Miniature and Figurine Studiowork - Downscaling for the Win
Part One
Figurine - Traditional Studio Portrait
Prologue:
There are a quite a few instances where scaling down is a really good thing. In product design, especially one involving physics like aerodynamics, upcoming products are constantly tested in scale. This is of course about cost savings. Wind tunnel testing a Airbus A380 in full scale would be extremely difficult because of the shear size of the thing and thus insanely expensive. There are naturally pitfalls and one of the things engineers need to take into account is similitude, how the physics of what ever is being tested scales down (or up for that matter).
There isn't really anything preventing to applying this to photography. Naturally if you want a studio shot of a real life model you don't have the option of going small scale. As far as I know "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids" hasn't happen outside of cinemas yet. However if you're just learning photography and want to experiment with working methods involved with studio photography going small scale is a great idea. Benefits of it are clear.
First of all, you don't need a big photography studio, which tends to be the hardest thing to come by especially when you're just beginning to experiment on it. If you find a studio, you'll probably have to pay rent for it and if the one renting it finds out that you're a complete newbie the chances are you won't find a single piece of studio photography equipment in there apart from a backdrop. So you'll end up having to get your own lights as well. This mounts up to a lot of money.
Then of course you'll need to find someone to model for you. Professionals once again cost money and might be a bit reluctant to work with you if you're actually not going to publish anything outside of your Flickr feed. Professional models tend to want their work to be used in something that works as a reference for them as well. Having the pleasure to tell having worked for a photographer who's never seen a soft box up close and personal in their life doesn't really inspire confidence in them that the shoot will present the model in a great light. The chances are they're not trusting you to produce stuff that they'd want in their portfolio either. Employing friends, partners, relatives etc. is of course an option but even so more often than not you'll have a mountain to climb to convince them to do it.
However this means that you'll have to go inanimate with your subject. One major part of the process is of course lost, but you'll be able to get some confidence with the mechanics of it so when you move up to a real studio and a real model, you'll have some idea what you can do, what you should do and what to avoid technically. It saves you some time since you don't have to experiment quite so much on a conceptual level while in studio. So you can focus on familiarizing yourself with the equipment and the model and trying to get the most out of them. So in essence this is product photography done in portrait style.
Directing a model is an art on its own and a subject I'm not going to touch. As a related issue, poses you can to some very limited extent simulate with figurines. They also are something that I'm not really confident with so I'll just use some very generic ones and later in the second part which is coming later I'll experiment a little with a bit more unconventional poses and framings. For now it's just traditional pose with traditional 3 and 4 light setups.
Equipment used:
Camera gear:
Olympus PEN E-P1
Voigtländer 25mm F/0.95 Nokton
Manfrotto 190DB tripod
Manfrotto 486 RC2 ball head
Backdrop:
Cardboard box
Ilford Galerie Classic Pearl Paper - printed with Canon Pixma iP4300 inkjet printer
Double sided tape
Lighting:
3x Small Led torch
Paperboard
Skewers (wooden)
Parchment paper (bleached)
Aluminum foil
Black electrical tape
Double sided tape
As you can see apart from camera gear virtually NO money was spent on other equipment, so if you don't put a very high price on your own labor these experiments are dirt cheap. All of above are pretty much household items and if you're missing something you'll find them in almost any convenience store. You don't need to use photo paper as a backdrop regular copy paper will do. If you have them I'd recommend using some kind of heavyweight paper which is not fully glossy though since it isn't quite as translucent as regular copy paper. Glossy papers create quite nasty highlights so choosing between copy paper and glossy photo paper, I'd go with the copy paper. As for parchment paper, tracing paper would have been better than parchment paper but I didn't have that available since this was a bit of an impromptu shoot and tutorial.
About camera gear. Use what you have available. You don't really need much. Since you'll be shooting at very close focusing distances you'll even get a little bit of background blur (which is what you want) with a decent digital compact camera. That being said you'll need a lens (or a camera in case of compacts or bridge cameras) which has a relatively close focusing distance in relation to the focal length. If you have that covered you're pretty much set. Tripod is optional but with the kind of lighting gear I'm using exposure times using low ISO will be long. Tripod will also provide the added benefit of enabling you to work away from the camera (either with remote or self timer) so you can use hand held lights etc.
If you don't have a tripod and plan on buying one, here are a few tips. First and foremost, don't be cheap. Cheap tripods are sh** you'll be putting on it a camera and a lens that might have set you back quite a sum of money, you don't want it to be made out of tracing paper and chopsticks. Don't by one blind unless you're ready to invest a fair amount in it. Try it out. See how stable and sturdy it is. By the sturdiest one you can get for your budget. It really is better to have a heavy one than a flimsy one. If you plan on doing more miniature photography get one with an invertible center post. There will be a photo of my setup later on that explains what that means and why it is a good thing.
