A guide to photographing miniatures.

his is a collection of posts regarding photographing miniatures made here at Warhammer-Empire.com, as well as from other places across the web. Macro photography, and photographing miniatures in particular, is a recurring topic, so hopefully when people use the search function regarding photographing miniatures this post will come up and save them some time.

In the weeks/months/years to come, if any of these links become broken, please PM me, and I will do my best to update them. Some of them may be gone for good, in which case I will try to find substitutes. If you have some links that are better than those here – more intelligently written, more photos and examples, better photos, professional sources, etc. – feel free to PM me (PygmyHippo) with the link and a description, and I will add it. Alternately, you may post the links as a reply in this thread with a BRIEF, clear description. At some point in the future, this information will be collected, re-written, and added as a complete article to this site.

The re-printing of the posts below is meant to illustrate the discussions from this board, and they are filled with good ideas. Also, their inclusion here is to help folks who aren’t savvy with the search function by returning this as a top search result.

The goal of this thread is NOT to house links to every single occurrence or discussion, post, and site regarding photographing miniatures, so please do not post redundant info unless it is a marked improvement over what’s here. This thread is meant to provide a simple, clear, and as far as possible, complete introduction to help everyone take better photos of their figs.

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Links to Discussions on Photographing Miniatures:

http://www.librarium-online.com/content/view/65/18/

http://www.bananaking.net/cento/workshop/photography.htm

http://www.wargamerau.com/viewtopic.php?t=844

http://forums.privateerpress.com/index.php?s=cf…=5813

http://www.librarium-online.com/content/view/64/18/

http://www.macrophotography.org/

DIY (Do It Yourself) Macro-photography Links:

Building a Macro Photo Studio (Light Box) for under $10
http://strobist.blogspot.com/2006/07/how-to-diy-10-macro-photo-studio.html

http://www.paperminis.com/tutorials/tutorial_light_box.htm

Building a Macro Lens (not for the meek):
http://www.photocritic.org/2005/macro-photography-on-a-budget/

Backdrop blue-to-white gradient:

http://members.optusnet.com.au/~streetj/bluetowhitex2.jpg

Free image hosting
For example: if you want your image to appear in a forum post, it needs to be placed somewhere on the internet, and a link to that image is then made in your post. The following hosting services will store your digital photo online for free, and then you can link to the photo.

http://photobucket.com/
http://www.freeimagehosting.net/
http://imageshack.us/
http://www.free-webhosts.com/free-image-hosting.php

For instructions on how to add photos and other formatting to your posts, click here.

Photo Tip and Link from Von Waiss:

http://www.bananaking.net/cento/workshop/photography.htm

Remember; avoid the camera flash, use a tripod & white-balance is important.

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Photo Tips by General Helstrom:

I’m not experienced enough to write a full tutorial, but a buddy an I have done plenty of screwing around with a digital camera to get his Sisters of Battle sold on Ebay – one squad of five went for about $180 so I suppose the pics came out alright.

Lighting and stability are the two keys – you need good lighting and a perfectly stable camera.’

Lighting can be improved by masses by using the following guidelines:

- Use strong bulbs, say 60, 80, or even 100 Watts.

- Set up lighting from at least two directions: One from atop, and one from the side. Both should be slightly angled to illuminate the front of the model (that is, the side you’re photographing). Use either a third, less powerful light, or a piece of reflecting card (a simple white card will do) to get some light on the other side of the model.

- Use a proper background: It should be a light colour, but not too near white. A light grey or blue is commonly favored. We used a large sheet of “stained” paper, curved against the wall to provide a smooth transition from floor to wall. Make sure the picture is cropped to include only your chosen background as background, an no bits of wall, window, or anything else, or it’ll look dead cheap.

- You camera should be able to adjust the colors properly if you used only one type of light source – either all candescent, all daylight-corrected, and so on. The camera adjusts the colors to compensate for the colors of the light by judging the white scale somehow – this means a white background can put your colors way off (over-adjusted) unless you’ve used daylight-corrected bulbs. If you use the same kinds of bulbs and a proper background, no need for the daylight-corrected (expensive) things.

Stability is relatively easy to achieve with a few simple tricks.

- Get a small tripod mount for your camera. These things can usually be had for something like $5 and will help to no end. Get the camera angled so that it is slightly looking down on your model.

- Use the timer function so you don’t need to touch the camera when it does its thing.

- Don’t bump the table when photographing.

For most other settings you can rely on the automatic functions of the camera. Some final notes: Make sure you use the macro setting on your camera, and do not zoom: Rather, physically move the camera closer or further while it is zoomed completely out. Also, many picture editors don’t blow up or shrink digital pics very well due to the constraints of the JPEG format and general digital SNAFU (aka pixels). You’re commonly better off taking pics at medium size in the first place.

Hope this helps some – at least the set-up makes you feel like a real pro.

–GH

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Photo Tips by Bigrin:

Many of you have commented on some of the pictures on my website in the past, so maybe I can share with you what I do to get such nice images. Essentially, it is the same as what General Helstrom said: lighting and stability.

