon’s surface so that some more details can be seen.
The same gear as the last moon shot was used. Canon EOS 7D was coupled with Sigma 100-300 F4 & Sigma 1.4x teleconverter all sitting on the Manfrotto 055 Pro tripod. This gives me a relative stable platform for the camera and an equivalent focal length of 672mm. The following photo was shot at ISO 100, F11 @ 1/100th second.
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phoenix | July 10th, 2010 Went to Yorkville Exotics Car Show today. This is a new car show that started this year in the downtown heart of Toronto. I got a bit restless waiting for my new car to come from Halifax so I wanted to go there to check out the other exotics before my exotics arrives. The show is primarily sponsored by Ferrari and Porsche so the car that’s on the show is also only Ferraris and Porsches. Since I was just dropping by quickly during noon time, the lighting will be horrible, and I’m not going to spend too long at the show, I only brought my point and shoot. So unfortunately the photos are all pretty bad to my standard.
 But anyway here goes.
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