Lights:
Basics:
Snoot is a highly directed light. It creates an intense area of light on the subject, very strong contrast and sharp shadows. This used in fairly special applications as a key light but in the most conventional three point lighting setup snoots are often used as rim lights or hair lights or back lights as they're often called, mostly to avoid light spilling but at quite a bit lower intensity.
Softbox and umbrella are quite similar in application however softbox produces lower contrast and softer shadows out of the two. Both are large area lights, the area of the light source is high. Because the the led torches produce very directed light to get these to work properly the setup ended up being a bit more fiddly than when using actual studio lights which generate a wider beam and more uniform light. More on that later on.
Terminology:
-Key light: The primary light source.
-Back or Hair or Rim light: Light placed behind the subject usually directly opposite to key light to create a "rim" of light around the subject to add separation from the background.
-Fill light: Light or a reflector placed in this case in the front of the subject but opposite side than key light to soften the shadows on the subject and provide illumination to the side of the subject opposite to key light but still facing the camera.
-Background light: Well the name says it all. Light used to light the background.
Equipment preparation:
I didn't plan on writing a tutorial on this when I built the stuff so I didn't take any pictures of the process but I'll try to give you some kind of instructions on how I built the the various things. It's rather simple so I'm sure you'll figure it out without pictures.
Snoot:
Making a snoot is a relatively simple process roll a piece of paperboard into a cone shape and cover both sides of it with black tape.
Here's a picture of the end result put on a flashlight with a piece of parchment paper taped on the business end to diffuse the light a bit.
Softbox:
Building a softbox is a bit more fiddly. What you need is 3 triangles of relatively same size and shape. Tape aluminum foil on the inside (this is much easier if you tape the foil first and then put the pieces together) or if you're lazy like me use a cardboard juice carton they tend to have an aluminum lining. Finally when you have the shape together tape a piece of parchment paper or tracing paper on the open end and cut of the tip of the pyramid you just created enough to get the flashlight in. I used a similar setup with the flashlight with parchment paper taped on it as with the snoot since the light was very focused and I got a nasty hotspot on the softbox.
Umbrella:
Another slightly fiddly build. You need to make two paper board cones. One larger with a steeper angle and one smaller with a shallow angle. Place the smaller cone inside the larger one and tape the two together. Place a piece of aluminum foil on the inside of the cone, which now should have roughly parabolic shape, using double sided tape. This doesn't have to be perfect, not even close in fact, the light will be very diffused anyway so wrinkles will not affect the outcome by any measurable degree. Once you're done with that just stick a skewer through the whole thing and fix it into place with tape. Then tape the flashlight on the shaft. I once again used one with a piece of parchment paper taped on it.
Other equipment:
Reflector:
Just tape a piece of aluminum foil on a piece of paperboard matte side out. Couldn't be simpler. I actually didn't even use tape.
Backdrop:
Almost as simple as the reflector. I printed just the backgrounds on a few sheets of paper which I taped together and taped them to a cardboard box to keep it upright. For traditional portrait background I used one of Photoshop's basic effects "Clouds" (Filter->Render->Clouds). Made them brown which isn't all that traditional color for the backdrop but since the Miku figurine I used has TURQUOISE/GREEN hair. A more traditional bluish gray wouldn't have really worked all that well. When shooting a portrait what you want is separation from background not blending with it but the background has still to be subtle so that it doesn't draw focus from the subject.
The setup:
Picture speaks more than a thousand words so here are 4000+ words. Key light was in this case placed in front of the subject on the right side, reflector used as the fill light was on the front left. Background light was behind the subject on the right and rim light behind the subject on the left. This would make it very basic 4 light setup. For the actual photos I held the key light and the reflector in my hands and did the exposure with self timer. A three light setup was also used which I didn't photograph. The only difference basically was removal of the rim light.
Four light setup:
Here's a shot using the four light setup as explained above. As the lens is manual and thus the EXIF-data doesn't have the F-number, this was shot at F/4.0. The depth of field seemed too shallow which was one of the reasons why this wasn't the money shot.
The money shot:
The shot I thought best out of the ones I shot was a three light setup. Key light using the umbrella, fill light using the reflector and background light using the softbox. I uploaded all the raw files so some of them have the rim light as well. But it seemed unnecessary and slightly distracting to my taste. This was shot at F/8 for nicer depth of field. You see, I said you don't need a fast lens.
Part two on miniatures and some more advanced figurine stuff will follow suit later. In it I'll go through some cheap tricks.
But I'll need to pop by a hobby store for some colored papers and stuff and redo the setup and find the time to do all of it.
Files:
Background print
RAW files (converted to DNG and Zipped)
And finally here's a bonus picture taken during setup...