First of all, I use a mid-range Sony digital camera that has 2.3 Megapixels, a macro mode, and a timer. I never use the flash when I am shooting my miniatures. I have 2 Architect’s desk lamps on my hobby table. They are relatively inexpensive (~$20 at Wal-Mart), and I have bought the daylight bulbs for them. These are fluorescent lights that are 6″ long and put out just the right combo of light. I also have a cheap tripod and always use it to take pics.

Let’s talk lighting for a few minutes. Halogen and incandescent bulbs put out a very yellow light. This light colors your models and mutes the tones. It also gives all of you whites a “dirty” look. Fluorescents are much better for getting brighter colors. I usually turn off all incandescent and halogen lights in the room when I shoot to remove their coloring effects.

In order to alleviate shadowing effects, you need at least 2 lights, and you want to make sure they are close enough to illuminate your models, but far enough away so that they do not oversaturate your colors. Make sure that your models are sitting in front of an appropriate backdrop. Shiny items (like army books) or pure white paper will reflect too much of the light back into the camera, leaving your miniatures low contrast. I normally use a textured, non-white surface as a back drop.

Now, for detailed closeups that are not blurry, you need to have a camera with a macro mode (so you can get in real close), a tripod (so you don’t shake the camera), and a timer function (so that you don’t move the camera as you press the shutter button).

The macro mode is important, because it allows you to get detailed closeups of the miniature. This is important because you will often want to reduce the size of your image in order to post it on the net – because I am not going to sit around waiting for a 2.3 Megapixel image to load! I would much rather have a 2.3 mp image that was reduced to 640×480 than to crop a 640×480 region out of a larger image. Why? Because when you resize an image, a lot of the blurring and color errors are reduced, leaving you with a very nice looking image indeed. If you simply crop from a larger image, then all of these defects are still present and your minute errors (small painting mistakes) really seem to be visible.

The tripod and timer function are the next step in getting really nice images. Pick your camera up and watch it carefully as you aim at something across the room and press the shutter button. Did you see how much your hand shook as you aimed, and how much the camera moved when you pressed the shutter? This is why we need a tripod and timer. The tripod gives you the stability that your muscles can’t. The timer allows you to take an image without having to worry about the camera “jumping” as you press the shutter. Simply set the timer, focus, press the shutter button, and wait for it to do its thing.

OK, now that we have the basics down, surely our first image will come out great and we will never need another one, right? Wrong! I usually end up taking 3-5 images from every angle with different lighting positions, camera settings, backdrops, etc. This is because, no matter how carefully we try and repeat a previous setup, there are always additional factors that we can’t control. Maybe it is daylight outside, so you have different ambient lighting. Maybe there is more white on this model, causing too much light to be reflected back into your camera. Maybe the backdrop you have chosen worked great on your armored knights, but blends into your wizard. There are many effects that you can achieve with your camera, and it will take practice and experience to figure out what settings/conditions/etc. will work for any given shot.

OK, now that we have gotten the mechanics of photographing out of the way, what about post-processing. “What?” I hear you say, “you mean we can’t just upload directly into our gallery?” Of course you can. But if you really want people to go WOW at your images, you are going to have to give them what they are looking for. Things like cropping out the background, resizing for appropriate display, lightening/darkening the image as needed, can make your images really shine. This means that you need a software package to do this postprocessing.

Most digital cameras come with a “light” version of a processing software that will do the basics of resizing, cropping, contrast enhancement, etc. For those that are a little more serious about controlling what goes on in these processes, there are packages such as: Adobe Photoshop ($400 – overkill), Paint Shop Pro ($70 – not quite as much overkill), and the freeware Gimp ($0 – just about right). These packages allow you a little more control over the functionality and can help you to present high-quality images that still reflect your original paint job.

Well, we covered everything from photography mechanics to software, so I guess that’s about it. The only way for you to get better images posted on the gallery is to grab your camera and tripod and get some practice, so go to it…

Brad G.

http://www.sleepless.to/brad

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Photo Tips by SirUlrich:

Here is what I do.

1. I have a large sheet of white foamboard that I place upright on my table to make a large clean white background. Also I always take the pictures during the day.

2. I place my table (with the foamboard) next to a window (and thus gain the advantage of natural light) but also under the normal home lamp (hanging from the ceiling). Now I have a light source above my miniatures as well as on the side. Also I benefit from the natural light that riches the colors.

3. I negate the problems of disturbing shadows forming on the opposite side of the miniatures than where the light comes from by placing a third light source, an ordinary desk lamp, on the opposite side. So now I have three sources of light and the white background that also reflects the light. NEVER USE THE CAMERA’S OWN FLASH!

4. Then I use the “MACRO” option on the camera (the funny flower mode you can choose on most cameras) and take the camera VERY close to the mini. Be sure to not hold the camera! Use a stand instead. Or place the camera on the table to avoid shaking. Altering the angle of the photo is easy to do e.g. by placing a movement tray under one side of the camera (tilting) or placing a pile of books under the cam to raise it higher.

