Above You can see my setup, where except the camera (a Panasonic GX9 with a no-name macro ring and a Panasonic 14-140 lens, which I had before), nothing is really expensive.
Warning! I try not to use technical language here, but there are some parts, where avoiding it would be too cumbersome.
And remember, this is not a photography blog, and I am not a photographer. These are just basic things I learned on the way.
- Chapter 1: The Lights
Lights are very important, because without them You cant have a good picture (You know what “photo” in “photography” means?). It will be a dark, unsharp stack of pixels with weird colors. You have to have enough lights on places You want to show (so a strong and adjustable source is needed), with the proper color (which is, unless You want to intentional something other, like natural sunlight) and without harsh, disturbing shadows (it has to be soft, not like a spotlight). And I bet You have this type of light source just there, on Your painting desk (and if You don’t, you should): a painting light. Its stand is adjustable, the light is soft and strong enough, and it is (it needs to be) near sunlight.
If you somehow don’t have such a thing, or don’t want to use it (but again, it’s the best and easiest way to do so), there is another cheap solution, a softbox. Its basically a big, soft light source, perfect for photography, and its cheap and easy to build (but can be tricky to adjust the placement): a big plastic box, with the cheapest bulb-socket in it, lined with tin-foil (to direct all the light in the direction to the open side), with a daylight bulb and covered with thin, white paper.
The bulb is by far the most expensive part of it, but its important to have an around 5500-6000K color temperature lamp, that mimics sunlight. Or else you will have too blue, or too orange colors.
And how to direct Your light source? Basically start from above-front (top light is like natural, and front light is needed for the camera) and play around, until You find what You like.
There is one other little trick, if you want more light, or even more shadow somewhere, and You cant reach it with your lights: take a white paper for more light, or a black paper for more shadow, and set up next to the miniature but out of the frame. These things are called light/shadow bouncers and they amplify or reduce the repelling lights, which can create better lighting or more contrast on the picture. There is a short and very good description about this on Lead Adventure Forum.
Another method to have good lights on Your miniature is a so called lightbox. It’s a box where the object is placed in the middle of all around soft lights. If you like those catalogue pictures, with natural background, that’s the easiest and quickest way to go, buy one or build one.
But if you want something more versatile, want to make pictures about bigger things (like a building or a monster), or want to create realistic scenes, then go with the above mentioned lights.
- Chapter 2: The stand
The next point is a stable camera. So You have Your miniature with proper lights on proper places and You take a picture. But what a horror, You don’t like it. You have to take another one, but from the same place, so You can adjust whatever You want. If You aren’t a robot (which I assume), You can’t do that with a handheld camera… You need a stable tripod, with which You can make the same placed pictures, until You are happy with the result. Another advantage is, that Your camera wont move, swing, tilt, shake while making the picture, which basically (don’t want to go too deep in the technical explanation) results a better, sharper picture, under every circumstance.
Even the cheapest, smallest, foldable tripod can be enough, the only really important thing is, that it has to be able to securely carry the weight of Your device. If You have more place and more money, a bigger tripod can be better, simply because its height: its much easier to make bird-view or eye-height pictures with it.
- Chapter 3: The backdrop
So there is the miniature on the picture, most important things are done. But what else is on the picture? As the miniature pretty surely wont fill the frame, there has to be something other: the background. If You satisfied with a messy painting desk as a background, its ok, but when not, You will need something... If You want to concentrate on your miniature (like a catalogue picture), You will need a white, a black and a gray backdrop (because some minis look good on a dark background, some on a light, and sometimes on a neutral middle). The cheapest way is to buy colored cardboard. And that’s it.
If You want something more interesting or realistic in the background, You will need some pictures… The easiest and cheapest way (except simply using a monitor, but I never tried that) is to find some nice, big (with a lot of pixels), free to use pictures on the internet, and let them be printed big (for a single miniature A4 can be enough, but I would recommend something bigger). My 60x40 pictures cost around 6€ a piece… So can I have more of them without ruining the family budget.
Once You have Your backdrops, you have to use them. Well, I don’t know any all-resolving trick for it, just make them stand upright somehow. I clip them to a stiff board, and adjust them as needed. It is very important, that the backdrops surface reacts with the lights, and can create nasty glittering. You can get rid of it with adjusting the angles of the backdrop. For me, a negative angle (so forward leaning) works the best, which makes the placement even more tricky… This is how I do it, but again, its far away from the best solution.
I also use some terrain pieces on my photos to amplify the perception of depth and to create some additional visual interest.
- Chapter 4: The camera settings
Once You have everything perfectly in place, time has come to take that picture finally. Todays cameras (and smartphones) are smart enough to make good pictures in full-automatic mode (some of them don’t even know other modes). But sometimes the camera doesn’t make the picture what you want to make. Therefor here is a little list, what are the possibilities of improving Your picture with manual adjustments:
- Manual Focus: The camera tries to figure out, what is the most important thing in the picture, and tries to focus on it. But sometimes its wrong. With manual focus, You can really focus on, what You want. If you cant get a sharp picture, maybe the subject is too close, so try to move it further away.
- Manual Aperture: Aperture (in this case practically) means depth-of-field, which means how many things will be sharp on the picture. If You want to concentrate on the miniature and want to have a blurry background, You will need big aperture (which means small value), If you want more things sharp, then You will need small aperture (big value). But remember, if the background is too sharp, you can lose the perception of distance and space.
- Adjusted White Balance: You use Your best lights, but the picture feels still too cold or too warm? Then You have to adjust the white balance: try to make white things look white, and that should fix all other colors too.
- Adjusted Exposure: You set up Your lights the best You could, but the picture is too dark or too bright? With adjusting the exposure (which makes the picture darker or lighter) the problem can be solved.
- Limiting the ISO value: The picture feels noisy, like You had bad reception on your TV (Who remembers those times?)? Your camera is trying probably too hard to make a quick job, and want to use a too sensible “film”, and therefore it captures some false information. But Your camera is on a stable tripod (right?), so You can use the lowest ISO value (means that the sensor needs more time to capture the image, but with less failures).
- Self-timer: If You push the trigger on the camera, even on the most stable stand, it will vibrate a bit, so can make blurry pictures. Therefore I recommend You to use self-timer. Even 2 seconds are enough to reduce these vibrations to an insignificant value. But you have to let the camera go after pushing the button…
- Image Stabilization off: Image stabilization is good, but now, because of the tripod and the self-timer, You wont need it. You can turn it off. Theoretically it shouldn’t matter, but sometimes the results are still a bit crispier without it (but just on a tripod!). Another small advantage is, that without it, the battery lasts longer.
- Automatic Shutter Speed: All points above were there to take out the control of the AI´s hand, and make exactly the picture, what You wanted. But there is one point, where is much easier to let the machine calculate, and that is the shutter speed, basically the time, as long the camera makes the picture. With the aperture and ISO You changed the parameters in the imaging equation to your needs. But the last part of the puzzle is the shutter speed. We could calculate it, test and try it, but it’s much easier to let the camera make it right. And because of the stable camera, shutter speed can go as far as needed.
- Chapter 5: The attempts
There are dozens of other things to care about (composition, effects, retouching, etc.)... But whit this post, I hope You have the basics to make the good enough pictures. You will figure out the other things with time and experience. Just grab Your camera, set things up, and do it!
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