Last year, as part of the Star Wars Celebration in Los Angeles, collectible prop & model makers Master Replicas held a party at Henson Studios. Perhaps their most popular item is the Force FX Lightsaber, possibly the single most fun “toy” ever to grace our green Earth (and if you ever played Star Wars as a kid and have yet to buy one of these, trust me – you want one). The highlight of their party was the Lightsaber competiton, in which dressed-to-impress ultra-nerds duelled each other to the multicolored, LED-strip death. Naturally, I was there grab photos…
I have to say, nerd jokes aside, the combatants put on a great show. Their skills with these $100 electronic glowsticks was impressive, clearly the result of many hours of practice (and I’m sure at the sacrafice of anything not nailed down in the living room). Lucky for me, it was an opportunity to have fun with long exposures and slow shutter speeds, so enjoy.
As always, click to enlarge – and may the force be with you!
Darth Mojo 
Mojo,
You Are AWESOME!
Hmm… an effect for video? Maybe…
Will
Your “long exposures” are a work of art, without question.
My Force FX Lightsaber allows me to be quite the kid, from time to time, at 47 years of age. I do so love my nerdy toys. :)
It’s kind of like “Star Wars” meets “The Matrix!” Very cool pix.
I’m with Will: I’d love to see a video version of this.
Resist!
– Doug
Wow, great photos.
I live in NYC and see a group of (possibly NYU student) ultra-nerds practicing their saber skills nightly in Washington Square Park during my walk home from the office. Hee!
I bought my chap a ForceFX lightsaber a few Christmases ago…earned me UBER brownie points, and of course I think it’s bloody marvellous as well;P I bought him a Kotobukiya Boba Fett this year..apparently I am the best girlfriend ever:)
Kitty =^..^=
I think I do have a short video of one of these guys practicing… it isn’t quite as cool as the long-exposure stills, but I’ll see if I can dig it up and post it.
UPDATE: The video isn’t all that great, not worth posting – trust me.
Doug Drexler? I know that name from somewhere in the past. Oh yes, the Federation Trading Post!
You, Doug, forced me to empty my wallet some thirty-one years ago during a visit to NYC. Shame on you. :) I was a kid in a Trek candy store….those were the days.
Among a lot of other things, Doug Drexler fleshed out the interior of the Defiant for DS9, though I would still like to know how its cutaway and deck plans ended up at about 120m in overall length, given that most official sources insist on 171m (a length established at the very beginning by Gary Hutzel, then a VFX supervisor for DS9). The 120m size is considered to be correct by serious analysts nowadays, partly due to the cutaway’s canonicity, but also due to inconsistencies in the VFX itself.
(Note: even though I know all this, I’ve never dressed up or played with replicas, and I’ve only been to a convention once and hated it, so I’m something of a mirror-fan in that respect.)
JustBob – Remember the Rules of Acquisition: Once you have their money, never give it back! Ahhhh… the Federation Trading Post… we’ll not soon see days like those again! Back then there was NOTHING. No movies, no TV. An interesting period in fandom. The Trading Post was an oasis for Trek fans, as I recall, we were publishing the Star Trek Poster Book at the same time.
Boris – I’m guessing that we updated the size of the Defiant based on the Chaffee shuttle. The Chaffee egress is the only time we have ever seen an identifiable human scale object next to the Defiant. By the way, I worked with Gary on the Chaffee design, and Gary decided the size of the Chaffee in relation to the Defiant. Basically the ships are usually as big as they need to be based on the dictates of the story. Hey look, we once shrank the Runabout to the size of a 9 volt battery.
Doug
Doug – “JustBob – Remember the Rules of Acquisition: Once you have their money, never give it back!”
Yes, and you have done well by those rules as I have not yet laid eyes upon my spent funds for over thirty years. :)
The Star Trek Poster Book was, and still is, a favorite. I have the entire set but one issue, the one that contained the Spock publicity photo. It was crystal clear as I recall.
Indeed, it was an interesting period in fandom. The only thing we had aside from reruns were conventions and, in my book, those 70s cons were the most unique versus what we have today. I don’t find the same “electricity” that I experienced back in the day.
What camera were you using and what settings???
I’ll pile on Doug, as well – I subscribed to the Poster Book too! Yes, I was the guy Shatner told to get a life – I lived in my parents’ basement, with all those Star Trek posters on the wall. My fave was from the first issue: Enterprise getting entangled in the Tholian Web. And, although it’s easy to get ahold of Trek stuff these days, it was far more magical back in the late 70’s.