tutorial - miniature photography

7/27/2019 Tutorial - Miniature Photography

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By Warmaster Nice

When people talk about Epic they of-ten talk about the good old days. Backin Epics golden age when they wereyoung, the hobby was new, minis cheapand GW less hellbent on squeezing theevery last penny out of their consumers.Back then the Epic Hobby was trulygreat and since then things have onlydeterioratedWell minis have certainly only gottenmore expensive and Rules- and FluffLawyers can be a real pestilence for theenjoyment of the game and GW hasbecome a major corporation which has

to make money for its shareholdersBut never mind all that: In all this mis-ery one thing has evolved which hasmade the Epic Hobby more enjoyablethan ever: The Internet.Back in the old days your only source ofinspiration was what you saw in WhiteDwarf and what you and your gaming

buddies brought to the local club. Todaya whole world of ideas are available by

typing a few words in Google.Lots of people post pics of their minisand terrain on the net. Either by upload-ing them to various hosts and forums orby making their own web pages.There is a lot of great guides how tophotograph miniatures available on thenet but since sharing pics of your minisis becoming such an important part ofthe hobby, weve made this quick guidewhich will help you through the basics.

The Camera:

Digital cameras are pretty commonnowadays but even if you only have aregular camera most of the same princi-ples will apply, except those parts deal-ing with resolution (number of MegaPix-

els in the camrea)Two factors are important when choos-ing which camera to use for miniaturephotography.

1: the resolution of the pics ie. theamount of MegaPixels available. Thebest way to describe pixels is as small

colour dots which makes up a picture.The more you got, the finer resolutionand more detail you can theoretically getinto your pic.Today 3 Megapixel are pretty stand-ard though 2 would still be OK for moststuff. I wouldnt go below that though.

2: Macro. The macro function allowsyou to take pics of stuff very close tothe camera. Macro is symbolized with asmall Tulip icon on your camera. Notall cameras have this function though so

if you plan on snapping a lot of pics ofminis it might be a good idea to choosea camera with Macro.Strictly speaking you dont need Macro:If your camera has got enough Megapix-el you can simply Crop the pic. Moreabout this later. However I strongly rec-ommend Macro if you have the choice.

Finally, before you go buy the cheapest

camera you can find, take these thingsinto consideration: A camera may havea lot of pixels but if its got a crappylens it will still take poor quality pics.Go for a camera with a lens made by aknown manufacturer. The very best areOlympus, Nikon, Zeiss, Leica, Agfa andCanon.

Miniature Photography:-A beginners guide.


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Durability/ergonomics: Will the cameraonly be used indoors for photographingminis or do I plan to bring it along whenI go fishing/rapelling/paragliding etc. Abig camera may not always be practical.A camera made with lots of flimsy plas-

tic parts may easily break. It is always amatter of taste but please do take it intoconsideration before you buy.

Oh, and one more thing: NEVER buythose combi products like a Camera/Videocamera/Telephone/MP3 player/coffeemachine/whatever-thingies. Theymay be able to do all these things but itwill never be able to do any of them very

well. For the same amount of money youwill get a pretty good dedicated product.Trust me: youll like it much better in thelong run.The pics on my website and also some ofthose featured in this mag (including thecover art) were all shot with my CanonPowershot A70. Its a reasonable cam-era for the prize: 3 Megapixel, Macro,Decent pics and many nice functions. Agood beginners camera IMO. I bought it

two years ago so today theres probablya lot of equally good and even bettercameras available for the same price.

Camera settings:

While theres a lot of interesting pos-sibilities when you start tweaking yourcamera theres only really two thingsyou need to know when you start photo-

graphing Minis:Exposure time and Aperture.Exposure time is how long the shutter or

camera eye is open. Aperture is howmuch light the camera catches in thepic. While you can create specific effectsby tweaking these, the basic things youneed to know are these:

A long exposure time gives a sharperpic but if you shake the camera everso slightly the pic will become blurred.Short exposure time increases thechance of a decent result if you donthave a tripod. However this requiresextra light.

You normally dont need to set aper-ture on the default settings on a simplecamera. However if it is set to low thepics will become very dark. This holds

especially true with Macro pics whereyou need all the light you can get to getgood pics. Instead of fiddeling too muchwith this I simply recommend that youmake sure theres plenty of light whereyou plan to take the pic.

Lightsources:

The best natural light is of course day-light. Preferably in a light room out ofthe direct sun. Allways stand betweenthe light source and your miniature

never snap a pic against the light. How-ever shadows even the one cast by youor the camera- can show up on the picand spoil it, even though you dont ap-pear to be casting a direct shadow. Youprobably need to try this out for yourselfa couple of times as it may also varyfrom camera to camera.I recommend using a white backgroundas it will help reflect light back ontothe miniatures. Dark backdrops tend

to swallow the light and offsets yourcameras white balance.

