On the Workbench - I never learn

Still no photography post, but I have some rushed snapshots of the forces I'm trying to assemble for the next battle for Talomir Tales.

I drew the Invasion of Treyine by the renegade Brethren Mercenaries who are trying to re-establish a holy state in the North of Talomir. If you go back and read the beginning of the campaign the Bretheren were originally played as a faction that was defeated by Treyine.

You may recall I finished the majority of the Treyine force during the Anologue Hobbies painting challenge here and here. For this battle I am short four units (12 figures) of Archers, three units of Infantry (12 figures), 1 unit of Knights (3 figures) and the Wind Maiden and her three ships.

Ass you can see from the picture I need to paint up 3 MiniArt German Knight for the Knights, finish the Dark Dream Studio Landsknects for the Arquebusiers, and paint up the twelve remaining Strelets Military order Warriors to finish of the Infantry units. I could use the Airfix Robin Hood set to finish out the Archers, but I ordered some more figures that I think will be better. I also have a ton of Egyptian Archers should I be forced to proxy.

The Brethren have fewer figures, but I'm further behind.

I'm missing the Brother Knights and the Sergeants. I have a bunch of Crusader/ Templars on order and found a source for the Strelets Sergeants. I'll use the Zvezda 100 Years war English Halberds (in pink) for the heavy spear. I had thought to use the same Strelets Military order warriors as Treyine but decided against it. The Crossbows are Strelets as well, I have three based and primed. The Peasants are from the Zvezda Medieval Peasants and, at first, I cut out the slingers to use for the peasant archers. I then remembered good old Airfix Robin Hood so I cut out those two green figures next to the slingers to use instead. The Eskelin Knights are common mercenaries in Talomir, so I had three started already. You can see them on the left. Again, in a pinch, I have some units I can proxy if the shipments take to long, or my painting for that matter.

I have some 1:1 scale modelling to do. A little dry wall patching. Shouldn't take too long. You can't work in a Martial Arts school and not learn how to patch dry wall.

Photographing Miniatures Part 4 - Interlude

Hi All,

Things on the photography front have not gone apace here at the corner. Yesterday I tried to buy some inexpensive lights to use for back lighting a la Giovanni Azzara, but I didn't want to pay $20 per lamp and all of the $5 lamps had sold out due to the back to school sales.

What I did find this morning, however,  was another resource which I think is worth a look.

Table Top Studio's Product Photography Tips.

That page has an excellent explanation of Exposure Value (EV) and what settings to use to get pictures to not look so dark on a white background. They also give you the same tips that I've been giving you about lighting and tripods etc. And the "Hard/ Soft" Light test is genius. They are trying to sell you a light box and other equipment, but the advice is rock solid as far as I can see.

One other point they stress, know how to focus your camera. This is actually a very big deal, especially if you have auto focus. One of the common errors I see in photos of minis is people taking the time to set up the shot and then not paying attention where the focus point is. Maybe you really do want that tree behind you figure in focus instead of the figure, I don't know. Use the trick of pressing the shutter half way to set the focus and then position the camera for the shot.

And because it sort of came up in a comment from the last post, here is a scaled down version of the shot from the Fuji, instead of a close cropped version.

In and of itself, not bad. Just too far away. I doubt many of you are going to use a clunker like this one so it's really all academic.

And a welcome to two new followers:

Panzer Kaput of Panzerkaput's Painted Review. The very talented artist who did Loki's blog header and the Bloggers for Charity logo. He's also got some fantastic looking buildings for VBCW on the blog right now.

Mark G of The Repple Depple Clubhouse has some lovely hotspot markers for 20mm (1/72) games of Force on Force. Hopefully I'll have a chance to dig through his site in the future.

Gotta Run.

Photographing Miniatures Part 3 - Camera Comparison

This one was a little tougher than the last post. Aside from being busy over the weekend I had to try and figure out how to actually use these things without finding the manuals.

What follows is my attempt to take the same photo with four different cameras. In each case the set up was the same. I used three desk lamps with compact fluorescent bulbs. I don't remember their exact wattage, but I want to say that they were meant to replace 60W bulbs. The two frontal are supposedly daylight and the over head was regular, probably soft white.

I wrapped my baking parchment over the housing of each lamp and used my regular black construction paper background. I used metal book ends to support the back of the construction paper, and used mini wooden clothes pins to secure the construction and baking papers in place.

