Photography Weekend

This weekend my wife and son were both out of the house for an evening, so in between caring for the baby and taking care of some chores, I was able to break out the lights and the DLSR camera for a short photography session.

Photo Setup

I retook some recent miniature shots with better lighting (350watts of halogen light, and around 200 watts of incandescent light), took pictures of the night goblins that I just finished painting, and then worked on the pictures using Adobe Lightroom on my wife's new computer.

Here are some comparison shots of the Ork powerfist:

Old on the left, new on the right.  It seems that while the focus is better in the new shot (due to a new method I discovered) the color is better in natural sunlight than with the array of lights, even after correcting in Lightroom.

Similarly, the older picture of the Ork is not as focused, but the color is certainly better in the first shot.

In this next comparison, we have an old shot taken by OTT light, and the new one with the lighting array and manipulated in Lightroom.

I would say that the focus is again better in the new shot, but the colors are not quite right, the red in particular looking a bit too orangy. (I also need to hit these guys with some matte sealer!)

Here is the fellow from the Irony, MT bunch, where you can again see the improvement in focus, and here you can also see an improvement in color, although it is still lacking as compared to having the figure in hand.

I used the Perry Miniatures article on Painting Dark African Skin by Steven May

So in conclusion, it seems like the increased focus is beneficial (particularly for closeups) but that getting the correct lighting is important. When I have time, I will endeavour to take some of these shots again with diffused natural light, which we should have plenty of for the next couple of months.

What are your thoughts? Do you have any photography tricks to share?