5. I also use the “TIMER” mode (of 2 seconds) to make sure that the possible shaking of the camera when pressing the launching button has ended when the pic is taken…

6. Here are a few examples taken with the above technique:
http://s81.photobucket.com/albums/j224/schwartzland/

SirU

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Photo Tips by Wisenheimer:

Personally, I prefer lots of indirect lighting. Cameras are funny things. You can take the same bowl of fruit with the same lighting and get two different looks using two different cameras. A lot of this has to do with how much gray the camera assumes is in a shot. That’s why pictures generally look better on slightly overcast days.

Basically, after following the ground rules, you need to get a feel for the camera. There’s a fair amount of experimenting that goes into it. You may never get the shot your looking for from a disposable. And if you do, you may never be able to successfully repeat it. It isn’t you.

I’d definitely hang around the photography classes, or put up a flier. There’s always two or three Ansel Adams wannabes running around a campus. They’ll generally have access to the equipment you’d need, and you can watch how they set up the lighting for certain effects.

Another thing you might want to consider is picking up some full spectrum bulbs. GE makes a Reveal bulb that’s pretty cheap and gives a wider spectrum. You can also get aluminum worklights from hardware stores for a couple bucks each. These can clip onto things like chairbacks, which is a very inexpensive way of getting decent lights.

Also you’ll need is a tripod. If you want to get close to the model at all, you’ll need a steady hand. Setting the camera on top of a book or two is a cheaper option, but ultimately less successful. Usually, you can get a pocket tripod that stands about 3 inches off the table for around 5 bucks.

For reflectors, use white foamboard. The board itself will provide a nice diffused fill light. If you need something harder, they can be wrapped with aluminum foil, the dull and shiny sides also provide options.

I’d say photographing on the cheaper side would require:
Three worklights at about 9 US Dollars.
Three extension cords at about 15 Dollars (optional but may be required)
4 pack of Reveal bulbs at about 5 US Dollars
A mini-Tripod at about 5 US Dollars
Two sheets of foamboard at about 5 US Dollars
Some aluminum foil 1 US Dollar (Hurray Dollar Store)

It looks like about 25 to 40 dollars you’d have everything required to take a pretty good picture reliably.

Photo Tips from warhammer.org.uk’s Jonathan =I=
(in turn reposted from http://www.wargamerau.com):

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Miniature Photography 101

Hi all,

thought I’d bash this out to answer a growing number of questions on how to photograph models. This will be a substantial message, and I may not be able to get it all down in a single go, so watch for edits along the way. I will aim this at all levels of photographer – be you the proud owner of your first simple camera, or an enthusiast with a digital SLR and an assortment of lenses and filters. I’ll cover equipment, techniques, basic camera usage, etc. I will also refer you to external sources from time to time, where additional information can be found.

Anyway, thats enough preamble. Lets get on with it…

PHOTOGRAPHY BASICS 101

Rather than type in a lot of information here that may or may not be of interest or use to you, I will simply refer you to my website. You can access a basic photography lesson at: http://styledsky.iinet.net.au/hints/basics/1.html (Note: this link is dead, looking for substitute. PygmyHippo)

If you can use an SLR in Manual Exposure Mode, you can skip this bit safely. Otherwise, I would advise you to read over it. If you are serious about taking photographs, you really do need to learn about shutter speeds, apertures, and exposures. I know that lesson is based on film, but the principles of exposure are the same.

Next, I’d like to go through some equipment that you may find useful for mini photography. I’ll list EVERYTHING you may or may now want, along with where to get it, and how much it will probably cost you.

Camera Support

* REAL Option: Tripod.
Cost: $50- up
I’m not talking those stupid bendy ones you see in travel shops. A simple but decent (read: stable) tripod is available from any good camera store – a cheap one will set you back anything from $50- upwards. You’re not transporting it up hills, so don’t waste your money on carbon fibre and the like. To chose your ‘pod, put YOUR CAMERA AND LENS on the ‘pod, set it up, and see how stable it is when someone walks past, or if its got any degree of give in it. If it does, put it back and move up the market. Shakey Tripod = Useless !

* BUDGET Option: Beanbag (mini)
Cost: $5-
Seriously ! Get a cloth bag, just a tiny one, and fill it pretty full of beans. Try to get real beans (heavy sort) as opposed to stryene balls. All you do now is place your camera on a stool or something, and put the beanbag either under the whole camera for a compact one, or just under the lens (SLR only !).

Lighting

REAL Option: Professional Lighting Rig
Cost: Too much.
Forget it. Unless you’re a pro, don’t bother. Plus, we’re likely to be using Digital in the end (either a digital camera or scanning the film), so its not really a problem.

BUDGET Option: 2 x Desk lamps with daylight bulbs
Cost: $19.95ea for the lamps, $3.95ea for the bulbs
Get the “anglepoise” style lamps, and if they are on large floor stands, even better ! You can get away with one of those floor lamps with 2 or 3 “spots” on them, but two quite separate sources is better. Daylight bulbs are -NOT- essential, however I find them easier to work with.

Exposure Control

REAL Option: Light Meter
Cost: More than the lighting rig for a good one !
Forget this too – you won’t want to spend $1200- on a small box you’ll use once a month (unless you’re a pro!). If you have one though, you probably don’t need to read this ! Plus your camera has a simple one built-in. More on this below.

