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  • How to Photograph Miniature planes

    I am going to give a brief overview on how to take better photos of our miniatures. In this first part, I'll cover using the average point and shoot digital camera that most of you will have.

    With limited equipment, you will most likely want to photograph your mini on a white background. It will stand out better and will give you more light to take the photo with (lighting is the single most important part of photographing).

    All of the images are taken in the camera's Macro mode on a small, inexpensive Canon point and shoot automatic camera (not the one seen in the photos, that was just used as a prop).

    Basic setup

    Below is a shot of the photo box that I made for shooting miniatures on a white background.



    As you can see, it is just a cardboard box with one side cut out of it and all the inside surfaces covered with white paper. Not that the bottom and back wall are covered in a single sheet of large paper and there is a nice curve in the transition. That curve will keep your background nice and clean with out any seems showing in your photos. All of the white paper will help reflect light back on to your mini from all angels.

    You will want to use some kind of support to hold your camera so that it does not shake when you take your photos. A tripod is best as it gives you a lot of freedom in how you angle your camera... giving you more exciting and visually pleasing photos. If your planes are mounted on Gimbal Mounts, you can use those to get the nice angles and keep your camera level. If you do not have a tripod, no worries! You can use just about anything to raise your camera to the correct height.

    DVD cases


    You can also use a 3 Ring Binder to set your camera on. This will allow you to fine tune the angle of your camera by adding or removing DVD cases from inside it.





    Most cameras have a self timer, I suggest that you use that as well.


    Lighting

    As I said before, this is the single most important part of any good photo. The photo will only be as good as the light you take it in. There are two basic properties to light, quantity and quality. The more light you have, the better you can make the quality of it. I'll show some photos of a plane shot in both different quantity and quality of lights.

    This first image was taken using the built in flash of the camera. As you can see, there is plenty of quantity of light, but it is very bright and harsh... so of poor quality.



    This photo was taken with what is called ambient light... no flash. The light is much softer and of better quality, but there is not enough of it so the image is too dark.



    The darkness of the photo can be fixed after the fact in an image editing program. A nice free program is GIMP. There are many YouTube videos on how to use GIMP, so I will not cover that here. I will tell you that the biggest adjustments you will want to make are:

    1. White Balance
    2. Exposure/Levels
    3. Cropping


    Here is the same image as above, but with the Exposure adjusted on the computer (the White Balance should have been adjusted as well as it is now to red/pink).



    As you can see, it is much brighter now and still has the softer quality so that everything is evenly lit and has the same color tones all over.

    This next image was taken outside in direct sun light. You will notice that it is again harsh lighting with deep shadows. The darker mini and the white background also trick the camera into underexposing the image (making it darker). This makes the background bright, but makes the mini dark.



    Finally we have the outside photo in shade. I like to take these photos inside my open garage with the photo box in the shade, but as close to direct sun light as possible. Point the opening of your photo box towards the direction of the sun. Doing this will give you the most amount of soft light as you can get with out specialized flash equipment.



    One thing to note about taking your photos this way... you will have to adjust the White Balance! Some cameras will let you do this during the photo process (usually with a "Shade" setting), or you will have to do it in your photo editing software (my preferred method). If you do not adjust this, your images will be very blue looking. You will also notice that in this photo the seam in the background. This is because I shot it at an angle and the side wall is in the photo. This shows off how important that curve in the paper we talked about earlier is.

    If you can't photograph outside in the shade like this, you can do it inside using table lamps as well. You will want at least two of them, one on either side and above the mini. Keep them the same distance away from the mini if possible. This will keep the lighting even across the entire mini. You will most likely want to soften the light from the lamps as well. You can do this with another sheet of white paper between the lamp and the mini (closer to the lamp is better, but don't let it get to hot and catch on fire!). Using household lamps will most likely make your images too yellow looking, so adjust that White Balance again!

    I will write another post later covering how to photograph with a non-white background (like with the game mats) and better camera/flash equipment for those that have it... or might want to get it.

    Hope this helps some of you out there.
    This article was originally published in forum thread: How to Photograph Miniature planes started by Oberst Hajj View original post