Taking pictures of my toys...

As you can see from the beginning of my blog to now, my picture-taking skills have greatly improved, largely due to a lot of trial and error in my different photo-shooting sessions... :)

Here is what I use nowadays for most of the shots :


1) A lightbox: (to eliminate shadows and harsh lights)

Unless the toys are extremely big, most pictures are taken within a lightbox that I built with plastic square profiles of 2.5 x 2.5 x 50 cm. and connecting pieces. I use metal pegs at different heights and a white or black K-line foam board of 50 x 70 cm. to adjust the height of the object.

General layout of lightbox (built from scratch)

The black connecting pieces allowing to make my "cube"

These white plugs are originally child-protection plugs for electrical outlets.

 I use them to fix the vertical part of my backdrops (colored cardboard)

Metal screw-in eyelets at 12.5 and 22 cm. from base so I can raise

or lower my foam board - background is heavy colored cardboard that

is clipped to foam board to have a seamless transition.

Unit with white drape and tripod for camera 

Lighting comes usually from only one side or top - with Ikea TERTIAL 

work-lamp and "white" 100W low-energy lightbulb. I can work shadows and

make light-effects on my background by positioning the light before, on top or slightly

behind the object

2) A camera:

I use a CANON EOS 600D with a 18-55mm lens (the standard one you get when you buy such a camera)

Usually, all pictures are taken using tripod, remote control (to avoid any movement - you can also use the timer function - this allows for longer apertures without the blurry effect) and no flash whatsoever.

Settings used are :

1) no flash 

2) Macro / no flash with UV-light setting

I have a LED light-ring and I did some experiments with this, but since most toys are shinny plastic this tends to bounce back right away on the pictures.

3) Picassa

I re-work all pictures in Picassa before posting them on the blog - with crop / straighten functions and other light and some other artistic effects. I do find that the "LOMO" function on Picassa has a great effect to warm up the colors when needed.

For example :

Untouched

Lomo - effect

PLEASE FEEL FREE TO LEAVE YOUR COMMENTS / ADVICE / TRICKS AND SECRETS OF THE TRADE OF HOW TO TAKE THE PERFECT PICTURE TO ALL ON THE COMMENT SECTION - THANKS !