When photographing using artificial lightyou should never use flash as it castsway to much light on your mini so close.The best solution is to use a colour cor-rected light bulb. Most light bulbs pro

Never photograph against the light source


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duce a very yellow light but you can getsome special ones which cast a morenatural light. It doesnt matter muchthough as you can always colour correctthe pics on the computer.Neon lights are not recommended be-cause they flicker. It happens too rapidly

for the eye to notice but on photographsa whole bunch of odd things happen.

Use at least one good light source closeto the mini. The best solution is to havetwo lamps set up at an angle as thiseliminates the shadows in the pic.If the light source is too sharp so it pro-duces unwanted highlights you can placea piece of thin baking paper (I think itis also called wax paper) in front of the

lamp to diffuse the light. Better still is

using semi transparent acrylic plateswhich are available cheap from mosthardware stores.

Taking the pic:

Well here you should pretty mush justfollow the manual of your camera butgenerally speaking: Many cameras havesmall boxes which appear on the LCDdisplay to tell you where in the imagethe camera chooses to focus. Sometimesthe camera will not choose to focus theright place. You can fix this by point-ing the camera at something else with asimilar range, press the release buttonhalf down so the auto focus locks on,

return to your miniature and press thebutton all the way down. If the rangefrom the camera to the object were thesame you should now have a nice sharp

pic.I usually snap a few pics at each angleso I have a few extras if one turns out tobe shaken or out of focus.

Editing your photos.

Once youve uploaded your pics to the

computer (or scanned them if you use aregular camera) you should import theminto a photo editing program before youpost them on the net.Due to my profession I have access toAdobe Photoshop which is pretty muchthe industry standard photo editing pro-gram. However less will also be just finefor most peoples needs.To begin with your pic will be in one of

the following formats: .jpg, .jpeg, .tiff,.bmp or .raw. Most of these formatsproduce very big files which is a majordisadvantage for web use.You need to save the images as .jpg (or.jpeg for Mac users) as this format al-lows you to compress the images. Thisprocess removes unnecessary informa-tion from the pics.First you need to resize your pic to the

size you want to physically appear onscreen though. The function may benamed differently in each program butlook for something called image sizeor similar. A pic 1000 pixels wide willappear fullscreen on most computersthough this depends on peoples screenresolution. Choose whatever formatUsing two or more lamps will eliminate

any shadows cast by the miniature

My photo stage. Nothing fancy; just acouple of lamps covered in paper or thincloth. It works. However using daylightis usually preferable in most situations.


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you like. There may also be a functionwhich allows you to set the resolution ofthe pic. This should be set to 72 dpi asthis is the max resolution viewable on acomputer screen. Anything higher will

just make your file unnecessarily large.As a rule of thumb I say that the larger

a pic is physically, the more it can be op-timised. Smaller images need less com-pression in order not to spoil the detail.Id rather see a large image in a poor

resolution than one that is so tiny that Imight as well be standing 3 metres awaylooking at the mini!

You may also want to crop your pic.Perhaps you dont want all the stuff sur-rounding your mini to be on the image.

The editing program will probably have aCrop function. Then it is a simple mat-ter of selecting the area you want. If youwant to crop your image you should doso before all the re-sizing.

Finally youre ready to save the imagefor the web. Photoshop has a save forweb function which allows you to bothre-size and optimise the image at the

same time. Other programs may simplyhave an option under save image asor optimise Here you choose .jpg. Youthen have to choose Image quality. Setthis to low. Try it out a few times untilyou get an image quality youre satisfiedwith.I usually save my web images at around20% of the original quality. For verysmall or finely detailed images I mayset this higher but generally speakingan image for a web page shouldnt beany bigger than 50 kb max. unless of

course you want to have full screen picsor bigger.Then you simply upload your pic to thenet for the world to enjoy.

If youve never tried photographing ordigitally editing photos before I know

that a lot of this sounds a bit compli-cated at first. However once youve triedit a couple of times it is really quick andeasy. It is actually a lot more compli-cated to explain than actually do.Im by no means an expert but thegreat thing about digital cameras is thatit doesnt cost you a penny to practiseand get better. It only took me a weekto learn how to get decent pics out ofmy camera. You then continue to learntricks and improve your skills with everypic you take.

If you want more info on miniature pho-tography I can highly recommend FelixGaming Pages, and www.dragon-mini-atures.com which explains this muchbetter than I ever could. And of courseyou can always search Google under

Macro and photography.

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