[NSFW] Lardroom's room of lard and dolls.

24 minutes ago, lardroom said:

Not sure what the difference would be between having an off camera flash with a sync cord versus setting up a soft box lighting kit.

Either one is fine, it's really about not having the light always mounted on the camera right above the lens. The softbox kit is just as good a way to accomplish that.

53 minutes ago, BeyondTime said:

Either one is fine, it's really about not having the light always mounted on the camera right above the lens. The softbox kit is just as good a way to accomplish that.

Now that I know more, I've been using this camera mounted LED as a supplemental light and a way to light up the face and the eyes, and get a reflection in the eyes to create highlights. This is especially important with 2B's default eyes because she doesn't have the anime eyes that Arle has. I've built myself a reflector out of aluminum foil, which casts soft light on the face, but doesn't generate that reflective highlight that brings 2B to life.

She ends up looking really lifeless, although her eyes become remarkably blue:

 

 

 

 

 

Bonus: I forgot about this one. I actually like this composition when I took it from another angle.

Test2 by Lardroom, on Flickr

Edited March 22, 2020 by lardroom

Lighting the eyes is pretty important in doll photography.

To answer one question from before, using for dolls only, the smaller softboxes should work. When doing real-person portrait or fashion photography, the softbox being huge compared to the subject is how you get the most even and flattering lighting. But think of a DD as a 1/3 scale person, and everything else can be scaled down as well. Still, larger is typically better and I don't think you can be "too large" considering those windows in that pic I posted.

Those small softboxes exist as a compromise; they're less expensive, and easier to carry around and such.

My own opinionated slight rant:

Basically, never use camera-mounted lighting, and never ever use that little pop-up flash unit that is on your camera, not even for "fill" flash. A well-positioned reflector is a far better way to do any needed fill, and won't look artificial like that little flash always will. (I wish cameras didn't come with those stupid pop-up flashes. On mine it's a real weak spot in the physical construction of the camera besides being useless.)

When I look at your two pictures above, I see "flash pictures." They look like the typical snapshots with on-camera flash, just slightly better lit overall because you are using some proper lighting besides the camera mounted light. The thing is, that light still overpowers the rest of the lighting, so there is that obvious light source coming from camera position. In my opinion, all of your other pictures posted in this thread or better, even if they're missing that little extra sparkle you are looking for and trying to achieve with the camera-mounted unit.

Perhaps you already know or do this but I want to mention it: A very useful skill in photography and to truly understand lighting (not that I fully do either btw), is to learn to instantly recognize where lighting is coming from. When looking at any picture, try to figure out how it is being lit, by how many lights, and where they are. If you can get to a point where you just intuitively see this and then can also "see" lighting in the real world the way the camera sees it, that is a huge help.

A good rule to go by is the idea that a photograph shouldlook like there is only one light source. That doesn't mean you only use one, it just means they are balanced in such a way that it looks like that. I think it's based on the idea that it's what we intuitively view as realistic-looking lighting, because outside there is only one sun, or even typically one light source in a room. Taken to an extreme, if you have noticable shadows, you don't want to see them being cast in two directions.

4 hours ago, BeyondTime said:

Lighting the eyes is pretty important in doll photography.

In people photography period. And there should only be one set of catchlights, to the degree that any extras are generally edited out. Of course, that's not exactly an issue with doll animetic eyes that already have their own possibly multiple ones as part of the design.

Edited March 22, 2020 by cfx
used wrong terms

53 minutes ago, cfx said:

In people photography period.

In doll photos if the eyes aren't lit they tend to look like black pits.

4 hours ago, BeyondTime said:

5 hours ago, cfx said:

In people photography period.

In doll photos if the eyes aren't lit they tend to look like black pits.

I think that isn't a universal statement, in terms of using an actual light source. It's certainly the case for the eyes that are very dark already, like many of the old Volks styles, with again Mio being a good example of this, and that effect showing in the racequeen picture. Lighter eyes with their own large catchlights, for example like your Asuna, I think only need to not be in shadow, not explicitly lit necessarily. It's a good point to make though, because I overlooked it for the simple reason none of my girls have dark eyes like that (thinking about it, I guess that's an eye style I mostly don't prefer, though it's also cute to me in some cases like Yaya).

To elaborate on this just a bit. In portrait photography, catchlights in eyes are typically considered the difference between the eyes looking "alive" or "lifeless", to a point they're something that may be cheated and added in post if they aren't there, and any that are there past a single one usually edited out.

