How To Take Good Pictures

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philleehellphia
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How To Take Good Pictures

Post by philleehellphia »

Since Heptzul asked for this, and I don't want to hijack Milo's thread, here it is. A Pretty decent article made by Xini from the Pyramid Vaults

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Photographing Miniatures (For the newly spawned skink in all of us)

You have just finished painting your first Saurus and are desperate to show it to the world. You whip out a camera, point it at the model, press the button, race to the computer to upload it and post it.

"I can’t really see it. It looks alright though."
"It’s too dark."
"Ahhhh! So big! Horizontal scrollbar of doom!"

To avoid comments like these and put more attention on the actual model, a simple set-up for taking pictures may be ideal. With very little effort and maybe an extra couple of minutes of work, you can be taking good pictures.

1) Get your tools ready. Contrary to popular belief, you do not need super-expensive equipment to get good pictures. It helps, but it’s not necessary. When I’m taking pictures, I gather together:
• A camera (Higher-quality is better, but I’ve been able to escape with 1.3 megapixels.)
• A tripod (a table can get the job done here, but a tripod is certainly ideal.)
• Two desklamps
• An old CD or other reflective surface
• A sheet of white paper (Some people prefer grey as it is neutral, but pictures may tend to turn out darker, but some cameras may see the high amount of white and adjust the brightness to something too dark for the models. I use white because it’s available. Feel free to experiment here.)
• The subject (of course!)
• A stereo (more on that later)
• Photo-editing software like Adobe Photoshop, Jasc Paint Shop Pro (Most cameras come with basic forms of these programs which will do fine)

2) Set up the paper so that there is a gradual curve from being horizontal to
vertical. This will give you a smooth background without any interfering lines.
Lean the paper against something with some height. A jug of glue, a tin of spray-on deodorant, a toy truck, etc will do fine. Anything goes.
At first you may notice that the paper will slip and fall flat. Even a slight amount of weight (i.e. the subject) will prevent this.
Image
This paper is held in place against a toy truck by Silverskink and Ironskink.

Do not use coloured paper. It will only add unecessary hues to the picture and interrupt the computer-based finishing process.

3) Set up the lighting. I have one lamp shining directly above. If it is too far behind the subject, you risk taking a picture of a silohuette. Another light should be shining at the front-side at about 30-45°. On the opposite side I set up a CD or whatever other reflective surfaces are available to catch some of the light and even it out.
Image
The general set-up with main light source, side light source, mirror, backdrop and camera on tripod.


Some people prefer to take pictures outside, using the sun as a light source. The problem with this is that you can’t position the sun. At least we hope you can’t because if you can you could possibly interrupt the time-space continuum and get the world sucked into a vortex of doom. We don’t want that, do we?
The point is you have to work with where it is. You have to act fast too, as the sun will be out of position in a matter of minutes. Also, working with the sun is problematic if you happen to be in Iqaluit in the winter months.

4) Set up the camera. First, put it on the tripod/table and point it at the model. Next, turn off the flash! You’ve just set up some lighting. The flash will not help here. Now set the camera to Macro mode. This will be a button, a wheel with a picture of a flower or a switch on the side of the lens that says "Macro." Note that in order for Macro to work, the lens cannot be zoomed in. Next, set the light balance. Most cameras have a light –balance function that adjusts the overall hue to compensate for tungsten lighting (the standard bulb), fluorescent (the long tube), halogen (the satellite-dish shaped lights) and sunlight. This will prevent that orange glow that makes models look like they were taken in a fire. If you do not have this option, this can be corrected later on the computer.
Set the size of the picture to the largest size available. You will want to resize the picture to a quarter of this size later, but this allows the most detail in the shot.

With the camera on the tripod and all set up, zoom in as close to the model as you possibly can while keeping the camera as far from the model as possible while still keeping it in frame.

5) This is the most critical step. Go over to the stereo and put on some Europop. I don’t care if you despise it with a passion. You have just set up a miniature photography studio. In most countries it is illegal to take pictures in a studio set-up without having some European dance music playing in the background. Such a crime is punishable by tortures such as being locked in a room and forced to listen to a continuous loop of Adam West saying “Robin.”
Why do you think professional fashion photographers play that stuff? Because they like it? To put a good vibe into the model? No! They play it because they’ve been subjected to the chamber of West before and know its horrors.