BUDGET Option: Photographic Grey Cards
Cost: $25-
These are worth their weight in gold ! Place them behind and UNDER your model. Not only do they defeat a lot of shadowing, your camera’s internal lightmeter is set to expose for “18% reflectance” or “middle grey” – which is the EXACT colour of these cards. They are so useful that I would suggest that ANY mini photographer should have a pack (you typically get 2 8″x10″ cards, and a 4″ x 5″ one in a pack. They will last a lifetime.

Special Effects, ie: Filters

You don’t NEED these. If you want to use them, you will only ever use a couple of them. Briefly, they are listed, along with their uses, below.

81B “Warm-Up” filter – gives everything a warm tinge to it. Nice if you’re shooting outdoors and want things to look more “friendly” and nice.

UV or Skylight filter – protects the lens, and can eliminate the “cold” blue edge to light if you live REALLY high up in the mountains.

Flourescent Corrective filter – its magenta in colour, but I forgot the number. If you’re shooting under office-style flouro lights, you need on of these if you don’t want everything to appear green.

Circular Polariser – if you have high-gloss minis, or you’re photographing a highly reflective substance (NOT metal – see below), you might consider one of these. It works by eliminating one specific direction of light – by turning it you can specify which direction you want to cut out. Great for highly reflective surfaces – you can eliminate the reflection and get a clearer picture with no hotspots. This doesn’t work so well on metal reflections (the explanation for this is far too technical to be worth worrying about), but is SUPERB for glass, resin, water, varnish and other reflective surfaces. No, it won’t stop a mirror.

Right, enough on equipment. Lets get on with taking pictures !!!

PREPARING TO SHOOT

This section is all about setting up. I’ll cover how to use the different sorts of cameras afterwards – this part is common to all picture-taking units.

Step 1 – Setting the Scene

Find yourself a nice flat, stable surface to place your mini on. It should be a decent height and be well-lit BEFORE you add more lights to the area. Your dining room table should be pretty good, unless you have a fluoro light overhead. The BEST place is directly under a skylight, but we don’t always have those in convenient places.

Prepare the area by removing anything loose that could rattle around or possibly interfere with the scene. Spiders, cats, small children, threads, loose tablecloth, etc – all bad. Get rid of them, or tape them down. Close windows and turn off A/Cs and fans. Don’t let ANY STRAY MOTION get within 10 metres of your scene. Why do I stress this ? We’re dealing with items on a macro level, potentially with a fairly substantial exposure time. The SLIGHTEST vibration will cost us in sharpness and ruin the picture.

Next, place one of the large sheets of grey card on the edge of the table, grey side up. Just lay it down. If you did the previous step correctly, it won’t move around. Now, get a small but heavy box, a stack of books, etc, and place them on the table behind the card. Now, get the other large card, and lean it up against the books. It should be on about a 75 – 80 degree angle – we DON’T want it perfectly vertical, but it has to be more or less upright. Finally, place the small card grey side up on top of the large card, towards the front of the card, but NOT on the edge. We’re going to stand our mini on that to get him/her off the main flat area. Trust me, this helps !

Step 2 – Placing the Mini

Get your mini and place him down on the small card. Don’t bother about posing him perfectly quite yet – we do that ONLY WHEN the lighting is in place and ready, as posing includes lighting ! If you want any extra scenery, place it now. ANYTHING ELSE you place should be off-centre and to the side of your mini. Because of photographic properties such as “depth of field”, these pieces of scenery will blur out, and thus won’t detract from your mini. I would advise that the first shot you take, you take of the mini on its own, unless you’re specifically trying to shoot a diorama (more on that later).

Step 3 – Lighting the Scene

We need lots of light for our scene for several reasons, but the main one is that we’re doing our utmost to ensure that the camera does -NOT- fire the onboard flash. Yes, on some cameras you can turn it off, but others you can’t. The more regular light you have, the less likely the camera is going to want to use the flash, and I will tell you this for free – DIRECT FLASH RUINS PICTURES ! Especially when your target is about the same size as the flash bulb!

Position your lamps (you DO have 2, right?) in front of your scene. Place them approximately 30 degrees to the left and right of the model, with the bulb about 15 degrees off horizontal. If you can’t do this (maybe you have a single floor stand), just make sure the lights are CONVERGING on the model. Why ? This will ensure that each light eliminates most of the shadows caused by the other. Shadows will rob us of detail. I’ll later cover the use of lighting for effects, but for now, stick to neutral. If you have an overhead light, turn it on as well. If you still need more light, well, you’ll have to improvise. Try a torch.

Now, get down at eye level with the model. Put your head roughly where the camera is likely to be (you’ll be able to predict this better with practise) and look at the model for 5 seconds WITHOUT blinking. Are you squinting because of the light ? Close your eyes – do you see “hotspots” in them ? If the answer is yes, then your light sources are quite possibly too close to your target. This is NOT a hard and fast rule – only trial and error will tell you if this is the case (you’ll get crappy pictures with flare in them).

