Many people ask me how to get such pictures of the miniatures that I have. Well, these are mostly Czech people, as they usually do not browse the internet for tutorials. Anyway, you might like my pictures, so here is the guide.

Equipment: digital camera with macro mode (I use now-already-old-and-obsolete-and-low-cost-but-three-years-ago-it-was-a-hit 1.3 Megapixel Olympus Camedia C900, also sold as D400 in some parts of the world), one lamp (see below), tripod, 1 piece of paper and a photo editing software. And of course the miniature I want to photograph.

OK, now everybody asks - how can you get such great pictures with just one lamp? OK, here comes the advertising for a particular type of lamp. This is the best lamp, either for painting or for photographing. The lamp does not use a bulb, but a 20cm tube. This is the trick, as the light doesn't come from one point, the lamp doesn't serve as a single source of light, but a pretty good area! And for this reason, in the rare case you get a shade somewhere, it's still very soft shade.

Even better, the lamp is mounted on 3-joints arm, so you can position it really the way you like. This is very important, as I put it very close to the "watching object", being it either the lens of the camera (for photographing) or my very own eyes (for painting).

Such a lamp can be bought here in my country in several DYI stores, hypermarkets and of course stores with lamps. Of course the lamp is not the cheapest one, but it's still pretty affordable. Here it costs about 400 Czech Crowns, which is something like 12 US dollars.

Alright, next page gets us to photographing setup!