Light in the box.
how does one take serviceable images of miniatures? Well I guess there are many answers to that question, but proper lighting is absolutely vital for a good result.
I have a fairly decent camera. A Canon EOS1200D. I also bought a 100 mm macro lens for it(which cost almost as much as the camera) It is mostly used when I photograph jewelry or miniatures that I make to sell in my small one man company: Evil Hippie Design, but also occasionally when I am on vacation.
It is a lot heavier and more bulky than a mobilephone camera, but is also takes infinitely better pictures. Especially when lighting conditions are not optimal. Originally i wanted to buy a light box, and have it set up permanently so that every time I needed to photograph something I could just put it in the box and snap a few photos from different angles.
I never got around to buying the box. I didnt have the time to properly research what I needed and i wasnt ready to dish out the money without knowing what I wanted , and then time passed and I didnt get one.
Recently (as I am sure most of you have noticed) I have started really getting my miniature printing production up and running and I needed a way to quickly photo-document my miniatures(this one above is a size comparison with a warhammer 40k figure). These images is mostly for documenting the shape, size and detail and as such needs to be well lit. I did some photographs on our dinnertable but the lighting was less than desireable (the one above is not from the dinner table).
I also did some snaps with direct outdoor lighting which is usually quite nice, but if it is sunny you get really hard shadows and if it is cloudy the light is usually not optimal either. Also, in Denmark cloudy and rainy often go together and it is not very nice (or good for the equipment) to film in rain.
Here I show you how the nice hard shadows look really good but also they obscure much of the shape and details.
This is where my Ultimaker comes in. I have taken a few images inside the printer, either while it printed or just after, and noticed that it has a serviceable lighting in the led-strips that line the inside. The background is not very nice though but by just inserting a piece of colored paper this is easily changed. Now I have a nice colored and still rather discrete backdrop very similar to what I would usually use on my 3d-renders
It also makes it easier to do simple compositing to e.g. remove the background and insert some interesting artificial stuff instead. I have done this a few times and it is a fairly fidgety process, but it is a lot easier if you have an almost flat backdrop of a known colour.
I still struggle a bit with the colour bleeding from the background, which is somewhat pronounced on these small object, but I have plans for adding different colored plates off screen to compensate for this. We will see if it will help.
Thanks for reading this. Im EvilHippie, a compulsive creative and jack o' trades. If you want to know more about me, check out my introduction post here
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Nice idea using the printer as a lighting box!
Just some things that came to mind:
You may keep having problems with colours if you only use the white LEDs for lighting; their spectrum sucks:
Also, if you also have a small camera with a smaller sensor, I would try that one with the aperture closed as far as it will go and compare depth of field with you big camera.
Thanks. That sounds like a very probable explanation for the excessive colour-bleeding. Maybe I will try adding more lights, maybe one of these daylight bulbs or something. Or maybe i should buy myself a proper lightbox with proper lights in it.
Great Miniatures - which dimensions they have ?
i think i must have an 3D Printer too :-)
When ive have more Bucks in my Pocket, i will spend me one.
This is a must have :-)
Thanks. the small ones are in the scale which is commonly called heroic scale. That is a standard human in this scale is app 3 cm high excluding the base. the female figure in the red dress is identical to the small female except she is scale 125% so is app 4 cm high excluding the base. the printer I use for these have a resolution of app 50 X 50 X 50 microns i.e. 1/20th of a mm voxels. The surface finish is somewhat comparable to the degree of surface smoothness you get from 80 grid sandpaper. Even though the two are hardly comparable because one it stock removal and the other is highly ordered "stock-addition". thus the printlines on these, are sometimes much more visible, on surfaces which are close to parallel with the z plane.
I will look forward to seeing your creations when you find the financial room to buy a printer. feel free to ask when you do. I would be happy to share my experiences.
I'm so fascinated by 3 d printing and I know this post is about photographing your figures, but I'm excited to see someone using 3d printing in this fashion, very cool.
Thanks. Well it is about 3d printing as well. Without that, there would be nothing to photograph :-)
But some of my other posts are admittedly more pure 3d printing oriented.
I have followed the 3d printing hype for quite some years now and the things that are possible is only now really getting obvious. I think we will see even more cool uses for 3d printers in the coming years.
Hello @evilhippie, thank you for sharing this creative work! We just stopped by to say that you've been upvoted by the @creativecrypto magazine. The Creative Crypto is all about art on the blockchain and learning from creatives like you. Looking forward to crossing paths again soon. Steem on!
Great usage of the 3d printer as a sort of light box, very creative solution to that problem
thanks I thought it was pretty smart myself 😆
There is a super cheap lightbox from aliexpress, only costs about 10USD, and perfect for miniatures. Comes with lights and both black and white background. Check it out!
Thanks I will