A note on photographing miniatures

As a little warm-up on my intended blogs on mini-painting, or more specifically, colour schemes and what they bring with them, here's a few points on how to photograph your lovely minis. Actually, it more concernes the inevitable digitalization of them.

1. For the love of God/Allah/the Brahmin/Khorne/whoever!: DON'T save as JPG. Why? Because JPGs compress file size by "mixing" adjacent colours to a mid-way approximation, and they get worse the higher the compression value.
I don't have to say why this is a bad idea as far as painstakingly painted minis are concerned. I have seen fantastic minis, blurred practically beyond recognition by JPG-formatting. Sad, really.

2. On that subject: I know CoolMiniorNot.com has a width limitation (as well as a size limit), but it has no length limit to submitted pics.
Use this to your advantage!
If you still have to show HUEG pictures of your free-hand, link in the artist's comments to a Photobucket account or similar, where such size-restrictions aren't imposed.

3. Use a neutral background for your minis. And have good lighting. Preferably day-light bulbs. Curse you EU for forbidding the sales of ordinary damn bulbs from next year! I have to stock up on these now!

4. Macro is your friend! Don't forget to turn this on when photographing minis. Not everybody has access to a fancy system camera (although I am looking at a Canon EOS D40 currently), but most compact cams have a macro function. My current even has a special "Best Pic"-mode for miniature photographing. That's luck!

That's all I can think of at the current. I will now go back to my lizards for a while. You can follow that progress over at my Twitter account.

In a way, you could call me a pot-head

I have played Warhammer...-esque games for something uptowards ten years now and I have been painting scale miniatures (my fondest memory being getting my hands on an Airfix 1:72 scale Messerschmidt Me 262 Schwalbe at age 10) for many years more. I still have my first Spitfires and Me 109s lying around somewhere.
This means I have a very particular relationship with the paints involved in creating these little pieces of art. Strangely enough, I consider the glue more as a tool than helpful friends, as in the case with my paint pots and brushes.