Shooting Challenge: 27 Shots Of Toys, Big And Small

From little toys to big boys toys, the variety in this week’s shooting challenge results will blow your mind. Well, it blew mine. Some of you got your shots from toy shops, others pulled out old Lego minifigs, and some took the interpretation of this week’s theme into weird places. See all the results after the jump.

Brent Clark

Camera: Canon EOS 600D
Lens : 18-55mm
Manual focus
F-stop: 5.6
ISO: Auto
Struggled for any original ideas with my three stormtroopers, so I made them copy some monkeys. Had trouble with “See no evil” trooper as he couldn’t see where to face the camera. The force is not strong in that one.

Stuart Addelsee

Canon7D – Canon 50mm f/1.8
f 5.6 | 50mm |ISO 400 | 30 sec
Probably one of the only real toys I own, if you down count my camera, guitars, PC, etc. Very simple setup but a few takes to get a shot I was happy with. Figure against a black back-drop in a dark room, and then a single LED passed back and forth for 30 secs. Some slight tidying up in post, but more or less straight from the camera.

Stuart – http://www.flickr.com/photos/stuart_addelsee/

Tracy Miller

Team Thundercat is always getting beat by the man, so Mr. Silver wanted to
show support and give him a massage. I used an iPhone.

Tegan Ackley

This was taken with a Canon EOS 550D using the standard lens. It is my 5 year old cousins my little ponies playing with a decorative silver horse in the back garden.

I did some post editing using photoshop to overlay a black and white layer, bringing back the colour in the eyes of the horses for a standout effect.

Heidi Messer

Nikon D7000 – Sigma lens 18-200mm, f5.6, ISO 640.
I took this photo of an old toy car as it reminds me of my childhood. I always took my brother’s matchbox cars off him to play with. Taken outdoors in natural light in “off road conditions”! I feel this photo has a nostalgic sense to it.

Kevin Cheng

Canon EOS 7D with 50mm f/1.8
Hand held at f/1.8, 1/40 second exposure at ISO 800.

Danbo is my favourite fall back prop with her versatility in poses and expressions. Here she is with a massive hangover after a night of partying.

I did a Danbo and Seven Sins series last year if anyone is interested in looking.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aerokev/sets/72157627381219404/

Adam Tzinis

Canon 600D w/ Sigma 50mm, ISO200D+, ƒ1.4, Shutter 1/100

You’re looking at my S.H Figuarts Kamen Rider Fourze just casually rocket drilling kicking his way through space, making sure to look good as he goes along his way, leaving our blue little world behind him. (Space is a theatre room pretending to be a studio and Earth is a globe hiding its stand behind a Ps2).

Georgina Luczi

Taken with “my baby” Olympus e-pl3, 14.0-42.0 mm f/3.5-5.6 Iso 200.
As I don’t have any toys, I decided to visit my local Games Workshop in Brisbane city. The actual photo is of Gandelf from their Lord of the ring s range. Thanks to the guys at the store to let me take a couple shots.

Tara Clapperton

I never really cared for the Japanese character ‘Mashimaro’, until I found this one in his red velvet cloak looking very mage-ish (of course, there are holes for his rabbit ears to poke through).

I haven’t really done much low light photography, and was playing around to see what I could get that would capture his character. The warm glow of candlelight worked best, like he’s made camp for the night and is warming his paws over a fire 😛

Canon s95
ISO 500
-1/3 exp
no flash

Madhu Mogulla

Inspired by the person who experimented with Towels in one of the Gizmodo’s shooting challenge, here is my try.
Camera : Canon 550d
Lens: 18-55mm IS kit lens
fstop: f/4.5
shutter speed: 1/2sec

Joe Lim

Hi everyone here’s my attempt for this week’s challenge :Toy . My favorite toy has and will always be cars

This is my friend’s sexy red hot Holden Cruze in the underground car park at Mitchell Centre

About the camera: Nikon D5000, sigma dc 18-50mm f2.8, manfroto tripod, and hoya UV filter (just to prevent the lens from scatches, I am a clumsy person)

Setting:
RAW format, shoot at 27mm, aperture f3.5, iso200, shutter 0.8 second

Editing:
Topaz infocus to get the details back
Topaz denoise to get rise of some noise
Topaz adjust for color, contrast, etc

About the car?

Holden Cruze 1.4 turbo petrol which produces 103kW of power and 200Nm of torque. Not much but enough to have fun.

Fuel economy starting at just 6.4L/100km, Holden say it can take you up to 1000km on a single tank (has anyone managed to do that?)

6-speed automatic transmission with Active Select (not sure if anyone needs that )

Electronic Stability Control (ESC) , Anti-lock Braking System (ABS) , Electronic Brakeforce Distribution (EBD), Traction Control System (TCS) – Lots of safety yeah……

well…thats just to prove I can read the brochure and thanks for viewing 🙂

Mashuqur Rahman

The attached picture was taken with a Nikon D90 at ISO 200 at 38mm and f/11 using a Nikon 18-200mm lens. Shutter speed was 1/60 seconds using aperture priority. I used a Nikon SB-700 set to 1/2 power at camera left to cast the shadows of the chess pieces. The flash was triggered with a Nikon SC-29 TTL remote cord.

