Nothing too technical...?
Hmm.. what works on that camera might not work on another one. And the same with the subject you photograph. One setting that works for small figures will maybe not work with larger ones. So I kind of feel that one should try to learn the basic things when it comes to photography and manual settings or else it\'s very hard to improvise.
It\'s not that hard if you dare to experiment some and try different settings yourself.. the words and meaning might seem complicated at first but once you start using it practically it will make much more sense.
Aperature and the aperature priority setting
One shortcut you might take is to use the aperature priority setting which on the main button where you select modes is marked with an Av. Then you get to choose aperature. Aperature is the size of the hole in the lens letting in light.. equal to the pupil of the eye. The confusing thing with aperature is that the numbers are fractions so a larger number means an higher fraction= smaller opening. typically the lowest number (depends on the lens you are using) is f/2.5 or f/2.8 while the highest might be f/32 (f stands for fraction).
Choosing aperature setting
When choosing aperature for miniature photography you should mainly think of one thing, getting it entirely in focus. The aperature is related to the amount of the mini you can get in focus without certain things getting blurry (called the depth of field). A smaller opening (which means a higher number - remember) means a larger depth of field and you can get a larger miniature in focus. What you can try to do is experiment with the aperature number.. on this specific camera there is a little roll dial
viewable here that you roll to change aperature. With very 2d miniatures like the bar wench you are painting right now an aperature setting of maybe 5.6-8.0 will do while on larger miniatures you can choose a higher value. The problem with higher aperaturevalues is that it needs very much light as the opening in the lens is very small. Therefor if you find that the images are too dark you can add more light or choose another aperature setting.
Now we are not far from using full Manual settings.. so I\'ll explain the rest too
White Balance setting
When you have tried taking a few pictures and they come out descent you might notice if there is a yellow cast to the picture. That is depending on how white your lighting is but it is adjustable in the White Balance setting in your camera. You can find the white balance setting by pressing the arrow facing down (marked with a WB) it is visible on
this picture Then roll the dial to change from different modes. You\'ll notice how the colour of the picture changes on the LCD screen as you move the dial. There is an \"Fluorescent\" setting (usually the symbol is a rectangle with some lightbeams around) that should come in handy. You exit the WB mode by pushing the WB button again.
ISO setting
As you might notice there is an upper arrow to where it says ISO. This is only something you need to change if you shoot in lowlight conditions as increasing the ISO will lead to a more grainy picture (a higher ISO gives a higher lightsensitivity and thus lighter pictures). Just press the ISO setting and make sure it is as low as possible, on your camera the lowest number is 100. Press ISO again to exit ISO settings.
Manual settings
Now we\'ve come to the next step that will give you full control over the camera, which is the M setting on the main button. M stands for manual.
Shutter speed
The only important change to what I\'ve spoken about so far is that you can also control the shutter now. The shutter is most easily described as an eyelid. When someone takes a photo you hear a \"click\" and that\'s the shutter opening and closing again. The reason why it opens and then closes again is because it sets how much exposure the film (in this case a digital chip) get to light. The more exposure it gets the lighter the picture will be. But also things moving fast will become blurry.
this animation of a small waterfall will illustrate that effect. Again the numbers can be confusing. But this might not be the case for you as they may write out the entire number including fraction (1/10 for 1/10 of a second and 10 for 10 seconds).
This is a small write-up if you don\'t get the whole number. The short shuttertimes are fractions.. and that\'s the one\'s we usually use. So 10 means 1/10 of a second, 100 means 1/100 of a second and 1000 means 1/1000 of a second. But if you go down further 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Then 1 of course means one second but when you start to have even longer exposure times the numbers go up again. But that is marked by adding a symbol \" before the numbers (not sure this is universal) as in 1\", 1.5\", 2\"... etc.
Choosing shutter speed
In miniphotography this is fairly straight forward you pick the shutter speed that gets the best exposure for the selected aperature setting. In other words the photograph when you view it on the LCD shouldn\'t be too light or too dark.. perfect amount of light and darkness is perfect exposure. This might be a bit difficult to appreciate until you get it onto your computer so try some different shutterspeeds and see what works best.
In other photography you might instead focus on how still you can hold the camera and if the things you are photographing are moving. Often you have a flash as an help to take sharp images. Really long shutter speeds might give cool effects as well when for example taking picture of cars in the night as illustrated in the Wikipedia link.
On your camera in manual mode the main dial that in aperature mode is for aperature now is for shutterspeed. so when you roll that dial the shutterspeed will change. Changing the aperature in manual mode includes holding a little button marked with Av +/- which is situated on the right hand side of the LCD display (visible on the link I gave earlier).
Picking distance to subject
This is entirely dependend on the lens you use. In macro mode (which I think you already know about) each lens has a different minimum range. Often you get the sharpest image near that minimum range, so go as close as possible with the entire mini in focus and some room for cropping the image later. But remember that the closer you get to the mini the smaller the depth of field.. so you might have to change the aperature for close shots.
Lighting
As for lighting.. The
photographing minis with just one lamp article is a very good start. Get a fluorescent light whith as natural (white) light as ppossible.. you might ask for full spectrum light but sometimes they don\'t know what you mean. At least here in sweden each fluorescent light comes with a 3 digit number. What you want is as
high number as possible. I use 840 I think in my 11W armature. The 8 stands for colour rendition while the other two numbers stands for how white the light is. I always take my pictures doing the day and use a fluorescent light (the one I paint under) as the main light. The most important place to get light from is straight forward and slightly from above. Never take pictures against a white background as it might confuse the camera. You\'ll notice the difference when switching to a neutral grey one.
Positioning the camera and taking the picture
Many recommend tripods when taking pictures for miniatures, and I agree it is a great idea. That will keep the camera well positioned and steady which will give sharper pictures. In faster shutterspeeds you can however do with just supporting your hands and get the flexibilty to move around the mini with the camera. The same with using a timer to take the photo. Pressing the button might shake the camera but in faster shutterspeeds you can do it carefully and it won\'t matter much. I always take many pictures of the same view even if I use a tripod so that I can be sure that I have several pictures that are sharp.
Post processing
No digital image is complete straight from the camera it always need some tweaking. Spacemunkie has written a great article about it
in this thread that I recommend. However I most often use a gradient backdrop that I have printed out as I think it looks more natural.
This might be the beginning of an article, so if anything that needs to be clarified further or expanded... just ask!
And remember it\'ll come together in practice even if it seems difficult now.
