Collecting figures is a lot of fun and part of the fun is getting to show them to other people who might enjoy looking at them. Sure most of your friends will humor you, if they don’t make fun of you first, so it’s not as much fun showing off your brand new figure to them. As with many things that appeal to a certain crowd, like anime and video game character figures, sharing the joy often means going online and for that you need pictures. This blog entry is a tutorial on how to better show off your figures to other figure enthusiasts on the net by taking better photos of your collection to share.
Good photography is good lighting. A lot of people think that good lighting is expensive. Wrong. The best light source for photography is free. The sun! If you’ve got a backyard use it. Shoot in the morning or an hour or two before the sun sets for the prettiest light. Those looking for the quickest and easiest way to take pics of your figs, well there you go. But if you’re in the city or in an apartment and feel a little too funny about taking a half naked anime babe outside for a photo shoot while people walk by wondering what kind of freak totes a half naked anime babe out in public, this means you’re shooting inside.
It takes a little setup, but really all you need for an indoor lighting setup are two desklamps, a couple of big sheets of construction paper in different colors, a cardboard box, some tracing paper, and some tape. Many of you have tried the desklamp thing and gotten results you weren’t that happy with, but if you use them right, you can get some good results. The best type of easy indoor lighting is a daylight balanced (aka, full spectrum) light source, because it’s close to daylight in color and it burns relatively cool, which is a plus when shooting PVC. You can use normal lights, but just watch for overheating your figures and calibrate your camera’s white balance settings accordingly.
A lot of full spectrum desklamps are supremely overpriced, but there are cheap options out there. I bought a daylight compact florescent for a normal desklamp for about $10 USD at Lowes (they don’t seem to have it on their website, but they have them in stores). I also use a cheap one from Sam’s Club and it’s great (unfortunately they no longer sell it), it’s even better when I use it as a normal desklamp. It’s 27-watts, which is the equivalent of 150-watts of incandescent light. You’ll need about that much light if you don’t want to use a tripod (if your hands are shakey rest your hand on the table and rest the camera on top of that).
Update: Some bulbs are being called daylight, that really aren’t. The best thing to do is look at the color temperature rating on the package itself. What you want are bulbs with a color temperature between 5,000K and 6,000K to get the best color balance.
It’s helpful to have a second light from above (one that’s weaker than your main light) as a hair light, but you can use a normal floor lamp or a clamp swing arm desklamp, one of these is probably already in your house. My hairlight is a 75-watt light, so half as strong as my main light. The ratio doesn’t matter that much since you can move the light to get more or less intensity.
Anyway, the typical setup for taking a picture of your figure is:
You’ve got your main light at about a 45 degree angle from the figure and the weaker lamp from above and slightly behind the figure (ignore that stuff to the side for now). You set Mizuki down on a colored paper backdrop and you’re even in macro mode and have properly white-balanced your camera when you take your picture and it still sort of comes out blah:
It’s in focus and all, but it looks like some schmoe took a picture with a cheap-ass desklamp from Sam’s Club. The main reason is the light is hard, leaving a highlight that screams plastic and shadows that are too sharp and deep. Hard light is not flattering, so you need to soften it with a diffuser. A diffuser is pretty easy to make. Basically, all you need is a cardboard box, some tracing paper, and some tape to fix the paper onto the box.
A diffuser is a filter which you shine the light through to soften the highlights and shadows so that it blends with everything in between a little more smoothly:
Okay, so the lights are in the same exact position and so is the figure. Here’s what the diffuser does to the highlights and shadows:
Okay, the light is a lot softer now, the shadows less harsh, the glare less defined. It’s getting there, but needs something to make it less dingy. The third piece you should use is a reflector to make the shadows on the dark side of the figure a little less dark. It’s tempting to use another light on the other side, but what that does too often is eliminate shadows altogether, which totally flattens the figure making those round shapes less three dimensional. A piece of white posterboard or even a sheet of aluminum foil bouncing light back onto the figure is usually enough to lighten the shadows a little bit.
So it’s a little cramped with those boxes and the posterboard reflector (the purpose of the Betty Crocker chicken and dumplings box is to hold up the reflector, fancy setup indeed), but it’s worth the small bit of effort to set up and shoot. Here’s the result of this setup:
The reflector leaves the deeper shadows pretty dark, while the larger and more open shadow surfaces were lightened up a little bit to remove some of the dinginess. It also made the transition from mid-tone to shadow a little smoother.
