Have been trying to get a good photo of my work and cannot decide which is better. These are the two different approaches I am working with. Not sure if I like either. Any help, out side of spending the model fund (and grocery money) on a new expensive camera.

Thanks

Inside with lights


Out side with out lights.. well the sun does not count does it?

Use the second style,it looks more more realistic.In sun light your work looks better...
No need a better camera

There is nothing wrong with that 2nd photo....it is great!

Use natural outdoor light... it is very hard to beat and keep
the photo shoot in open shade, unless your looking for a
harsher lighting effect.
Cheers,
Joe

Depending on what camera you have... Check your white balance settings. Inside shots cameras tend to auto really warm and magenta tint which is why the colors don't look as real or vibrant as the the outside shot. I like the neutral blue background of your indoor "studio" helps concentrate the viewer on the dio.

Looks like your outdoor shot is slightly over-exposed. Try bracketing your shots for varied exposures.

I agree with Biggles2's comment it is a little over exposed. Also the most important thing is to think about the background to your photo. Your outside shot has too much going on in the background that detracts from the model. Your interior shot is better. I always use photoshop with my pictures to compensate for colour, exposure and lighting problems if there are any, and to crop the photo as much as possible.

John

You could easily correct the over-exposure (or the poor indoor lighting / wrong white balance) with pretty much any photo software. I don't see any need for PS for what you're doing, as there are inexpensive and free apps available that cover the basic stuff.

You might also work on composition / framing.

The natural light works better for you, but the direct lighting is washing out your photo a bit. Shooting close to noon with light cloud cover or another form of shade will work very well for you. Also use a white posterboard (or the blue one if you prefer, but I think it competes with your diorama) while you are shooting outside. Pretend that the outdoors is your photo room, where you want a clean uncluttered background and someone else is working the lights for you. Your photos won't really even need any editing, unless you want to play with adjusting the whites a bit.

I'm far from the best person for advise on this,but I do believe Jeremy has some very good points.The only good photos I ever get are taken outdoors.Noon with clouds is a very good idea.I tend to be too impatient and take them whenever.We have a pro photographer at work and he tells me to and takes outside pics in the shade.Less shadows and still natural light.

Tom

Here is another attempt, shot outside in the day light with the blue background. There is some photoshop work for the over exposure but the shots in the shade were to dark. Let me know what you think.

How about a different view? I keep thinking that I'm looking at the scene from a nearby tree-top, or a very low-flying helicopter - if they had been invented and used in WW1. I think a diorama photo always works best when the person looking at it can feel that they're involved in the scene. I realize that the way you've designed it, with two elements right in corners, there's no possibility of seeing all of the scene without including the base and it's sides.

If your camera is capable of it, try some more tightly framed shots. For example, try shooting from just behind the guy with his arms up. Or, perhaps just the wall, sandbags, and tank - try not to show the base, which will require using a fairly long "lens".

One technique you might try it puttong it on some sort of stand (even say a bar-stool), in front of a natural background that complements your groundwork, perhaps using settings that will leave the background a bit blurred, so it isn't obvious where the dio ends and the real landscape begins.

The mid-day / overcast works for "flat" lighting, but photographers consider the hour after sunrise and before sunset as the "golden hour", due to the rich light available. This could help accentuate the wonderful coloring on the tank. Yes, there are shadows if you shoot at times other than mid-day, but because of that photos often look more real-life instead of staged.

BTW, I've never seen a version of the Mk IV with square gun barrels previously. I'm guessing this might be a small scale? It's not the Emhar 1:72, so I have no idea what the kit is.

All the colors have turned muddy on the latest shot. Instead of relying on PS, see what you can do by varying the settings on the camera. Assuming it has a variety of automatic programs, try using different ones. If you can and know how to, manually control focus and aperture, controlling depth of field.

Good luck.

I will try the sunset hour... I work nights so sunrise is not going to happen I have kept the same camera angle manily because I am trying to figure out how to get the picture to look right, I will play with different shots once I get the first part figured out.

The model is the Airfix 1/76 Female, It is straight out of the box. I saw the camo pattern in a pic and figured I would give it a try. I will admit to doing all of zero research so the square guns are probably just flat wrong.

Thanks for the advice, will try to post some sunset pics this weekend.

im not a photographer, but you could also try a different backdrop. perhaps use white or another light color. different colors have different effects on eyes/brain. also, darker colors tend to absorb/reflect natural light differently than light colors. if you do a white backdrop, it could change how the picture looks without changing anything with the lighting itself.

I think the camo is what's on the Mk 1 at Bovington - apparently before it was placed in a "diorama" and muddied up (based on a comment I saw).

