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BJD photography tutorial: phones, small cameras and other wide anlge lenses

In this part i decided to go mobile and make a whole photoset using my iphone camera to see what issues does it have and how to deal with them. All written here can be used with small cameras and other devices with wide angle lenses. In general, wide angle lens means we get a lot in our frame, but proportions of what we get into it distort as more as we get closer to the object we’re shooting. Distortions are usually more visible at the sides of the frame and less visible in the middle part of it. And as the doll is a small object to shoot (i used 52 cm zaoll doll here) there are some issues and i’ll try to show how to slove them. 

Building the setting and shooting

I start making my seting as i did in previous tutorial, checking what i get in my frame. I do not zoom with my phone bcs zoom there is digital, not optical, and if i crop the image after shooting i’ll get the same result as when zooming. Also my goal is to show how uncropped photos  work. 

I see distortions right away:

Here the doll’s head got in the upper part of the frame and became too long

And here i got too close to her face

oh gosh

I moved away a bit and placed the doll’s face closer to the middle part of the frame and it went out a bit better.

Also you may have noticed that wide angle lenses give a sharp picture over all frame, that means that your background is going to be sharp too, so we will need more small details this time.  We still need several big objects to set the scale of the setting, but this time, as we need to show more small pieces, i decided to use a cork board with a lot of small things pinned on it  - it’s quite big itself, but we’ll have a well detailed backgroud because of all these small stuff. I made this board using a cork sheet from a hobby store and a photo frame and used blu-tack to stick small things on it. 

I placed the board to the wall

I tried to place doll keeping the distance from the wall as i did in previous tutorial, but it did not work (thanks to the wide angle) - the doll in the front looked like it was huge and the room and things on the background looked tiny. I placed pillows in front of the doll (you can use any other medium-sized objects) to let her be in the middle between them and the wall, to move her into the center part of the frame and to get a bit of a living space feeling. 

As making a distance between doll and the wall did not work i decided to move my doll closer to the background (if you’re having a backdrop for BJD it might become visible that you’re having a print, not the space. Try building your setting not by wall but keeping some distance between backdrop and furniture to avoid it)

Guess it’s a bit better now

I tried to move closer to my doll but that’s my iphone’s maximum - i get distortions if i get closer

I made some more experiments trying to keep my doll closer to the center part of the frame and trying not to get too close to avoid distortions 

I did not get too close here but the doll’s head got in the side part and upper corner of the frame and got distorted

And as i moved it from that corner it started to look better

But there seem to be no problems when shooting a full height picture

I got best results keeping my phone in distance of 30 cm from doll

I decided to see if there are any iphone apps which might help in sloving wide angle distortion issues and i found one called 50 mm. You cand choose 35, 50, 80 and 135 lens there and this app really changes the perspective of the frame as it would look if you used other focal length. It still gives you sharp picture on the background but is convinient anyway bcs you don’t need to have your doll near your decorations.

Here’s what i shot using this app with doll sitting far away from the wall

Notice how different it looks compared to the pictures of a doll sitting on this spot taken with standart iphone camera i posted in the begining of this tutorial. I can not see distortions here and background does not seem to be tiny.

So here’s a brief list of what i have discovered about wide angle lenses and phone cameras for doll photography:

1. Wide angle lenses make distortions, which are more visible at the sides and less visible in the center of the frame. They also make huge noses when you get too close to a doll. Also the object in the front always look really bigger then scaled object at the back. That’s why the tip here is not to get too close to the doll’s face and to place a doll near dorr-scaled objects.

2. Wide angle lenses give a sharp image in general, that’s why the tip here is to have more details around the doll, as the background will stay sharp.

