Oh, Not the Horses!

Yes, the horses!  Until, and probably after, we get real ones, I’ll keep photographing these little plastic ones.  So, learn to appreciate the finesse of creating, lighting and photographing the miniature scene!

This is Monk, a bay Welsh Cob model by Breyer in 1:64 or Stablemate scale sculpted by Jane Lunger.  Lit with 2-100W incandescent bulbs, one with a cotton soft-box from about 3-4 feet away.  The background photo is by Eduardo Amorim, used with permission.  These are show photos; we take them and enter online or mail-in model shows and compete with other hobbyists (the CORRECT spelling, btw) for prestige, points and year-end prizes.  This year, we (Rianna takes some photos, too) won 2 Divisional Year-End Championships, 5 National Qualifications (for live shows), and many Top Ten finishes!

So, these little ones are around 3 inches high and 3-4 inches long.  There are larger and smaller, but we have many more in this size.  Model railroad scenery materials are pretty convincing and do well to blend the scene into the background photos.  I use some foamboard for smaller bases and masonite for the larger ones and the background photo is sprayed with a light coat of Testor’s Dull Kote spray to kill glare.  The footing board is placed about 5-6 inches away from the background photo to increase the distance and prevent shadows from the horses, not so important with the little ones, but the larger models need even more distance, about a foot or so.

The new Nikon has a wonderfully large 3 inch lcd screen…that tilts!  And, in the manual modes, I can expose from one point and focus on another, without moving the camera on the tripod.  I’m still shooting long exposures, about 1 second, but at f/4.5 to f/5, I can get a touch more depth of field and not worry that with the eye in focus, the feet aren’t.  The lens is much larger and brighter than the E4300.  I’ve changed my style in this; I used to use auto exposure and manual macro focus, now I use AF area mode for focusing (I can choose from 99 positions in the screen to focus on) and Spot AF area metering (looks at a small spot at the center of the frame) but choose my aperture and shutter speed manually with a metering scale onscreen.  The first ones were a little overexposed so I dialed the shutter speed down two-thirds of a stop to keep more detail in the bright areas.  Adjustments to the overall brightness and levels I make in Photoshop.  I saved all of these settings as U1-one of the two programmable modes I can use without changing my single manual mode on the E43oo back and forth for other photographing outside.