Finally, pose your model until you’re happy. You may have to adjust the position of your lights slightly here – do it. They’re not glued down – nothing is – so don’t be afraid to shift stuff to get a strong composition. I’ll talk composition later on – this is the technical part.

Step 4 – Positioning the Camera

OK, grab your camera and tripod (or stool & beanbag, if you’ve been listening…). Mount the camera, and look through the viewfinder (or at the LCD). Now, move the camera and its support until you’re happy with the way the scene looks in the viewfinder. Don’t worry about zoom and focusing at this point – we’re still composing here. Once you’re satisfied with the way it looks, you can actually get around to the next part, where we’ll actually TAKE the picture…

A NOTE ON COMPOSITION

I think this needs to go in here. Composing a picture is a lot more important than just whacking the subject down, putting it in the centre of the frame, and firing away. This may be fine for a complete beginner, but we want BETTER pictures than that. This is far more important when you have a diorama and some scenery in place than when its simply a single model, but its still the simplest and fastest way to better pictures.

Here’s another tip absolutely for free – THE FIRST VIEWPOINT YOU CHOOSE IS -NEVER- THE BEST ! Move the camera up and down, side to side – lower yourself if you have to – you have knees – look around the scene through the viewfinder/LCD until you get the best-looking composition.

Hang on, you say – this could take hours ! Yes, it could… however there are some simple guidelines that help to make simple but strong compositions. There are loads, but I’ll cover a bare few…

Rule-Of-Thirds
The rule of thirds divides a picture up into 9 equal sections by drawing imaginary lines at 1/3rd and 2/3rds of the way across and down the picture. Grab an old picture of a landscape from a magazine (Road Patrol magazine is a good one, and is in most households) and actually measure and draw the lines to see this in action. What does this do ? Well – there are now 4 verticies (intersections) on the picture. These are the STRONGEST places to have something you want people to focus on in your picture. Interesting, you say, but not useful – my mini is bigger than that. Yes, it is… however, you also have 4 lines drawn. Anything placed along these lines will be seen strongly by your eye – so think about placing your mini along one of the vertical ones in your pictures. Trust me, this works WELL. Finally, if you have a horizon line, try placing it on one of the horizontal lines for a strong composition. Such a simple technique, and so, SO useful !!! Your mini may not have a horizon line, but if you have ANY sort of background, then pay attention to this.

The Rule of Thirds grid

Example Photo in Rule of Thirds grid

Triangles
Tri = 3… hmmm, a pattern maybe ? Using Triangles to draw focus works well. Go back to that picture above. See those verticies ? Any triangle, drawn from any of the lines to any of the other lines, will look strong.

Triangles in Rule of Thirds grid

Leading Lines
Try to have something in your picture that naturally leads the eye around or through the image. A river, a road, a fence – these are the obvious examples, but you can use leading lines in so many ways. Try to position your mini in such a way that your eye naturally follows its shape, its details, etc.

Leading Lines in Rule of Thirds Grid

Odds vs Evens
Although most people prefer symmetry over disparate halves (ask people), your brain and eye don’t work that way. Your eye will naturally be drawn to groups of ODD numbered items rather than even. It’s subconcious, but you can use this in your photographs. If you’re not photographing a single mini, try groups of 3, 5 or 7 – for example, place your commander and 2 lackeys in the photograph. Not only will the more ornate commander stand out, the picture will look pleasing, and you did almost nothing to make it that way !

Depth of Field
We’ll cover this in more detail during the shooting stage of this article, but for now, remember that its a compositional tool that you should always keep in the back of your mind.

FINALLY – TAKING THE PICTURE.

I’m going to split this into 3 sections – one each for point-and-shoot film cameras, one for digital cameras, and one for SLR cameras (be they digital or film-based). This is the order in which you’ll get quality photos as well – no compact camera (be it digital or film) will EVER match it with the “big boys” of the camera world when it comes to this sort of thing. You’ll see why when you read through these sections.

Point & Shoot

There isn’t much to say here. Run your camera’s zoom (if any) to its extreme telephoto end (zoom in !). Now, line up your photo, remembering that the closer you get, the more chance you’ll have of “parallax error”. What error, you say ? It refers to the fact that your viewfinder is NOT seeing what your lens is seeing, and from this range, it could be a problem. Compensate by backing off a bit, and taking -2- photos each time, one with the mini slightly lower and more to the right-hand side of the viewfinder. Take your first couple in really close, then slowly back away, shooting 2 pics each time, until you have taken 2 from about a metre away (your camera should be fine from closer – this is to hedge your bets, a process in photography that can collectively be called “bracketing”, even though technically this refers to exposures only. The last thing you need is to get your film back and find nothing usable. This way, you’re guaranteed of getting SOMETHING).

If your camera insists on firing the flash, you can get faster film (ISO400 is a good option), plus you can up the light around your mini. If this still doesn’t work, stick a piece of black tape over the flash itself. Then, take a photo of the grey cardboard and NOTHING ELSE. Tell the lab you did this (and the grey card), and they should be able to adjust their equipment to give you something usable. This is another handy trick !

