Plastic bricks are tough to photograph, for lots of reasons - the main one being that they have lots of tiny details. So here are cures for your most common photographic woes:
MY PICTURES ARE BLURRY.
- 6. HOLD YOUR CAMERA STILL.
If your camera shifts an eighth of an inch when you're photographing a person, no one will notice. An eighth of an inch blur on a minifig face or torso destroys all the details. Your hands are not steady enough to take minifig photos. You need to set your camera on a stable surface, such as a table, a pile of books, or best of all, a camera tripod.
7. MAKE SURE YOU HAVE ENOUGH LIGHT.
The less light you have, the longer the camera aperture has to stay open, so the more time the camera has to accidentally move around and blur the crap out of everything.
8. FLOWER MODE.
Some cameras have a flower mode. The flower means "still life," and is the mode for adjusting focus for fine details.
9. CHECK YOUR AUTO-FOCUS REGION.
If you're using auto-focus, the camera will set its focal length to whatever's in the center of the image. If your image centers on the empty space in between two warriors, the space will be in focus and the warriors will be blurry.
10. CHECK YOUR DISTANCE.
Some cameras aren't able to focus on objects that are too close. If you're an inch away from your subject and you can't get focus no matter what you do, you may need to back the camera up a few inches and use the zoom instead.
- 6. MOAR LIGHT.
Your pictures are grainy because the camera isn't collecting enough light particles. You need moar.
7. BETTER CAMERA.
Sometimes this just means you need to buy a better camera. But usually, moar light is the solution to this problem.
- 6. TURN OFF THE FLASH.
Shiny plastic is shiny. A bright light from a single source will reflect and create hot spots, and if you're using a flash those hot spots will all be pointed right back at the camera. Unless you're really clever about it, flash photography ruins MOC photos.
7. MOAR LIGHTS.
Glare is caused by having too much light reflected from a single point. So instead, get multiple lights and spread your light sources around.
8. DIFFUSE YOUR LIGHT.
If you're able, bounce some light off diffuse reflectors (a sheet of white paper works fine), diffuse it through lampshades (for lamps) or window shades (for sunlight).
- 6. MAKE SURE THEY'RE ON THE INTERNET.
Files hosted on your computer are only visible to people on your computer. If your image url starts with something like "C:\" or "file:\\\" then you fail.
Do you want to upload an image to the forum? Answer: no you do not. Upload it to an image hosting site; there are plenty to choose from.
7. MAKE SURE YOU KNOW THE URL.
An image location can usually be found by right-clicking on an image (if you're on a PC) and selecting "Properties."
8. FILENAMES MUST END WITH IMAGE EXTENSIONS
like .jpg, .gif., .png, etc. Some image hosting sites give you urls that end with garbage like "&a=0937" or "?v=0" or other useless junk. The forum's IMG tag only recognizes filenames that end with recognized image extensions.
- 6. DON'T POST GIANT IMAGES.
Everyone will hate you. If your images must be giant, then post a thumbnail with a link to the giant images instead. 600 pixels is a good maximum dimension.
7. IF YOU DON'T HAVE PHOTOSHOP, GET GIMP.
Or some other free-download image editing software. There is no reason you shouldn't have this. Once you do have this, learn to do the following:- - image resizing
- image cropping
- auto-levels
- sharpen buttplug
- - image resizing
Quantumsurfer wrote:I built a lightbox for really cheap.
Here's how I get my pictures clean:
Then, you just get two, preferably three, normal bendy desk lamps and place them all so that the light shines through the white cloth into the box. Two side and one top, in order of necessity. Try to angle the lights such that they eliminate the most shadow cast from the other lights.
- Cardboard box of medium size
- cut out square holes in every side except bottom and back
- tape/glue matte white poster board to bottom and back, such that it curves and does not fold in the bottom corner
- tape thin white cloth, stretched tight, over all holes in box except front
Check the micro specifications for your camera. Mine's an older, shittier digital camera so I need to take pictures from 9 or more inches away (of small things like lego and miniatures and such). Your picture will probably come out shitty. Don't worry about it. Load the picture into photoshop or some similar photo editing program, crop it, and adjust the white balance. I use PS, so I'm not sure how to do this in other progs without looking it up. In PS, though, it's Image>Adjustments>Levels. Select the white eyedropper and click in the white space of the photo. You can adjust the sliders/click elsewhere as needed to get the whiteness to explode. This might wash out the figure, so bring up the grays and blacks slightly. Done, professional looking picture, easier than it sounds.
