More Lighting Shenanigans

Just a quick post.. a return to work, coupled with a totally nuked PC (I mean how hard can it be to install windows seven? turns out, very) Mean not much time for modelling and not much ability to make posts.. still I played with the camera some more and got these:

This one was taken with some available tungsten lights

This one was taken with the only light source being the single LED in the cabin

I'm a fairly experienced photographer, I know what I need to do to get my pics looking like the ones on that flickr account I posted about. What's holding me back is the Kit..

See, I have lighting for bright, daylight neutral close up mini photography, and what I need is very adjustable lighting for low light ambient colour and fill. I also need more in-scene lights, such as LED's or dollhouse lights such as JonTLaw uses.

I also need to either a) photograph in water.. or b) use smoke. for the atmospheric density to help fool the sense of scale. I don't have ready access to either not wanting to immerse my lil plastic dudes.. and having given up smoking over ten years ago.

So for now, I'm going to try and get hold of some more in scene lights.. and look for a cheap source of smoke on ebay. mainly because I like the possibilities presented by all this, even if it is just my own little crazyness.

thanks for reading, and I promise, more articles as soon as my PC is back on it's feet.

Experimenting with LED lighting..

 After seeing this guy's flicker I was blown away.

So much so that out came the soldering iron and I set to with a few LED's I already had, a battery pack off a toy car and a small terrain peice i also already had...


Much swearing later I had this thing... no, it's not as impressine as Jon T Law's stuff.. but you know what I can see how to get there from here :)

I had a play with this terain peice and another LED I had.. and now know that I need to got a few more powerful ones than I have..

but that's okay.. this is the first part of a journey... I hope you'll come with me on it as I try to improve my photography and build some new, illuminated terrain peices!

The first one was taken with an extra LED point light, the second with just a long exposure.. and no, no photoshop, that starring was created in lens..

Anyhoo just another insane distraction.. on which your thoughts are always welcome..

Thanks for reading!

Puppies! – Okay, Fenrisian Wolves.

Just a painted post for these, no build, to be honest they go together embarrassingly easy, and there’s no real poseability built into the kit, so paint is all I thought was of interest.

I got a bit more light into the photography, oddly by cutting out some light :) and the light i have is very flat and cool, so this is pretty good colour reproduction.

A fairly large proportion of the paint on these fellows was airbrush work, so they went very quickly.

Individual shots:

I will need more of these fellows, so the question I face is whether to paint the next batch the same, or a different brown, or even paint some grey wolves.

Thanks for dropping by and reading, I appreciate your thoughts!

Strewth, I actually got to play!

I don’t play often.

In fact I think I’ve managed less than 15 games since 5th launched.

I was fortunate the other day, that once I’d finished the boards to a playable level i sent out an “all points” to a few friends who play and a couple f them popped round.

This allowed me to both test the boards, and a 1750pt guard list.

My reflections and ruminations on the effectiveness of the list, and proposed changes subsequent, can be found in the preceding post. for now, I just wanted to share a few pictures.

 

“Do you think they saw us Sarge?”

”These new krootscoops are pretty combat effective, eh?”

“hothothot!” – blast markers totally stolen from http://santacruzwarhammer.blogspot.com/2009/09/great-way-to-watch-your-models-burn.html

 

“Sneaky scouty…”

“Ahh dammit, who gave the Tau a Hill!”

  

“You know, I want to rethink… Armoured sentinels sound good right now..”

“Okay, if Rogers had the map.. and he’s now a puddle of plasma.. Sarge, are we lost?”

All in all we managed two games, a 1750 with my guard against tau, and a three way 1200. odd I know, but there were three of us :)

The 1750 rolled as annihilation and DOW, and I was very greatful that IG vehicles tend to have searchlights as it helped with turn 1.

It’s also never struck me before, but that combination of missions really favours going second. it gives you more targets to shoot at in turn 1, and you have much more of an idea of the killpoint level you need to hit/beat for victory conditions.

My guys did okay, but victory was only ensured on the last turn, when I went all out for the easy kills in order to snag those KP, mopping up the off FW squad and light vehicle.

