Take a picture once a day, whether you need to or not

[Engels]

Well your suggested theory is that there are ghosts that only show up for a nanosecond between other shots. Which seems more likely? One of a billion dust motes that caught the light just right or a haunting specter that appears to your camera for a split second?

[Khaldun]

No, my suggested theory is that there was a weird visual aberration--maybe lens flare, whatever, just doesn't seem like it--that created a creepy effect. Weird shots happen all the time in photography and sometimes they're interesting.

[Signe]

At least you got an interesting picture.  If that were me, the dust ghost would obscured by my thumb.  Or I'd have dropped the camera out of fear and I'd own another picture of a foot. 

[Nerf]

So I finally broke down and bought a proper camera a few weeks ago - a Sony Nex 5N.  So far I've just been messing around with it on auto settings, but it's definitely capable of taking some nice shots.  Have a Sigma 19mm and 30mm lens on order, should be here in a week or so.

Einstein:  (first pic I took with it, no flash, only light in room was from the TV about 2 feet in front/left of Ein.)


A few pics up at my friend's shop, we were putting together a new exhaust for his M coupe racecar.






Resized with tags, right click for the whole thing.  Haven't done any processing on them at all yet.

[apocrypha]

Not posted for ages. Here's a flower:

[Paelos]

It's almost glowing. How did you do that?

[apocrypha]

With a 640Ws strobe, a 22" beauty dish, some black velvet draped over the plants behind and several B&W conversion layers in PS 

[Paelos]

Ok then, so I can't do that with my phone is what you're saying. 

I kid, it looks good.

[apocrypha]

Hehe, not without a serious  game-upping by phone manufacturers    I'd actually love a way to trigger & sync strobes from a phone. But then I'd end up spending a lot more money on a phone probably.

[Signe]

I love your slightly wall-eyed dog, Nerf.  LOVE IT!!  And apocrypha, you are so consistently good at this.  I'm jealous.  I have a camera in my iPod but I can't make it go.  :(

[Merusk]

It's summer, this thread should be full ya lazies!

Stopped off at the Corvette Museum while we were down Mammoth cave way.  No tripods allowed on the tours so the cave pictures are all unsuitably blurry unless at really small resolution. Boo.  Still got some nice ones of the Vettes.

[Fargull]

Currently all I have are iPhone shots.  Have not loaded up and edited anything from the SLR.  Just got back from a trip to Glacier National Park.


Hidden Lake Overview after the hike from Logan Pass.


Avalanche Lake

I am not sure you can take a bad photo in glacier.  Everything was just beautiful.

[Signe]

Gorgeous photos.

[Paelos]

Mt. Hood from a jet.

[RhyssaFireheart]

Purty!

I like how the snow covers the top of the mountain like that, yet everything else is so green.

[Hawkbit]

Looks north, that should be St Helens in the background.

[Mithas]

Fargull - took this picture very near where you took yours overlooking Hidden Lake. This was July 7th, 2010. The weather was horrible on our vacation. We were also there in 2009 and it looked a lot like your picture. Glacier is probably my favorite place on Earth. Wish I could go every year.

[Fargull]

Mithras,

Great shot!  We had great weather the whole trip.  The hike out was 70% snow when we went, I cannot imagine how crazy your hike was!

Fargull

[Khaldun]

Coming down off of Mt. Pilatus in Switzerland.

[K9]

I think all that picture needs is to have the bushes just at the bottom cropped out. Otherwise I love it, the light on the tree is fantastic.

[Lantyssa]

The view from my soon-to-be front porch.

[Khaldun]

I think all that picture needs is to have the bushes just at the bottom cropped out. Otherwise I love it, the light on the tree is fantastic.

Yeah, I probably need to clone out the rope too. I want to keep a bit of the ground underneath the tree--that's part of what I think makes its loneliness seem real and grounded.

[Sky]

I can't believe I've been photographing minis for a year now and haven't nagged you nerds to get me a better setup. My current light box:



Typical photos:



Which get the job done. I'm still using my old canon powershot from 2005, apparently a higher f-stop would be better, mine only goes to f8 iirc. Next year when my budget starts to recover from 5 years of paying off my truck (yay) I'd like to think about taking another step forward with photography, with emphasis on this kind of photography for obvious reasons.

One particular model gave me a ton of trouble, bluish white hair and black clothes, dark skin. The white balance is set to the box's standard lighting using a white sheet of paper, it's pretty accurate in almost every other photo.

[apocrypha]

The light box setup looks alright! I love that lamp on the left hand side. There's quite a lot of the brown cardboard in the box showing which will bounce some orangey light around in there, you'll get cleaner colours if you mask that off with white paper a bit more. It might be fun to try playing with less diffusion on one side sometime too - open up one panel and move one of the lights about a bit to get some harder light. Might give the figs a bit more depth.

If you want better pics it's the camera that's the weak link in that chain, for sure. You'd probably get better results from most smartphones today! :)

Also, the f8 thing, you may get more depth of field at tighter apertures but you will lose sharpness and if it means you have to increase your ISO to compensate you'll be paying for that with more noise.

[Signe]

That is a cozy looking work area.  I'd ditch the compact fluorescent light bulbs, though.  They contain mercury.  If it breaks you might not notice any effects, but your cat easily could.  Or a visiting baby.  Do you have visiting babies?   