I wanted to try to give the board a film noir feel with long shadows of the pieces bearing down on the black king. The chess board depicts the ending position of the 1921 World Championship game (played 1/12/1921) between Jose Raul Capablanca and Emanuel Lasker. After Capablanca’s white queen put Lasker’s black king under check, Lasker resigned.

I had a lot of fun setting this shot up. I hope you enjoy viewing it as much as I did setting it up.

Jason Round

I’ve been doing these plastic soldier shots for a few years now and couldn’t resist entering. In this one I used tiles, a baking tray, watering can, cellophane, a Matchbox car, LED torch, cement dust, LCD monitor and more in a single shot.

The full PSP set is on my website www.roundeyephotography.com.au (Folio/Projects).

(5D MkII w/28-70@f16, ISO 100 Av)

Paul Douglas

Sony NEX-C3 with 18-55mm lens.

My robot brush doing his job in this dirty world.

And to be extra sure of the challenge, I used the toy camera filter on the NEX-C3 😀

Graham Nicol

I bought this BioShock “Big Daddy” a few years ago at a comic/gaming con in Adelaide. Since then it’s sat next to my tv; vigilantly collecting dust.

Light sources were a MacBook Air and an iPad. Post-processing consisted of a light sprinkling of Photoshop magic dust.

Equipment: Canon EOS 550D, Sigma 30mm prime lens
Settings: 1/11sec, f1.4, ISO 200

Simon Lee

Toy Mini racing over a bigger “Toy” Mini (a 1964 Austin Cooper S).

Canon 7D: 50mm: f/3.2: 1/40 sec (tripod)

Simon Brown

Canon 7D, 50mm F1.8 – 1/60 F10 ISO100

What better excuse to dust off the spaceman Lego, and get the flash off-camera and down low?

Damien C

Indiana Jones and the Backyard of Doom

Taken: 15/04/2012
Camera: Canon EOS 550D
Lens: Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II
ISO: 200

Vignette added and Lighting adjusted in Aperture 3.

Fairly new to the DSLR world, but giving it a whirl, not one of my favourite shots, but the only one I had time for!

Some of my other shots live at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/foto-dc/

Jeff Gamble

G’day Gizmodo Australia, This is my submission to the Toys shooting challenge. A friend I’m doing a 365 challenge with found this challenge and suggested we all try. Usually I would be using Lego for such a challenge, but these “friends” have forbidden me to use them because my Flickr stream is full of them. So Wile E Coyote is the subject of this one. This is Wile E’s response to the North Korea Rocket Launch. I have a feel ing won’t end well for him.

This was taken with a Nikon 300.
Tokina 100mm Macro lens at f/3
160sec exposure
with ISO 125 (L.7)
using natural light.

The rocket was homemade with parts from the Acme Corp. I used a sparkler for the fuse and Wile E’s been with me for decades.

Marc Soriano

So I pulled out my Legos, I mean my son’s Legos from his toy bin and thought this would be a good way to show our lego excitement. I thought it would be cool to have the minifigures pose like they were doing a photoshoot. I wanted that DOF in the background on the models to show the 2 POV. I used a Canon 5d II, Canon 100mm L macro lens, 200 ISO at F11 for 1 sec.

Marika Lehman

Initially I took a few photos for this challenge using my children’s toys, and I had one ready to submit but needed to go out shopping for a birthday present for a friend’s daughter. I walked into this puppet shop, and wow – the marionettes were just aching to be photographed! I knew as soon as I took this shot that I’d use it for this challenge.

Nikon D3100 with a Tamron 90mm macro lens
Using only the shop lamp as lighting – my settings were:
Manual mode, with M focus.
f/8
1/80 s
ISO 800

Post processing: To give the image some punch, I cropped it, added a touch of brightness and contrast and added a slight vignette using Photoshop CS5.

Dave Read

A local shredding the Vanity Bowl with a Frontside Bluntslide.
Rig: 450D, 55-250mm

Martin Caulfield

Canon Eos 1D MKIV, Canon 100mm Macro f/2.8 @ ISO 320, F/11, 1 Sec.

My favourite toy is a talkin Freddy Kruger Doll.

My kids also love it as they pull on his string to make him talk

I used a small LED light shining from above to give a more dramatic effect

Walaad

2 Instagrams _ iPhone 4S

Summer… Uncle Sol

Aline Riche

I shot this using my Canon E0S 550D.

What is it with getting older and not being able to enjoy toys anymore? I still enjoy colous, cute mini sizes and playing…

Yunhung Huang

Shot with Canon 7D, 15-85mm, f/3.5-5.6. ISO 1000.

I bought these two toys from Hot Toys. I am always amazed by the relationship between The Joker and The Batman. They are one of the kind and make up for each other. Best hero and villain team EVER.

David Johnson

Truck View
I was thinking hard about this one looking for toys like a madman in my house (no children to steal them from) there was only marbles as the toys from other peoples children had gone home with them. I looked under and behind everything in hope for a figure …..
I finally decided on a forced perspective shot with an old 1/14 Tamiya Aeromax r/c semi-trailer cab.
I set the shot up, balancing on the handrail, to look like shooting from a balcony looking down the street across the bonnet and into the cab.
Camera :Canon 600D
Lens :EFS 18-55
Length: 25mm
Foc: Manual
App:F25
Shutter :1/30
ISO Speed: 2000


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