Monday, August 24, 2009

So, I Built a Photobox

I feel like my picture quality has been kinda up and down on the blog and wanted to standardize the way I take them. I usually just put a sheet of paper up and take the pic with the camera on a tripod with the shutter speed maxed and the timer on. Recently, I have been lazy and just snapped pics on the desk. I have seen a few people make these photoboxes and thought it would be an easy way to get up on my picture quality. Below are the pics of my setup. I used a cardboard box and cut openings in two sides and top then covered these on the outside with parchment paper. These inside I just lined with printer paper as seen. I thought this would just make it point and shoot but it's not. I'm having trouble with to much light or to much shadow. For the pics I post I always crop in photoshop and do the quickfix option which fixes my lighting problem most of the time. I have yet to shoot any pics of painted models in this box, only just built ones and am not very impressed. What do you guys do to take high quality pics of your models? Does anyone have a setup like this? Do you have to use the quickfix for lighting correction and is this a good alternative to not having a good lighting setup?



5 comments:

  1. HI

    I use a lightbox with reasonable results. I might posit that you are a bit short on light, but even that should be able to e overcome with your camera.

    it's about using the camera to compensate for the light. with a tripod you can use a nice long sutter speed and a wide open apeture, if you use a digital, where you ant directly control these, try looking for an "apeture priority" mode

    hope that helps

    ReplyDelete
  2. I also recently built a photobox... I think the real problem is the lighting... regular lights seem to give everything a yellow tint. I believe the photobox should have a flash pointed at it to work best. I am currently looking for a flash that will connect to the hotshoe on my camera with a long cord so I can point it through the top of the photobox.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I would add multiple lights to kill shadows, from both side in the front, and buy the " natural light" bulbs, I think a flash will be a bit too hot, unless you defuse it.

    John
    Santa Cruz Warhammer

    ReplyDelete
  4. As the others have said, you still have a single directional light source despite it being diffused by the sheet of paper. To improve things your first step should be to add at least one and preferably two further light sources on either side. These should eliminate almost all shadows. Also, go for a high a wattage bulb as possible which will allow you to take shorter exposures.
    The second step would be to either replace all three bulbs with "natural" light bulbs which simulate the light we receive from the sun (they are blue tinted to counter the yellow light given off by a standard incandesent bulb) or alternatively if you camera has the options to adjust the white balance, set it to incandesent or whatever the equivalent setting is and that alters the colour sensetivity of the camera to adjust for the yellow lighting of a normal bulb.

    ReplyDelete
  5. thanks for the comments. I'll try some of these alternative methods on some painted models and post some pics of my successes/failures.

    ReplyDelete