Model Photography for Beginners

Why take photos?

I am writing this article to note down my experience and experimentation in scale model photography. I have scour the internet looking for write-up on taking scale model photography but most article on the web is either obsolete or it is not to direct to my requirements.

I want my photos as close to be like what is seen in the magazine and on the box art. My reasoning is simple. If Bandai or Hobby Japan could take those nice looking pictures then there must be a way for me to do the same.

My requirements are simple.

1. I want my photos as close to what is seen on a hobby magazine or on the box art.
2. I want my photos to be easily cut out to make desktop wallpaper or some CG.
3. I want to use the cheapest solution that I could find. (It is against my Gundam religion that I should spend more money on my photo equipments than giving it to Bandai.)

Please note that I am not a professional photographer nor my current work is near where I wanted to go. The purpose of this article to summarize what I have learned so far; from being a complete idiot in photography to the point where my friends could not believe that I actually took those photos.

I hope that this article could benefit the reader in taking better photos than just point-and-click.

What do I need?

The Subject

The subject is what you are taking for your photos and in this case, your model is the subject. This is the most important element in taking a good photograph. If you did a bad job on your model, you will never take a good photo out of it even though you own a photo studio with the most expensive photo equipment money can buy.

Unpainted kit. Looks ok but something is still lacking.	Ahhh... A beautifully painted subject. See the difference?

The Camera: Digital Vs Film

Obviously, a camera is required to take photos. There are many types of camera out there in the market and the question here is which of those is appropriate for model photography. I guess the type of camera you should use is a subjective issue where your final decision on which to use boils down to what you want to achieve and your budget.

This issue is much debated on the web on the pros and cons of both digital and non-digital. In my opinion, the winner here is a digital camera. I could not recommend which camera model to buy owing to the reason that whatever I recommended will be obsolete by the time you read this.

As for me, I am going for the digital camera and the following are my reasons on why digital is better.

• It is cheaper on the long run. Trust me.
• You could work on your taken photos immediately.
• What am I going to do with all those photo prints?

The Stage

The stage is the backdrop for your subject. The objective here is to prepare a consistent background of a single color. The reasoning here is simple. Firstly, you might want to cut out the subject for editing. Secondly, the taken photo is to guide the viewer to admire your subject not your home furniture in the background. Most importantly, your work looks more professional.

Setting up is simple. All you need is a table, a strong backing support and a colored cardboard. Place the backing support 90 degrees to the table surface. Stick the colored cardboard to the support and table surface in curve.

Photo taken with background. What is the car doing there?	Hmmm.... This looks much more professional now.

Legend 1. Flood light preferably sunlight from an open window. 2. Lights directly on top. 3. Lights source In front of the camera. 4. Camera. 5. The backdrop.

Setting up the backdrop.

Lighting

This is the second most important element after your subject. Bad lights equal bad photos. Always try to use natural white light. The best lighting solution is the sunlight and it is free.

If your photo is taken indoors, use a three lights configuration to eliminate shadows. Place one light on top of the subject, one at the side and the last one in front of your camera. Adjust the lights position to soften the shadows.

Try to balance the light contrast that is the light is not too far away or too near to the subject. Lights too far means dim photos and lose out details otherwise too near will cause reflection and over-exposure. All light sources should be of equal in strength and placed in the same distance from the subject.

If you do not have that many desktop lights, use at least two desktop lights. Place one on top and one in front of your camera.

Try to use natural white light. The best is photography lighting but we want to go cheap here, right? I use adjustable desktop lights that I bought from IKEA. Usually those table lamps come with standard yellow light bulb, which is bad. Change those bulbs with white light bulbs. This is not the best solution but sufficient to get the job done.

What's Next?

You got yourself the lights, camera and the stage prep. The next stage is the action.

It is recommended to use a tripod. Put your camera on the tripod and try to set it to the following mode. Please note that I am using an Olympus Camedia C-200 Zoom and each camera features vary from model to model. Please refer to your camera instruction manual on how to setup your camera.

Resolution :	2.1 Mega pixels and above
Camera Mode:	Macro, No Flash and Timer
Focus:	Spot
ISO:	100
Quality:	Super High Quality (SHQ)
Image Size:	1600x1200 pixels
White Balancing:	Florescent or yellow lights depending on the lighting you use.
Exposure Adjustment:	+1.0 to -1.0 depending on situation.

Macro mode
Photos are taken at extremely close-up distance to the subject. The standard mode could not focus properly at this distance. Macro mode, which usually denote by a tree or flower icon, is a special camera function for this situation.

No Flash
Flash is too strong to be use in close-up photo. Disable flash to avoid hard shadows and over-exposure. You have to rely on your lightings to get a decent photo.

Timer and Tripod
The combination of timer mode and a camera tripod allow a slower shutter speed to be set. This helps in producing better result than taking it with your shaky hand.

Focus Mode
Standard camera focus is set to ESP where details are captured in whole. Spot is to configure the camera to focus on the center spot where your model should be. Don’t waste image quality by focusing on the background.

ISO 100
ISO means film speed. 100 for strong light condition. 400 for low light condition. 200 is in between. In theory, ISO 400 should be use indoors but the picture appears to be grainy so I switch to ISO 100 for all my photos.

Please experiment.

Quality and Image Size
Always switch to the highest setting your camera can go. This is to capture the best quality image your camera could take. You can always resize the photo. Downsize it if it take too much storage space. Recommended to buy a larger memory card.

White Balancing
Human eyes adapt well to different type of lighting. You will be surprise on how the image turns out under different lighting condition. The white balancing function is to counter the color tint of different type of light source. Fluorescent light cause a blue tint on your image and should be counter with the yellow balancing settings. If you uses light bulb as light source, which causes a yellow tint, you should counter it by using the blue white balancing settings.

The best light source to use is actually sunlight where no white balancing is needed.

Photo taken uses yellow white balancing.	Photo taken uses normal white balancing.	Photo taken uses blue white balancing.

Exposure
The higher the number, the lighter it becomes and vice-versa. It is difficult to find the right exposure rate. Take multiple shot with different exposure in the in increment or decrement of 0.5 (a.k.a. bracketing).

You have to experiment with all those settings with your camera until you know well about your camera capability. Each situation and even each position require minute adjustment. In one session, I will normally take about 200 plus photos and only four best will be chosen. As your becomes much more experience, might be able to cut down the number of photographs taken. The beauty of using a digital camera is that you could take as many photos as you like without the worry of the print cost, so snap like crazy.

Underexpose. Image is too dark to make out the details.	Overexpose. Highlights is too bright and overshadow the details.

Post-Image Processing

Use Adobe Photoshop or other image processing software to fine-tune your taken photographs. The objective here is to touch up the image to be as close as possible to be as seen under natural light.

Three properties here to adjust, color level, picture contrast and color balance. Play with these settings until you get the closest match you could find. Adjusting the settings might look complicated. I would suggest first timer to use the auto adjustments feature in most image editing software.

I would recommend you to use Adobe Photoshop and ACDSee. Use Photoshop to edit and ACDSee to manage your taken photographs.

Please note that Photoshop 5.0 (and above) and ACDSee come with auto-level and auto-contrast function. Only Photoshop 7.0 comes with auto-color adjustment function.

The dead. Photograph that is taken under the wrong lighting condition.	Have no fear. Photoshop is here. This photo is save by performing some simple touch up.