Tips for Miniature Photography

Have you ever painted your new favorite miniature and then struggled to take a photo that shows your work at its best? Us too, but lucky for us, we have an awesome photography team that works to bring our miniatures to life for you.

We had a chance to sit down with Matt Ferbrache, our Senior Photographer. Matt is not only a key contributor to box photography, and rule books, but he is also the mastermind behind all of our on terrain photography that you get to enjoy on social media and in transmissions. Today we’re sharing a Q&A with him that should help you take your photography to the next level.

What are the biggest mistakes most people make when taking photos of their miniatures to post on social media?

A lot of the mistakes I see in miniature photography are the same mistakes that can be made with any type of photography. This is an obvious one, but your main priority when shooting minis is to make sure your subject is in focus. I see a lot of mini photos with motion blur or heavy depth of field blur. Keeping something that small in focus is quite difficult, especially if you’re holding your mini in one hand and your camera in the other. Tripods and tables are your friends.

Honestly though, most of the ‘mistakes’ I see aren’t necessarily mistakes. They’re really more related to the quirks of shooting photography with cell phones. Under-exposure, distorted proportions, and noise in the image are all things you’re fighting against when shooting miniatures with a cell phone camera and they’re tough to overcome. The only foolproof way to overcome some of those pitfalls is to shoot with a tripod mounted camera that gives you more control than a hand held cell phone. Phones aren’t really made for capturing this kind of small detail.

If all you have is a phone to snap a shot, what can you do to make a miniature or set of 3-5 miniatures look their best when it comes to shot composition, distance from lens, and lighting?

Phone cameras are usually designed to shoot everyday stuff out in the world. They’ve got very wide-angle lenses and sensors that work best with bright, natural light sources. That means they’re really not set up for the weird specifics of miniature photography. However, it’s not impossible to get good results with a phone camera. You just need to know the limitations of your gear and find ways around those limitations. To help get the most out of shooting with your phone, you’ll want lots of light on your subject so your camera doesn’t try to compensate for low-light conditions by bumping up the ISO. Most phone cameras will set the ISO automatically and won’t let you change it yourself. That means that if the phone thinks there’s not enough light, it’ll raise the ISO to compensate and that will make your photos come out grainy looking and not in a cool ‘vintage camera’ kind of way.

I’d also recommend making use of the digitalzoom features on your phone camera. Instead of putting your phone right up close to your mini, move back a few inches and zoom in on your phone. Most phone cameras are set up with a very wide angle lens which can distort the shape of your miniatures if you try to shoot up close.

What are your tips for using lightboxes for miniature photography? How integral is editing software to making lightbox photos look great?

A light box is a great way to show off your minis! It’s much easier to control lighting and background conditions in a light box than it is trying to shoot on a table with standalone lights. Find yourself a decent sized light box with interchangeable backdrops and (ideally) integrated lighting.

I do substantial photo editing work to ensure our photos look as good as our actual painted minis do in person. If you really want your photos to look great you’ll need to do at least a little bit of post-production work. No matter how clean you keep your workspace and no matter how much canned air you use, there will always be dust or blemishes that show up in your photos. The camera can be very unforgiving. If you can put in the time and effort to edit your photos you’ll definitely notice a difference.

Can you recommend a good lighting kit for folks starting their miniature photography journey?

There are plenty of photography lighting and light box kits available and I’m sure most of them will work just fine for miniature photography. You’ll probably want something fairly small and compact if it’s just going to be for miniatures. I’d recommend looking for setups aimed at product photography or jewelry photography. I’ve been using Foldio light boxes from a company called Orangemonkie for about a decade now and in my opinion they’re the best all-around choice for miniature photography. They’re compact and have bright, built-in LED lighting. There are a few different sizes available and they’re fairly affordable.

How does photographing against a dark/light backdrop affect how our eyes perceive a miniature in the resulting photo?

