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Could you guys help me out here? I have had an issue with taking photos for a while now and I am now starting to use lights and a light box. The light box seems to tone down the brightness way too much. Without the light box the model has no color to it. And with natural light, it doesn't look professional. Which one of these to you looks the best/most professional. Thanks for any help! (Spoiler alert: a lot of photos sorry, I had to try a lot of things).

First image light box + normal brightness
Second image light box + highest brightness
Third image normal lighting (my favorite cause it actually shows colors lol)
Fourth image lights no light box
Fifth image lights no light box high brightness

Two things:

1) You definitely need the plain white background. The ones with the table in the background look cluttered and unprofessional.

2) What camera and settings are you using? Are you using a phone camera with automatic settings, or a good camera with a tripod and manual mode? I ask because light shouldn't make that much of a difference, if the image is too bright or dim you can always adjust the exposure time to compensate.

Alright I think you might have just solved my lifelong problem . Tell me if this is better. I did a little bit of experimentation with shutter speed and the light intake.

 deathwing fanboy wrote:
Alright I think you might have just solved my lifelong problem . Tell me if this is better. I did a little bit of experimentation with shutter speed and the light intake.

It's better. The first one is a lot better, the others are over-exposed to varying degrees. Look up some tutorials on photographing miniatures and practice more, it's pretty straightforward to learn. TL;DR is use a tripod and a long exposure (I often use 10+ seconds) and use your lights to fill in dark areas or direct the shadows, not to increase the overall brightness of the image. For example, the most recent image I posted to the gallery was taken at f/22, ISO 200, 3.2 second exposure, indoors under natural light with just a sheet of plain white paper as a neutral background.

For such a light model, you might also want to try a darker background.

 Peregrine wrote:

 deathwing fanboy wrote:
Alright I think you might have just solved my lifelong problem . Tell me if this is better. I did a little bit of experimentation with shutter speed and the light intake.

It's better. The first one is a lot better, the others are over-exposed to varying degrees. Look up some tutorials on photographing miniatures and practice more, it's pretty straightforward to learn. TL;DR is use a tripod and a long exposure (I often use 10+ seconds) and use your lights to fill in dark areas or direct the shadows, not to increase the overall brightness of the image. For example, the most recent image I posted to the gallery was taken at f/22, ISO 200, 3.2 second exposure, indoors under natural light with just a sheet of plain white paper as a neutral background.

Thanks so much for helping me out. I will try and experiment more today. I think I might have had the lights too bright and have the aperture too low.

Disclaimer: Not a photographer, at all.

I use a simple Nikon L820, set to Macro. I use a simple white sheet of paper, ramped up at the back. I use two lamps - one above and one from the front. The biggest adjustment I make after a photograph is auto-correcting the white balance in the picture using GIMP.

A quick picture of the desk:


The picture I normally get:


With white balance:


My set-up really struggles with dark miniatures though so I haven't figured out how to tackle that well.

I've found this article quite useful in how to do camera setup, has helped a lot, even without a DSLR:

http://taleofpainters.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/tutorial-beginners-guide-to-miniature.html

Alright I think I did a little better this time, again thanks to you all. I also just realized my camera was on some toy picture setting on the last photo so its very different from the rest.

I'm liking the updates OP. Every time, they get better. Unfortunately I cannot add to the conversation but this is definitely helping me.

Im glad its helping you . I really am trying my best to get better, i'm hoping it will pay off in the form of more commissions lol.

I think you're getting the hang of the lighting as the last pic is far better than the first. Using GIMP and editing your photos is the key. You don't have to use loads of effects, but as Elbows points out - make use of the auto-correction for White Balance if you've not already done so on your camera. Another pointer - crop out all the white on either side. You're displaying your model and the expanse of white on either side of your model distracts the viewers eye - so get rid of it. Finally, as others have said, a tripod is really handy as you can eliminate hand-blur, especially during long exposure. Other than that, keep doing what you're doing!

Thanks for the advice man. Whenever I turn white balance on it turns into this weird color, its the 2nd,3rd, and 4th photos (my camera has different settings for wb), not sure if its a good thing or not lol. I have been using a tripod this whole time believe it or not, but I've had the focus on the wrong setting so the last photo should be the most clear (it has the white balance filter on).

 deathwing fanboy wrote:
Thanks for the advice man. Whenever I turn white balance on it turns into this weird color, its the 2nd,3rd, and 4th photos (my camera has different settings for wb), not sure if its a good thing or not lol. I have been using a tripod this whole time believe it or not, but I've had the focus on the wrong setting so the last photo should be the most clear (it has the white balance filter on).

That's probably because white balance is not an on or off thing, you have to set it to the appropriate value for the lighting conditions*. The best way to do this, if you aren't sure what white balance setting to use, is to take several pictures and see which setting makes the white background look pure white. It also helps to make sure you only have one type of light source on the scene. If you put your model near a window to shoot with natural light don't turn on the overhead fluorescent light if you think it looks too dim. The conflicting colors of light will give you weird results in the final image as the right white balance for some parts will be completely off for other parts.


*Explanation, if you don't know: normally your brain automatically adjusts for different lighting conditions. Light bulbs (and even different types of bulbs!), daylight, etc, all have different tints to them even if they're called "white". But your brain removes the tint and interprets the color as what it looks like under "standard" light tinting. But obviously a camera doesn't do that, it records the actual value of incoming light. What white balance does is say "this is the tint of the lighting right now" and adjust the image to compensate, just like your brain would do. So you have to tell it if it's a tungsten light, fluorescent light, daylight, etc. Some cameras have an "auto" function that can try to guess at what the image is supposed to look like, but when it guesses wrong you'll get weird colors.

To follow on from what Peregrine said, you may find that your camera has a custom AWB function; point it at a plain white background in the area you want to take the photo and reset the custom AWB. It will then adjust the settings for subsequent photos.

A Black T-Shirt / Tank-top is perfect as a background; white reflects a lot of light so maybe diffuse your light sources if you gonna go for a white background; I use white backing paper/pan liner for the diffusion of my Lights - or just take photo's on my balcony when it's sunny outside.

Your camera doesn't need to be the best - i think a lot of people use their cellphones nowadays. Mine is a Canon PowerShot G3 - ancient hardware - but as longs as you can change the Film-Speed / ISO manually you're good to go.