[Photo] James' Miniatures

[karohemd]

jholloway asked me to take some photos of his miniatures. It was a bit tricky as the best place to do it was outside and it was very windy and the trees wouldn't stay upright. The building scene was taken on the flagstones which worked OK for the main shot but there isn't enough detail for the crops. Stupidly, I didn't think of taking some detail shots with the macro lens I had used for the bronze statue. I blame the heat for turning my brain into slush...

  




This one I'm happy with. The trees are wonky because we didn't have a flat surface and used the bins.



The next shots are tight crops of the former setup:

The tight crops would have been much better as full macro shots but I had no way of elevating the scene so I could use the tripod and the macro lens. Handheld macros are tricky as well. Oh for a decent space with a table and enough room around it to set up lights (or a nice big window beside it)...

Comments

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Ooh, that takes me back! I spent years painting (and gaming with) GW miniatures around 20 years ago.

Good work on the pics. Even using my dad's fancy lenses (high depth of field FTW!) I seldom got results that good.

I like jholloway's painting style too. Very clean finish. Not easy to get without making things look flat.

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Are you sure you mean high depth of field? What you want in shots like this is the opposite, really.
I'm still beating myself up for not having taken closeups of the scene with the building but lying on the ground isn't the most comfortable position for taking good shots.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Are you sure you mean high depth of field?

Yes. Shooting with the regular lens I found there was a tendency for even a single miniature to be only partly in focus. With sufficient cleverness this could be a good thing, such as in your shot above with the bloke in shades pointing his gun towards the camera. But more often I just found it annoying, losing detail that I wanted in the shot.

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

Fair enough.
For me, using a shallow DOF for miniatures means the scenes look more realistic (if you ignore the fact that they're made of painted metal/plastic, you know what I mean).

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Yeah, makes sense.

[pengshui-master.livejournal.com]

Interesting .

Back when I was into photography. I tried a few shots of minitures. I remember finding DOF a little to shallow and the focus roll off to sharp.

The problem I had was that you could really see the depth of field in the baize we used. it less obvious than I remember (on the carpet?) in your shots.

Well done.