Diesel DM

As our photography series continues this week we’ll start talking about the camera settings necessary for getting great photos of WARMACHINE models.  Rather than only discuss technical photography terms and leave it up to the reader to figure out how they apply, I’ll be using the technical terms for the sake of generality, but then I will show how those settings apply to my camera, a Canon S2 IS.  While the actual steps and menus necessary to configure an individual cameras will vary, by at least giving you the example how it works for one camera you will be able to extrapolate the techniques to your own camera.  Remember to consult your owner’s manual to figure out any camera-specific details you need further assistance with.  As much as we all dread reading the manual, there can often be some good tips hidden in there.

In case you missed it, check out Part 1 of the series.

Setting the Mode

The Auto mode you might normally use for taking photographs isn’t going to work for our miniature photography.  Auto lets the camera make all the decisions and sometimes that’s okay, but we’re going to be asking for some pretty specific settings, and Auto mode won’t let you set many of them.  On my S2 IS I use the Av mode which lets me set the aperture value.  This is set by a rotary dial on the top of the camera.

Macro Mode

Macro mode is the most important setting when it comes to photographing your miniatures.  If your camera does not have a Macro mode it is going to be very difficult to achieve good results.  Macro mode enables the camera to focus on subjects much closer to the lens than normal by making a special adjustment to the lens.  For example, on my S2 IS the normal focus range is 20.4″ to infinity.  If you try taking a photo of a model 20″ away, it’s not going to fill much of the frame nor will it be very detailed.  And if you get the model closer than 20″ you’ll find the camera has a difficult if not impossible time focusing on it.  With Macro mode enabled the focus range starts at 3.9″.  With the camera 4″ from the model you’ll get a more detailed shot that fills more of the frame.  The S2 IS also comes with Super Macro mode which allows a focus range of 0″ to 3.9″.  That can lead to a frame-filling, very detailed model picture.  I don’t believe Super Macro mode is very common among most cameras as I didn’t even know it existed until I read it in my owner’s manual.  (I told you there was good stuff hidden in the manual!)

Macro mode lets you get close

On most cameras, including my S2 IS, Macro mode looks like a little flower.  For the S2 IS the button is located on the front right of the camera near where the lens protrudes.  Pressing and holding the flower enables super macro mode, but again that may not be very common.  Once enabled I get a little flower icon on the display screen.  (It has an S in it to indicate Super Macro Mode).

White Balance

Ideally a photograph of a white object would be white, but this is not always the case.  Light sources all emit their own color ranges.  The color of light is called the “temperature” of the light and is measured in kelvins (K).  The color temperature emitted by a light source affects the color of the objects they illuminate.  For our models we want to most accurate representation of our colors possible.  One way to offset this color shift both while photographing and painting your models is to use light sources in the 5,000K to 6000K temperature range, giving off a cooler white/daylight light.  But regardless of the bulbs illuminating the object, we want to manually set our white balance.  Most cameras come with a variety of preset white balances (e.g. – Daylight, Fluorescent, Flash, Custom etc).  Manual, or custom, white balance will let the camera figure out the appropriate balance for us and give the best results regardless of lighting conditions.  It’s worth noting that you can adjust the white balance in post-processing on your computer afterward.  Most image tools like Acorn, GIMP, Photoshop and even iPhoto have the ability to adjust the color balance in a photo.  Setting it on the camera will give you consistent photos will accurate previews instead of waiting to post-process to see how the colors came out.

On my S2 IS there is an on screen menu accessible with the FUNC. button, second option from the top.  From here you can select a number of presets and at the end is the Custom White Balance setting.  Setup your background and lighting as you will have it for your photographs then position the camera where it will be.  Do not have the model or anything else setup, you just want your well-lit background filling the frame.  Pushing SET from the Custom White Balance option will then take a photo of the background and adjusts the processing on the camera to make the background white, removing and tint applied by the light sources.  If you are using a colored background you can place a white sheet of paper in front of the camera about where your model would be, just make sure it’s illuminated well by your lights so the camera can make adjustments for the correct lighting.  While I keep using the term “white” in actuality greys will also function properly as long as there is no color tint to it.

Below are three examples, one under cooler lighting, one under warmer lighting and one that has been properly white balanced.

Blue tinted

Orange tinted

White balanced

ISO Speed

Back when cameras still took film you could buy different speeds of film.  The higher speed film is more sensitive to light, allowing quick exposure to produce reasonable images.  Sporting events such as football would be a good use where if the picture took to long to expose the player in question would be blurry.  The downside is that these short exposures tend to be grainier and lower quality.  Digital Cameras replicate this same idea through ISO Speeds.  The higher the speed the shorter the exposure and the grainier the image.  Luckily we are taking photos of stationary models, so we can turn the ISO down as low as the camera will allow to give us a nice, slow, high quality exposure.

Back on the S2 IS under the FUNC. menu, third from the top is my ISO menu with choices of AUTO, 50, 100, 200 and 400.  I choose 50 to give a good clean image at the expense of exposing the image longer.

Below is an example of an ISO 400 image.  It’s under-exposed to give you a chance to really see all the noise that is picked up.  Compare it to the white balanced Stryker above that was shot with ISO 50.

ISO 400 - Very grainy

This week we looked at Modes, Macro, White Balance and ISO Speed giving us a good start on taking quality miniature photos.  Come back next week as we continue talking about camera settings.

Photographing WARMACHINE Miniatures

(Part 1) | (Part 2) | (Part 3) | (Part 4)