You really aren’t going to get decent results this way – very few compact cameras can handle anything up close and personal. Having said that, I’ve managed before to use a $29 camera to take a decent photo down the lens of a microscope. If you don’t try, you’re guaranteed of a failure, so its worth having a go and experimenting.

Digital Compact

This gets more interesting, and I know for a fact that a basic modern digital camera is capable of some good model photography, even if its doesn’t have a “macro” or “close-up” option on it. If your digital camera is NOT an SLR, use this option. If you have a digital SLR, but aren’t confidant, use this method.

First, set your quality to maximum and image size to maximum. We’re going to use the CCD in your camera to give us a “virtual zoom” without loss of image quality. Next, set your camera’s mode to either “macro” or “close-up” if you have it, otherwise set for “portrait”. Next, switch OFF the flash, and engage the self-timer option to keep your camera steady with your hands OFF it.

Now, zoom in to your limit, then back off slightly. Get the camera into position – you can probably get to about 30cm away with even the cheapest of digital cameras. Half-press the trigger, and see if the camera gets a focus lock (it should give you some warning if it does/doesn’t – check your manual. Mine displays a red or green dot for AF lock). If it doesn’t lock, try adjusting your composition just slightly to ensure the camera has a fighting chance. If it doesn’t lock again, back away slightly. The focus will SOMETIMES lock on the cardboard, but typically there is nothing there for it to get. It should lock on your mini only, but if you have a diorama, then you have to be careful.

If you get the lock, fully press the trigger and take your hands OFF the camera. Wait for the shot. Excellent ! Repeat this process about 8 times from slightly different distances away, angles, etc. Its digital – you can delete what doesn’t look good. DO NOT ASSESS your pictures in the LCD display – use your computer later to REALLY check them. Once you have a few pictures, you can go check them on the PC. Reject -ANYTHING- that has hotspots from a flash, is even SLIGHTLY blurry, or that is too dark/light. HOWEVER, DO NOT REJECT anything just because it looks a little on the blue or orange side. This can be corrected later with a single click. Besides, a little orange adds warmth, which often improves pictures.

If you haven’t got anything good, repeat the process until you do. The first few sessions will be a little bit hit-and-miss, but you’ll soon work out the nuances of your particular camera, and soon you’ll be getting about a 75% hit rate for great mini photos.

SLR Cameras (film or digital).

This is the best way to do it, bar NONE. If you’re on film, load up ISO 50 or 100 if you have a tripod, ISO400 if you don’t. This is irrespective of the lighting conditions. Those of you with digital, simply SET the ISO to one of these. Again, digital people, set top quality, largest size, 0 compression, etc. Both mediums – leave your flash OFF (if its automatic pop-up, remember to push it back down again), and enable the self-timer. As far as metering goes, set yourself to either matrix or spot if you’re confidant.

Set up the camera with either your macro lens or your longest zoom lens. Zoom it in to its maximum, then back off slightly. Now, switch -OFF- auto-focus – we’re going to rely on our eyes for this one. Focus your lens to its extreme end, and then back off slightly. Now, move the camera into position to where the focus is perfect. Remember you’ll have a -LITTLE- bit of leeway if you followed the instructions to back off a little here and there. Shore up your composition.

If you’re confidant with your camera, go to MANUAL exposure mode. If you’re not, you should use APERTURE PRIORITY and follow my instructions.

If you’re using SPOT metering, aim the spot AT THE GREY CARDBOARD !!!!! If you don’t, your picture could very well be poorly exposed. If you’re on MATRIX, don’t fuss – it will sort itself out.

MANUAL – set your aperture to f/22. You NEED the depth of field from the small aperture, so don’t argue. Balance in your shutter speed. You’ll probably be looking at anything from about 1/8th sec to about 3 sec, depending on the lighting and film speed. Doesn’t matter though, does it – your mini won’t move, and you’re on a tripod, so neither will the camera.

APERTURE PRIORITY – its probably labeled Av or A on the dial. Choose it. Now, your MAIN control dial/toggle will change this value for you – move the dial until you see f/22 appear. Your camera will do the rest, so don’t panic.

OK, I hear you ask – why are we messing with this aperture thingy? Why is it important, what does it do ? OK, simply put – aperture will determine the “depth of field” or in other words, how much of the miniature will be in focus. Will it be just the very front detail, or the entire mini ? See the examples below for a visual.

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Since I’m not trying to give a technical photography lesson here, we’ll leave it at that. A small number in the aperture setting (ie: 4.5) means we get not much in focus. A big number (ie: 22) means we’ll get lots in focus. Don’t get bogged down here – and if you desperately want a more technical definition, go check my website.

Finally, once you’re happy with everything – focus, composition, etc – fire away. Once your camera has taken the first shot, you’ll want to do what we call “bracketing” – which is adjusting the exposure just slightly to ensure best picture. You have 3 ways to do this.

1 – Manually. If you’re on MANUAL mode, just adjust the shutter speed 1 mark away from balanced, and take the picture. Next, move it 1 mark the OTHER way from balanced, and take the picture again. SO, you may take one photo at a shutter speed of 1/500th sec, then one at 1/250th sec, and finally one at 1/1000th sec.

