How to photograph miniatures on the cheap

A mid-80s’ Grenadier cleric photographed using this method.

When posting your miniatures online, whether on blogs, forums or facebook it is nice to have good photographs of them. This is more or less the cheapest way possible to take good photographs on the cheap. This is what I do when I photograph painted miniatures.

You will need:

• A window, preferably facing north. A northern window will provide a soft even light. If the sun is shining in through the window it will create sharp shadows. Any direction will do however if it is an overcast day or there is no direct sunlight coming through the window.
• A camera. Preferably a good one with a nice lens, but any cheap compact or even a cellphone will do in a pinch.
• A white paper, the larger the better. In this case I used an A3 printer paper. The paper will function both as a backdrop to get a clean background and as a reflector to create a soft and even light for the miniature.
• A couple of boxes or books. Preferably 1980’s miniature boxes or books by post modern thinkers. I have found that Foucault is especially suited for this use.
• A table to put next to the window. It is good if the table is roughly as high or higher as the bottom of the window.

The method is quite simple. Just stack the boxes or books. Put the paper against the boxes to form a backdrop facing the window. The idea is to avoid creasing the paper, so no shadows or lines are formed in the backdrop. The paper will slide, I just use the weight of the miniatures I am photographing to hold the paper in place.

The setup in all its glory! The paper was slightly creased forming the slight line seen in the photo of the cleric in the top of the post.

When everything is set up, just to put the camera on the table between the window and the miniatures and take some photos. You can use the paper to set the white balance of the camera. I use photoshop to correct the colours and contrast. But there are plenty of free and easy to use software for editing images. An image browser with some editing functions like Picasa or Iphoto works just fine.

Julie Guthries’ Women of adventure box set

FIREBALL!

More than ten years ago I bought a bunch of miniatures on a closing sale of a webshop belonging to some game store in southern Sweden. This was before easy to use freeware webshops, so there was just a single line of text with the title of the product. It must have been very cheap because I bought a lot of stuff.

One thing I got was several box sets with RPG miniatures from the long defunct Grenadier Models. I recently pulled them out from the bottom of my pile of gaming stuff and thought I should write a couple of lines about them. First out is the Julie Guthries’ Women of Adventure Box Set! This box was released in 1992, and is a collection of minatures sculpted in the mid to late 80’s

For all of you who haven’t heard about her, Julie Guthrie is truly a veteran sculptor in the miniatures industry. She is probably best known for all the RPG miniatures she has sculpted for Grenadier, Ral Partha and  currently Reaper Miniatures.

As you can see in the top of the post the box art features a very 80’s looking sorceress who is just about to blast you with a fireball while looking fabolous, in the background a female fighter is charging forward to chop your charred remains in to little pieces. It also proclaims  proudly that it contains a limited edition miniature.

The box insert shows that the woman on the cover is a black sorceress. All the other archetypical are also represented.

No, I could not resist to start priming and painting until after I photographed them.

The sculpts are very nice even though they are bit dated. They are very finely detailed and well proportioned even though the heads are a bit big and round. The women are quite reasonably dressed and armed unlike a lot of miniatures you see. More importantly though, they are not posing for a pin-up photo shoot, which if most miniature lines are to believed are quite a common occurence in fantasy worlds.

So far I have only painted the rogue. I painted 80% of this miniaure ten years ago, let it sit in a box until finished up the details a couple of weeks ago. Hopefully I’ll get more done soon.

Finally, for all of you who haven’t heard about her, Julie Guthrie is truly a veteran sculptor in the miniatures industry. She is probably best known for all the RPG miniatures she has sculpted for Grenadier, Ral Partha and currently Reaper Miniatures.

Further Reading:

If you want to read up more on Grenadier the wikpedia page has a lot of info.

The excellent Oldhammer on a budget blog has post about Grenadier models as well as several links to manufacturers that produce some of Grenadiers old range. Unfortunately I have not been able to find anyone who manufacturers who has Julie Guthries old sculpts. So ebay is probably your best bet.

Reaper Miniatures has a lot current (and some very good) sculpts from Julie Guthrie.

Dreadball Teams!

I just finished painting enough Dreadball players from the starter box to play a game. I will get back to what I think about the game when I have enough time to actually play a game! Meanwhile, here are my teams!

Seeds!

Seeds are one of those things that are a bit to fun to buy. A package of seeds is inexpensive, there is a HUGE variety and the shipping is usually cheap. In that sense they are a bit like wargaming miniatures… No wonder that it is easy to end up with loads of them.

Anyhow, this is the latest order of some of the stuff we are growing this year.

So it begins.

Today I planted my first seeds for the season, and today I make the first post on this blog. This blog will be about my attempts at urban gardening (it can’t hardly be called farming…) and my addiction to little plastic and metal men.

So what did I plant today? Chili. Early Jalapeño and red pepper to be precise. The red pepper and the Early Jalapeño are sorts I tried out with great success last summer. They grew well and gave a good harvest on my window sill. Since I live in northern Sweden and we have a risk for frost until april, these won’t be placed outdoors. I also took some seeds from a Jalapeño bought at the supermarket. The fruit was a bit green, so I don’t know if these seeds will give anything, but I figured it was worth a try.

We have also started planning for what we will plant in pots and buckets on the balcony. A post will follow with what we have planned.

The Geek part of the title then? It will come! I have a review of a 3d-printed board game, a post on my attempt to salvage the Basilean cat riding nuns from Mantic’s Kings Of War, and a recipe for bread to go with Twilight Imperium sessions on its way!