You can get different moods by moving the lights around or by using a shallower diffuser. Sometimes you want a harsher highlight to simulate glistening skin, for example. Sometimes you want deeper shadows. Anyway, you don’t need expensive photographic lighting equipment or an expensive camera to get some pretty decent results.
Hope I was able to help.
Thanks a lot for the very helpful tutorial; I’ve been struggling to try and take decent pictures of my figures but they always turn out like crap. =( Just wondering though, but how many megapixels do you recommend for the camera? Because I think I need to buy a new one as the cheap one I have isn’t very good for taking detailed pictures.
The number is kind of tricky and depends on the type of camera, point-and-shoot or dSLR. Too few MPs and your highlights clip. Too many pixels (for the size of the sensor) and the images have a lot of noise. Genrally, anything above 5MP avoids the clippling issue, so you’re looking at getting a 6MP camera for a point and shoot. New models are just coming out and I’m not familiar with the advances made since I bought my camera. Check out dpreview.com for comprehensive information.
Wow ok this is the best guide for figurine photography. Puts my own to lots of shame. But one question, with all that “equipment” taking up space, isn’t it a bit difficult to manuvere your camera?
Wow. It’s funny I’m doing all of this in my studio shoot when I’m taking photos of models and it never came across to me that I could do it for my figures.
It can be, which is the drawback to a tabletop studio cobbled together with makeshift lighting. It winds up being easier to move the figure than it is to move the lighting and camera. There’s less freedom of movement and sponteneous action in this type of setup, for sure. For convenience you can move the lights and reflectors out a little to give yourself more space without affecting the light quality. One of the reasons I kept it tight was to limit where my camera could go to keep all the shots in a similar angle so that when I pulled back for the shot of the setup I would be in the same spot when I moved back in for the closeup.
Tsubaki: Like real life models? That’s cool!
[...] Linked Up Fig Sci: Great Detailed Indoor Figurine Photography Guide Published September 22nd, 2006 in Figurine Science Just check out superrats’ site, Happy Soda. Especially this article. It’s probably time for me to read photography guides and websites. [...]
Wow this is an awesome guide. I’ve been trying to take better photos of my figures as so far I’ve been using white cardboard as backgrounds. Thanks for the tips.
Excellent.
Really great tutorial ! Clearly explained and with cool pictures !
For my pics, I only use indirect lights (for example, you turn the light away the fig, and you reflect it with a white surface to difuse it)
I will try your tracing paper tips next time !
Thank you, SbebiWan, you’ve got lots of nice figures as well. Bouncing the light as you do works well.
I can’t read French, so I am sad to say I wasn’t able to read much of your blog.
[...] It looks rather nice, but it you can’t see the vibrant colours of her costume as opposed to the pictures above. But the shadow effect was nice. Though after reading up on an article posted by HappySoda, I’m going to try out using various coloured backgrounds since I bought some coloured cardboard today. Next figure review will be a Shana figure. [...]
Thank you, I was thinking about doing a 2 languages blog, perhaps one day
Thanks for the tips. Going to fiddle around with it and try it for my next figure shoot.
Woah…now that is well and truly helpful. This is a long way off from my failed first time attempts at photography.
I love your blog. =D Thanks for the tutorial!
I’m going to attempt a similar setup. However, the link to the first Sam’s Club lamp you mention doesn’t work, and when I searched further, I didn’t find it at all on the site. I don’t believe that they carry it anymore.
If it’s not too much trouble, could you please give me the name of the lamp, or at least the company that makes it, so I can search for it elsewhere? Thank you!! :3
The one I have is made by the same people who make the Executive Sun Light Desk Lamp in the second link. If you already have a swing arm desk lamp, you can buy full spectrum bulbs just by themselves. Just do a Google search on “full spectrum bulbs” or “full spectrum lighting” to find them. The full spectrum bulb is the important part.
Since I don’t know anything about studio photography, this tutorial really made me go “wow!” If I would ever come to buy a figurine (that’s extremely unlikely though), I’ll think about this *g*
Don’t ever do it either, because many people get hooked on figure collecting. My sister has turned into a figure freak. It all started with some Bleach trading figs, a Roy Mustang here, a Sora there, a Renji and Rukia, some Samurai7 dudes, a Tachikoma, Kusinagi and then before I knew it, she’s ordered the EB Archer figure, Van from GunxSword, and a box of Last Exile figures.