2 – Compensation. Your camera will have something called “exposure compensation”. Set this to +0.5 and re-shoot. Next, change it to -0.5 and re-shoot. Reset it to 0 before shooting again. Do this each time, so 3 shots at each composition.

3 – Auto-Bracket. Your camera may have an “auto-bracket” facility. If you turn this ON, your camera will automatically take 3 shots for every depression of the trigger. If you know how to use this feature though, you’re probably way beyond this tutorial.

Whichever method you choose to use, you should now have 3 pictures, one of which should be at the settings the camera recommended, and then one slightly under-exposed, and one slightly over-exposed. One of these three is likely to be pretty darn good, so we want to use that, however, since we set everything up, lets keep shooting. Change your composition ever so slightly (viewpoint, mini position, pose, etc) and repeat. You’ll want to take about 24 shots all up (which, if you have been doing your math, is 8 actual “poses” with 3 shots each).

Now, either finish the roll of film on something else, or if you’re in digital, go download the images to the computer. If you were using film, please Please PLEASE take it somewhere DECENT to get it processed !!! The local Kodak Express or Rabbit Photo really aren’t the best option. A good option is the local Teds or Camera House store – their people are at least properly trained developers as opposed to a 16yo who’s been told “push this button”. Better still are places like Halse or I&G (mail order developers) who are a dedicated outfit. You pay a couple more $, but its worth it!

Once your prints/slides are back, assess them carefully before scanning them into your computer.

The Final Step – Selecting & Preparing Images for Display

Since we’re talking primarily online display, I’ll go through a number of methods for cleaning images up. Before we start though – a word on selecting your picture. Computers are notoriously literate – garbage in, garbage out, so to speak. So, it follows that if you try to scan a crap photo, or try to “enhance” one, it will STILL be crap when you’re finished. So make sure you start with a good photo.

Don’t expect perfection from your first batch, but you need to know how to identify the common causes of poor photos, and what to do with them. So, fetch a pair of scissors and the bin. Seriously. Now, go through your photos quickly. ANYTHING, and I mean ANYTHING, that is obviously blurry, has parts “chopped off”, is too light or too dark – cut into several bits and throw in the bin. Forget they ever existed. Those of you with digital, delete these and flush the recycle bin. What I want is for you to have NO WAY of recalling these pictures for use. Forget you ever took them.

Now, look at the remainder with a VERY critical eye. Discard (but don’t destroy) anything thats not quite sharp (in focus) – you want razor-sharpness, anything that detail is obscured in, anything that has “artifacts” such as shadows, dust bunnies, etc that are in the way (like over the model). Examine EVERYTHING but composition here – we can crop these later.

Whatever you are left with (usually about 3 – 6 out of 36 photos) should be usable. Pick the best one – which one shows off the mini the way YOU want it shown – and we’ll work with that.

SCANNING

There are 2 ways of scanning images, and only 2. I don’t want to hear tales of duplexers and slide duplication rigs. These are such: scanning the print with a flat-bed or drum scanner, or scanning the original (negative or transparancy) with a DEDICATED film scanner. Those of you who have one of those “film adapters” for your flatbed – throw it out !!! Its just a pixel doubling unit.

BEFORE you start – open up your graphics editor of choice – NEVER EVER EVER scan from the scanning software alone. Always let your program start the scanning, and NEVER the other way around. Right, now lets begin.

Lets start with flatbeds. First, default all your settings. Next, set 300dpi (no point exceeding that), neutral gamma and turn -OFF- Unsharp Mask. The latter is a nightmare at THIS STAGE of the game, but VERY useful later on. More on that later. I have noticed that some scanners make a pigs breakfast of scanning WITHOUT this option switched on – if you are unfortunate enough to have one of these, then leave it on. Just look for the warning near the end of this section. Ensure all the descreen options are off – you’re not scanning from a magazine. OK, now, PREVIEW the image, and use the crop margins to get as much of the image selected as possible. You don’t have to fret about little sections, but ENSURE you DO NOT GET ANY of the white area outside the picture, as this will stuff up the exposure of the scanner. Once done, hit SCAN, and wait. Once scanning is complete, you will probably be shunted back out to your graphics editor, and you can continue to the Digital Manipulation section.

Film Scanners are almost a different species than flatbeds. Although they start with a smaller original, they at least scan the original. A print is NOT an original item – it came from the negative… So, load up the scanner, taking care to not scratch the film, and line it up neatly. Close the lid, and switch OFF your overhead lights. I know it sounds mad, but some of the cheaper film scanners suffer badly from light leakage.

Make sure your Film Scanner is set to at LEAST 1200dpi, or you’ll end up with postage-stamp sized pictures. If your film scanner can’t do 1200dpi, toss it out and get a new one – they should ALL be able to do this if bought within the last 3 years. Again, like the flatbeds, PREVIEW the scan, select the area, and SCAN.

