20190602_0025-web by Gary Menten, on Flickr
In real life, we are bombarded by light of all different colors. This a reason I often describe shooting photos in my old reserve armory as a photographer's nightmare. The overhead lights over the parade square are sodium type and have a greenish cast, the light coming in from the many windows is whatever color of daylight is going on at the moment, and then there are a bunch of incandescent lamps in a lot of places as well. This being said, when shooting still photos of your action figures, using different colored filters is both easy and can add much interest and mood to the photo.
20190602_0029web by Gary Menten, on Flickr
I will start off by saying that to shoot these three images, I used off-camera portable flash as my light sources, but you can do this with a variety of much less expensive lights as long as you have a tripod or something to steady your camera. All three shots feature an orange light to camera right and a blue one to camera left. The big advantage of using flash here, aside from how fast it is to make the exposure, is that the flash has a variable output which can be adjusted if one or the other is too powerful or weak in relation to the other. You can achieve the same effects with hot lights but it's a bit more complicated. The filters used were as follows. The orange one is the one that comes with the Nikon portable flash, in this case both SB-700, which can be controlled remotely from the camera using the camera's (Nikon D800) popup up flash. It's normally used when to color balance a flash to incandescent light when shooting in a place where the dominant ambient light is incandescent (tungsten). The camera is then set to balance for tungsten and since both ambient and flash are closely matched, the lighting looks the same, no matter what the source is. In this case however, I am leaving the camera itself balanced for daylight, so that the orange filter will render an orange light, which is the same color as firelight, or a muzzle flash, or an explosion at night.
The other light to camera left was covered with a heat resistant blue gel, cut to fit the front of the flash and held in place with tape. These gels are available at any pro photo retailer or supply house and are very inexpensive. They come in a huge variety of colors. They can be used to correct the ambient light and remove funny color casts, or they can be used as I am using here, for the opposite effect.
20190602_0038web by Gary Menten, on Flickr
In all three photos I used a black foam core background and placed the orange light to the left front of the figure, pointing downwards. The blue light was to the right rear of the figure in each photo, but in the first, it was bounced directly into the background to make it sort of blueish, in the second it was pointed at the figure and in the third, up at the ceiling. This is where flash really pays off as you can adjust the power output of the flash very easily. If doing this with hot lights, you either have to move the lights closer or farther away from what every their point at, or use neutral density filters (also sold as gels) to reduce the amount of light output reaching the figure or background.
If you find this inspiring but are not sure how to go about it using whatever lighting you have available, just feel free to ask me. I'd be delighted to answer.
In real life, we are bombarded by light of all different colors. This a reason I often describe shooting photos in my old reserve armory as a photographer's nightmare. The overhead lights over the parade square are sodium type and have a greenish cast, the light coming in from the many windows is whatever color of daylight is going on at the moment, and then there are a bunch of incandescent lamps in a lot of places as well. This being said, when shooting still photos of your action figures, using different colored filters is both easy and can add much interest and mood to the photo.
20190602_0029web by Gary Menten, on Flickr
I will start off by saying that to shoot these three images, I used off-camera portable flash as my light sources, but you can do this with a variety of much less expensive lights as long as you have a tripod or something to steady your camera. All three shots feature an orange light to camera right and a blue one to camera left. The big advantage of using flash here, aside from how fast it is to make the exposure, is that the flash has a variable output which can be adjusted if one or the other is too powerful or weak in relation to the other. You can achieve the same effects with hot lights but it's a bit more complicated. The filters used were as follows. The orange one is the one that comes with the Nikon portable flash, in this case both SB-700, which can be controlled remotely from the camera using the camera's (Nikon D800) popup up flash. It's normally used when to color balance a flash to incandescent light when shooting in a place where the dominant ambient light is incandescent (tungsten). The camera is then set to balance for tungsten and since both ambient and flash are closely matched, the lighting looks the same, no matter what the source is. In this case however, I am leaving the camera itself balanced for daylight, so that the orange filter will render an orange light, which is the same color as firelight, or a muzzle flash, or an explosion at night.
The other light to camera left was covered with a heat resistant blue gel, cut to fit the front of the flash and held in place with tape. These gels are available at any pro photo retailer or supply house and are very inexpensive. They come in a huge variety of colors. They can be used to correct the ambient light and remove funny color casts, or they can be used as I am using here, for the opposite effect.
20190602_0038web by Gary Menten, on Flickr
In all three photos I used a black foam core background and placed the orange light to the left front of the figure, pointing downwards. The blue light was to the right rear of the figure in each photo, but in the first, it was bounced directly into the background to make it sort of blueish, in the second it was pointed at the figure and in the third, up at the ceiling. This is where flash really pays off as you can adjust the power output of the flash very easily. If doing this with hot lights, you either have to move the lights closer or farther away from what every their point at, or use neutral density filters (also sold as gels) to reduce the amount of light output reaching the figure or background.
If you find this inspiring but are not sure how to go about it using whatever lighting you have available, just feel free to ask me. I'd be delighted to answer.