[...] It looks rather nice, but it you can’t see the vibrant colours of her costume as opposed to the pictures above. But the shadow effect was nice. Though after reading up on an article posted by HappySoda, I’m going to try out using various coloured backgrounds since I bought some coloured cardboard today. Next figure review will be a Shana figure. [...]
Thank you, Super Rats, for this great tutorial. Gonna try it some day!
[...] Revealed: This is the set up I used. Looks familiar? It’s an exact replica of Superrats’ tutorial. I used foil for the reflector instead of the usual styrofoam, which works better outdoors. HLJ provided me with a trillion cartons for such use. I’ll have to find some way to cancel out the yellow colour of the lights though. I hope this doesn’t involve the purchase of new bulbs. [...]
[...] P.S. After reading Super Rats’ guide on lighting figures, I realized that I need to work on lighting the figures better. Hopefully, the next photo shoot will turn out better. [...]
hi..good site..by..
actually, the link to the first desk lamp doesn’t work, and the second lamp cannot tilt sideways, making it a top light only.
Really good tutorial though. Incredibly helpful. I have a rig set up now, but my so called full spectrum light is in bulb form rather than flourescent, so my pictures are still too dark. They do look much better than before though.
Thanks for the information, radiant. They stopped selling the one in the first link. I’ve edited the post and will update more later when I have time to dig for new links.
I bought daylight balanced compact florescents at Lowes, made by Sylvania for about $10. Oddly, neither company site lists the item. But these bulbs fit into a normal socket to turn most normal lamps into what I recommend.
Thanks Super Rats! What lumin range should I be lookign for? I’ll definitely keep my eye out for these at my local hardware store or something. In the meantime, check out my figure photos on my website and tell me what you think I could improve on!
I did some research and found out that Sylvania bulbs are -claimed- daylight bulbs, when really they aren’t. Daylight is 5500k~110000k, and the Sylvania bulbs fall at around 3300k or so, which is just slightly better than regular incandescent. I think perhaps it has a higher lumines, so it makes things much brighter. And with manual white balance adjustment on cameras, color temperature becomes somewhat irrelevant.
Regardless, I found a 2-pack set of Philips Daylight bulbs (27watts) 1660 lumines for about 12 bucks Canadian. Though not marked on the front of the packaging, the specs on it showed 6500k at 80 CRI. I tried it out and was astonished at how close it resembles daylight. A tad bit on the blue hue though, but definitely more accessable than the full spectrum lamp you recommend.
Anyway, here’s a link to an informative site about full spectrum lighting: http://www.lrc.rpi.edu/programs/NLPIP/lightingAnswers/fullSpectrum/claims.asp
Thanks for the think. It’s a good read.
Sylvania has several color temperatures they list as daylight. The ones I got are listed at 5000K and are part of a line they call Craft Bulbs. It gets confusing if you go by the product name. Reading the color temperature data on the bulb is the best way to go it seems. My other bulbs were also rated at 5000K and they matched up well.
6500K is a little bluer than a sunny day which is around 5500K-5800K. I always custom white balance to nudge the slight differences back to “normal.”
I’m still struggling with my lighting. I’m following your tutorial pretty closely, but I’m still getting heavy shadows on my backdrop, and on my subject. I’m wondering if my light is too bright – I move it away, and the scene ends up looking too dark though. I move it closer, and subject gets too much specular.
Should I thicken my diffuse? Are you using the shiny side of the aluminum foil? Or the matte side?
Well, it does take a bit of practice to get it working. Different figures require adjustments. E-mail me some examples and I might be able to help you figure out what to work out.
Your tutorial was awesome for me ^^
I’m currently trying a few things on my blog, and I used the cardboard+tracing paper trick.
I still have a lot of issues to solve :
1. I couldn’t find a strong enough full spectrum light, so I used a 60w on a few pics, which is pretty dark when using the paper filter.
2. I couldn’t find a decent desklamp that can hold a strong enough light if I ever find one.
3. Space management is pretty harsh because I have to use my lamp+cardboard pretty close to the figure. Could probably be helped by finding a better lamp/light too.
