The process was refreshingly simple:
1. Cut the flaps off of a small-to-medium sized box.
2. Using tape, apply aluminum foil to the sides and top with the matte side facing toward the miniature.
3. Using a thumb tack or some other fastener, put a piece of paper on the back wall that will be your back drop.
**Cool Tip!** To avoid any visible corners or creases, use a legal-sized piece of paper and stick it so that it's half on the back wall and half on the bottom, under the miniatures. This way, the paper will gradually curve in front of the bottom rear corner and provide a seamless backdrop!
4. I have no specialized knowledge of photography, but I think that a fluorescent bulbed desk lamp is probably preferable to a yellowish incandescent. (Though these days those are going away anyway, right?) Regardless, the "more natural" the light the better. I happen to have picked up this cool light/magnifier hobby lamp and it's working well.
5. Take pictures and adjust the white balance/exposure/metering settings on your camera to optimize your results!
**Camera Phone Tip!** My camera hated the white background that I was using and really dimmed the models at first. Even upping the exposure didn't make a substantial enough difference, but then I learned about metering. My phone has three settings: Matrix, Center-Weighted, and Spot. Matrix was the default, and it basically looks all over the view-able area to determine how to brighten or focus or whatever, and since it was seeing a lot of white background, it was being a jerk. For small models, the Spot setting was ideal. Choosing to look only at the center of the view-able area allowed me to take reasonable images based on the lighting conditions of the model, not the blazing sun behind it. Center-weighted is some mix of the two and may be useful for vehicles or monstrous creatures or something?
Anyway here are some fruits of my labor! (Sorry, these are basically all models depicted previously, but now with greater quality!)
A common terminator
Some tactical dudes
Dark Angel Terminator Librarian (traditional librarian with a converted Halberd of Caliban and Ravenwing swag book)
Belial (conversion with marneus calgar and some dark angels/deathwing/kinghts bits)
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Great guide man you should take some pictures of the process of building!
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Thanks James! I'll have to do that. I should mention that, with the clean background that the lightbox provides, it's easy to lasso or otherwise select the background and digitally normalize each image. In the images above, some were brighter than others because I am still figuring out my camera, but the uniformity of color allowed me to edit and normalize them all. An exception is the rear picture of the belial model, which was darker and I did not adjust.
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