In doll photography, the eyes can be difficult to photograph to get whatever look you are trying for, because of the metallic aspect of most of them, and how lighter colors can end up glowing like cat eyes if they are lit in certain ways. I believe this is also why animetic eyes are so hard to photograph where they look like they do in person. I think Volks over-lights eyes in their official product photos which is one of the reasons the photos always look worse than the dolls actually do.

So, how does one get that kind of lighting on the eyes while not messing with the rest of the lighitng in the photo? For full-scale people portrait photography, this is often done with a separate light of comparatively low power, with a snoot or some other method of making it a small light source compared to the softboxes, beauty dishes, or whatever else is being used. Or done with a small reflector. It's also what people try to replicate with the on-camera pop-up flashes, with not-good results, in part because you usually don't want the catchlight coming from direct camera position either.

Only speaking in theory as I haven't been able to do this myself yet, but I want to try to replicate this, in scale, by making some kind of effective small light, or a very small silver reflector, or maybe a whilte one. It will certainly take some experimentation to see what looks best with doll eyes. The type of eyes that 2B has will also probably need different techniques; I'd guess more like actual human lighting in that case.

There are also what I think of as special effects photographs sometimes done in portraits, such as the use of a ring light to get a circular open catchlight.

 

Already brought up as sources for inspiration are doll twitter, instagram, fashion magazines, etc. I have another suggestion; until brief browsing now to make sure it was still about the same I haven't looked at this in years, but the Fred Miranda forums has a people photography section where people of various skill levels and styles post their work. Sometimes others critique it which can also be helpful. It used to be that some of the photographers talked about their lighting setups which was what I was actually looking for. I didn't see any of that in the bit I looked at now, so I don't know if anyone still does that but if so it's quite useful:

https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/board/49

1 hour ago, cfx said:

Only speaking in theory as I haven't been able to do this myself yet, but I want to try to replicate this, in scale, by making some kind of effective small light, or a very small silver reflector, or maybe a whilte one. It will certainly take some experimentation to see what looks best with doll eyes. The type of eyes that 2B has will also probably need different techniques; I'd guess more like actual human lighting in that case.

I enjoy the challenge of lighting 2B's eyes. Here's what she looks like without any catch lights on a very sunny day with direct sunlight. It gets pretty bad. Cropped from a RAW file, but no other post processing. I think a reflector would have worked in this particular case, but I had no way to place it to shine onto her eyes.

Spoiler for huge:
 

Spoiler

 

Test3-2 by Lardroom, on Flickr

 

 

 

Edited March 22, 2020 by lardroom
Removed unnecessary pictures.

That's a good example, and generally a good picture. You've got the sun a bit to one side so there's modeling light to show definition on the nose, etc. What typically would be done here is to use a larger reflector, probably a white one, off to the right and below a bit, to lighten the shadows under her chin and nose (but not remove them entirely). That would, at least on a person, also give you the appropriate catchlights, in the shape of the reflector. It may or may not actually work on doll eyes.

The picture is a good illustration of what I said about "lifeless" eyes, because they're not bad really, you can still see them, but they don't look much different than if they were just printed pieces of paper in her head because they miss any kind of sparkle here.

It also depends on what the photograph is actually about. If it's a portrait or otherwise fairly close up picture of 2B, then you'd typically want the eyes lit and less harsh shadows. If it's more of an environmental picture where 2B is smaller, off to one side, and you're showing her surroundings, lighting just as it is here can be perfectly fine. In that doll photography video of @Orchid's that I've linked elsewhere, she talks about that one of the first things to do when taking a photograph is to decide what story you are trying to tell with the picture. This is a simple idea, yet something I never really thought about before, and I think it's really important to know what you're trying to do before you can do it.

If you look at youtube videos or various articles of people doing portrait photography, they tend to have assistant(s) who hold reflectors whereever they want them. Otheriwise, for the large ones used for people photography there are various kinds of stands or ways to mount them on tripods and such. I suspect we will just have to improvise. Too bad our DDs just stand there or you could have Arle be your assistant when photographing 2B or vice-versa.

 

Don't take any of my comments as absolutes; it's my preferences along with what I see, in general, and read from others that I also tend to agree with. Tons of experimentation never hurts either as sometimes a fabulous photograph comes out of doing things "wrong." There are also styles of portrait photography that intentionally use much harsher light and harder shadows; you will probably find some of those on that photography forum; I don't really like those styles so things I talk about doing won't get you there. Those styles are as valid as any other, just not my thing most of the time.

