Click, Print, and Treat – Canon on the road – literally!

Today at Hidalgo St. in Quiapo, Canon held an event featuring a number of cosplayers and participating photographers. It was a Canon only affair which means that in order to join or even be considered, you had to have a Canon camera.It was unfortunate that I wasn’t able to register because I missed the announcement of the final registration mechanics… I do have a Canon in the guise of the Powershot SX110 IS.

The event ran from 8 in the morning until about 5 in the evening which was when the winners were announced. Seeing that I wasn’t a participant, I went there just around the time the event was culminating. What really interested me was that the location is a street rather than a hall or an enclosed space. It did work towards the theme of the contest – Cosplayers in Quiapo which was more a form of street photography rather than anything else. The sponsors lined up the middle of the street each with their own tents – Tenba, Benro, Crumpler, and Sandisk.

Jay Tablante and Alodia Gosienfiao were the highlights of the event, neither of whose scheduled presentations I witnessed. Fortunately, even though I got there late, I was still able to see Alodia rocking a neon blue hair and striped outfit probably inspired by the Hatsune Miku character.

It wasn’t surprising that even though it was a Canon specific event some of the people there bore Nikon, Olympus, and Panasonic; there’s simply no stopping the determined although they were not allowed to participate during the contest proper which had a pre registration requiring a serial number. What was surprising was one of the three winners for the photography event used a Powershot/Ixus (not sure exactly which one but it was a compact and not a DSLR), he even cheered when his name was called and all for good reason; Amidst all the entries there shot with DSLR’s with all manner of lenses – wides, teles, and primes, who would’ve thought that a compact would lay waste to them all?!

Photo above shows the grand winner of the photography contest whose entry was a shot with the Quiapo church as background (held by the person she’s shaking hands with… dont know what camera she used though.

My DSLM (that stands for digital single lens mirrorless) is with my brother touring around Bangkok and I brought my SX110 to this event to shoot with as well as to abide by the Canon only theme. Since it still was daylight outside, shooting can be fast enough and with the SX110 having a 10x optical zoom, even though I was on the far end of the audience, I still managed to snap away at Alodia while the awarding was going on… not too much though because most of the photographers stood up and crowded to the front when the cosplay queen finally appeared again.

Let’s look forward to more events like these from Canon, who knows… as this competition has proven, anybody with a Canon and a fantastic perception can win.

All images in this post were taken by the SX110 IS, in full manual set to Vivid, crops applied for better composition.