Yesterday, I talked about why I like Santana Row so much, despite ultimately being a fancy shopping mall. There’s an urban park in the center and it was quite lively when I visited, with my friend Dan, a few weeks ago. There, I discovered the world’s smallest chess players.

Perspective has an interesting effect, though there is more happening here than just wide-angle distortion. These chess pieces are unusually large too. I imagine Hollywood probably used tricks like this, before the advent of realistic high-resolution computer effects. Of course this illusion would look even more realistic if a set was built to simulate a table top and surroundings to match.

I shot this at a slow 1/6 of a second to get a higher image quality. That accounts for the unwanted motion blur of the guy’s face. And while the Canon G7X Mark II is a fairly capable camera, I really try to maintain a lower ISO, whenever possible. Its high ISO, which is good compared to cameras from a decade ago, doesn’t meet my ideal.

But in reality, ISO 1600 on this camera is better than what my first DSLR, a Canon Rebel XT, did back in 2006. All told, I suppose that’s pretty good considering the G7X Mark II is a compact camera, which fits in my pants pocket.