How to Photograph Your Models at little cost to you.

[JohnReid]

Photography on the cheap.

Lights,Camera,Action !
All of the pics that I have taken over the last five years or so and published in my photobucket ,were taken for the cost of the camera alone and that I got on sale ! The rest is just stuff that I had laying around the house.No expensive tripods,special lighting or other equipment is required.The modern day camera does it all for you,the only thing that you have to do is a simple setup.Put it on "Auto" and off you go ! You can experiment to your hearts content (no more film cost to worry about) If only one pic in fifty turns out so what ! Have fun.

First the camera. I will take a pic of it in the mirror for your info.Point and shot,how simple can it be.Prior to the digital era I knew nothing about cameras and it is still that way today.
All the technical stuff leaves me cold and I haven't even read the manual for the digital I am using now ! (some would say it shows LOL) If I can take reasonable pics anyone can do it.
The only real secret to good pic taking is using your creativity to set the scene up, in other words, arranging the stuff in a nice way (composition).This will come with experience.Just start shooting ! Here's how I do it....

[cdavenport]

Lovely work!

[Alcides]

John first I've to say: your work is great and very creative. I've missed until now your dioramas and they're great.Congrats.

But I've to disagree with you about photography, let me take something from wikipedia:

"Photography is the art, science, and practice of creating pictures by recording radiation on a radiation-sensitive medium, such as a photographic film, or electronic image sensors."

As you can see nothing about to have to know about the camera. The truth is the more important thing about photography is practice, patience and control the light, a person who writes:

"Pic 2
-special lighting effects for photography can easily be set up.Here for example,the overhead hangar lights have been shut off and I simply shone a hand held light through the door and windows and moved it around to create interesting shadows."

Knows a lot about to photography, I know a lot of guys who know every technical aspects for the last ten cameras in the market but they don't have the patience to take a picture.

You just don't read the manual, you try and see what works for you. That's great. Go ahead and just don't read the manual.

Regards. Saludos.
Alcides

[davelant]

In model photography, I find some value in understanding some of the technical aspects. The most important, I believe, is the "depth of field." When you take a photograph with a camera, there is always a range of distances from the lens for which objects are in focus; farther away or closer, objects are out of focus. This in-focus range is called the "depth of field."

If all other things are equal, a camera focused on a near object will have a very small depth of field, compared to photos made of distant objects. You know this, even if you don't realize that you know it. A typical photograph of a near object with only the subject in focus, and other things fuzzy, "reads" as the picture of a toy. This illusion is so powerful, that landscape photography that is perfectly focused at all points, can be made to appear miniature, or like a dollhouse, by artificially fuzzing everything away from the center of the picture. Take a look*:

50 Beautiful Examples Of Tilt-Shift Photography - Smashing Magazine

So what does this imply for your model photography? If you increase the depth of field, your model can look more like the real thing. Each camera has an iris, an adjustable-size hole in front of or inside the lens that controls the amount of light allowed through the lens. If you choose the smallest possible aperture (i.e., the largest f-number), depth of field is maximized. But when you photograph through a smaller hole, you need brighter light and/or a longer exposure. A tripod will come in handy.

The lecture is over. It's time for a quiz. How big are the items in the picture below?
The answer will be provided in a later post.


*And I know that this "tilt-shift photography" used to be done by actually tilting the film inside old-fashioned view cameras ( the ones with fabric bellows), but most you see these days are the result of digital post-processing.

[JohnReid]

My style of photography depends on 3 things
Hand held mobile lighting
Hand held camera with a stabilizer
creative thinking, and breaking the rules

Here is the camera that I use for all my shots,very simple but it must have lens stabilizer as I move it a lot seeking different shooting angles.I use my still camera like a movie or stage director would if he were taking a one frame movie.My first digital camera didn't have this function so a lot of my early shots were more traditional.The lens stabilizer is really the basis for my style(if you can call it that)
The camera body should be black so it doesn't get reflected by glass or other shiny surfaces.
And that is about it camera wise !

Lighting. I use a hand held clip on with easily changeable ordinary household bulbs and experiment with different types, wattages and color.The key here is to try everything.
I also use my white ceiling and one of those cheap car maintenance lights from the garage for bouncing light off the ceiling.On occasion when I want a nice moonlight scene I will use just an overhead florescent light.I have even used candles.Experiment and have fun !

And finally use your creativity there are really no wrong ways of doing things just new ways waiting to be discovered.

[JohnReid]

[davelant]

Sorry, John, I didn't mean to hog your thread; I didn't realize you were doing a series of posts as you do with your builds. But this last is actually a good case in point of what I was talking about. The depth of field here is so shallow that the lettering on the ring surrounding the lens is in focus, while the lettering on the camera body is out of focus. However, the aperture for this camera can only be varied from f/2.8 to f/4.3, which is a fairly narrow range, so that using a large f-number is not really an option with this camera.

[3Turner]

Lots of great info here....and I agree, if you take your time to set up your shots you can achieve outstanding/acceptable results if you know how to work with the camera you have handy.

On lighting, when I use my homemade whitebox to take pictures of models, I get the daylight rated household bulbs. This helps with the white balance in the final shot after I pass it through Lightroom.

Using my dslr, I usually set my camera (on a tripod) to ISO 100, 1/250 and f/11 with a pop of off camera flash to help keep shadows to the minimum.

Originally Posted by davelant

However, the aperture for this camera can only be varied from f/2.8 to f/4.3, which is a fairly narrow range, so that using a large f-number is not really an option with this camera.

Here though, I just have to clarify in regards to this camera.

The aperture is not limited to f/2.8 - f/4.3....what that means on the lens is that at 6.0mm, the aperture can be opened up to f/2.8 for a narrow depth of field (DOF), but at 60mm the largest aperture achieved will only be f/4.3 and NOT f/2.8. So if you need more light, you'll have to go for a longer exposure at f/4.3. The camera can be stopped down more using Av or M modes instead of the fully auto mode. However, per the user manual the most that particular lens can be stopped down is f/8 (pg. 88 of the user manual). So, actually you can get a decent DOF trying out various set ups (distance between camera and subject), messing with ISO and shutter speeds to accommodate f/8 and get the wide DOF to get the subject fully focused front to back.

[Gil]

Hi John,

You might want to try LED head lights. Some come with a variable brightness control. They're great to use for scene back lighting. On the plus side is the illumination is fairly white. Regular LED flashlights also work well though most don't have the variable control...,

+Gil

[JohnReid]