Photography for modellers

[War Griffon]

Browsing one of the many other forums I am signed up on and some kind sole posted a link to a web page about photography for modellers.

I know a few people are having various problems at the moment so thought I would post the link here as well

Photography for Modellers

Quite a usful little site and it is easy to use as everything is laid out in steps and lots of illustrations
Just use the side bar menu (No you can\'t order a salad).

 

[Dragonsreach]

Well scrap that article I was working on.

 

[War Griffon]

Sorry Mike

Although you could still do the article anyway, you know that after about a week this link will be out of site and out of mind so most people looking for answers probably won\'t check the threads

 

[Avelorn]

Nice and clear article for vehicles and overall macro photo. But for the kind of photography we do there are some more things to be considered like direction of the light source of the model etc.

So.. two comments from a quick read:

1. Placing lights to the sides in a diffusing lightbox is something I don\'t recommend. It will possibly bring out the absolute worst in your painting. Despite what the article say the most important place to have lighting is always from the front-above (or slightly to the sides to avoid glares better). Why? Because that\'s the position the light is when you paint the miniature. He has painted no light source what-so-ever hence the miniature will look absolutely flat.

2. A pure white background is something that should be avoided as well. It makes it much more difficult to get a perfect picture even if you have a really good digital SLR. While it works for general macro photography the kind of details and accurate colours we are after it gives a number of problems that are more easily solved by taking a more neutral background.

 

[War Griffon]

Originally posted by Avelorn
But for the kind of photography we do there are some more things to be considered like direction of the light source of the model etc. I didn\'t say it was the be all to end all articles

So.. two comments from a quick read:

1. Placing lights to the sides in a diffusing lightbox is something I don\'t recommend. It will possibly bring out the absolute worst in your painting. Despite what the article say the most important place to have lighting is always from the front-above (or slightly to the sides to avoid glares better). Why? Because that\'s the position the light is when you paint the miniature. He has painted no light source what-so-ever hence the miniature will look absolutely flat. If you read through that page it does say about using 2 lamps from the front sides at an angle

2. A pure white background is something that should be avoided as well. It makes it much more difficult to get a perfect picture even if you have a really good digital SLR. While it works for general macro photography the kind of details and accurate colours we are after it gives a number of problems that are more easily solved by taking a more neutral background. Background is a matter of choice and what will work for the colours of the mini. On several occassions I have had to revert to a pure white background to get the shots I want.

Although I agree in part to the comments you have made I didn\'t post the link for people to nit pick, there are several ways of photographing what we do in our hobby and people have tried to put this across in a number of different ways.
I felt this was a different light on the subject and was worth bringing the the attention of those people interested. At the end of the day it is like teaching people to paint, you can show them your methods and after that it is up to them how they interpret those methods and put them to use.

 

[Sukigod]

This is one of the better articles I\'ve seen - online that is. Reminds me of one back int he 80\'s that Fine Scale Modeler magazine did. With the proliferation of digital (and cost effectiveness) most people have access to a lot of these tools that used to be almost strictly in the domain of dedicated photo-hobbiests and pros.

I like his example of using above/below angeld shots to create drama in the shot (I use that one a lot) and the trick of using and LCD in the background. I would have thought since it\'s a broadcast light source and not a reflected source, it would have over shadowed the model or been washed out without any depth reference to the camera, but it didn\'t.

I\'ll have to try that in my next set of photos with the ork waaagh! stampeding over the hills with a some LOTR-esque scenery onscreen.

Thanks for the post War Griffon! Consider me inspired to do more fun things.

 

[Legacy Account]

Goos article, nicely illustrated.

@Avelorn: Flat, diffused, shadowless lighting is pretty much exactly what you should be after if you want to show your painting off surely? What\'s the point in highlighting a figure if you\'re just going to blast it with directional lighting??!

I also disagree about the white background. It\'s simple enough to meter off the mini or even a neutral piece of card if you\'re bothered about it. In practice, even this isn\'t necessary these days as you can correct it all in Photoshop afterwards. You shrink the images so much that you can get away with murder and the white background makes it a doddle to whack a digital background in.

I can\'t be bothered mucking around with lighting anymore. I blatt my figures with diffused onboard flash and just bounce the light back onto the fig with a piece of handheld paper. The results are as good as the times I\'ve buggered about for ages with lightboxes and multiple lightsources.

A nice ringflash or macro twinlite would be good though....

