Miniature Photography
I often get emails from folks asking about how I take pictures of my miniatures, and decided it was time I posted a brief tutorial about it. I am not a professional photographer, and I'm sure that many people do it differently, and might even take issue with some of my methods. That's fine - there are many ways to do things, and this is simply how I do it, and what works for me. Take what you need, leave the rest.
The Equipment
Camera
When I started taking pictures of miniatures, digital cameras didn't go much over 2 or 3 Megapixels. Now, it seems, you can get cameras with 14,000 Megapixels or more... and all that in your cell phone. But you know what? 2 MP still works just fine, and I suggest that as a minimum. If you wan to pay for 8 or 10, be my guest... but 2 to 3 is plenty. Other features your digital camera should have are Macro Mode, a timer, a tripod mount, and the ability to alter the "F-Stop." A good optical zoom is worthwhile, but Digital Zoom is useless for miniature photography. Another useful feature, if you'll be doing long photo shoots, is an AC adapter. If the camera doesn't have one, at least make sure you have rechargeable batteries for it, as digicams will eat through regular batteries like there's no tomorrow.
Do NOT use a webcam. Do NOT use a camera phone. Do NOT use a Scanner.
What I use: Sony Cybershot, Super Steady Shot, 5.1 megapixel camera, DSC-H1. It has 12x Optical Zoom and a nice-sized 2.5" LCD display for seeing what you'll get before you take the shot.
Software
You are certainly welcome to go out and pay $800 for Adobe Photoshop. It certainly is the king of all photo-editing software. I'm sure some less scrupulous people have also acquired it for free along the way (probably why it costs honest folk nearly $1000 now...). But all you really need is something that will allow you to crop and resize your photos, and fidlle with the brightness and contrast. Any other monkeying about, in my opinion, is no longer about what the miniature actually looks like, but how well you can fool folks. With the proper settings and lighting, the raw image ought to be pretty close to what things look like in real life. So I'd suggest somehing cheap - mine was about $40, and many home PCs now come with some sort of free photo editor pre-installed for you.
What I use: MGI PhotoSuite. Version 4.1 or thereabouts.
Tripod
Get one. I had a $20 cheap-o from Wal-Mart that lasted for about 2 years. Its $45 replacement from Circuit City seems like it will last a lot longer. In a pinch, use a stack of books, a music stand, or some other steady and sturdy support for the camera. There needs to be ZERO movement during image capture.
What I use: Samsonite 3731
Lighting
You need plenty of this. Lamps that emulate daylight are great - like Ott Lites - and GE Reveal bulbs are good, too. Regular incandescent bulbs are too yellow, and fluorescents are too green; stay away from them. At minimum, you'll need three light sources close, to cancel out shadows. Gooseneck lamps, available pretty inexpensively at Target or Wal-Mart are perfect, as you can bend them into position to get the best light coverage. As you won't have them burning for very long, I've had no problem exceeding the lamps' maximum recommended wattage. 75-watt is about the minimum; 100-watters are perfect.
What I use: Four 100-Watt GE Reveal Bulbs. Two in Gooseneck lamps, one in a swing-lamp, and one in a small clip-on style lamp I hold in my hand.
Background
It's best to shoot pics of models against a solid background, so things like your painting desk or computer keyboard don't clutter up the image. I use an 8.5" x 14" fade from Blue at the top to White at the bottom. Download it HERE. It's also good to have some poster board around, for shooting larger models or entire armies. I have a white sheet of poster board, and also blue - the back side of blue poster board is a nice light blue. Use the non-glossy side as your background.
While not strictly necessary, a photo diffusion box is also useful. It spreads out the light, rather than having light directly hitting the models and creating harsh glares and bright reflections. Mayne Thiele over at Dragon Miniatures has a great article on how to build one, so I won't repeat it. You can find it HERE.
What I use: Background. Diffusionator.
The Set-up
As I mentioned above, lighting is critical, so that's what the set-up mostly deals with. Place the model on your background, the tripod and camera in front of it, nice and close. I use four lamps; one to the right, one to the left, and one above while the fourth I hold in my hand and aim wherever I need more light, to cancel out shadows. With the lamps on, bend the goose-necks in to position to get rid of as many shadows as possible. Click the thumbnails to view my set-up:
Notice that the goose-neck lamps are turned almost upwards, to prevent shadows on the torso and legs. The hand-held lamp is to the left side, and I will often point this directly at the front of the miniature, from next to the camera. The white poster board curves up behind the "Diffusionator," ready to go for larger models or group shots, and is a perfect set-up if you don't have and don't want to build a diffusion box. Lamps would remain in the same position without the Diffuser. The model is very near the back of the background, where it begins its upward curve, and the tripod is placed as close as possible to the subject.
The background curves up behind the model, rather than being folded, so that there will be no unsightly lines or creases in the background of your picture to detract from your model.