Taken with my cellphone, an HTC One X, 8MP camera, normal setting.

The figure I chose was my favorite Orc Character. I painted him for the analogue challenge and you can check out the photos I took there. Those were natural light I believe. This figure does not have a lot of technique, in fact it's pretty basic, so that is the only thing I don't have to show you detail photography. I'll keep on working on my painting technique.

Photographing Miniatures Part 2 - Online Tutorials

Online resources for photographing miniatures.

I figured that I would start where most of us start and look up “photographing miniatures” on the old Google machine. I'll provide a link and a short synopsis of the points I find useful.

[Sorry, this post is super dense verbiage without any pictures. Funny, since it's about photography. If you want to skip to the end, I would read #5 and #6 and the synopsis for the executive summary of what to take away from all this.]

1. LIGHT EM' UP! Tips for Photographing Minis Like a Pro

This article from Bell of Lost Souls is pretty straight forward. What I come away with from this is use lighting on your minis. Three lamps seems to be the magic number. Use “daylight” bulbs. I have some daylight fluorescents, I'm now seeing daylight LED bulbs as well. I'm not sure if one needs to go out and buy a daylight lamp, but if you've got one you should use it. You should also notice that none of the lights in the working example are shining directly on the figure. See my example from the other day that direct light is problematic. Other advice,  like use a backdrop etc. are a no brainer. For a competition shot you want no distraction, even for an ebay shot I bet a good picture leads to a better sale. The only thing I don't totally agree with is the white background makes for brighter/better color. To me most figures photographed against a white background don't look as vibrant. Perhaps they look more true in color, but I prefer a dark background.

What's on the bench.

Just a quick post, more to keep up my painting and blogging mojo more than anything else.

Here's a couple of shots from the other day of some 1/72 figures from the Caeser Fantasy Adventurer set.

Nikon D5100, 18-55mm lens, Macro (Flower Symbol) setting. Afternoon reflected sunlight.

I'll try to start captioning my photos with what I remember of the camera settings and conditions. These guys were all based and then primed gray. I wanted to try different things with the flesh so three of them have territorial beige (?) as a base flesh color while the odd one out has the yellow ochre to provide a base for Dwarf Flesh. Wartchemakalit (2nd from left) has also had her hair done in Camel I think. Nanoc (far right) has had bestial brown applied to the leathery bits, Botgun Metal on the sword, and some kind of brown (probably Burnt Umber) on the hair.

D5100, 18-55mm lens, Macro Setting, Afternoon sunlight, brighter day?

So I did a little work, apparently fixated on "Not Legolas" (or I guess by my naming convention, Salogel.) The figures with the darker base skin tone have all had Reaper 09045 Tanned Highlight painted on. Nanoc in particular looks a little like how Arnold was painted up in "camouflage" in the 80's Conan the Barbarian.

Well maybe not even. Anyway I ran through all of my new Rosemary & Co brushes and I want to say I did the edge detail on Salogel's tunic with the #1, although it might have been the #0. I got #2 down to #2/0 and they all hold a nice point.

Next up I brought out my oldhammer ball & chain fanatics and Goblin Shaman.

During the Anologue Hobbies painting challenge I painted their flesh in Hauser Light Green. What shocks me now is that a quick perusal of the internet shows nothing but Night Goblin Fanatics.  I personally found the Night Goblins to be a total cop out sculpting wise. For me a sea of robed figures is "BORING".

In the above picture I was trying to show the painting of the foot wraps. This is 9AM-ish sunlight through te blinds, directly down onto the table. Too many shadows etc.

Same time, blinds adjusted to be parallel with the sill causing no direct sunlight. Much better. The first of these three was taken in the afternoon. My window faces East, so more direct light in the morning. All of these were also with the Nikon D5100; 18-55mm lens; Macro setting.  One other thing I'll note is that in these last two pictures there is a little too much clutter around the figures. The Macro setting can be your friend, by having a short depth of field, but you need to take into account that even blurred out clutter can be distracting. Especially if it is a bright color.

Welcome to R.A.E. Gingerbhoy of Gingerbhoy's Painting Projects, a fine painter and figure converter.