 

[airhead]

Thanks.

Good link added to my Favs

 

[Logan]

Great article WG. Good find. Been struggling with pics for a while.

Mike - Still finish your article off. Will be good to see another and certainly one more geared towards figures.

 

[Avelorn]

huh? Now I\'m not following you here. I\'m not making an attack on the article on you for posting it.. it\'s an excellent one for modellers. I just thought I put forth some reflections of the article I had that users reading the article could use. I am a bit surprised by your relatively strong reaction. I\'m sorry if I came across in a different way then I had intended.

@Scott: I have to say that I don\'t agree with you on several of these points... I could give a long technical argumentation of why I don\'t but I think I\'ll save that for an article that you later can read and criticise.

About the even lighting though.. yes obviously but the way they positioned the lights on the setup I criticised will not mean a good even lighting. It\'s one of the basic way for lighting when doing product photography like jewellery and such when you don\'t want shadows. But for miniatures it will not be optimal. Just look at the GW UK pictures from the event 2 years back. That\'s the setup they used. Last year and this year they chucked one light in front of the miniature as well (at least in one of their setups) and the photos turned out better overall.

 

[Legacy Account]

Originally posted by Avelorn

...I could give a long technical argumentation...

I\'m sure you could

The only real arguement for NOT using a white background is that it buggers your metering. So either meter off a grey card, bracket or set exposure manually. In reality you don\'t need to make any corrections as it can all be done with pp in Photoshop. The pics are, after all, only going to be 72dpi and tiny.

If you\'re using a ropey lens or camera, CA might play a part, but it\'s simple enough to remove.

There\'s a temptation to make the whole photography thing much more complicated than it needs to be.

 

[Avelorn]

Me overcomplicating things? Never! :innocent:

However in this case I can\'t think of a reason why you would use white either even if I buy your argument that the pictures are very small. So for me that is just complicating things. Actually the thing about using the magic want tool is another reason. Not only do you you have to do more work on exposure and white balance... especially with a cheap camera. If your mini has white, or close to white, parts that are in contact with the background you will have to deliberately underexpose the photo if you want to use the magic wand tool with any great success. You might of course be able to set an exact sensitivity selection, but again - more work!

 

[Legacy Account]

White balance has nowt to do with the colour of your background. And as I said, all you need to do is a levels tweak to correct exposure - something you\'ll likely have to do anyway.

You can make an accurate selection with the wand and lasso tools in seconds. It\'s not difficult.

 

[Avelorn]

Originally posted by Spacemunkie
...White balance has nowt to do with the colour of your background...

It has in the case of a black or white background. When you measure the white balance on a white background you need to either have it perfectly exposed or slightly underexposed or use a grey card (If you want a pure white background that is). Measuring on the figure is a hit and miss. The automatic whitebalance function will be useless if you don\'t have the image underexposed as the whites are washed out and the camera sees them as white despite the colour tinge. The problem is depending on how much light you use as if you don\'t use much light the difference in light between the model and background might be enough that the background becomes a light grey.

Every tweaking of an image will make it less like the real thing. Underexposing and pulling up the levels will disrupt the colours. Fixing white balance will as well. I know I might be a bit anal about it but it is always easier to get a good picture from something that was really good in the first place.

 

[Legacy Account]

Errr, white balance adjusts the colour temperature. As I said, it\'s buggerall to do with exposure. You use it to compensate for colour casts caused by artificial lighting.

\'Every tweaking of an image will make it less like the real thing...\'

Disagree as well. If that was the case, why do Adobe bother putting white balance adjustment, exposure adjustment etc, etc in their products?! You can fuss around being anally retentive all you like, but did you ever consider that your eyes see differently to your camera, to my eyes, to my camera.... Is your monitor calibrated? Have you calibrated everybody elses monitor? Do you colour profile your images? Do you shoot in RAW or JPEG?? If you shoot in JPEG, then you\'ve already processed the image before it even hits your computer!

Images from the camera are just raw material. They ALWAYS need processing if you want them to look right. Unless you shoot in JPEG and let the camera make all the decisions.....

 

[Jericho]

RAW material, haw haw

You do lose accuracy when you change the white balance, levels etc. too much in Photoshop. Play around with them a few times then check out the Levels graph. You see a TON of holes in it after only a few alterations. Blends won\'t look as smooth as they should, you won\'t pick up some of the subtle color shifts, etc.

