PlaymoFriends
Creative => How-To => Topic started by: Tiermann on April 06, 2014, 17:15:02
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As promised after the comments in the Figures forum here is some info about my photo studio. This is where I take all the pictures for Animobil including the Shields section and the Figures pages located there. It is a closet space in my finished attic.
(http://www.animobil.info/playmo/studio1.jpg)
(http://www.animobil.info/playmo/studio2.jpg)
As you see there is a clothes rod across the space that I have hung a two bulb fluorescent light fixture from. The bulbs in that are just standard ones. There is also a three light spot light fixture. The bulbs in that are special ones. They are 13 watt mini fluorescent spiral bulbs. The type is Natural Light at 5000 kelvin with an output of 880 lumens each. The equivalent of a 60 watt incandescent bulb, but in a natural light spectrum. There are three of them so that's giving me 2640 lumens quite close to the photo area, plus the light from the big tubes as well. In a small space with light colored walls to reflect the light down it provides quite a bit of light so that I never have to use flash for my camera and only have to make minor light adjustments and no color adjustments on the photos.
My standard background for site images is a piece of Canson grey artist paper. I chose the grey because it shows black and white items equally well and doesn't splash any reflected color onto the items being photographed. This is important for color trueness. If you use a colored background the light reflected onto the item from the background will join with the light coming at you directly from the item and effect the perceived color. You can see it's a large sheet that has been taped up and then curved. This avoids any seam in the image, and if there is enough curve the light with be gradated rather than in solid bands of lighter and darker tones.
I use Photoshop Elements 6 which is quite a few updates behind but it works fine for my needs. I open the photo there and crop the image, reduce the size to web size. For the Figures images I am using a standard height of 500 pixels so they look good together on the page. The exception being the exploded views that are all 600 pixels wide instead.
My camera is a Canon PowerShot SX 210 IS that is now about 4 years old. Between photos for the website, travel and other things I have lapped the counter twice, so that's over 20,000 pictures with it and thousands more next month with my trip to Germany coming up. So needless to say I have been happy with this one. Most shots are taken in the auto mode, which adjusts to macro automatically depending on the auto focus. I am not doing anything too fancy, it's just a basic point and shoot type camera. It does have a decent 14x optical zoom, but that is used mainly outside. Image size is always set to the maximum size and quality. It's much better to reduce down for web use from a really big image than to have one that's not high enough quality to start.
So the basics for good item photography -
1. As much light as possible, but not so strong and from a single source that it causes dark shadows. Ideally this is in a natural light range that is well balanced.
2. A camera that has good sensitivity, decent quality but it certainly doesn't need to be thousands of dollars with multiple lenses etc.
3. A neutral background that wont alter the colors
(http://www.animobil.info/wit-icons/butterflies6.jpg)
I hope this is helpful. Thanks for reading
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Very nice set-up! Thanks for the info. :)
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Thank you so much, Tim! :hatoff: Seeing your set-up is very helpful to me, especially seeing the way you have your lighting rigged which is truly illuminating (pardon the pun . . . I couldn't resist! ;D ) I have tried many different arrangements over the years (mostly for ebay photos) and have never found a combination of elements that I am satisfied with but, after seeing your photo space and reading your advice, I now have a much better understanding of how to improve my own photos.
One question, if I may: I have always appreciated how the animals and klickys on your animobil site seem to be shown at the same scale from one photo to the next and this is also true of your new Mystery Figure photos. Is there something particular that you do to achieve this or is it just the serendipitous result of shooting all the items in the same spot?
Again, many thanks! :)
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Great set-up, Tim. Thanks for showing us, and explaining how it all works. I've been wanting to set up a permanent mini studio, but can't seem to find the space. I also don't have the appropriate lights, so I often end up having to just use the camera flash, and that doesn't work well at all, of course. Besides the problem of shadow, klickies are quite shiny! I generally try to bounce the flash off a lighter wall over their shoulders, which does help some but not enough. I also did set up a studio in a box, with the sides and top cut away and replaced with white tissue paper for filter (meant to have lights on the outside of the box), and a curved white background for the back wall and floor. Even with the flash, the light usually bounced properly so that the pics ended up crisp and with no shadows. But it was hard to store and ended up being munched on by silverfish. :loco: So I had to get rid of it.
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That's really useful Tiermann, thanks a lot!
It doesn't seem too difficult to set up... I do need a better camera, though.
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Thank you for this very helpful instruction. Grey sounds like a very good background color and now I know why. I never thought of that.
I was wondering is there also a natural light source in your room, a window behind you or do you use only artificial light?
Great to have a peek in the chefs kitchen!
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Thank you Tim. That was very useful, indeed!!
George. :)
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Nifty set up, thank you for sharing.
kaethe
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It looks awesome! Your pictures are always great. I thought the thread would be about the Space theme when I saw the title. :lol:
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Nifty set up, thank you for sharing.
kaethe
"Nifty" isn't a word you here often nowadays!
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Thank you for a very comprehensive and useful overview of your methods, Tim. Well worth following them I think.
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Relative sizes in the pictures comes mainly at the editing point. If you crop the image with about the same amount of space around the figure, and then make one of the sides a standard size, it just sort of ends up being pretty close to the same. The use of a klicky in every animal image is to show the relative size of the animal. I felt that otherwise just cropping around the animal an elephant would be the same size as a cat.
I get a little bit of natural light from the sides. There are skylights about 15 feet away on either side. It's not a ton but pictures do tend to be just a bit lighter when done during the day. There are no windows or anything behind or closer than that.
Thanks for the nice comments
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Thanks for the guide.. I need to find time, space, and patience :-[ to try it out... Gods know my pics need all the help they can get!