3. Also please keep in mid that  it is better not to tilt you phone camera too much and it’s better to shoot from the doll’s face or body level. And it’s also good to pay your attention to the imgainable or real vertical line in the center of your picture - it should stay vertical. Processing your photos I used VSCO app for these photos, because i find it convinient. You can use any app you like, Snapseed it quite good, there’s also Lightroom mobile app, but i find it very poor comparing to the computer version. I used one of built-in presets but still i changed some parameters: highlights and shadows, temperature, tint, contrast, sharpening. I did not crop any of these pictures as the goal was to show how iphone camera works as it is, but surely you can make a photo from a distance where are no distortions and crop it after.

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Creating a BJD room-looking setting for photoset and some photography tips

From time to time i get questions like how do i make the setting for the doll photoshoot and how do i shoot my dolls, so i decided to make a small tutorial with some tips i use like almost always to create a room-looking setting without actually making a room and with no doll furniture. I felt that it would be interesting to model the situation when there’s almost nothing doll-related around, and give some tips how to work things out. So now i will show how to build up the room-looking setting for a BJD using really simple things and make photos that will make the setting look like a living space. I shall not write much about camera settings and composition tips as there’s pretty much written about that on the internet, and doll photography is actually pretty same with usual photography. I used my Supia as a model as she’s the tallest doll i have (58 cm), and it usually is a bit harder to shoot bigger dolls. I will not be using any doll furniture or things that can not be found in a common flat, bought for more then 10 EUR or any small things that can not be easily made in 15 mins.

Here we go

1. The setting

it’s good to pick the place for the shooting before you start making the setting. I use this ikea kallax surface in general, bcs it is located near the window and the light is quite soft there. 

You can use any other flat surface and use lamps for lightning. Just remember to check your lamp temperature, if you combine it with a daylight it should be 5500 K, and if there’s no daylight and you use several lamps make sure they have the same temperature. You can view some lightning schemes on the internet, here’s my pinterest bord about it  ru.pinterest.com/mimiaume/studio-light/

Kallax is not that big so i make the surface wider using 3 laminate  boards i have.

But actually you don’t need it if your desk or other surface you use is wide enough.

I do not recomend making a setting on the floor if you can make it on a desk bcs it’s not really convinient for shooting, but it’s still okay if you have no other place to do it.

Let’s make a wall for our “room”. I usually make 1 wall for BJD, the window makes the second one, it’s good bcs it draws a border but is transparent. Look around yourself, how far are the walls around you. If you place a doll in a corner made by 2 walls it will look more like it’s in a box, and we do not need this in our setting. That’s why i try to make photos with no more then 2 walls in the frame or 1 wall and a window, 3 walls make a box feeling.

For almost all my settings I’m using canvas on the frame i got from a hobby shop. You can actually use any big and flat object, i just find canvas being convenient.  

I usually leave my wall white, but i decided to wrap it with gift paper for this tutorial. When choosing a gift paper please keep in mind that it should not be not very glossy, or else it will reflect light and you’ll have light patches on your background. Also it’s good to keep in mind that all elements in your pictures should look good together, so even if you choose bright and colorful gift paper, it should not draw away attention from more important details like your doll or the dress she’s wearing, etc.

If you’re owning a backdrop suitable for BJDs - good, you can use it too, just remember that the border of the “wall” and the “floor” on your backdrop should be 1 cm higher then the real floor is. I used brown paper for this wall, just because i could not find anything suitable in a store nearby. 

I placed the doll into the setting to see what’s going on.

Here is how it looks from the side

An here is what happens when i zoom into 50mm to see how the setting will look on my photos. Looks like my doll got high just before the shooting oh well  

Now we’re going to set the scale, using 2-3 big doll-scaled objects.

I’m using a printed map, a dress on a hanger and a mirror.

