Despite joining up a bit late this week to 'the pledge' I had already managed to get in some productive hours. After a post on dropship horizon about light boxes (and previously on an oldhammer blog) I was interested in improving my photography and went through the (admittedly small) hassle of creating a light box.A bit of cardboard recycling dumpster diving, and 3 bucks in dollar store purchases and I was done.
Armed with a variety of lamps from around the house, and took some pictures. The blue form was a printout of a background from the interweb. The first few pics didn't use it, but I was having trouble with the pics and wanted to see if it'd help.
My test bed is some GZG spiderbots I had, admittedly, finished a week or more ago. I still intend to paint a symbol on the top, but I'm undecided what to use for a force.I wasn't super happy with the large shots. It's obvious that I need more light (MORE LIGHT IGOR!!). The speckles are loose flocking material from this weeks work....
What I have done this week is create bases for them. Steel washers, Elmer's walnut coloured wood filler, and some woodland scenic turf blend (lifted from Doug as he uses for his 28mm napoleonics). A bit different from my normal bases, so I'm deciding if I like them or not.
I'd like to figure out some sort of more urban or sci fi corridor base.....but i need to be able to do it on integral bases which most 15mm figs come with. Which likely means a putty or spread, and it won't be conducive to 'stamping' with some of the new fangled terrain stamps/impressions.
Upon printing out the blue background I tried to take some more photos. I'm using a samsung nexus phone here, so nothing too amazing (besides the amazingness inherent in all smart phones).
It appears that if I tighten up A LOT on the model I can capture enough light for a decent shot. I may need to futz around with photo editing (sigh) in the future, but I'm going to look for some 'light solutions' first.
My last shot here is in my typical photo style. Close to the brightest light in the house, balanced in one hand.
15mm photography is pretty unforgiving and really makes you appreciate more the mad skillz of some of the other folks involved in the 6MMRPC
I think they look absolutely brilliant and now I want to build a light box. My photos suck. Haha
ReplyDeleteThanks for the kind words =).
DeleteI think light is *really* important to making it better. The light box just diffuses the light (and thereby reduces it), so you probably need to scare up some lights. Matching bulbs is important apparantly (or you get weird color artifacts).
I read at dropship in the comments that reading about theatrical lighting helps you understand the positioning of the lights.