Amateur miniature photography!

[benmoor]

Hi All,
Haven't posted for a while, but have spent a bit of time recently painting up the remainder of my WoT collection. They're sat waiting for a bit of grass on the bases and a coat of varnish before I take some snaps of them. So I was wondering if anyone has any advice on miniature photography? I'm thinking of getting a better setup for it, reading blogs on the internet there are quite a few tutorials about creating light boxes, correct lighting and camera settings, etc. I always have problems with shadows on my photos so figure it might be fun to try. Does anyone have/use a specific photo setup or any good tips and trick they would like to share?
Thanks,
Ben

[Carcharoth]

Photography is always a real challenge! I bought myself a Foldio (photo studio), which seems to work well for individual figures but I also have a bigger portable photo studio type set up that came with lights that I used for the photos in the book.
For the camera, I use an old canon EOS DSLR with the kit lens and a tripod. It does the trick, but I'm sure you could get a better setup. Then again, newer smartphones might work just as well...
I still struggle though!

[Halcyon]

I too had problems with shadows when I started.

It might not be the best set up, but I have now settled on using an anglepoise lamp (with a daylight bulb) as my main light source and another lamp (with a normal bulb) behind the miniatures.

I find the two lamps "cancel" each other out and so the shadows aren't as prominent.

The best tip I can give is to get a daylight bulb.

[benmoor]

Great tips - and I like the Foldio. In fact I'm now thinking that DIY is not the way to go as you seem to be able to get a folding light box fairly cheaply on Amazon so I might look into that, with a few inexpensive shadow-busting lights (with daylight bulbs!). I'll post some pictures!

[TuffSkull]

Tips above are indeed all good. It is more about the lighting than the camera these days, and the tripod is an absolute must.

I still take my photos with a very old, pretty basic camera, but my secret is a very good (~£200, but sadly no longer available..... Damn environment.... ) double bar lamp from the daylight company. Its width means it simply bathes an 18in wide area in light. With this placed directly over the camera as if it were the flash, it works in eliminating most of the visible shadows in itself with only a single lamp to manoeuvre. They do a new Eco friendly version which is a bar full of daylight LEDs but I have no experience of it.


One final tip - it's always worth taking multisession of the same shot. Less so with modern cameras which have many more focal points, but there's nothing more annoying than doing all the work then only realising a detail you wanted isn't in focus at the moment you get it onto a PC to upload!


I look forward to seeing more of your great stuff, in even clearer pics than before 

[Kadmon]

Here's some tutorial I've collected:
http://alkony.enerla.net/en/updates/nexus-updates/30-photographing-miniatures

It's worth noting that painting for the camera is not the same as painting for gaming, that's why even the best paintjobs can look average on photos. If you'd like to paint up minis that look good on photos, read painting tutorials by Games Workshop, and go for bright colours and highlighted shadows.

[benmoor]

Cheers for the extra tips. I get the impression lighting is the key element here!
Kadmon - that's a really useful collection of articles, I like the tripod mounted smart phone one!
In any case, I didn't want to spend much money on this so have gone for a cheap option (mainly as pretty much anything will improve what I'm trying to use at the moment!) and also something that won't take up much room. I've ordered a pop-up light tent thing (£10 on Amazon) and two light bulb holders for about £3 each. I already have a hobby lamp with a daylight bulb and a decent digital camera with tripod (Nikon NX10, my wife's but he lets me borrow it when I'm good...). So probably the most expensive part was two high power 30W CFL bulbs which were about £6 each.
We'll see if this actually makes much of a difference! If any ones interested I'll post some pictures of the set-up?
Ben

[Carcharoth]

I'd be interested to see the setup and more pictures!

[benmoor]

Ok, so - LESSON No 1: Check bulb sizes.

I wanted to get a high power bulb for the lighting.  I already have a 20W daylight bulb in my desktop lamp, which isn't quite strong enough so I ordered a 55W version. There is virtually no size difference between my daylight 20W and the usual household 7/11W bulbs - so I hadn't considered this:

Yes, its giant! Still fits in the lamp and works, but pokes out of the shade a tad...! I probably shouldn't have scrimped on the cost and gone for an LED one instead!

[The Slann]

Well, that's how a light  bulb should look like

I'm excited about the first results!

[benmoor]

Its taken me a little while to get round to this but here is my trial photo set-up:

Sorry about the rubbish photo (which doesn't bode well for this project as a whole!). I got a basic light box from amazon for about £10, and two bulb holders (£3 each) with low energy daylight bulbs (30W, about £6 each I think). So minimal spending of round £25 in total (excluding the lamp which I'd expect most people to have, and the camera of course!).

I'm currently having an experiment around with settings and backgrounds. I'm lucky enough that my Dad is a bit of a photo genius, although he is a keen landscape photographer, he took me through camera setup and digital editing specifics whilst he was here over Christmas.  If anyone's interested in knowing more let me know and I'll do a post to pass on some of his wisdom...

[GrimSnik]

looks like you've got a good handle on things. there's a fellow at my local gaming club who takes nice pictures and your setup looks a bit like what he uses, so I guess you're on the right track with what you've picked up.