The second game was again annihilation, at 1200pts with an Eldar player throwing down as well.

I’d never really played mech Eldar before, not since 3rd ed and man they have some evil toys and funky tanks. holofields suck.

I did learn 1 thing, having seen Straken not do much, I dropped his command squad and swapped in a Primaris, who really worked for me at that level, I also dropped the grenadiers from all my guys and that worked too, those things are now making their way into my list proper I think. anyway, I refer you to my earlier list posting once more :)

That’s all for now. Cheers.

Whole army shot

That’s every painted imperial guard unit so far.

I’ve got the pysker battle squad to finish, and there might be some new additions the more I reflect on how units performed in a recent game. but that’s another post.

Here you see one of the game board sections set up as a photo “set”. I need to clean up how I’ve masked off the back, and throw another light into it, and as I said it needs some more work before I take many close-ups, but it looks okay.

It wont be often that I take whole army shots, its more likely to be used for this kind of thing -

Hope you enjoyed those, I’ll try and upload the stages of board building, as I did take pics, however I took them on my phone and essentially in the dark, so they are pants.

1750 test list, in pictures

I’d appreciate any comments from the list builders out there, I’ve never built for 1750 before, and though I’m not a competitive player, I do like to hear the thoughts of those who are.

 

HQ – Straken, astropath, banner, medic, flamer, two bodyguards and a Chimera (flamer.

Troop- Veteran squad, plasmas, plasma sgt, Chimera (flamer)

 

Troop – Veteran Squad, Hvy flamer, 2x flamer Power weapon sgt, Chimera (flamer)

Troop-  Veteran Squad, Plasmax3 Sgt Plasma,

Fast Attack - Valkyrie, Rocket pods.

 

Elite – Stormtrooper squad, 2x Melta

Fast Attack - Vendetta

Fast Attack – 2x Scout Sentinels, Autocannons

 

Heavy – Leman Russ Demolisher, Hvy Bolter sponsons, Flamer

  

Heavy -  Leman Russ Executioner, lascannon

 

I think I’m two points shy of 1750.

(apologies for the photography, this is set up in my kitchen at the moment and the light there is very poor)

Miniature Photography, Massive Voodoo style

So my bulbs arrived :)
I now have lovely cold daylight all over my painting area, even in the dead of night. It’s amazing, I mean – I’ve used daylight bulbs for years, but these fluorescents are sooo bright compared to the old incandescent bulbs.
I’ve taken some pictures with the photo set up suggested by Roman at Massive Voodoo, Its incredibly simple.
Here’s how it looks (photographed from my phone)
 
You see I use my painting desk, and use the two cheap Ikea lamps with good anglepoise arms, and those shiny new bulbs. the glowy white thing is the (also cheap) ikea plastic bin suggested by Roman. The camera, obviously is on a tripod, and set to a 2 second delay (so that my clumsy paws can’t shake the camera, as I wont be touching it when the shutter goes off)

In this closer view you can see some of the interior. I set my white balance manually, and in hindsight that might not have been the perfect thing to do. with the lights this close the white paper I used was a little bright, and the pictures are a tiny bit warm, – shocking as the scene is so cold.
Dave, who commented on my previous post is right to observe that the contrast shift in my current background image is too severe, I’ll print a new one when I’m next able.
anyway, enough procrastination, here are some of the shots taken now that this set up is in effect -
(BIIG pictures all the way this post, as we are celebrating the imagery)
 
Using the same miniatures as other recent experiments, hopefully you can see the difference.
In this guy, some of the details are much clearer, unfortunately some of the rougher areas are also much much clearer :)
    
Chalk this one up as a win however – a lot of the work I’d done on him that just wasn't visible at all in previous photos can be seen now (also, mistakes too :p)

And again, the work is clearer. Whether this is a good thing or not remains to be seen :)
so there we have my photo experiments, I think they've improved, at least to the point where you can see more clearly what I’m trying to do with these more recent figures. I leave you to judge the levels of success for yourselves now that you can see :)
Thanks again for reading!