Photographing Miniatures part 1 - My gear

I have been thinking about photography, among other things, again. While I was in the middle of thinking about this r.a.e. gingerbhoy of Gingerbhoy's Painting Projects was talking about how he felt he was losing painting competitions because his pictures weren't as good as his opponents. I'm paraphrasing, but you get the idea. This is a big topic, and I don't pretend to have all the answers. But I do have some opinions.

I think I'll try to do a series and see what some of the answers are. But for this one I'll talk about what equipment I use. It's a bit narcissistic, but so is blogging in general.

I have been using a Nikon D5100 for the last couple of years for most of my photography and have been fairly pleased with the results. I bought it on sale at Costco ( a big warehouse store in the US) and it came with a camera bag, 18-55mm and 55-300mm lenses. You can see their current deals here. It's a lot of money, but I use the camera a lot now. Before I would carry around smaller digital cameras and never bring them out. With the big expensive camera I feel compelled to use it to justify its purchase. Although I still forget to break it out at family gatherings and social settings.

Now we could leave off there, but there are a few things that I've acquired since the initial purchase that I find useful. First, especially for shots of miniatures, you need a tripod. I have a standard one from years ago which works fine, but I recently bought a Gorilla Pod flexible tripod. I use it to set up on the game table. I'm still working with it. I think it could be very useful, but so far I haven't done that much with its unique features. I also have a monopod. I use it for photographing outdoor sports, it really helps to get better shots when the kids are running around and you don't have a lot of time to set up the shot. I can't remember if mine was this Dynex one, but I'm pretty sure I didn't pay a lot for it.

Second would be the flash diffuser. Lighting can always be an issue, and to be honest, I don't think I've gotten it licked yet. The diffuser I bought was recommended by Dave D here. (In fact I could have just skipped this whole post and just sent you to Dave's post. It is essentially how I take my pictures now. But I digress.) This gadget really helps dull the harshness of the flash. One day I'll try the other colors, but i use white. I got mine from Amazon here.

Third would be some kind of infrared remote. You can set the timer, but the remote is dead easy to use and takes away any nudging or vibration of the camera. I bought a generic one from Target here, and it works great. Just make sure that the camera has something to focus on. The first time I tried it I think I had the object inside the cameras focal length and it refused to take the picture.

Fourth item is a good camera bag. Now the camera I bought came with a bag, so you may be thinking, why does he need another bag? Well, although serviceable, the bag isn't all that comfortable or easy to get the camera out of when you are running around historical sites. So I bought a sling bag and it's been great. I got the Lowepro Slingshot 250W and it's been great. I will say that the single strap, although great for camera access, can be a little fatiguing when you are on a death march through the Louvre or trying to cram in a lot of site seeing in one day. One salient feature, that I haven't had to use yet, is an integral rain cover that pulls out. Great for sunny old England, although we had hardly any rain during our visit in March.

The last thing I bought, and it is totally unnecessary, was an 18-300mm lens. The stock lenses are very good, but I've been caught many times in sports or on vacation where I had the wrong lens for the job and missed the shot. My solution was a lens that could do a little of everything. I bought this one used, again from Amazon. It is not uncommon for a lens to cost more, sometimes multiples more, than the camera body itself. So you need to get over sticker shock and sort out your price range and what you want from the lens. My hope is that I can get the closeups on the football field and then take a portrait of the team, all without having to try and do a lens change with little time and a lot of dust and dirt flying around.

So there you have it. My fancy camera gear. Next I'll look into various resources for taking good pictures of your minis. I'll try to follow that up with some examples of a setup and try to show the difference between different kinds of cameras. Lastly I may try to look at some examples of miniature photography and see if I can get the photographer to share their process.

Happy picture taking. Or is that camera shopping at this point.

X-Wing - Game 1 - Political escort

Hot on the heels of the Battle Cry game, my son asked to play X-Wing. We decided (or was that I decided) to play the first mission in the back of the rule book, but using the very basic quick start rules.

Here's how it went.

It was over fairly fast. My son flew in with the Ties and broke up my formation, but tail gated the shuttle. In my reading of the rules you can't take a shot if you are in base to base contact. I tried to persuade him to ease up on the accelerator. There were many tears after I shot down the one TIE. I'm not totally sure why as I thought we were passed the "it's only fun if I win" stage. So it may be some solo X-Wing in my future.