Good job John. Here's a few suggestions that I'd consider trying.

1. Are you leaning the figure up against the backdrop? It's good to have a little distance between the figure and background. I usually prop of a MOC against one of the cylinder loose figure cases to stand it up, but really anything smaller than the MOC will work.

2. How are you placing your lights? It almost looks to me like you have a window with daylight coming through the room. I usually take the photos in a dark room with only the lightbox lights on like in my pic. I also try to place the lights so they are aimed center to the MOC, so basically the front half of each light is hitting the MOC and the back half is illuminating the background. Hopefully that makes sense.

The other thing I'd say is just practice practice practice. Play with the lights and your camera settings. You'll eventually get the combo that works for you.

Here's another old thread on lightboxes that has some good tips. You can see one of my first pics in there.

Thanks Shawn. To answer your questions/comments

I did prop up the items but I was towards the back of the box. I'll center the items on the next go around. I used an AFA'ed loos fig but I have those cylinders and will try it.

Ironically I did these in a completely dark room. No light to be found except the lamps. I had them fairly center to the box, but since I had the items towards the back they weren't at the lights "equator" , so to speak.

As for my camera, it's a Cybershot 120 Sony and while there is some manual override, I felt it did more harm than good. Ill keep playing with the settings.

More tries today, stay tuned!

Sounds great John.

I've just looked at your camera manual and a few things you might want to try are: softsnap mode (this is usually portrait mode on other cameras) It looks like this will open up the aperture to help blur the background a little while keeping the main subject in focus. Also, make sure the macro mode(flower icon) is on.

shawn_k wrote:

Sounds great John.

I've just looked at your camera manual and a few things you might want to try are: softsnap mode (this is usually portrait mode on other cameras) It looks like this will open up the aperture to help blur the background a little while keeping the main subject in focus. Also, make sure the macro mode(flower icon) is on.

Dude thanks! I'll try it!

It might also help to iron the sheet or drop cloth that you are using the background. If you can take out some of those wrinkles it might help keep the camera from "auto-focusing" on them. Which in turn should help the camera focus on the subject and blur the background a bit.

It looks like you are off to a great start though. Keep playing with it. Especially the lighting. That's really what helps with the lightbox.

Also, you want to create a gentle "slope" for the drop cloth. So there's no hard angles from the floor to the back of it. If that makes sense?

This image might help me illustrate what I'm failing to say.

Okay , round 2 !

Mucho better!

Looking a lot better John!

I tried tweaking one a bit for you. I just cropped it a bit and adjusted the white balance to get rid of some of the yellow tint from the lights. You should also be able to get rid of this by using the Tungsten white balance setting in your camera.

I think this thead has nothing to do with how to make good pics. John just wants to show off

I got round to picking up one of the cheap studio kits yesterday, was not sure how good they were going to be but for the first pick it don't seem to have come out so bad

I actually use my iPhone for all of my pictures. Disable the flash & you can take super close up pictures. Plus, you don't even need to edit them. Before the phone I would use the macro feature on my camera & then crop the pictures. The iphone cut all of that out, it's literally snap & go.

damn apple, now there taking over the vintage toy world!

Gorneesh wrote:

I got round to picking up one of the cheap studio kits yesterday, was not sure how good they were going to be but for the first pick it don't seem to have come out so bad

that looks a decent 1st effort there, Mike. The blue background brings it out well. Was it easy enough to set up, and have you tried it with a loose figure yet?

Artoo_Detour wrote:

that looks a decent 1st effort there, Mike. The blue background brings it out well. Was it easy enough to set up, and have you tried it with a loose figure yet?

I have only taken this photo and that was done at about 10.30 pm so no I have not done any pictures of loose figures. As for setting it up it was very easy unfold it all tape up the Velcro strips that hold it all together and plug in lights then start snapping, I think it was well worth the money even if it makes my pictures look that little bit more professional

I'm not sure if it'll help but I just posted some shots on my blog that show how I use my cheapo clip-on lights.

http://ratherchildish.wordpress.com/2012/11/21/shoot-out-the-lights/

I can't seem to find a thread for cool photos of vintage figures (scenes etc), if there isn't one we should make it happen.

Personally, I use mostly dark rooms, lights from simple desk lamps (no flash). These arrangements are mostly for scene photography.

I will eventually get a macro lense, which is what you use to get really close. I've successfully tried it on bugs

Wampa wrote:

I can't seem to find a thread for cool photos of vintage figures (scenes etc),

http://www.imperialgunneryforum.com/t1874-star-wars-figures-in-action?highlight=action

Thanks! I have a lot of catching up to do and a lot of fun ahead of me!

Wampa: Just had a look at your blog.

It would be fun if you would share your pics in the TIG thread now and then.

Dr Dengar wrote:

Wampa: Just had a look at your blog.

It would be fun if you would share your pics in the TIG thread now and then.

That's exactly what I'm doing right now!

I'll put them in the thread aussiejames told me about.

Cheers.