In most cases, the best view is head-on, level with the model. Make sure the camera isn't set too high, so that you end up with a mostly top-down view. Too low, and you end up with some sort of Film Noir aspect that won't show any base at all. So straight on to the front of the model, to get a good view of the face and torso, with a bit of the base texture showing. Of course, to capture certain details, you may also want some top-down or bottom-up angles. But for everyday miniature portrait use, head on and level is the best way to present your models.
The Execution
Settings
Many cameras have "Automatic" and "Manual" modes, as well as the Moon, the Palm Tree, and other modes of selection for taking pictures. I use the Auto setting, a capital "A" on my selection dial. This allows me control over what I want to control, such as focus and aperture, while automatically handling all the other things that I don't really understand.
Use Macro mode. This is usually a button with a flower on it. Macro Mode allows for up-close focusing of small objects, which is exactly what we want to do.
Focus. I use an auto-focus mode that has a small square I can move about the LCD screen. I point this square, usually, at the model's face. With Macro engaged, you should see your model come into crisp detail on your LCD. For group shots, I will use a wider auto-focus that analyzes the entire screen and picks out areas to focus on its own. Works swell for me.
Flash. Don't use it. It creates sudden, harsh light, horrible reflections, and will ruin your photo. If you have enough steady lighting in your Set-Up, the flash is unnecessary. Make sure it is turned off.
Timer. Definitely use it. Combined with the use of a tripod, it ensures that no movement will disturb the camera during capture, ensuring precise, clear pictures.
F-Stop. Open the camera's F-Stop all the way. This allows a greater Depth of Field, making sure that the entire model will be in focus. If you've ever had a dynamically posed model whose sword arm in the back is all blurry, while the body is in great focus, it's probably because your F-Stop was not set high enough. The higher you set the F-Stop, the darker the image will become, so you'll need to allow in more light. My camera's F value goes up to 8, so that is what I set it to.
EV. I don't know what this stands for (see the "not a professional photographer" disclaimer, above), but as I raise the F value and the picture darkens, I can make it lighter again by raising this value. On my camera's LCD, the "EV" number is located right next to the "F" number. With the F opened all the way, I increase the EV until the picture on the LCD most resembles what I see in real life in front of the camera. Something between 1 and 1.7 seems to work for me, coupled with the F value of 8.
White Balance. With all the lights on, the model in place, my F-Stop and EV values set, and everything in focus (i.e., when I'm ready to snap the pic), I then use the camera's auto-set feature to set the White Balance. This ensures that all the colors will be as true to life as possible. Since it uses black and white values in your frame to set the balance, a great tip is to have something that is pure black and pure white in the frame, right next to the model. The back of a business card, half of it painted (or magic-markered) black, works great. Remove the card after setting the white balance and before snapping the photo.
Taking the Photo
1 - Place the model on the background.
2 - Place the camera on the tripod.
3 - Turn on lighting, and adjust the lamp positions as needed to eliminate shadows.
4 - Turn on Camera.
5 - Engage Macro.
6 - Open F-Stop to maximum, adjust EV as necessary as described above.
7 - Use auto-white balance to correct colors.
8 - Use telephoto to zoom in so that the model takes up as much of the frame as possible. Be careful not to go over the Optical Zoom maximum and into crappy Digital Zoom.
9 - Use auto-focus to focus the subject.
10 - Turn on Timer, Press the Go! button to capture the image!
Rotate model in place and repeat steps 8-10 for additional angles and views. Everything else remains set.
The Processing
With everything set properly in the previous stages, not much digital wizardry should be required to show what the model really looks like. The raw image captured using the above steps ought to be very close to real life. All we need to do at this point is crop, resize, and perhaps alter brightness and contrast a bit. Any old photo-processing software should be up to the task.
Crop
All we want in the photo is the model. Not miles and miles of blank background - and certainly not the McDonald's cup off to the side of the frame! Use your software's Crop function to cut out as much background as you can, getting very close on all four sides of the miniature. Leave only a slight border of free space around the edges. This way the focus is on the model, and folks don't waste hours of load times downloading your background.
Resize
Your raw image may be 2000 pixels or more wide, even after cropping. That won't fit on many monitors, and who wants to zoom in on their painting mistakes that much? For a standard, 28mm infantry model (with no extraneous back-banners or outlandishly tall bases), a Height of 350 - 600 Pixels is just about right. It will still appear on the monitor many times its actual size, large enough for all the details to be clearly seen, without magnifying it to the point where you want to re-think your involvement in this hobby.
Brightness and Contrast
If the image is too dark or light, a quick trip to your program's brightness and contrast filters should do the trick. If I need to, Ill adjust both back and forth until the image resembles real life. My software actually has a nifty button called "Enhance" that adjusts the brightness and contrast for me. It does a good job about 75% of the time. Other times I must do it manually - and it's usually on raw plastic and metal figs, rather than painted ones.
That is how I take and process my pictures. Again, I don't have the professional know-wots that others might have, but I'm fairly happy with how mine turn out. Hopefully, if you've been struggling with getting good photos of your models, something in this article will have helped you improve.