I'm not guaranteeing that you'll like the sunset results, and you can also try the period for say a couple of hours before it. If you do try this, note that you want to try to find a fairly large open space so the sharply-angled light doesn't have anything in the way of it before it strikes your dio. I think it might work well with a natural background, perhaps a partial tree-line - although you might have a hard time finding a ravaged landscape like that in the dio.

No problem just go to a large construction site (preferrably a new highway) while they are still grading the surface dirt before starting construction. Use a low camera angle to your model and avoid seeing any modern equipment in the background.

I find that shooting a model at the eye level of a scale figure makes the model look more real.

p.s. - This is just a suggestion: The plywood profile board you used, it stands out, I think, too much. For years I did model trains and I used a dark brown profile board along the edge of the layout. It finally occured to me as I was looking at my model photos that the profile board just showed up way too much in every photo. After that, I selected a common color in my dio and repainted the board in that shade. It really helped me to "forget" about the board in the photo. I even experimanted with using a combination of camo colors to make the board less visable.

After all it is the model we want to viewer to focus on.

Check out a photo editing software called GIMP. It is a free and legal download on the internet for Mac or PC. Does almost everything PS does and it is FREE!

For the lighting I too like the second photo set-up the best, just use Gimp to take it a little darker.

I like that glass topped patio table. So far it is the best background I think I've seen. Sorry but those solid, bright colored backgrounds just look too artificial and distracting!

Mike
165th Signal Photo Company.

I agree with Michael. However, it is the all too apparent grain that bothers me more than the color. Some guys like to use formal, wood picture frames to isolate the modeled object/scene. In your case, I think you want to make the base disappear.

If you paint the 1/4" ply roughly the same color as the ground, it will make photography easier, since your scene is so difficult to photo without including some of the base in the image.



I think I know what the story on your guns is.

Here is a photo of a heavily kitbashed Airfix model, including a scratched female sponson, and lots of other work.



I discovered that Airfix only makes a generic "WW I Male" tank, not representing any particular model.
The male had a large sponson with a 6-pounder naval gun on each side, while the female had a much smaller sponson with two machine guns on each side - meant only to deal with troops and not other tanks (which is why two of them quickly withdrew from the first "tank battle", leaving a lone male to contend with 3 German A7V's, which he did quite handsomely).

Anyway, looking at my Airfix kit I suspect you placed both 6-pounder guns on one side (is there anything on the other?), but with the "barrel" mounted backwards - the short squared bit corresponds to the section that the Airfix instructions show being inside the tank.

If you can still get inside the tank, I would move one gun with it's "turret" to the other side.

There's a long thread on Armorama about this kit, with someone spending a whole lot of time/effort to improve it.

Will look at getting a while background vice the blue as well as changing the the time of day. Downloaded GIMP, thanks for the tip, I was using a VERY old copy of PS.

As far as the guns go they are what the kit called for, my guess is airfix just got it wrong. All 4 guns have the same square shape.



this was shot with the second batch of outside shots. Just played with it differently in GIMP, thanks

[quote]


BINGO That was what I was trying to say. To paint profile a generic ground color to help it disappear.

Also when shooting your dio, either in doors or out, don't forget the old studio trick; place a big sheet of white paper on the side opposite the main light source to fill in and soften the shadows.

If main light comes from your right place a large white cardboard to your left as a fill. Experiment with this technique you will find it can really improve your shots.

P.s. Don't use the new curly-cue light bulbs. Modern cameras have not yet figured out how to exactly color correct for then. Also do not mix light sources in the same photo. No curly-cue with regular bulbs and no artificial light mixed with sunlight.

Mike.

I much prefer the shooting angle in the new shot, although most of the color has been drained out of it. If possible, using even more of a telephoto setting would allow you to get a similar view with a minimal amount of the base sides showing.

The Mk IV Female photo I posted is a good example of both late-day shooting (indicated by the light quality and long shadows) and a natural background. Given the design of your dio, you could do something similar with the tank only, but not including the figures.

I did some more research on the Airfix kit. It seems that the male version has been around since the 60's, while the female was only introduced in 2010. I didn't recognize it as I had never seen a proto photo of that particular type. There are many comments saying that the Airfix kit is a bastardization of multiple prototype models, but in this case is meant to represent a Mk II. I wasn't aware of it as the Mk I and Mk IV were much more prevelant, with Wiki saying: "With the exception of the few interim Mark II and Mark III tanks . . . ".

The MK II's were supposedly built for training purposes only, with unhardened steel shells. However, a decision was later made to send them to France for battle - with predictably disastrous results.

No doubt the info is somewhere, but I wasn't able to find out what the Mk II machine guns with the squarish profile are. I did find a proto photo showing them.

thanks for the info, looks like I may need to go back and paint the Mg's a darker color though. I will try to take some shots tonight at sunset and see how they look.