Dave graciously allowed me to copy the disclaimer from his blog so I can (hopefully) avoid any unwanted contact from the big bad toy soldier manufacturing corporations! Thanks Dave! If you get a chance to meet Dave, do it. I attended some painting and modelling workshops he taught at WarGamesCon a couple of years ago, and have chatted with him a little bit the past 2 years at Games Day in Chicago. I don't claim to know him well, but he's always friendly and helpful. I haven't yet had the chance to stand across the table from him and roll dice, but I hope to some day; I'm sure he'll make a fun opponent!
Well, much has happened since my last offering. I played my first game of 6th Edition 40K. I've helped a couple guys out with some painting tips. But, something just came up in the past hour while I was checking out a gaming group I belong to on Facebook: The Gaming Garage....check these guys out, there's lots going on! One of the guys is looking to sell some of his armies for personal reasons. His photos are not doing his painting any justice. I know, I've seen some of the models in person. I decided to hold off on talking about my first 6th Ed. game, and the rest for now, and post an article I wrote a year or so ago to help people take better photos of their models. Some friends of mine own a hobby store called Heroic Realms in Kalispell, Montana. I was asked to type this up to answer a question on the forum at HeroicRealms.com. So, here's my miniature photography 101 article in its entirety. Ignore the references to people and places; except any part about owing me. Message me and we'll work something out!
Please note; this is not the definitive article on this subject. This is just one way, that is fairly easy to go about, that will let you get some good results.
Miniature Photography:
This is actually a fairly complex question and this will be a lengthy post. You owe Kaos a dessert from Joyce's shop for pointing me to your question! The problems you need to solve (in no particular order) are lighting, depth of field, focus, and background. For a starting point, I'm going to assume that your camera is of the point-and-shoot variety. It has some sort of zoom control and a few different shooting modes, but no real control over focus or the actual exposure settings. You will need a tripod of some sort; a small table top model will work. As Kaos stated, you could build a light box. This is the best solution overall and not expensive, but a bit of a pain to store so we'll go ultra-simple to get a nice background. Get a piece of poster board and spray paint one side of it grey. Use cheap matte finish grey primer of some sort....like from Walmart or Lowes or something. Make sure it is a nice even coat...spray 2 or 3 times if you have to. Tape or thumb tack one end of the poster board to a wall so that about 1/3 of the length is on the wall, and the rest is laying on a desk or table that is pushed up against the wall. Tape the bottom end of the poster board to the desk or table. Make sure you have a nice smooth curve in the transition from wall to desk and you now have a nice seamless background for taking photos of your models. Carefully un-tape it when done, roll it up and store it safely in a corner until you need it again. Use grey spray paint because it will make it easier for your camera to get a good exposure and easier for you to color correct the final photos later on. Lighting: ideally you want 2 lights, but one will do. Goose neck desk lamps are fine. Get daylight balanced bulbs for your lamp(s). They are better for painting by, and cameras are designed to work best with daylight....always have been. Yes, modern digital cameras have white balance settings but they are inconsistent. You will get the best results in more ways than one if you get daylight bulbs. If you have trouble finding them, check at Walgreens. I have bought daylight balanced compact florescent bulbs there before. Place the model you want pictures of on your background. Leave about 3-4 inches behind the model before the curve of the background starts up toward the wall. You may need to adjust this spacing later....we're going to try to put the shadows from the model into this space so they are not on the wall behind the model messing up your photo. A larger model will for sure need more space behind it. If you have 2 lamps place one on either side of the model, approximately 45 degrees in front of the model, and aim the lights down toward the model from about 45 degrees. This setup throws the shadows behind and to the sides of your subject and minimizes them because the shadow cast by one light is hit directly by the other light reducing its intensity by 1/2. If you have just one light then put it directly in front of the subject again angling down from about 45 degrees. The shadow should be cast directly behind the subject this way. The downside to a single light is that the light and your camera are competing for the same space so some fiddling around for best results will be required. Put your camera on the tripod. If your tripod allows it, consider rotating the camera to a vertical photo format; this allows you to zoom closer to the subject, filling the frame better. Focus is easier to deal with so I'll tackle it first. Your auto focus camera may or may not focus right on your model the way you want it