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Any tips?

I have several all red models that I think look great in person, but often get washed out in photos.
Examples:

I dont see no examples but what is your photo set up like?

Sorry, had to refresh to add the examples.

I tend to use a mixture of outside nature lighting an indoor florescence.
My concern is that you cannot see the edging highlights on the brighter reds, like the Blood Angels.

So you use indirect lights from a bunch of different sources.

IIRC you should try and use a Daylight bulb to get a pretty neutral color. try and defuse it to avoid the overly harsh lights and shadows

Thanx, I'll try that.

You might want to try LED lights. Many incandescent lights are tinted. Even sunlight tends to be yellower than white, at midday. The sky is blue because the blue light is filtered by the atmosphere, and red near sunset because different wavelengths travel through more atmosphere to get to you... something like that. It's been 20 years since high school.

I find double-light LED's [One left, one right] are great lighting. LED Bulbs have come down a lot, I'm pretty sure we can get them for about $4 CAD in Dollar stores these days.

Also, working with a hard-black background will help the lighter highlights show up, with the increased contrast.

 Desubot wrote:
So you use indirect lights from a bunch of different sources.

IIRC you should try and use a Daylight bulb to get a pretty neutral color. try and defuse it to avoid the overly harsh lights and shadows

Almost!, Daylight bulb are actually more blue and will actually be the worse offenders for washing out your reds.

Light bulbs are rated in 2 ways, Color temperature (CT) which is measured in Kelvin (K) and Color Rating Index (CRI) which is a % of the visible light spectrum it shows accurately.



You want to find a cool white bulb, preferably in the about 3500k-4000k range which will be white light with the highest CRI you can find (generally high 80s-low 90s.

There is no such thing as a white LED. LEDs are green red and blue packed onto small chips to make white light. They can be adjusted to be at any color temperature (which is why you have those color changing bulbs too). LEDs are the best bulbs out there for a lot of reasons including being able to pick the right colors for the right job.

^ As above, LED's are not White individually, but create white light by having RGB combined. Something to do with a photon being given off when an electron jumps a certain distance, if I recall. Again, school was a long time ago. But to the point, you get a crisp "appears to be white" light from them.

For example...



You can see a double shadow, one left, one right light. With the black background, you can more easily see the highlights due to sharper contrast.

The reds are washed with Reikland Flesh Shade, so they're browner than some Reds, but that might also help with keeping the richer colour. Click the picture so you can zoom in.


PS: Dang it, I missed touching up the blade / wooden handle...

See if you can find someone with a Nikon digital camera. Have had at least five different Nikons over the years and they ALL LOVE reds.

T

 Lance845 wrote:
There is no such thing as a white LED. LEDs are green red and blue packed onto small chips to make white light. They can be adjusted to be at any color temperature (which is why you have those color changing bulbs too). LEDs are the best bulbs out there for a lot of reasons including being able to pick the right colors for the right job.

Minor nitpick: you get white LEDs with a blue LED and a yellow phosphor layer. You can't tune the color during use, but you can set it anywhere in the white color space during manufacturing. And the quality can range from "just like white light from the sky" to "fake white light that doesn't show colors accurately". High CRI is the factor here, you need it as high as possible. There's more to it, but I'm not sure how much anyone else is going to understand the physics of light and color.

(Source: work in R&D for an LED company.)

text removed.

reds8n

Sigh. I apologize for following comments about "it's been years since school, something like that" by not getting into the precise details of CRI and black-body curves and emission spectra, something I've found most people have trouble understanding. Clearly I should have understood that this actually means "I understand everything, give me more physics", not "I don't really understand this very well". I deserve every bit of your blatant rule #1 violation.

Tried anything Galef? How's it working out?