6) Is the lighting the way you like it? Is the mini positioned how you want it to be? Is the camera set up? Are you blasting the area with a sonic boom of Europop? If the answer to all of these questions is ‘yes,’ ‘yep,’ ‘uh-huh,’ ‘aye’ or any other positive response, you are ready to take a picture. Press the shutter botton and remove your hand from the camera. Keeping your hand on the camera will cause it to shake slightly, resulting in blurry pictures. If you’ve just had a triple espresso, the shaking will be very fierce.
Never hold the camera while taking a picture. The camera will have automatically adjusted the shutter speed and aperture to something that will record even mild tremors.
The best way to avoid shaking the camera is to get in a car and drive to a place far away from the camera and the rest of civilization. Like Saskatchewan.
After you have taken the picture, review it in the picture viewer. You won’t be able to see much, but you’ll be able to see if it’s blurry or not and if the lighting is decent. Keep taking pictures until you area satisfied and then head over to the computer.

7) After uploading the images to the computer, open up a photo-editing program and take a look at your pictures. Hopefully, the pictures are so good you won’t need to do anything to them, but chances are you’ll need to adjust a few things.
First, resize and crop the image to the desired size. This will make the rest of the process faster as there are fewer pixels to change when you adjust things like brightness and contrast.

Decide if you are going to go for a digital background (either white or another background of your choice) or use the white background from before.
If you are going to have a digital background, use the magic wand function (if possible) to remove the background. The magic wand selects everything with a colour similar to the area clicked upon adjacent to that area with a certain tolerance for colour variance, adjustable by the user. If there is no magic wand function, you may have to remove the background by hand.

Adjust the colour balance to change the overall hue. If the shot is too green, lower the amount of green and/or raise the amount of magenta (the opposite of green).
Remember that unlike pigments, the three primary colours in light are red, blue and green. The opposite of these colours is effectively white (all colours) minus the colour at hand.

If adjusting the the contrast and brightness, adjust the contrast first as increasing the contrast can make the picture appear darker or lighter. Once that is done, you can modify the brightness – if necessary.
BEFORE
Image
AFTER
Image
I edited this picture in Paint Shop Pro by Jasc.
In this case, I removed the background, then adjusted the colour levels to
R:7, G: 5, B: 30 (0 is no change, Red in negative intergers makes the picture increase in "cyaness")
The contrast was then changed to 23 (0 is no change) and the brightness to 12 (0 is no change, -12 is darker).
At this point you can add backgrounds if you like.
Image


There is no exact way of doing things and that the best way to learn is to experiment. Fiddle with everything until you are happy.

NEVER digitally correct mistakes in painting if entering the picture into Golden Old One painting competitions or other online painting competitions.

8) Show off your work! Hopefully the process hasn’t been too painful and your pictures have turned out well. People will be able to focus on the model, not the picture.


Hopefully, this guide has provided some help for future miniature photographers and at least some amusement for everyone else.

Good luck and happy posting!
Image
Thanathos
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Post by Thanathos »

That is an awesome tutorial !! :)

Congrats to Xini over on TPV.

Thanks a lot, this will definetly help many people to get better pictures.


Thanathos
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Shinobi
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Post by Shinobi »

Nice tutorial, here's link to Perry mini's pages, it's useful as well :)
http://perry-miniatures.com/index2.html
TerminusEst
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Post by TerminusEst »

Thanks, this article is great. Although I've been doing the basics for most of my pics this article covers some things I didn't consider such as the reflective surface and placement of the lamps.
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Post by Harbringer of Sorrow »

thanks mate, great help. we all know about my errr lets say a good try at photography... heh.
thanks again philli

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Forestcrab
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Re: How To Take Good Pictures

Post by Forestcrab »

Very good and easy to follow tutorial!

I just have to mention about using two lights. Sometimes there might be some problems when using two completely different bulb types as the color of the lights are also different and that might result in confusing color reproduction in the picture. This is almost impossible to fix in post processing. Why is it impossible? Example: model is lit with greenish light from above and reddish from front, the top part of the model reproduces colors quite differently than the bottom. So, if you wanted the colors of the model to be in balance you had to do the post production colorbalancing differently to all parts of the model and that is quite impposible to do neatly, especially in places where the two different coloured lights blend together.
But mostly the color difference isn´t that bad that it would ruin the picture. Just something to keep in mind when taking pictures and post processing them.

P.S. And I´m not talking about coloured bulbs. I´m talking about the ordinary "white" bulbs which actually come in many different "colors" of "white".

EDIT: The confusing color balance will most likely happen when you lit your model with sun light AND artificial light from another direction.
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