Global Scale Modeller

Hey guys,

Up until now I have been using a Samsung S4 mobile phone for taking pictures of my models, but I plan to invest some money in photo-equipment. I have a Nikon D80 with a 50mm 1:1.8D prime lens. The camera have been sitting on a shelf for a couple of years, since my zoom lens broke down, but it is a good camera and I would like to be able to take better (and more interesting pictures) of my models.

I think that I need a good zoom lens and maybe also a macro lens but I'm not sure which focal length to choose.

Any advice would be really helpful. Thanks.



All the best,
/Tommy

Hi Tommy, here's a photo 101.

The human eye sees things at about 50mm. So any lens above 50mm will magnify and any thing below 50mm will show more ( wider angle).

BUT any wide angle lens will distort the image by making things that are closer to the camera look bigger. So if you are shooting a aircraft ( in a 3/4 view) , the wing closest the camera will look stretched. The wider the lens ( the smaller the mm) the worse this effect will be. Wide angles also make things in the distance look smaller, but on a model this won't really matter.

A lens with a higher mm ( or a zoom) has the effect of "flattening the subject" so if your aircraft has a very big wingspan, the wings may look to short. This is a good effect for portraits as it gives you a slimmer look.

So the ideal lens ( as far as distortion) is the 50mm that you already have! But there are lots of other things to consider, chiefly with model work is being able to focus close enough to fill the frame. Nikon do a range of lens for this. Most manufacturers call these Macro lens, but Nikon use the term Micro instead. Unfortunatly they are not cheap and when you start shooting close ups you run into a whole new bunch of problems with "depth of field" which is where the wing tip closest to you is sharp, but by the time you get to the fuselage, it's completely out of focus.

I'm off to a model show now, but if there's anything here you don't understand just ask.

Hi Tommy. Although a true macro lens would be ideal, a close focusing zoom could also work for you.
The macro lens would be best if you want to capture really small details such as tiny photoetch parts. These lenses focuses close enough to give you a 1:1 reproduction ratio. This means that at closest focus the object is projected onto the sensor at life size. But these lenses are expensive.
Nikon's basic kit lens, the 18-55, focuses close enough to give you a 1:3 magnification ratio. The object is 1/3 life size on the sensor.
If your main consideration is for posting online, the 10mp of your D80 will give you enough cropping leeway with the kit lens. This in effect will bring you closer, and enlarge your subject.
As a point of reference your 50mm lens only gives you a 1:7 reproduction ratio.

One other very important thing to consider for quality images is lighting. Forget about using the built in popup flash. Use an external flash bounces into the ceiling or wall.
If you take a look at my recent builds for Coen C Tiger I and Rising Sun, my images were taken with a Nikon Coolpix A and an external flash bounced into the ceiling or wall. Then they were cropped and edited in Lightroom.

Let me know any questions.

Thanks.

when I had the Nikon d80 I had the sigma 70- 300 that had a macro setting on it. that's what you need for really close up photography. you can zoom in really close. and compared to my Nikon 40mm macro lens the focusing is really to close and throws all sorts of problems with flash. the sigma and a similar tamron go for around 80 pounds second hand

I use the Kit lens that came with my camera 18-55mm
I agree... kit lenses aren't top notch... but it does good enough photos for my needs...
and I use Helicon focus to do stacking photography...

front to rear sharp focus helps with those Depth of field issues... with DSLR
easy to use and impressive results...

I use a 50mm lens for when I want a lot of light (canon nifty 50) and the 18/55 stock lens, havent tried the longs lens for macro shots

Tommy 50mm lense is fine , small aperture slow speed , tripod a must if you have one , digital camera has white balance adjustment to balance whichever light source you use , it's not like using film , shoot , shop ,wait a week , sod it didn't come out, go for it fella

Extension tubes are whole new world of pain! That bug is less than 5mm long but yet hardly any of it is sharp. That's the depth of field problem that I mentioned.

Thanks for the massive amount of suggestions, it's well appreciated !

I have decided to begin using my 50mm so I bought a cheap light-tent that included a couple of halogen-spots and a stand. I also bought some sheets of carton in different colors to use as curved backdrops.

Lessons learned today is that the dispersed light from the spots and room lightning isn't enough - I need sunlight as well to get reasonable amount of light on the subject, so I can use smaller apertures. Also a better tripod could be useful to keep the camera from shaking. I have tried to push the ISO up, but at 300-400 noise starts to be annoying, so I have to stick to what I get using ISO 100-200.

Artifical light only also messed up the white colour, so I had to tweak that.

