First up is a funny character in 28mm - a cockney bloke caught on the loo during a German Air Raid and giving them an earful - those Jerry Blighters! He was painted as part of commission work. He is sitting on a lump of blue tack to prop him up.
The first four pictures were salvaged, with much tweaking, from my original photo shoot. They were taken on the dining table, on a white sheet of paper with a photo print sky background.
The next photos of the same figure are from my second attempt some days later. I'm not sure that they are much better, just different. There were a number of photos I took of other miniatures which were better overall I think, I'll save them for another post.
Hi John,
ReplyDeleteI prefer the shots with the background in the...er...background.
Great paint work mate!
Nick
Cheers Nick!
DeleteYou mean the sky background?
I just point and click, so I am not much good here. For my best results I tend to try and use the natural light of the setting sun.
ReplyDeleteShots seem sharper.
Sorry mate. Fig looks good and I agree with Nick.
Thanks Paul.
DeleteYeah normally I use natural daylight - for me the morning light has seemed best, but later in the day could help, too late and the sun really belts in through the windows and I'd probably end up with shadows.
So then..
ReplyDeletea number of the shots are out of focus. i'm not sure what camera you are using so its hard to suggest concrete strategies, but assuming you have focus control, you should try and set the focus button apart from the shutter release - i can talk you through it on a nikon cos its what i do.. - but other cameras would need a google - the other option is that its not Focus but camera shake - the way round that is a tripod - but not just to use a tripod but to set a shutter delay so it doesnt snap with your finger on the button and cause a shake.
as to the other obvious difference, the colour cast. most digital cameras have a feature called white balance - something where you set the camera at something white, tell it "this is white" and it then compensates for your lighting, some do this "automatically" with varying degrees of success, some you need to set. i could go on about colour and light temperature, but i fear it would be terribly dull.
iso shouldn't make a difference - ~ISO is an old term used to denote "speed" that is light sensistivity of film stock. we now use it to denote a setting on the camera one could think of as varying degrees of "low light". high ISO number however, usually means more grain and artefacting - not something we want - keep your ISO 100-200ish and let your aperture open wide enough and your shutter be slow enough to allow the right amount of light in.
Thanks Karitas for the helpful advice.
DeleteMy camera is one of those wee Olympus compacts, VG-160 14 mega pixel. The WB is usually auto, but can be set for the lighting type. It does allow me to change the ISO, which I normally leave on auto or 0- perhaps I should be setting it to 100 - 200 then?
I do have a little flexible tripod which I sometimes use, and must admit I didn't use shutter delay on these photos - need to get back to doing that each time.
I have taken some reasonable photos in the past, but my recent efforts seem to have been a bit lacklustre.
Cheers again for the sage words.
Your photos always look pretty good to be honest! Karitas has it on the button, keep your ISO as low as you can (not sure what the 0 setting on your camera means though...), higher ISOs will result in a 'noisier' image. As it doesn't sound like you can control the aperture, the tripod and shutter delay are good options.
ReplyDeleteAlso, and this may sound counterintuitive, don't get too close to the model, apart from having a minimum focussing distance, the closer you are the less depth of field you'll get. With a 14MP camera you can always afford to crop in a bit.
Good lighting helps too.
That said, most of my photos are taken on my phone under a desk lamp, so I can hardly talk! ;-)
G'day Alan :-) That's some sound advice, particularly about not getting too close.
Delete