Im still practising shooting my brightly painted minis, and red is especially difficult. I try turning the flash off, and sometimes trying with it on. Its a trial and error-thing. I took about 25 pics of my progressing paint job on a eldar phantom, and 2 of them turned out to look fairly decent, hope you like it:

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"We are the sword of fire with which the Traitors shall be cut down."

number 2:

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"We are the sword of fire with which the Traitors shall be cut down."

Nice smooth and even paint job. Red and yellow are particularly difficult to get right and I think you've done it. Were you thinking of shading them any further? A darker controlled wash might really help the bright base colors pop.

-Malakai

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-Malakai

"You'll never understand how much watching other people's pain gets me off, hearing their screams and knowing that I have the power of a god." -Velvet Acid Christ

The paint job is simple:

1. Spray white undercoat (important to get it even and to cover nicely)

2. Base coat of blood red, and bad moon yellow for weapons

3. Ink washes: red ink + a spot of purple ink; yellow ink + a spot of red ink for weapons

4. Under coat metal areas black

5. Highlight metal w burnished gold (a bit tedious as there is a lot of metal, but turns out pretty nice in the end, and you get a very nice blacklining effect while youre at it)

6. Highlights. I will use Blood red(+yellow)/bad moon yellow(+white)/Burnished gold+mithril silver. Ive only started doing the right weapon yet. This is the part that takes a veeeeeeery long time.

EDIT: Malakai - thanks! I didnt really want to do the shading too deep, as it tends to make it more difficult when adding highlights - and red is a difficult colour to work on when youre highlighting, probably the most difficult one IMO.

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"We are the sword of fire with which the Traitors shall be cut down."

I really like your use of vibrant colours. I think your Phantom looks amazing.

I too am just learning how to take photo's and have found some weird effects going on. Best of which is sometimes the effect makes the model look better than in real life. I love that when it happens...  

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My head is full of War...

[img]http://i278.photobucket.com/albums/kk120/Warhead40k/Tyranid%20Swarm/DSC02262.jpg[/img]

Thanks Warhead, and Ive had the exact same experience, its great!

Some things dont show well in photos though, like highlights on red or yellow. As in the pics of this phantom, you cant really tell which parts Ive done highlights on, and which ones I havent yet. And it took me an hour to do one pulse laser!

Drybrushing tends to look a lot better in photos than in real life, and I tend to use drybrushing fairly seldom. In general I think its a good idea to make the shading and highlighting much more dramatic if you want it to look good through the camera, no matter what technique youre using.

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"We are the sword of fire with which the Traitors shall be cut down."

I am having a similar problem also. The red in my photos came out quite flat even though I used several layers of highlights. I'm hoping that if I lower the brightness level on my camera it will help that.

-Malakai

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-Malakai

"You'll never understand how much watching other people's pain gets me off, hearing their screams and knowing that I have the power of a god." -Velvet Acid Christ

You need to change the exposure and probably the white point setting to clear that up. I had to make a custom white point for my photos and exposure bracket merge to HDR images to keep colors things in line. Failing that I sometimes have to run a warming or cooling filter on the shot to adjust the color balance close to correct.

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-Vaaish

I hope there is a big button on the side of my camera that lists exactly that Vaaish, otherwise I have no hope.

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My head is full of War...

[img]http://i278.photobucket.com/albums/kk120/Warhead40k/Tyranid%20Swarm/DSC02262.jpg[/img]

what kind of camera are you using?

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-Vaaish

Ha I was thinking the same thing! I'm "slow" when it comes to camera stuff.

-Malakai

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-Malakai

"You'll never understand how much watching other people's pain gets me off, hearing their screams and knowing that I have the power of a god." -Velvet Acid Christ

Damn, nearly broke the damn thing trying to take a picture! Then realised I was being silly again.  

This one here
http://www.sony.co.uk/product/dsc-other-series/dsc-p73
No it's not a lovely shade of anything other than silver, OK!  

Sorry for the off topic hi-jack Bro Capt Parzval.

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My head is full of War...

[img]http://i278.photobucket.com/albums/kk120/Warhead40k/Tyranid%20Swarm/DSC02262.jpg[/img]

Ok, well looking over the tech specs, you will need to have a tripod or other thing you can secure the camera to when taking the pics.

It does let you manually control the exposure but since it will be difficult to ensure that all three shots to bracket the exposure are the same, it would be best to take the shots underexposed so as not to lose detail and correct the exposure in photoshop.

You also have several whitepoint modes, I think you want the setting for incandescent because you shots look more red than they should be.

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-Vaaish

Oops sorry Vaaish, I thought you meant me but I think you want Brother Captain Parzval's camera specs.    

However, thanks for the advice.    

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My head is full of War...

[img]http://i278.photobucket.com/albums/kk120/Warhead40k/Tyranid%20Swarm/DSC02262.jpg[/img]

Thanks for all those tips, Im gonna look into this, although it does seem quite complicated! The camera Im using is an old Canon Ixus 65.

And to Warhead: its quite alright to hijack the thread, this is actually the discussion I was hoping for.

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"We are the sword of fire with which the Traitors shall be cut down."