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In lugnet.space, Kevin Dixon wrote:
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Very nice Jason. Between that and Junkbot I can see you’ve been using your
time very well :)
I have one question. How are you taking such high quality photographs -
especially the ones with the all white backgrounds? The photographs are
brilliantly clear.
Do you actually take the photo against a pure white background, or is there
some photoshop editing involved? If there is photoshop editing, how are the
shadows falling in the correct place? The photo’s almost look like very high
quality renderings.
I need to know the secret for my own photographs! :)
Great models though, and thanks for any info.
Kevin
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Thanks Kevin!
Here are some details on what I usually do...
Setup: Here’s a picture of my usual photography setup. I used to use a long piece of heavy
paper from a (very) large printer but I find the bed sheet is much easier to
work with. Due to the Discovery’s size I had to
rearrange things a
bit. I also use a black sheet when needed.
Lighting: You’ll want a good deal of ambient light - I usually use two floor
lamps to nicely illuminate the ceiling. I also have three additional spot
lights that I use as needed.
Camera Settings: I did a lot of experimentation to get these to my liking and
obviously every camera is different. I have a Canon Powershot G2 - you have a
G1 no? I believe the same settings are available.
- Key the white balance to the backdrop.
- Slight overexposure.
- No flash.
- Slight increase in sharpness.
- Slight decrease in saturation.
Post processing: If all goes well the pictures I get off the camera will look
something like this.
All that needs to be done is some contrast enhancement in Photo-Paint (not sure
what it’s called in Photoshop - levels or levelling maybe?), resampling and
sharpening as needed.
Having said all of that there are some caveats...
When taking photos of models that are primarily white I prefer to key the white
balance to the LEGO white. This unfortunately sacrifices the ability to easily
get the background really white - unless you start doing some more intense and
time consuming post processing.
I find some colours just don’t photograph well. I didn’t do any contrast
enhancement on my pictures of the Canadian flag mosaic because the green ends up
looking horrible.
Sometimes I’ll find that after taking a whole whack of pictures something has
gone wrong and I’ll have to do it all over again. Forgetting to change the
white balance after changing the ambient lighting conditions has happened to me
more than once. I took well over 150 pictures of the Discovery of which
probably only a third are any good. A lot of those were experimental mind you
as it was the first time I used the black backdrop.
I hope that gives you some useful info!
J
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