 

[Legacy Account]

Downsizing an image to 72dpi and 600px wide then JPEGing to 200kb or less makes any loss of quality (which will be negligible if done properly anyway...) a complete irrelevance.

 

[Einion]

Originally posted by Avelorn
Every tweaking of an image will make it less like the real thing.

Obviously better originals are preferable are all round, but the tools are there primarily to get closer to how an image is supposed to look; even high-end scanning of professional transparencies (on $$$$$ scanners) can still need some minor tweaks beyond removing dust specs.

Originally posted by Spacemunkie
Downsizing an image to 72dpi and 600px wide then JPEGing to 200kb or less makes any loss of quality (which will be negligible if done properly anyway...) a complete irrelevance.

Right with you until this part - GIGO applies.

With the right software and settings the act of reducing and saving as a good-quality JPEG will leave you with an image that show how good, or bad, it was. Tweaking can easily be too much for a photo to handle, e.g. overly dark ones when adjusted to a decent level.

Einion

 

[Avelorn]

@Scott:

The camera depends on the correct exposure on a white background to determine the white balance. As what it does is to determine what is white. If that white instead has a slight cast of yellow from the lighting but at the same time is a bit washed out through overexposing the slight yellow turns to a pure white = The photo will have the wrong white balance. As I\'ve mention it is more of a problem when you use a lot of light and less of a problem if your presettings are any good (mine are decent).

Shooting in RAW it\'s another matter entirely as the image is not even rendered in a usable format yet. You effectively set the whitebalance afterwards which nullifies my point of whitebalance and exposure. If you have the option of shooting in RAW do so, but most of us don\'t.

About my blanket statement of \"every tweaking...\" it\'s not true and believe it or not.. not really what I meant either. You will have to do some work with every photo that is true. But what we are after should not need a lot of tweaking. Then it is either a question of ropey camera, setup or lack of skill.

Yes I have actually considered monitors and cameras and IIRC discussed it in this forum even but you work with the things you\'ve got, you can\'t do much else. I try to compare between screens and sometimes the different results are shocking. My monitor is good but getting old and isn\'t very sharp nowadays which leads me at times to make my images sharper then they need to. But it\'s not like the discussions about screens have adapted the postmodern society. Either it is reasonable accurate or it is not. And if it isn\'t you learn the pros and cons of your screen just as you learn your other equipment and how they work together. My camera oversaturates bright reds and make them more yellow and also have a problem with blue greens. But I\'m aware of the problem.

It\'s not like you don\'t give a toss about mixing your recording just because some people will have cheap stereos. For movies (with a budget) we even do different mixing of the audio track for the cinema and TV for example.

Images from the camera are just raw material. They ALWAYS need processing if you want them to look right. Unless you shoot in JPEG and let the camera make all the decisions.....

From RAW you obviously will need to process the information to get an image you can use. It\'s however different from photoshopping .JPG images (no data loss) which I thought was what we were discussing. However \"you can\'t polish a turd\" still applies. You won\'t be able to put in details in the photo that the camera did not see in the first place.

 

[Legacy Account]

Originally posted by Avelorn

The camera depends on the correct exposure on a white background to determine the white balance. As what it does is to determine what is white. If that white instead has a slight cast of yellow from the lighting but at the same time is a bit washed out through overexposing the slight yellow turns to a pure white = The photo will have the wrong white balance.

White balance has NOTHING TO DO WITH EXPOSURE!! It\'s purely there to adjust COLOUR TEMPERATURE.

A white object is white whether you under expose it or over expose it. All white balance does is compensate for the differing intensities of particular colours in the visible spectrum that artificial lighting produces so your whites (and indeed all your other colours...) come out as you see them in sunlight - which has a more even distribution of colour intensity.

\"You won\'t be able to put in details in the photo that the camera did not see in the first place.\"

The bit depth of RAW images is much greater than JPEGs. You\'ll have PLENTY of data in the image that you won\'t see with the naked eye (and that won\'t appear in a JPEG either...). This data is retrievable. It\'s not \'wrong\' or even bad practice to tweak your images to get this data back. In fact it\'s even suggested that \'expose to the right\' is one of the best ways of shooting - that is to deliberately over expose and alter the exposure later in PP.

I\'ve got nowt against trying to get things right first time, but for shooting figures for the web you really are making the task sound much more difficult than it really is. Perhaps it\'s just easier with decent cameras....