Photography

With all of the setup in place, the next step is to use your camera to take a few photos of your chosen mini.  You do not need a top of the range digital camera to take good photos if you use enough lighting.  The camera I used to take the pictures of my Spellsinger cost me £30 in a Superdrug sale, and doesn't have any complex settings to adjust.

If your camera has one, set it to the macro setting, which has a symbol like a flower or tulip.  This makes the camera better able to focus on small objects close to the lens.  Also, as I explained earlier, the flash should be turned off.  For best results, try and use as little zoom as possible, and get as close as possible to the mini before the camera cannot focus properly anymore.  I took my photos about 8-10" away and my camera had no problems.

Even if you've used several lights, the camera will still have to use a very long shutter speed, so you should always rest your camera on something to obtain the sharpest image.  You can use a tripod for this if you have one, but in my setup I just rested the camera against a pile of DVD cases, or on the surface of the desk itself.  The important thing is that the camera stays as still as possible.  If you cannot get your camera to focus close-up to mini, and have to take a photo from a long way off, make sure that you have the camera set to take the best resolution pictures it can so that there is sufficient detail shown on the model once its is resized on a computer.

At the end of all this, you should end up with a nicely in- focus and sharp image of your mini.  And in best Blue Peter tradition here is one I made earlier!  Because I used artificial lights, the colours in the photo are slightly off and yellow.  This doesn't matter much at this stage, but the closer to reality the better.