Star War X-Wing Miniatures

I thought I would merge some of my hobbies together. I am some what of a gamer. I play board games, card games, dice games and miniature games. Some of these games have components that are very nice looking and very photographical.

I am going to start with my current favorite game. Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures Games. It is a fighter combat game. It is a very enjoyable game and well, it's STAR WARS!

This first miniature is called an Imperial Decimator.

 

 

 

 

 

New lighting for my still life photography

I made some small LED spotlights for Halloween. I made white , warm white, green and blue spotlights. When photographic in the dark the colors look normal. The whites look white and the green and blue look correct too. I did not test the warm white. I will try it next.

My LED spot lights are not powerful enough for anything other than low light photography currently. I will try creating an array of LED's to see how many are need for other lighting needs. But these small spotlights are cheap and easy to make.

 

Still life in the dark

I setup a space in the basement this weekend to try some still life photography. I placed a large sheet of black acrylic felt on a table and tacked it up on the wall also.

Black felt backdrop

The basement is normally lit by the long tube florescent lighting. But they produce more light than I wanted. So I was going to try some of those spiral florescent lights in some small lamps so I could control the angle of the light. But those produce an orangish light. Looks interesting but not what I wanted.

Orange glow from spiral florescent lighting

As it turns out the long tube florescent light produces the whitest light. So I turned them all off except one. The one I left one was on the other side of a partition, so most of its light is blocked. None of its light is direct. The light only came in through a doorway. Looking at the photo of the black felt backdrop setup, the light came in from the left side of the table.

First up is the deer skull I found a few weeks ago. With the light coming in from the side I was able to play with shadowing. The last photo shows the skull using a clamp-on light with the spiral florescent bulb.

Next is a couple of photo's on a possum skull. I hate possum's for some reason. I am glad this one is dead. It was living in my garage.They were all done with a spiral bulb.

Next I tried leaving on one one long tube florescent light that was in front of the backdrop. As you can see not much shadowing.

For the next test I will be making some LED spot lights of different colors. Since they will be spot lights I will be able to control the light better. Hopefully LED's will photograph well. Here is a link to my Flickr page with the rest of the photo's from last night session.