At the moment the my photographic "skills" (i.e. lack of) and lightning is the main issue, so I won't rush and buy an expensive lens before I really need one

I will make a new try tomorrow in daylight and hopefully post some photos as well.


/tommy

Hi - here's a quick sample of the 18-55 Nikon kit lens on a very old D40 DSLR. ISO 400, f/16, shoe mounted flash bounced up 4-feet to the ceiling and about 12 inches from the wall.

The full view with a ruler for scale reference. This is a 1/72 T-34.


The lens at it's closest focus at 55mm.


Same shot as above cropped to 800 pixels in width (actual pixel size), a typical size for the web. Hmm...a little dusty.


The second image at a larger size. You may have to right click on the image and view in a new window or download to view in it's actual size.


If you are using a constant light source light bulbs and always setup the same lights, the same distance form the model, I'd recommend taking the camera off auto and set your exposure and white balance manually. Try different combinations, see what gives you the best results. Use those settings for your particular setup. And I would highly recommend a tripod and use the camera's self-timer. Even an inexpensive one is better than hand holding it when using available light.

Hope this helps!

Thanks.

TommyKillander wrote:I have decided to begin using my 50mm so I bought a cheap light-tent that included a couple of halogen-spots and a stand. I also bought some sheets of carton in different colors to use as curved backdrops.

I'd stick with neutral colours for the background. Anything with a rich colour will throw of you white balance, plus it will reflect it's colour onto you model - And the EE Lightning that you are building at the moment is one big silver mirror!

You don't want to mix your light source if possible. Halogen, tungsten, fluorescence, and day light all have a different colour temperature and will give a colour cast to the pics. Flash guns are the same as day light, so a cheap flash gun is a good place to start.

Do you Photoshop or some thing similar?

The good old 'standard' 50mm lens used to be what you got with the camera body in the old film days. But what a godsend digital cameras are where you can review your pics on the spot! One of the nice things about the prime 50mm lens is that they are good general lenses with a good aperture range, so you don't have to lug a bag load of gear around with you. If you are shooting at home then the advantage of using a tripod and being able to set the camera at a low ISO of 80 or 100 and using a slow shutter speed come into their own. At model shows a tripod is impracticable so compromises have to be made like opening the aperture setting, and upping the shutter speed and or ISO to avoid handshake resulting in blurred pictures. The trade off here is that there could be some depth of field issues.
For doing the shows, I have ditched the SLR and bought a second hand Panasonic Lumix LX3 high end compact for the sheer convenience. It has a fast Leica lens that I zoom to the equivalent of 50mm and set the ISO as low as I can without suffering handshake.

Hey guys,

Thanks for the massive help!

Unfortunately I didn't have much time to photograpg today, I had to do some famliy-stuff so I didn't get time to set everything up until the sun started to set - basically I only got 1 hour of good light-conditions. I managed to take a couple photos that where not totally garbage - posted them on my English Electric Lightning build-thread:
http://www.intscalemodeller.com/viewtop ... 35&t=10479

I bought a tripod today which gave me a lot more flexibility in terms of slow shutter-speeds, so that is a good thing to have.

Think my next investment will be a good TTL-flash.

CJSomerset wrote:

TommyKillander wrote:I have decided to begin using my 50mm so I bought a cheap light-tent that included a couple of halogen-spots and a stand. I also bought some sheets of carton in different colors to use as curved backdrops.

I'd stick with neutral colours for the background. Anything with a rich colour will throw of you white balance, plus it will reflect it's colour onto you model - And the EE Lightning that you are building at the moment is one big silver mirror!

You don't want to mix your light source if possible. Halogen, tungsten, fluorescence, and day light all have a different colour temperature and will give a colour cast to the pics. Flash guns are the same as day light, so a cheap flash gun is a good place to start.

Do you Photoshop or some thing similar?

I have white, light grey and "normal" grey carton backdrops. The "normal" grey looks best for the subject I'm photographing now (the Lightning F6), but I haven't got any good result due to poor light-conditions.

I use Gimp, but I might get Photoshop later on. I think that I have a LE-version of it somewhere, though.

The LIGHTNING looks great! And the lighting is good as well, no nasty shadows and you can see the see through stand, so I'd say you did a good job on the pics as well.

The shot that shows the whole aircraft is a little fuzzy at the tail end, which is the depth of field problem. Taking the shot an hour earlier would probably let you close down the aperture another stop and cure that.

Depth of field on most lenses works at about 1\4 in front and 3/4 behind. So focusing 1\4 of the way down the fuselage will give you the best depth field for any aperture.

I've used GIMP by now people who do amazing stuff with it, but if you have a copy of PS elements, that will everything you need.