DIGITAL MANIPULATION

I’ll cover three stages of this – SIMPLE cleanup, STANDARD adjustments, and ADVANCED image manipulation. I won’t be repeating myself if I can help it, but if you choose to use any of the more advanced techniques found here, you should use the ADVANCED stuff first, then the BASIC, and finally the SIMPLE. Yes, its in reverse, but this because certain tasks MUST BE DONE in a specific order, or risk SERIOUS image degradation.

Next, a quick note on software.

I typically use Photoshop for this work, because I am lucky enough to own a fully licenced copy of Photoshop CS. If you have Photoshop LE or a full version (anything from version 5), you should be able to follow these steps exactly as written. My apologies to those who use any other program – to save MASSES of instructions, I will only document the Photoshop menu locations and shortcuts in full. All other programs – you’ll need to translate as best you can. I am reasonably PSP-savvy, so I will note anything majorly different for you as best I can. Everyone else – get your manuals out – you’re on your own.

SIMPLE Clean-Up

OK, you have your image, but its fresh out of the scanner. There are really only 3 things you need to do to it in order to get it onto the internet – these are, in order:

CROPPING
RESIZING
SAVING.

Grab these steps from the Techniques guide and you’re done. Not the most efficient system, nor the best image quality (its good, don’t get me wrong, but you COULD do better…), but its fast and it works.

STANDARD Adjustments

This is what we should ALL be doing before putting a picture on the web. This gives us a better image in terms of exposure and quality, plus better file sizes. Processes in order are:

Cropping
LEVELS ADJUSTMENT
RESAMPLING (this is of CRITICAL importance with film scanner images)
Resizing
UNSHARP MASK
OPTIMIZED SAVING

ADVANCED Manipulation

We do most of this stuff between the Levels Adjustment and the Resampling steps. This included digital grading, tints, gel compression, curve adjustment, channel balance, etc. I’m not going to cover this stuff – its not an exact science (none of this is, but this is REALLY subjective) and a lot of it can’t be taught in a textbook manner – a lot of this is about training your eye.

TECHNIQUES

Cropping: Using your Marquee tool (selection box), select the part of the image you want to keep. Don’t trim off any part of the mini, obviously, but keep backgrounds to a minimum. Once you’re happy, select IMAGE -> CROP and you’re done.

Levels Adjustment: This is a good way to balance up the tonal range of your image. Use the AUTO LEVELS command (under EDIT or IMAGE menu) and see what it does. Typically it will remove colour casts, etc. If you LIKE the way it looks after the adjustment, keep it. If not, UNDO it. If you think it was a bit strong, but still good, you can use FADE (EDIT -> FADE) and use the slider to adjust. NOTE – a great photograph and perfect scan will NOT need this, but who gets those on a regular basis ?

Resampling: This is one of the wonders of digital imaging – this is one of the most effective “virtual zooms” we can use. Because we’re doing this for WEB DISPLAY, and not printing (or “pre-press”), we don’t need a high dpi on our images. But wait, you say – we scanned at a high DPI ! Why Huh Easy – we’re going to down-sample the images and make them HUGE without a great loss in quality. How do we do it ? Click IMAGE -> IMAGE SIZE, and look for the DOTS PER INCH or DPI box. Change the DPI to 300 (assuming its higher than that !!!). You’ll notice that whilst hte PRINT SIZE boxes (greyed out) stay the same, the image size boxes jump up dramatically. Press OK and you’ll have a giant image.

Resizing: Use the ZOOM controls to scale the image to 100%. It may be enormous, but thats OK. Now click IMAGE -> RESIZE. Look at the pixel measures it gives. Take the longest of the two – this really shouldn’t need to exceed 400 pixels for the average web image, so set the longer of the two values to 400. Ensure the box labelled “Lock Aspect Ratio” is ticked – this will ensure when you change one value, the other will change with it in perfect scale. Press OK. You may want it smaller depending on what you’re doing, but anything bigger than this will clutter screens quickly.

Unsharp Mask: whenever an image gets passed through a lens, it loses SOME degree of sharpness (how clear and in focus it is) – this is unavoidable, although modern glass lenses are pretty good at minimizing it. There is no REAL way to restore this sharpness, but you can fake it with a modern imaging program. NEVER EVER EVER do this step at ANY OTHER STAGE – you do this, then you save. Don’t argue. Click FILTER -> SHARPEN -> UNSHARP MASK. Set the radius to 1, the threshold to 1 and the amount to 50. This is pretty mild, but it should be more than sufficient. If you need more than 100, the picture isn’t good to start with – 50 should be nice, given the next optimization. See the difference ? Handy. If this makes the picture look terrible, either a) you have the settings too high, or b) the picture just does NOT need it. UNDO it. MOST pictures will benefit from a mild unsharp mask though.

Optimized Saving: In Photoshop, this is done best by using FILE -> SAVE FOR WEB (CTRL ALT SHIFT S for a HUGE shortcut “key”). Select JPG from the dropdown, choose MEDIUM in the quality box. Notice the slight quality loss in the picture, and the artifacts it creates ? We can live with those – hit OK and name your creation.

Saving: In Photoshop, just click FILE -> SAVE A COPY. Choose JPG for your file type, name it and press OK. If prompted for “Compression”, just put the slider in the middle and press OK.

AND WE ARE DONE !