Photo Box

Back again.  What a year!

Since the last time I posted, I was posted to HMCS Regina as the Assistant Engineering Officer, and deployed for NATO Operation Active Endeavour.  That took from May to September.  As a short notice posting it totally threw the plan for the early part of the year.  Believe me, when I came back from four and half months of 24/7 work, I spend my post-deployment leave thoroughly enjoying myself.  Good intentions to post notwithstanding, I didn't even get in any gaming.  I just spent time with my family, worked around the house and generally chilled out.

As the days go on, I'll put up some of the more interesting photos from our various ports of call.

However, for this post I'll show you the photo box I've made.  The plan for it came from Privateer Press' magazine No Quarter issue #53, dedicated to all things PP (Warmachine, Hordes, et al.).  The concept is to have a box, with paper sides, that allows the light to be more evenly diffused so that photos of miniatures look more 'even' and hopefully aren't tinted as much by the bulb colour.  So, without further ado, here's the glorious box (and the two desk lights that will be the first light sources):

Here's a look at the two miniatures without the benefit of a photo box.  This is just with the desk lights, though I did try to angle them beneficially for the light.

Now we have the same photo, only with the two of them in the photo box.

This photo is a bit dim, though the light is diffused and there are no glares.  I moved the lower lights so that they were down at miniature level.

This gives the final results:

It's better, but still a bit dim.  I'll have to play a bit with the combinations to see what lights up the models well but without creating the glare from the first photo.  At least it's a start.  Maybe invest in a higher power lamp too, but we'll see.

The box itself is just a moving box (almost rid of those!), with the sides cut out and tracing paper put over the holes.  I used tracing paper rather than regular printer paper as advised in the NQ article as I found I would have to overlap the papers to cover the hole completely.  I was afraid of either darkening the light or creating a shadow line in the photo.  I also didn't feel like buying a whole ream of 11x17" paper, which I can't feed through my printer and wouldn't really use for much.  Tracing paper I already had on hand.

I may need a smaller box, as this one might be too wide, forcing me to keep the lights too distant to avoid shadows.  If the sides of the box were closer, I could have the lights closer, even if I have to back them away from the paper a bit.  More experimentation is needed.

The models are characters I painted for my daughters in the Pathfinder Roleplaying game campaign we play at home.  Since I hadn't really photographed them before, and they're some fine looking minis, I figured they'd be good test subjects.

Fore those who care, the models are: 03574 - Juliette, Wizard (as my daughter's character Ezreth) and 03566 - Valloa, Elf Thief (as my other daughter's character Merisiel), both in pewter from Reaper Miniatures .

Next up will be some larger models.  Maybe some warjacks will do better in the larger box.

After that, some photos and drawings of the comic box shelves I built over the last year.