to. If your camera has a manual focus option (not likely) then use that and focus where you want to. If not, keep hitting the shutter release button on you camera (only pressing it half way). Each time, the camera is likely to focus on a different point on the model....or it might not. It depends on the camera, the model, the lighting, etc. If the camera keeps focusing on an arm pointing toward the camera or some such place rather than the main body of the model then you need to trick your camera. Point the camera at the model's base and usually it will focus on the base which gives you a consistent point of focus from shot to shot. The deal breaker in close up photography is depth of field. Here's a quick explanation: In any photo there is a point of critical focus. This is the actual point (or plane) that the lens of the camera is focused at. Due to the physics of optics, there is an area both in front of and behind the point of critical focus that is considered to be in ACCEPTABLE focus. This area of acceptable focus is called the depth of field and it varies depending on the focal length of the lens (physics), the aperture setting within the lens (physics) and the distance between the camera and the subject. With most point and shoot cameras you have no control over your aperture. The lens focal length varies with the zoom setting, and you can place the camera where you choose. Use the 2 settings you have some control over to maximize your depth of field and you won't go far wrong when taking photos of miniatures. Depth of field is why I generally do not use a macro setting. Macro mode is for getting your camera very close to the subject which compresses the depth of field. With a simple mini that exists primarily within 1 plane it can work but I usually don't bother. A second common problem with macro mode is that usually macro mode turns your flash on by default. That flash will give you nasty harsh shadows. If you can turn your flash off in macro mode then give it a shot; cameras are getting better all the time. Yours might have an awesomely programmed macro mode that does a phenomenal job. If not, then do the following. Set you camera up about as far from the model as the camera's minimum focusing distance; usually about 18-24 inches (check your instruction manual). This is as close as the camera can focus the lens without switching into the macro mode. Then use the zoom (optical only, NO digital zoom) to crop in on the subject. The longer focal length of the zoomed lens reduces your depth of field, but that is balanced out somewhat by the increased distance between the camera and the subject. Use a remote release to trigger the camera if you can. If not, use the camera self timer mode to reduce camera shake as the photo is taken. Shoot multiple shots of the model, turning the model for different views. This way you can post front and back photos to show off your paint jobs, and/or you might get lucky and find the perfect angle to view your masterpiece from while experimenting. The last problem you will have to deal with is called color space. In a nutshell, every electronic device has its own color space. Your camera "sees" and records an image within its color space. Your computer and your software then "reads" and interprets the image file with a different color space. Neither of these is likely to match each other or what your eye sees when you're taking the photo. If you want to print a photo, your printer has its own color space too! What you need to do is use image editing software to adjust what you see on the computer so it matches the subject. Photoshop is the standard of the industry but ridiculously expensive. The editing software that came with your camera will do fine for what we need here. If you threw the disc away then go online and download the GIMP which is a ridiculously full featured editing software like Photoshop....but free. You will most likely need to lighten the photo up a bit and you may need to tweek the color balance a little bit. The grey background you made provides a neutral tone that allows your camera's light meter to get the exposure as accurate as possible. It is also a neutral color so doesn't create any color bias in the final photo. Extraneous light sources in the room where you are shooting could mess up either. Turn off extra room lights while shooting if possible. Once you've shot a few photos try experimenting with the white balance settings to see what color bias each one gives you: daylight should be best, but experiment. As far as image editing, first crop relatively close to your subject. You want to show off the model, not the background....no matter how super-cool it is. After cropping, adjust the exposure and/or color. In Photoshop the auto levels feature will take care of 90% or more of the editing job by itself when you are dealing with photos of miniatures. You'll have to play around with other software to see what features they have and what works. When you get the photo where you want it, re-size it for display on the web and you're ready to go. Play around with the info here and post your results....I'll do what I can to help get you dialed in. You can re-pay all this typing with Moose's pizza the next time I'm up for a visit!
Look forward to seeing your results.
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