Sorry if I sound bossy!   

[apocrypha]

Sorry if I sound bossy!   

You don't come across as bossy Signe. Crazy, sure, like that slightly odd aunt with too many cats that everyone has.

[Sky]

LEDs aren't there yet and incandescents are too hot to paint under. The two lights on either side are incandescents, though (GE Reveals, nice spectrum for pics). The CFL in the reflector is just what I had laying around.

Apoc, what kind of settings would you ideally use for shooting in that situation?

[apocrypha]

Ideally?

A light cube (probably about $30?) or if you want to get carried away a still-life table (up to $400+ but some cheaper ones around). Add some large bits of mountboard, black on one side, white on the other, and a couple of bits of silvered board and you can control light & shadow & reflection all you want.

I would say you want 3 lights really. One for background, 2 for lighting. Small hotshoe strobes would do fine most likely - something like the LP-180. Plus some light mods, nothing fancy, a couple of grids and some kind of softbox and some coloured gels. You can do all that stuff homemade just fine. Sticky velcro is a wonderful thing for strobe light mods :)  Hot lights are also fine but harder to make mods for and harder to colour balance. If you wanted to splurge then studio lights are nice but for close-up work small lights work fine. Just get them close. Inverse square law and all that :)

Camera-wise any decent DSLR with a good prime macro lens! You don't need to spend a fortune but the lens will be the most expensive bit of it all. A camera body will last you a few years, a good lens will last the rest of your life.

And a solid, heavy tripod with whatever kind of head you prefer. A pan-tilt head would be my recommendation for still-life. And a bunch of small clamps & stands etc for holding gobos, reflectors, etc.

At the end of the day you can do it all really cheap by making all sorts of things yourself. I've got a whole cupboard behind me full of home-made light mods and things! Have a search for DIY studio and tabletop studio and you'll find a million things you can do with cereal boxes and gaffer tape :p

[apocrypha]

Tell ya what, I've got some time free today, I'll set up a couple of really simple macro shots later and post pics of the setups and try to keep it as home-made as poss :)

[Sky]

I followed part of that 

If I white out the rest of my little box, would that be sufficient or should I look to upgrade it? Most people who photo minis use lamps, not those little flash lights, so this is kind of foreign.

Definitely hearing you on the camera, that's one thing I want. My tripod is somewhat decent, it tilts but doesn't pan (I just shorten a side leg :).

Some examples of what some of the better artists shoot like.

I tend to like a more well-lit scene, like Marika uses:
https://www.coolminiornot.com/artist/mrika?browseid=6119582
https://www.coolminiornot.com/artist/Alexi+Z?browseid=6119605

I like the looks of jarhead's scenes, but I don't like how it introduces non-painted shadows. There are several painters that aren't top level that I think use this style to hide their poor shading (these are all phenomenal painters :)).
https://www.coolminiornot.com/artist/jarhead?browseid=6119588
https://www.coolminiornot.com/artist/Arsies?browseid=6119600
https://www.coolminiornot.com/artist/Yellow+one?browseid=6119608

[Pennilenko]

Holy crap, That Marika dude that Sky linked is a mini-painting god.

[Sky]

Chick. But yes. (and cute) And as usual I misspelled Marike. I blame her handle mrika.

There's a reason I'm always tough on my paint jobs! Long hill to climb.

[Lantyssa]

Her paint jobs are amazing.  I'm quitting now, in disgust.

[Sky]

But there's so much to learn from them! She even has an instructional video!

Also, Lantyssa WIPs are needed! I wouldn't be half the painter I am if I wasn't doing each one more or less publicly.

[apocrypha]

I followed part of that  

If I white out the rest of my little box, would that be sufficient or should I look to upgrade it? Most people who photo minis use lamps, not those little flash lights, so this is kind of foreign.

Whiting it out will help a bit, but the main problem really is camera & lens. Table-top light tents are super cheap though, you can pick up something like this for $42 and that even comes with some lights! Here's another one, bit larger, simpler, nice and cheap. Anything that creates a big, soft light source will give you the shadowless lighting you're after :)

The two main things to bear in mind for lighting for this are:
1) The larger the light source is (relative to your subject) then the softer the shadows are.
2) The closer the light source is then the brighter it is. Inverse square law! 2 x distance = 1/4 brightness.

So if you start with small, hard lights you get this:
Setup for that:

Make those lights bigger relative to the subject and you get softer shadows, more even lighting, but more diffuse specular highlights and a softening of detail:
Setup:

A fourth light with a bit of purple cellophane on it, hand held above to add some background colour :)

Similar setup, front lights in softboxes to make the lighting soft & even, but plain paper background instead of the shiny perspex and I dialed the power of the back light up loads and the front lights down a bit, makes it all a bit more contrasty:

OK now this time the lights are bare, as in the first shot, but I've brought them in really, really close. This makes them larger relative to the subject and the lighting isn't as harsh as a result. But cos they're so much closer they're a lot brighter so I had to dial the power way down and close the lens aperture up too. Also switched to black felt background this time.
Setup for that:

Exact same thing without the rear light, so no edge separation from the background:

Some variations for... er.. variety!