Looking at these shots, I think the camera and lens that you already have will what you need.

CJSomerset wrote:The LIGHTNING looks great! And the lighting is good as well, no nasty shadows and you can see the see through stand, so I'd say you did a good job on the pics as well.

The shot that shows the whole aircraft is a little fuzzy at the tail end, which is the depth of field problem. Taking the shot an hour earlier would probably let you close down the aperture another stop and cure that.

Depth of field on most lenses works at about 1\4 in front and 3/4 behind. So focusing 1\4 of the way down the fuselage will give you the best depth field for any aperture.

I've used GIMP by now people who do amazing stuff with it, but if you have a copy of PS elements, that will everything you need.

Looking at these shots, I think the camera and lens that you already have will what you need.

Thanks, I hope to be able to take some more photos this weekend - It's dark when I get home from work and I can't take a day off.

I'm thinking of buying a Nikon-copy flash (MeiKe MK910), it cost 1/4 of what the Nikon would do and the quality seems acceptable. Will buy a cheap remote release cord from the same dealer as well. After that I think that I have what I need for now...

rubegoldberg wrote:you might also consider lightroom. same raw processing engine as photoshop, but much more photographer friendly. regardless, their new subscription plan makes it all a lot more affordable.

Another thumbsup for Lightroom. Highly recommend it as an editing and image management tool. Sometimes you can get great deals on bundles. Recently one of the online vendors had the Nikon 35/1.8G DX with Lightroom 5 for under $190 with free shipping.

has anyone tried these?…





I read these as macro filters? at £15 they're substantially cheaper than a macro lens, if they work

rgds
John (shortCummins)

Hello,

I managed to take some more shots of the EE Ligthning this weekend and posted them in the buildthread (http://www.intscalemodeller.com/viewtop ... 50#p155292) .

I used f-stop f11 on most of the pictures and ended up with a exposure time just below 1 second, so I used a tripod and cable release cord. I only used natural lighting - did a quick test with indirect flashlight, but it only produced hard shadows and overexposure of some parts of the picture.

I used Nikons Capture NX-D and Gimp to produce the JPEGs, but I will consider to get Lightroom (or Photoshop).

The thing with small models is that you need to use a SCALE focal length lens- well at least as near scale as you can get it. The problem with your average Nikon SLR is that you'll need a huge sum of money to buy an extreme wide angle lens to achieve this... You are going to be better off with a bridge camera (because the focal lengths are going to be much shorter) that enables macro style close up at the WIDE angle end of the zoom. Don't forget that a macro lens you attach to a SLR Nikon is essentialy a TELEPHOTO lens which is exactly the opposite of what you need because of the extremely limited depth of field.
What you desperately need when photographing very small models is enough depth of field to cover the whole length of the model and you'll only get that with a pretty extreme wide angle lens- the sort you get on most bridge cameras and also compacts. Because you'll also need to be able to stop the lens right down to the smallest aperture (to increase max depth of field) you may well need to use a tripod owing to the ensuing slow shutter speed.

Im looking into getting the tamron 90mm macro

Maverik wrote:Im looking into getting the tamron 90mm macro

Go for it mate , you'll not regret it , love it one of the best lenses out there
Peter

Have you ever consider using Helicon Focus to get crisp pictures....

http://www.heliconsoft.com/heliconsoft- ... con-focus/

supports most DSLR common brands...
give it a try ! you might like it ?

Cheers peter im going to grt one soon

schweinhund227 wrote:Have you ever consider using Helicon Focus to get crisp pictures....

http://www.heliconsoft.com/heliconsoft- ... con-focus/

supports most DSLR common brands...
give it a try ! you might like it ?

Thanks for the info!

I bought a new camera (Nikon D610) a couple of weeks ago and I finally had the time to sit down and test Helicon Focus and Remote together with the camera.

What can I say... I'm totally sold on that and will use it a lot in the future... Great stuff!


Tommy

I use a 50mm f/1.4 prime lens (by many considered one of their very best lenses, bwt) with my Canon camera which gives an extrordinary short depth-of-field that - with the right angle - gives a great shot. The 50mm shows some chromatic abbreration at 1.4, which is visible if the image is heavily cropped to get a close-up view, so, just the other day, ordered some extension tubes.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid= ... =3&theater
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid= ... =3&theater

Sigma do some carcking macro lenses and a hell of lot cheaper that the main players or if you go for older main brand models they can be grabbed for bargin prices on fleabay. The one thing about model photography is that you don't need all the gizzmos like super fast auto focus etc and lots of older manual lenses still produce super sharp images......just my tuppenies worth