OK, when I take pictures with my digital camera of my armor, a couple things happen. (as you can see by the recent tanks I posted)
#1 Colors don’t appear correct. Either too dark, or too light.
#2 The real models don’t look shiny…far from it…I like the dirty look…
I am using an Olympus Camera with 4.3MP. It’s a nice camera, but I can’t seem to fix the color thing. I’ve used photoshop 7 to try to correct the images, but I can’t get it right.
Any Suggestions? Is the flash killing it? What’s the deal?
I find the flash makes everything look shiny. I take mine with an Olympus as well, but I close the flash. I place mine on the kitchen counter and turn on all the overhead lights. I usually grab a piece of the kids posterboard put the tank on it and prop up the back so all you see is the tank. As for the colors, I can’t tell you. Mine look OK. Maybe the flash alters them?
I would suggest not using a flash instead taking the pictures outdoors or indoors with lots of lights , The flash will wash out the picture and get rid of depth. I use photoshop almost daily and if you look on net you can find image correcting turtorials that might help. Differnt light types affect how an image will appear and can change what it looks like from what it really is. Using floresent (sorry for spelling ) lights can work good to see actual colors.
Use outdoor lighting or, if too cold, shoot near a window.
Use pieces of aluminum foil wrapped around cardboard as reflectors to redirect this light onto the darker portions of your model (undercarriage, tracks, etc.). Crumpling and resmoothing the foil before putting it on the cardboard will make the reflected light a bit softer. Play around with it till you get the result you like.
To keep from doing all that color correcting in Photoshop, etc., see if you can set your own color balance using a white card. You may have to dig out the manual for this but you’ll find that setting the color balance correctly in the first place makes all other “tweaking” much easier.
Bracket your exposures. That means shooting several photos lighter and darker than the recommended exposure.
Find a way to steady your camera. A mini tripod (6" or less) is ideal and costs around $9 USD. Steady is better and it’ll allow you to use longer shutter speeds which should give you greater depth of field (that will make more of your model appear in sharp focus.
If using digital, shoot LOTS. It costs nothing to do so, right? [:D]
I personally use window lighting whenever possible. Sometimes this requires using the reflectors mentioned above. Flash, unless you can put it off camera, will give you shiny spots everytime. One way to think of it is to imagine your flash is a ping pong ball. If you threw it from the camera position toward your model, would it bounce back to the camera’s lens? If the answer is yes, you’ll have a reflection (AKA shiny spot ) in the finished image.
One last hint. Using GE Reveal bulbs in a couple cheap reflectors from your local hardware depot is a quick, cheap, way to outfit a mini photo studio. Just clamp those lights on anything that will support their weight, aim 'em at your models and fire away. This works best with digital, by the way…
Great tips. Thanks all, I appreciate it, I hate posting on my web site, and here pictures of models that look like I didn’t put the work into it I did, just because the color, and the brightness make it look silly.