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I was lucky enough to receive some LED lights as a present recently, they have proved to be a great addition to the games room for taking photos and doing the Utubes video.
I've done a video going through the functions of the lights and then put some samples of photos on the blog post.
Hopefully of use to those who photo their figures.
Nice review! I've never really dipped into LED lights as I've not done much if any video so I've stuck with flashes for photography. A few things you could try with these that might help improve/change results
1) Instead of just lowering or raising the power you can move them further or closer to the subjects, which will have the same effect, closer and they'll give more power, further away and the light drops off
2) Take a box (a shoebox would probably work well) and cut a slot in the base for the flash head to fit through. Spray the inside of the box white and then where the lid goes take it off (if its attached) and stick a sheet of white paper over.
This way what you are doing is increasing the size of the light source relative to the subjects. Going from the LED unit to the size of the white paper. This will soften the light, reducing the difference in brightness values from the darkest to the brightest spots. It's better than simply lowering the power or putting layers of material directly over the head of the unit (people do this and think the light is diffused, but light diffusion only happens when you are increasing the light source size relative to the subject - at least in so far as photography is concerned).
3) Shift the angles around - there is some science behind the angles of lighting but its been so long since I properly did any that I can't remember them off hand
I did cover the moving the lights closer and further away and the changing of angles in the vid and blog post, there are just so many variables that it's virtually impossible to mention everything and that's before you start turning dials and pressing buttons on the camera.
I have a very expensive full frame camera at work but prefer the camera on my tablet for figures, it's very subjective.
I can appreciate liking the tablet camera for close up model work and scenic setups where you want lots in focus and a DSLR would (even stopped down) start to blue the out of focus area. Focus stacking can get around that, but yeah its more hassle and editing to setup.
Very useful video thank you! Very crisp
I have a question, I used some LED amazon worklights in a lightbox, however ran into problem of horizontal stripes led frequency lights' oscillation thingy.
Do your lights have that frequency thingy or not?
2020/09/21 02:01:21
Subject: Re:Lighting for Wargaming Photos and Videos
Yarkshire Gamer wrote: Hi mothsniper, I haven't encountered any LED flicker with these lights on either still or motion shots.
Regards Ken
The Yarkshire Gamer
Roger Roger!
...
Now I ama bit curious, If you have time can you please double check if there are any flicker stripes with the LED lights only and on the white piece of paper.
I was looking for good/affordable lights for me lightbox, because with the LED desk lamps I do not get the flicker stripes as much and with none white backdrop It is harder to tell that they are there. The main problem comes in only when I upload images from the camera to find out that half of the images are darker because the picture was taken in that split second time that a dark stripe was in the way. Id rather replace cheep work lights with your lights if they are of higher frequency!
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/790851.page
