"Nikon L830" Topic

I just bought a Nikon L830 cmera to take pictures ofmy figures. I have a few questions.
Does anyone here have one and how do you find it?
What are the best settings for taking pix of 28 mm figures outside. And inside.
Any info would be appreciated.

I have an L30. I just use the close-up setting. I don't have good lighting, so the pictures are 't as good as I would like, but I have. Den very happy with the camera. I use a tripod and sometimes the remote control ter release.

Talking of lighting, I'm the same. I used to take decent photos of our miniatures before digital, but although I have a good camera (one of the Panasonic Lumix bridge range), I never seem to get anything I'm pleased with and it does seem to be down to the poor lighting. Anyone any ideas for a simple set-up which would improve things?

Anyone any ideas for a simple set-up which would improve things?

In the past, I built my own "light box" but wasn't overly satisfied. Then I purchased two goose-neck clip lamps on sale for several dollars each. I taped some tissue paper to each of the lamp's hoods. (I taped the tissue in a cone, no tape on the hood just on the tissue paper.) I set the two lamps up close to the miniatures (one lamp on each side). I clip them to the edge of my table. I set my exposures, and snap away. I might have to do some slight color/contrast corrections using photo software. (I use paint shop pro.)

Here is something similar at Walmart for $11. USD I use bulbs, not CFLs in mine. I'm sure you can find something cheap elsewhere. You can also get goose-neck lamps with bases.

All the photos on my blog were done using this method and a cheap tripod with a cloth background. ordinarygaming.blogspot.com

Walmart link:
link

The best way to take good pics is to learn to use your camera's manual settings. You want as narrow an aperture (as high an f-stop number) as possible, because this will increase your depth of field and more of your scene will be in focus. If you use a high f-stop, you will need to use a slow shutter speed, because not as much light will be getting into your camera, so put it on a tripod.

Direct sunlight can be very harsh, so the shadowed areas of your figures will be very dark and hard to see any detail. You can minimize this by using a bounce card to reflect sunlight into the shadowed areas – if you stand your figures on something white when you photograph them, this should provide enough bounce light to help illuminate their shadowed areas. If you don't want them on a white background, you can hold a piece of white paper nearby and out of frame to bounce light onto them.

Alternatively, you can just shoot on a cloudy day or adjust your photos in photoshop after you shoot them (that's what I do). For a photo like this:

the dark areas of the engines and front grille were almost black before I recovered them in photoshop.

Most of my photos are done in a light box, and I really like the results:

Lots of light is the answer, whether taking photos inside or outside. Here in Colorado, we have about 300 days of cloudless sunshine per year so outdoor photography is usually easy but make sure your camera is set on natural light, not incandescent. I have forgot to change the setting more than once, to my frustration.

Use a 100 ISO if possible. Higher ISO settings give more noise which is difficult to remove, even with photoshop. Also, the more light you put on the subject, the greater the depth of field you will be able to use. Without enough light, you will end up with a wide open aperture and a shallow depth of field. Otherwise, good luck getting an entire pike block in focus with a 5mm depth of field.

Greg C. (and having given this advice, I am the first to admit that I often don't follow it – sometimes pictures are just "good enough" for blogging.)

All the above is great advice.

One extra quick tip – put a piece of white card in front of the figures, but out of shot. This will reflect some light back up on to the figures, which often end up rather in shadow, partly from the figures themselves. A light box takes this to the next step, but I am usually pleased with the benefit from a simple white reflector.

The reflector can be flat, or I sometimes fold the paper in a V to allow it to stand up a bit.

link

Nice tutorial here on building a super cheap light box. If you want to avoid harsh shadows and glare one of these is Invaluable. To understand depth of focus ( f stop settings), manually adjust the f stop from f22 to f5.6, one stop at a time. Put a couple of figures in, one in front of the other. Focus on one item, say the face of he front figure, and click away. You will see how a low number f stop 5.6) will make the rear figure seem blurred. The higher the number, the more of the rear figure will be sharp. If you are shooting outside, you may wish to blur background foliage for example, so that your minis stand out by using a low f stop. If you are showing off your painting skills of a two rank unit, you may want it all sharp, so choose a high f stop.
Remember to take notes as you shoot, so you know what you did to get the effect!

Any pocket digital camera with a macro mode will do the job just fine. I made a hexagonal light box out of white foam board, drop in a background, two cheap hobby lamps with daylight bulbs and Bob's yer uncle.

Nikon Coolpix seem to have a good reputation for macro photography.

Lightbox is a must.

My wife does glass work, which is even harder than minis to photo.

The trick I have found is 3 light sources.

All diffused through the fabric of the light box sides.

Direct light causes deeper shadows, some times you want that but for glass it just causes a bright spot.

One nearly straight down, one up from bottom or side away from cameras one near the camera pointing in.

Then adjust for effect.

It is more art than science as your trying to bring out certain aspects of the work.

I don't like using macro mode on a camera because one of the features of macro photography is a shallow depth of field. You want as deep a field as you can get when photographing miniatures. (I do, anyway)

Macro mode and long depth of field are not necessarily mutually exclusive, certainly not on the scale we are talking about.

If you are talking about pictures of entire game boards rather than individual figures then you shouldn't be using macro anyway.

The L830 has a small sensor, so the two essentials for a good picture are to lock your ISO to 100 (or 200 if you must) and ensure good light. This will give you your cleanest pictures.

Next, get your white balance right, getting yellow or blue tints means you are not getting accurate colour.

Try not to have an 'f' number higher than f5.6 (f8at a push) because the small sensor can result in refraction.

Centre weight your exposure / metering to get the right exposure to come off the front of the figure.

If using flash for close-ups, power it down by -7 EV if the camera allows you to do it. Also change the white balance setting to 'flash'.