Photographing your miniatures?

[Lukas The Trickster]

Morning all - all Morning! Does anyone have any tips on getting the best results of out photographing stuff they have painted? I know very little about photography in the first place, and there doesn't seem to be much information on photography specific to miniatures. Any tips or links on what works/doesn't work, cameras, lighting and backgrounds would be much appreciated

[gwensdad]

I got a setup like this ([URL="http://www.walmart.com/ip/23988416?wmlspartner=wlpa&selectedSellerId=3&adid= 22222222227017366516&wl0=&wl1=g&wl2=c&wl3=25380878 076&wl4=&wl5=pla&wl6=50599035396&veh=sem"]link[/URL]) years ago on clearance for $10. Not with the backgrounds this has but very similiar. If you forgo setting up the lights you can take the "box" outside on a nice sunlite day and just use natural lighting for very good effect.

[Chaoschrist]

I think the biggest factor for miniature photography is having a macrolens or a macrofunction on your camera. It's often a flower/rose icon on cameras.

Aside from that, I've found that with lights you might want to have cooler lights and not the "warm" regular lights most people have indoors, since they tend to give out a yellowish hue. I'd avoid the 2700K range of lights for that and aim for around 3000K. But you could just as well use daylight, though right now, it's not really the "best" season (late autumn) for pictures outside I think. I found summer worked best for it, and preferably in the mornings.

Smooth surfaces for backdrops help out signifcantly as well. Black or white is used quite commonly, an off white does the trick as well. I usually take to a4 sized papers, put on as a surface and on curved towards the wall I'm shooting against to create a bit of a gradient with it.

But if anything; Macro is the key. Having a decent camera with a optical zoom (and knowing how to operate a camera beyond "automatic" settings) might help as well.

[Denzark]

I thought we had a sticky on this - without being trite that is my best advice.

[Lukas The Trickster]

I thought we had a sticky on this - without being trite that is my best advice.

Well it seems to have become 'unstuck' then, as I searched back through a number of the painting forums and couldn't find anything, unless its under an ambiguous title or has got squirreled away under PP or historical stuff Hence this thread

[Sarp3Don]

I can recommend this site: [url]http://massivevoodoo.blogspot.de/2009/10/tutorial-overview.html#photography[/url]

I use a daylight-lamp and a plastic-bin from IKEA for my photographs (and the aforementioned macro-setting on my cam). I have a rather simple cam (NIKON S3100) and have some problems with bigger groups of minis. But i think the pictures of a small amount of minis are OK. A darker background also helps (as can be seen on the page or on my pictures)
greetz

[Denzark]

I shall dig into the archive whilst humming a little tune to myself...

[energongoodie]

You can't go wrong with a daylight bulb and a sheet of A3 paper. It's not the best with honours but it's cheap and easy.
A camera with a proper macro setting is a must. I don't have a proper macro lens on my olympus cause I'd rather spend the money on models but the macro setting isn't too bad.

Assuming you have a camera better than a phone I think lighting is the most important factor.

[Lukas The Trickster]

Cheers Guys