Light saturation?

[Sakaki22]

Hello! First time poster, short time... well, lurker.

After the comments of my first miniature, I started reading around for tips and advice that other people asked on the forums, and eventually decided to construct a light tent. It\'s not exactly a \"quality art instrument\", but I think it\'s doing it\'s job, but can\'t quite tell.

I guess it\'d be easier to explain my problem with pictures, huh?

This photo was taken with the flash turned on.

This photo was taken with the flash turned off.

To me, it seems like turning flash on makes the photo too dark to notice the detailing, but turning the flash on generates too much light (And in this case, shows painting errors that I couldn\'t find with the naked eye, or with magnification goggles)

I\'ve tried changing the angle of the lighting outside the box, and tried to reduce glare by adding a matte finish to the mini itself (Originally I was going to display it without a finish, as all of my previous matte finishes came up really bland and detail-less.), but I can\'t see a difference myself.

If it helps the process along, I\'m photographing with a Nikon Coolpix L4, and if necessary, my image editor of choice is Paint Shop Pro.

Thank you in advance!

 

[Jericho]

If you\'re using a light tent you have to be sure you\'re getting a decent amount of light through the sides/top. It might be too heavy a material for standard low watt lamps.

Anyway you should be able to use the white balance and saturation +/- settings on your camera to compensate for any imperfections in your light levels. On my Nikon P3 there\'s a little +/- looking button on the back, and it gives you a little graph of the light spectrum in your image. Ideally you have data on almost the entire range on the spectrum, I personally leave a little bit of room on the light side (the right) so you get subtle shading on your whites once you get them on screen.

That should do it for the most part, I don\'t know anything about Paint Shop Pro\'s adjustment abilities so I can\'t suggest how to tweak anything in that program.

In Photoshop I usually use Auto Levels, then inspect the Levels manually, and if necessary do a bit of tweaking and/or apply a very low % Shadow/Hilight filter. Usually about 2-5% to get some of the subtle shades to show up closer to the real thing.

Your milage may vary, but I hope some of this helps!

 

[J2FcM]

Photography is a bitch man. A few things, focusing, brightness, and actual color are all annoying as stink.

I hop on my digi camera and use macro mode, obviously. For lighting, I have a white light... whatever shows actual colors best... anyways its a lamp and I shine it over the mini, and then of course let daylight in the room for secondary lighting.

NO FLASH.

Flash is the WORST THING EVER for photgraphing. And I even keep my lamp far from my mini otherwise it gets too bright.

Photoshop helps you \"correct\" your colors... read the \"one lamp\" article about photography, it will tell you how to use the \"levels\" function.


oh yah, this is my PS -- take a crap load of photos in different lighting... try different things, put the lamp 2 inches away, 6 inches away, 20 inches away, with and without daylight, etc...etc.... etc....

 

[Sakaki22]

Just wanted to pop by to give you both a thank you for your input.

I finally got some photos to a satisfactory level, and posted the miniature here.

 

[Legacy Account]

You can use flash successfully to photograph minis if you have no other lighting. You will need to diffuse your flash by sticking some tracing paper (or similar) in front of it.

A tent, or a few bits of strategically placed paper/card can be used to bounce the flash back around the model to fill in.

It\'s just a case of taking test shots and diffusing the flash down until you get a decent result.

 

[Manus]

some fotographer told to work a lot with white bal when you use lighttents.

 

[airhead]

Your natural light is a standard incandesent bulb? notice the yellow tint.

Get some replacement halogenA bulbs and up the wattage. It takes me 2 or 3 lamps at about 75 or 100 watts each. True halogen bulbs will be much less wattage, and much hotter. True photo bulbs are expensive and rated in 10\'s of hours.

What are you using for the light tent material? Window sheers seem to do a nice job.

Can you direct the flash? I\'ve got an external flash that I can point to the ceiling and get some interesting lighting from.

Finally, you say you are using a light tent, but what is your light rig like? It looks like the mini is backlight. Bring the lamp arms more forward. A darker background will allow the camera to open up the shutter more too.