The main idea is not to put things in a line, and to place them using different distance from the wall - so you can get some “real space” feeling on your pictures.  If you have no hanger for a dress you can cut one out of a cardboard - the hanger is covered with dress and stays at the background so will not be seen clearly. If you have a jewelry box with some drawers like i do - good, we can use this, but still if you don’t have any - just find a nice-sized box and wrap it with some pretty paper - it will be on the background also.  The setting from the side

And a 50mm zoom to see what do we have 

So now as we finished with big objects on the background i continue setting the scale using a mirror. I place it in the front of the scene, near the spot my doll is going to be. You can use any big doll furniture object, like chair, but as i promised not to use any doll furniture in this tutorial, i’m using this small mirror from H&M (10 EUR). You can use any pretty table mirror you can find, i guess even one from ikea might do well. You can use it as it is or as a base to create something special. My mirror is not actually a table mirror so I spent some time trying to set it, and I didn't do it well so it fell and broke a bit later :) 

Please notice how actually far the doll and the mirror are from the wall  

So now we’re checking what do we have if we zoom into our “room”. Not really bad but still some small objects might make it looking more like a living space. 

Books and polaroid prints are really easy to be done. You can fill your books with real pages which is cool but takes more time, but also you can fil them with blank pages. I stick polaroid pictures to the wall using blu-tack (it’s good bcs it does not leave any stains and you can use the wall in a completely different way next time). If you have a knitted blanket for your doll - that’s nice, but if you dont,  you can make it out of a knitted scarf, use a knited pillowcase or use knitted fabric.  

If you have some faux fur pieces it’s nice to use them on the floor, also some pillows are really easy to be done but look great. I place these objects in the front and slightly to the side from the mirror, it’s the place where my doll is going to be on photos. I do not recommend placing a doll by the wall, it will make your pictures look more flat, and if you’re using the backdrop the fact you have a print but not the space will become visible. Let your doll stay in front of the picture instead.

Look around yourself to see if you can use some objects around you. I like this grass in a pot - it’s from a pet store, and this globe is a pencil sharpener. The goal is to find 2 tall small ojbects, so some souvenirs your friends got for you during their last trip might work well :)

You also can make easy small things to shoot some activity - i made these pencils out of toothpicks and used a mini moleskine (it fits SD dolls good), printed tarot cards and used a glue-on paper for a back side. The candle is from a birthday kit.  

So here’s our finished setting 

and it’s time to shoot the doll finally. At this moment my mirror fell down and broke but i decided to use it anyway bcs i don’t have another one to replace it. 2. Photoshooting As i wrote before, there’s a lot about photography on the internet, so i will not write much about camera settings or the composition tips, as they are all pretty same for all kind of photos. But i’ll try to write some tips which might be good when you shoot dolls.

Make sure you check your white balance before you start. If you’re shooting in JPG and not in RAW this will be not that simply fixed after you finish. I shoot in RAW because i’m more used to it and it is more easy to fix small things (and even some big mistakes) without loosing the quality. 

So, here are some specials about doll photography.

1. The focal length. We made a setting which may look as a room on the photos but is not actually a room, so we need to crop the frame to have only what we need in it. And also it would be nice not to have our doll and room proportions distorted. That’s why i usually use 50-80 mm focal lengths, even if i need to make not a portrait but a full height picture. You’ll have to walk away from your setting for that, but using these focal lengths you’ll still have only a “room” part of the setting in your pictures   2. The depth of field . It really depends on what are you planning to shoot and how does your lens work. In general, if you’re shooting a portrait open aperture will be better but if you want doll’s clothes to stay sharp, you need to close the aperture a bit, but in general this depends more on the lens so you’ll need to make some experiments to find out how yours work. 3. The shooting spot. It’s not that uncommon that  dolls are shot from the top spot to the bottom using wide angles and it spoils all the preparations before and doll starts to look like it has big head and short funny legs. Try to shoot from the doll level instead (you’ll probably need to sit down a bit) and avoid tilting your camera too much. You can shoot from doll’s legs level lifting your lens just a little bit up also (and here you can see whay it was convinient to build your setting not on the floor).  4. The skyline. There’s a lot written about it but i shall do it too - keep your eye on a vertical line (real or imagined one) which goes throug the center of your photo. Not on the side, and not the horizontal line (it might confuse you if you’re shooting from the side) but the vertical line in the center. And that’s all about the skyline :)  So now, here’s what we have at the end. Looks like a room i guess :) 

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