Foldio!

This offering pleases me, human

I've been struggling with taking decent pictures of my miniatures for quite a while. It boiled down to two things - perfect set up and excellent light were both essential. Without either of them, pictures were never good enough and colors looked unnatural. 

That was the case until I learnt about Foldio. I missed the original Kickstarter campaign that launched it but read many enthusiastic reviews. I also learnt that it is widely used by miniature painters. I didn't hesitate for long and soon after ordered mine.

So what is Foldio exactly? It is a portable photography studio. It's designed to work with mobile phones but standard cameras will work just as well. Packed in the box it takes up very little space. You may say that any lightbox will be equally good. However, Foldio is made of solid plastic with magnets inserted inside permanently. It is only a matter of seconds to set it up and attach two batteries to light up two LED strips. Regardless of time of day or night you immediately get perfect lighting conditions for shooting pictures. The only downside is its price. It's not cheap (I got mine for $70+ with shipping on ebay), but if you ant to be able to take good pictures at any time, it's definitely worth it.

Foldio comes with three backgrounds - white, black, and grey. They are nice and made of material that will last for long, but I still stick to my standard backdrop (one that I downloaded from Massive Voodoo).  

I've already used it a few times and I'm very pleased with the effects. The colors look really nice, and the quality of pictures is excellent. 

I use it with my mobile most of the time (SONY Xperia M). While its built-in camera has rather basic parameters (5 MP, 2592 х 1944 pixels), it works really well (as you can see in the pictures below). I was finally able to take pictures of miniatures that are painted using red (for some reason this color would always look unnatural in my pictures) Besides, using phone, which always seems to be lying around is much faster and more convenient that taking pictures with digital camera and plugging it in to transfer all the pictures to PC's hard drive.  I'm too lazy for that too I guess.

 And speaking of pictures, here are three more ladies for the Seamus crew I'm currently working on. I've used vibrant colors on purpose. Firstly, it was requested. Secondly, these ladies want to first attract unaware customers, only to kill them once they get close enough. So bright colors make sense here. I'll be working on Seamus and his totem next. I can't make up my mind which one I like more, the classic metal model or the avatar one. I should be able to tell once I've painted them both.

Taking pictures of minis

It's a pretty important aspect of this hobby. I've tried different methods, various types of lighting and backgrounds and after lots of experimenting I'm now more or less happy with how my pictures look in the end.
Since I have my work space set up in the attic, lighting is a key issue. As you can see in the picture below, the main source of light comes from a roof window.



It's really a great thing as it allows me to maximize the time I work in daylight. On the other hand, the sun rays hit it directly so during the day it gets a bit too bright for taking pictures. In broad daylight light seems to be bouncing off the models that are photographed and as a result the photos show minis very inaccurately.
Using the old fashioned trial and error method I found that pictures look much better when they're taken early in the evening/late in the afternoon during a sunny day. Still, even then I need to use a white sheet of paper so that the light doesn't hit the photographed minis too strongly. This primitive blende helps distribute the light better.
Now let's have a close look at the photo setup.



As some of you may instantly recognize, I use a photo background from Massive Voodo (here's a direct link). I also usually use a tripod as even the slightest move of hand can ruin a photo. That, combined with using self-timer means that the pics are hardly ever blurred.
I use a Sony DSC-HX1 digital camera. It has a resolution of 9.1 megapixel and a pretty decent lens. As far as options are concerned, everything's very automatized and the camera automatically switches to macro (it sometimes even switches to a face recognition mode when I do close ups ;). The only option I always keep switched off is the flash light as once it hits a mini when a photo is being taken, only the most protruding elements are clearly visible.
I also have a small light box (30cm) but after several unsuccessful attempts I basically gave up on it. Maybe if I placed it on the desk right under the source of light it would work better but I don't really feel encouraged to try, especially taking into account the fact that the backgrounds I have printed are too large and don't fit inside.
I think I get pretty good results when I take pics when the daylight is just fine. Doing it at night is something that I've tried several times but never got good results.
So there you have it, this is how I take the pictures you see in my posts on this blog. If you have any comments/suggestions, feel free to write them in the comments section.

Picture this

It's been a while since I last posted. I've been quite busy with stuff at the uni. Now that I'm not too far from graduating I dedicate much more of my time to studying and so far it look like 'the end is near'.

Yesterday we (me and my fiancée) bought a new digital camera - SONY DSC HX1. It's a fairly advanced (if digital cameras can be described in this way) as there are plenty of options that can be adjusted manually. I haven't had time to fiddle with it yet but the first pics taken using the automatic settings are promising. It's a big change as my old camera has been in use for about five years (Konica Minolta DiMAGE X60) and even though it did take decent pictures, I personally felt that in particular the pics of the minis I paint were of poor quality and they did not show the quality of painting well enough. Anyway, from now on the quality of pics uploaded here should be noticeably better :)



I'm currently working on another WH40K commission - two more Ogryns (an early WIP pic can be seen below) and a Daemon Prince. The latter has not yet arrived but I will probably get it tomorrow. The commissioner asked for a conversion and I will pimp it with wings. I think i'm going to enjoy working on this one, pics of the WIP will definitely be posted here. Until then, take care.