No one asked for this and it might be rude, but!
I got some unsolicited advise for people photographying minis with phones against a backdrop of anykind (but especially a textured one) :
Here’s a suggestion to try things differently and then you’ll be able to decide which option you find more interesting…
What I usually see is this :
Image : straight out of iPhone SE
Minis with their backs against the wall, so to speak.
What it creates is that there is little differenciation with the minis, there is as much attention given (if not more!) to the background than to the mini when the eyes go through the image (in this case my minis are lacklustre which makes the issue very obvious)
You might want to try this and see if you like it better :
Image : straight out of iPhone SE
Giving some space between the backdrop and the minis will achieve two things :
Less light on the background, highlighting and detaching the minis from the rest of the scene, making them more noticeable.
Even with a phone, which hasn’t got a very shallow depth of field, doing this will allow you to put the background out of focus, making it even easier to focus on the minis. If you zoom in digitally with the phone, you’ll also help make that effect slightly more obvious. (Don’t overdo it though, you’ll lose in image quality fast!)
You can also really amplify the results by lowering the brightness of the background and adding blur effect with layer masks on it on an editing software such as Gimp (free) or PS, really making the minis stand out.
Image : iPhone SE + Photoshop
And of course all of this stays true if you use more unified backdrops and/or a dslr or camera with macro mode.
Here’s an example of things done not so well :
Image : hybrid compact camera (Fuji X100) + raw developer + Photoshop
Even if the image is OK, the background is way too close to the mini, making it receive almost as much light as the mini and thus making it too bright and distracting. I could’ve edited it but somehow didn’t (because the issue is minimal, the camera creates enough out-of-focus blur to make the mini stand out)
But ideally this is the result I want to go for :
Image : mirror less apsc camera (Fuji XT3) + macro adapter + raw developer + photoshop
A very “low key” background, almost completely black to really make the little mans shine and pop out.
Before I go back to the homeworking grinder, I’ll just mention that if anyone wants me to make a twitch stream and/or video tutorial on how to edit phone pictures like the dark eldar I posted there, yeah I’m open to it, if I get enough people harassing me about it.
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