4. I’m pretty newbie with my new dSLR, so I’m not used to setting a nice aperture/shutter speed. With my low light, I tried to set high aperture but then many of my pics got blurred because of low shutter speed and no tripod. I think I need to get a tripod ._.
Lol anyway, thanks alot for your help with this tutorial.
I really love all that you do ^.^
Is that a 60W bulb or is that a 13W florecent that outputs 60W? One of the great things about the florecents is you can put it a 27w florecent bulb in a normal lamp and get the output of a 120-140 watt bulb.
DSLR takes some getting used to.
Tripods are annoying.
If you find you’re not getting enough light, try moving the setup next to a window, using the window light as your main light (if strong enough) and using your 60W as your “reflector.”
It is a real 60W, I have trouble finding florecent bulbs around my home, especially daylight ones. I keep looking though.
With the little space I currently have, you’re right in that a tripod would be very annoying
I guess I have to try and improve the light over anything else, but I usually take pics at night so I can’t count much on natural light.
Someone told me about “ring flashes” that are sometimes used for macro pictures, do you know anything about those ? I usually don’t like much the light my regular flash cast on figures though.
Thanks again for your input ^.^
Ring flashes are commonly used for macro shots. I’ve never used one. I wonder if you can make one side of the ring weaker than the other, because if both sides are of even strength, I imagine they would give a very flat kind of light. That’s just a guess though, since I have never used one.
The normal flash can be great if you take it off where it normally sits on the camera. If you get a cord or a remote trigger for the flash, then you can position the flash off camera to get great light. I’ve been meaning to try this myself, but it would mean having to buy a flash.
[...] referred to super rats’s tutorial on “Figure on Cheap Lighting” and ‘built’ a little photoshooting studio of my own. Headed to the local [...]
nice tutorial, thanks to your tutorial now i can take proper photos of my collection, they are nowhere as good as yours but i am learning
[...] Note: The setup of this booth is based on super rats’s tutorial on cheap lighting [...]
[...] wanna thank super rats for that tutorial he wrote on figure photography. The lamp behind the diffuser is an Omni GXHO31 (couldn’t find [...]
[...] with her and she provided good practice in photoshooting. I (like so many) used the tutorial on Happysoda.com which helped me a lot. I modified his difuser box and built a custom one to achieve stronger light. [...]
[...] pictures that will folow, I’ve only used the number 1 lamp, the diffuser, made according to super rats tutorial, and some white paper as reflectors, supported by a mini tripod design easel (since I [...]
[...] had no dedicated lights for better lighting. Learned not long after from super rats most AWESOME tutorial that overheads, sides and a diffuser are very necessary for taking photos. *cue for super rats to [...]
[...] with her and she provided good practice in photoshooting. I (like so many) used the tutorial on Happysoda.com which helped me a lot. I modified his difuser box and built a custom one to achieve stronger light. [...]
[...] shop for some figure as subject and materials for my D.I.Y indoor fake studio lighting (thanks to HappySoda for this
). I stay in a typical Japanese city apartment and there is no backyard for me to use [...]
[...] this morning after reading HappySoda’s tutorial on how to take pictures of figure on cheap lighting, I decided to get another desk lamp which the body/neck comes longer than the desk lamp I am using [...]
Thanks for the awesome tutorial! Gonna try this out as soon as I get the right equipment.
Now, another question: graphic packages. I imagine it’s pretty tempting for a photographer to tweak a little here and there to get the ultimate image, so I was wondering if you ever use graphic packages to tweak your figurine shoots? Or do you take a WYSIWIG approach and try to get the best possible effect straight off the bat?
I use Photoshop Elements (the cheap version which came with my tablet), but all I do most of the time is an Auto Contrast and sometimes I’ll clean up obvious dust flecks. I feel it’s better to get it as close to right as you can before doing any editing.
Good luck and have fun with it.
[...] President Ritsuko of Genshiken fame. It was also the first figurine I shot using the excellent lighting tutorial over at Happy Soda; as you can see, there are some minor issues, but I think it was a decent first [...]
[...] tutorial, Phamolous’s two tutorials here & here, as well as super rats’ offerings here & here. Check out my blogroll as well to just simply view lovely photographs and grab some [...]
does anyone know how well this works for figurines inside glass cabnets? i.e. without the construction paper but still doing the tracing paper and reflector method. does it end up reflecting off the glass? the cabnet im using is the ikead detolf