In my experience, shooting on a light background will give you more natural looking colors and shooting on a dark background will make the colors and contrast ‘pop’ a bit more. In the studio, I have a light box set up with a white background and a second light box with a black background. I usually shoot our rotations on white and our packaging photography on black. There are benefits to both, depending on what you’re trying to achieve so I’d recommend getting a light box that can do either light or dark backgrounds so you can judge for yourself what you think looks better. I prefer shooting painted minis on a dark background because I like those punchy colors, but a dark background will also make dust and blemishes show up more prominently which might lead to more post-production work.

It can be surprising to see how much space you need to get photos of something so small. When you’re taking on terrain photography, how far away do you place lights and the camera from the subject?

Haha! Yea, my terrain setups can get pretty big! In a pinch, I can shoot photos of 1-3 minis on terrain in a relatively compact space, but having a large surface to set up terrain and having extra space around that surface allows for much more versatility. When I set up terrain, I usually build the scene further out than the camera will see. Then, if I don’t like what it looks like through the camera, I’ve got a lot of space to move the camera and the minis around. That also helps me flesh out the stories I’m trying to tell with the terrain photos. I’m basically using the gorgeous terrain our terrain builders make to create tiny film sets for each shot. After I’ve got terrain set up, I’ll set up the studio lights (usually a couple LED light panels for the key lighting, and a couple larger and softer LED panels for fill light) and then place the camera. Depending on the look I’m going for, I’ve got two lenses I usually use: a 50mm macro lens and a 90mm telephoto. I can shoot with the 50mm right up close to the minis and it’ll give me a big wide angle shot of the minis and the terrain. If I use the 90mm, I can place the camera much further back and it’ll compress the whole scene and create a more closed in vibe.

What is the biggest difference between on terrain photos that have been edited in post and the raw file when it’s first taken? What tools do you use most in post production?

I try to do as much as I can with practical effects and lighting so I don’t spend a lot of time adding in special effects after the fact. Our terrain and miniatures look amazing on their own and I use an LED backdrop to create the skies in my shots. Because of all that, the majority of my post-production time is spent focus stacking and cleaning up dust. I use Adobe Camera RAW and Photoshop primarily because it’s what I’m used to using. I’ve been using Adobe software for design and photography since the 90s. I also like to use a Wacom pen and tablet to do all my really detailed editing.

For the intermediate photographer, what types of tools should they consider? Light boxes? What kinds of equipment should people consider (such as type of camera/lens lights, lightbox) to create a tiny photo studio?

This is a tricky question because camera gear is expensive. However, you can get some pretty solid results without spending a lot of money if you’re clever about it. A small light box and decent lights are a good investment (Foldio2 with lights would be my choice) and good digital cameras are pretty easy to come by nowadays. I shoot all our photography on a Sony a7R, but a relatively new digital camera that lets you manually control shutter speed, aperture, ISO, etc. will work well for most people. A camera with interchangeable lenses would be best. That’s kind of it, to be honest. A good light box, a good camera, and a good tripod will get you pretty far. Oh, and some way to process and edit your photos would be a good idea.

What’s your favorite miniature photography accessory for either box photography or on-terrain photography?

My favorite accessory for shooting light box photography is a camera remote. It’s super basic, but knowing I won’t ruin my photos by accidentally shaking the camera is great. Plus, using a remote instead of the camera’s timer saves me a few seconds per shot and that adds up.

For terrain photography, I’d love to say it’s the mini fog machine, or the trick lighting, or the LED screen backdrop I’ve got set up, but really the thing that’s helped me out the most has been this set of clear plexi miniature bases I use as tiny risers. Sometimes the specific part of a terrain table I want to use for a shot isn’t completely level or I can’t fit the miniatures in there exactly how I want. Having some small things I can stack to raise a miniature up by a few millimeters or to level out a mini or a piece of terrain is invaluable. The pieces of plexi that I’m using as shims are 20mm, 30mm, 40mm, and 50mm circles and they’re clear so they’re easy to edit out of photos if I don’t hide them well enough in my photos.

That wraps up our tips and tricks from Matt! We love to see your miniature photography, so make sure you share it in our Discord Galleries and tag us on social.