Quick and Dirty Tutorial for Mini Photography! This tutorial uses Lightroom, highly recommend it if you don’t have it.

Table of Contents:

Equipment

1. WHIBAL CARD Highly Recommend: If you do not have one, get a WhiBal card. This will keep your colors looking correct. You can pick one up here. There’s also a keychain version here for slightly cheaper.
2. STUDIO LIGHTS Not Required: Lights are their own thing, but there are a lot of good cheap options on Amazon such as these for example. You can use a couple lamps if you need to, the WhiBal card will correct any color deviation. Just make sure you’re lights have the same temperature bulbs in them or you’ll never get your colors to look right. For other methods, such as the textured background, you can use sunlight to take quality pics of your minis!
3. SLR CAMERA Not Required: You don’t need an SLR camera to take photos, but it does help if you have access to one. Your phone camera will do wonders though by itself. You’ll just have more control with an SLR.
4. TRIPOD Not Required: Tripods are super helpful if you find your pictures are remaining blurry when you take them. Set a timer on your camera and let the tripod hold the camera still ensuring your shaky hands aren’t blurring your shot. This way your shutter speed really doesn’t matter.

Solid Black Background

Photo Setup

Have a background “tunnel”. I used some foam you can get from home depot and broke it into the appropriate size. The goal is to get the area as dark as possible. I spraypainted the foam black and put a black tshirt at the back and bottom of the foam while setting it up. (Fig. A) From there set up your lights, I use the $50 lights I bought from the amazon link above and use my painting lamp overhead. I just make sure the lights are all on the same temperature. (Fig. B) For this example, I’m using my cell phone to take the pictures. Bring your exposure down on your camera til it looks good. For me that’s usually between -0.7 and -1 exposure. Take a picture with the whibal card (Fig. C) and without changing your settings take your picture with the whibal card removed. (Fig. D) As long as you don’t change your settings you can take as many photos without the whibal card as you want. Just make sure to apply your color settings from the whibal picture once in Lightroom.

• Fig. A
• Fig. B
• Fig. C
• Fig. D

Lightroom White Balance Adjustment

Open and import your photos into lightroom. The first thing you will want to do is color correct. In the color section in lightroom, click the dropper icon next to the white balance section. Then click the grey in the whibal card. (Fig. E) I’ve included a side by side of another picture taken of the same model where the white balance was really off so you can see how well this card works. (Fig. F)

After fixing the white balance on the picture with the whibal card, copy your edit settings by hitting copy edit settings on the bottom of the screen with the photo selected. Then hit paste edit settings at the bottom of the screen on the picture you’d like to paste those white balance settings to. (Fig. G)