Finally: a photo studio for my miniatures

For a long while I have plans for a dedicated photo studio for taking pictures of painted miniatures. The most common solution for taking macro photographs is a lightbox. You can buy these out-of-the-box (this is a little fabric tent) or make one of your own with a cardboard box and some translucent paper. But the drawback (for me at least) is that it takes up some room and you need at least two decent lights to get good results.

But last week I got an idea for a compact photo studio after seeing this picture on the Mantic Games website: it actually features walls with aluminum foil to reflect and disperse the light.

So I used a cardboard box, cut out one side and the top and the bottom, and used some tape to cover it with aluminum foil. I also put some foil on the floor of the small studio. It's easy to fold up and store flat somewhere.

Since I have only one light, I positioned it right in front of the mini. On the picture you can also see my tripod, which doesn't have a camera on it obviously:


I'm also testing out a new backdrop I have created instead of the usual gray gradient... I think the sepia one looks best, what do you think? Oh yeah: I will be offering these backgrounds to download soon. I created them myself in Photoshop.


Here's a comparison with my previous photo setup. I think it's really a big difference.


When I have enough room and the cash to buy some decent daylight lamps I will most probably build myself a big lightbox studio, but right now I think this is a great alternative. And I'm really happy about my new backdrops as wel.