5/28/2020
This shot was definitely fun and frustrating at the same time. I really wanted to do a panels shot, and thought focusing on Thor and Mjolnir would be a great idea. Overall, I am happy with how each specific shot turned out, but man, this specific shot made me realize I need to pay attention to details more.
For the first panel, I wanted to do a close up shot of Mjolnir lying in some rocks, with Thor's hand on the handle to make it look like he is about to lift it. To get the angle of the hand right, I had to pop Thor's hand off and make sure the peg from his hand was out of the frame. I used my Tamashii Nations rocks for the rock base that Mjolnir is resting on.
For the second panel, I was going for a shot where Thor had just lifted Mjolnir, and this caused a lighting strike in the sky. I used the base of the Tamashii Nations yellow lightning effect on a Tamashii Nations flight stand to simulate the lightning. I used two LumeCubes on 60% brightness to light the lightning effects to get a nice crisp glow on them. This is also where the frustration with details came into play. When I originally took this shot, I completely missed that the gauntlet on his wrist fell off when I took the hand off for my first shot. You can see that this is missing in the behind the scenes pictures for panels two and three.
For the last panel, I went for a relaxed shot of Thor holding Mjolnir with some more lightning behind him. This time I used the entire Tamashii Nations lightning effect to fill the background with as much lightning as I could. Just like panel 2, I forgot to add the gauntlet on Thor's right wrist when I first took the shot, so I had to go back and shoot this panel again after I was finished.
Overall, I am pretty happy with the results of this shot. Sometimes I just need to slow down and look at all of the details before I post something so I don't have to go back and redo it. This shot was also fun because all of the lighting was primarily done with LumeCube products. I used my two LumeCube Panel Minis to light Mjolnir and Thor in all three shots, and used two LumeCubes to illuminate the lightning in panels 2 and 3. I also used an LED strip light to light the base of the backdrop to give a nice gradient effect. I'm definitely going to be trying to do more panel shots in the future.
Camera settings for this shot:
ISO - 100
fStop - 5.6
Shutter Speed - 1/15 for panels 1 and 2, and 1/13 for panel 3
Picture Control - Portrait
White Balance - White Fluorescent for panels 1 and 2, and Cool-White Fluorescent for panel 3
Comments