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| Yukikaze, 1:700 43mm, 1s, f/16, ISO100 |
Being modeller myself and a photographer at the same time I had to take a chance to shoot some good quality pictures of some of the models exhibited. I actually waited till exhibition was over and had a session in a... kitchen.
Using just one fluorescent light covered with white A4 sheet of paper to diffuse light . As a background I used relatively large piece of white backside of wall calendar. The setup could not be simpler. Light source was positioned around 30 cm above of the model.
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| Tsurumi, 1:700 38mm, 2s, f/22. ISO 100 |
I did not have macro lens with me so I used general purpose 24-70 lens which worked the charm. Having tripod and controlled light situation I simply setup the camera to f22 to have the largest depth of field as possible. ISO at 100 and worked down shutter speed to around 1/5 - 2 sec.
Models are relatively small... it is a matter what you refer to, for some real micro modellers they might seem massive and to other seem as small as a fly. As photographing subject nice and small and easily to handle. On top of capturing all the details I also I wanted to get absolutely real colours representation.
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| Left -Auto White Balance 3850K Right - Correct WB set by picking grey area - 3100K |
White balance
I had with me my X-Rite Color Check Passport which is fantastic tool for sessions like it. Anywhere where you can control light and you care about real colours, it should be used. Once I had more or less setup the "studio" so to speak and exposure values I went into colours. I placed Colour's Checker Grey card in front of the model and took a picture of. This pictures becomes my white balance reference for the rest of the session. I actually even set the camera white balance to custom using take photo of the card. You can see the difference between Auto and actual corrected using grey card. Massive difference you must say. From now all my pictures will be set to 3100K as set by White Balance Picker... well, almost - see end of the post.
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| Left - Colours under Auto White Balance Right - Corrected White Balance and Custom Colour Profile |
Colours Calibration
White balance is crucial but to tweak the colours even more and to have absolute real their representation, they should have actual reference points. Cameras come with pre-defined general colour profile sets like Standard, Faithful, Landscapes etc. Having in you bag colour checker passport you can create real colours profiles that will match actual light conditions. So next picture I took was other side of the tool i.e. it's colour squares. The other day I will explain in details each single square and the meaning of them. For now let's just keep the whole thing as future colour reference.
Colour Checker Passport comes with utility to create custom profiles based on given card's picture. Those can be integrated into Lighroom and all pictures from particular session can have custom colour profile applied to them. Next step is to shoot and shoot not worrying about the colours any more. We are sure they will be real!
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| Left - Manually adjusted WB to 3800K Right - shot as other at 3100K when sun came through the window |
All above is 99% true but there is one but. I mentioned at the beginning I have been shooting in the kitchen, and there was a window. When we started the session and for an hour or so light situation have not changed, but then the rain stopped and the sun got in through the window. Within one moment everything changed. All your colour setup may be gone. The best way is to completely block any outside light... or in my case I simply tried to tweak the colours in post production. However this last picture may not show 100% real colour situation. I developed it to my taste and what I think it should look like. I am posting here two versions of same model one in 3100K and second 3800K.
If you want to fully control the light, block all outside light sources.
Cheers
Jerzy
If you want to fully control the light, block all outside light sources.
Jerzy
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