Edited March 22, 2020 by cfx
senility lol

45 minutes ago, cfx said:

It also depends on what the photograph is actually about. If it's a portrait or otherwise fairly close up picture of 2B, then you'd typically want the eyes lit and less harsh shadows. If it's more of an environmental picture where 2B is smaller, off to one side, and you're showing her surroundings, lighting just as it is here can be perfectly fine. In that doll photography video of @Orchid's that I've linked elsewhere, she talks about that one of the first things to do when taking a photograph is to decide what story you are trying to tell with the picture. This is a simple idea, yet something I never really thought about before, and I think it's really important to know what you're trying to do before you can do it.

I'm still learning, so I take a few practice shots to dial in the exposure and see how the light is behaving in a picture. This a crop of a close-up with no real purpose, but to practice and see how the doll behaves in shadow/out of shadow and try to get a good depth of field for the elements I want in focus. Just wanted to zoom in on the eye/face aspect since that's why I now use my camera mounted fill light in well-lit situations. I did eventually move her out of that direct sunlight after a few test shots.

Here's the uncropped version:

Spoiler

 

Previously when I was just using a cell phone, I'd actually have a hand held LED light set that I held slightly off camera. It allowed me to create good expressions when the catch light, the doll eye, and the camera all worked together. I'll probably end up placing this mini fill light on a cheap tripod to simulate the same effect.

6 minutes ago, lardroom said:

I'm still learning, so I take a few practice shots to dial in the exposure and see how the light is behaving in a picture. This a crop of a close-up with no real purpose, but to practice and see how the doll behaves in shadow/out of shadow and try to get a good depth of field for the elements I want in focus. Just wanted to zoom in on the eye/face aspect since that's why I now use my camera mounted fill light in well-lit situations.

Oh absolutely. One of the hardest things for me is to see the way the camera sees, in respect to lighting. We see into shadows in a way that cameras do not, plus we are looking at 3D objects.

I talk about these things that I understand; it doesn't mean I'm actually good at them myself which is one of the reasons you don't see any pictures from me here currently because I'm generally embarassed at my results. (The other is the lack of space or anywhere to display my dolls so they live in their boxes for now.)

Also, in case anything I say has sounded harsh, I think you are doing very well, and especially so for not having been at this long at all.

Edited March 22, 2020 by cfx

2 hours ago, cfx said:

We see into shadows in a way that cameras do not, plus we are looking at 3D objects.

One of the best ways to learn about how cameras see light is to read about the Zone System. It was developed for black and white photography, and there are some updated versions for digital, but the basics of it explain how a cameras sight is different from human vision.

 

2 hours ago, cfx said:

I think you are doing very well, and especially so for not having been at this long at all.

Agreed.

 

2 hours ago, cfx said:

(The other is the lack of space or anywhere to display my dolls so they live in their boxes for now.)

A display case will help with dust, but if you have a lot of it you're still going to have issues. I'm not sure how you would completely close it up without using tape of some sort.

Maybe a closed bookcase instead of a traditional display case.

Edited March 22, 2020 by BeyondTime

27 minutes ago, BeyondTime said:

Maybe a closed bookcase instead of a traditional display case.

That's what it's going to have to be. Something like those Ikea Detolfs that people use, with all the gaps, isn't going to do anything at all for me. (I'm nowhere near Ikea anyway and shipping is more than the cabinets cost--if I recall it was about $200 to ship one.)

I wish I could do something about the dust but there's really nothing I can do without moving, which isn't feasible at this time.

Edited March 22, 2020 by cfx

16 minutes ago, cfx said:

That's what it's going to have to be. Something like those Ikea Detolfs that people use, with all the gaps, isn't going to do anything at all for me. (I'm nowhere near Ikea anyway and shipping is more than the cabinets cost.)

I wish I could do something about the dust but there's really nothing I can do without moving, which isn't feasible at this time.

I've got Detolfs, and while I agree about their shody construction, they're better than nothing and the figures I have in there haven't accumulated a horrid amount of dust even though they've been there untouched for a year or more. I've also got an electric duster and some compressed air that I use during a "spring cleaning" event. Since we're all stuck at home, I might as well start that process.

It does help that I've got a cleaning service (a maid, but apparently you can't call them that anymore) that comes in every two weeks to clean, but it's not like she cleans inside the detolfs. Cleanliness of the general area helps a lot.

Edited March 22, 2020 by lardroom

6 hours ago, cfx said:

Also, in case anything I say has sounded harsh, I think you are doing very well, and especially so for not having been at this long at all.

All the comments and criticism are great. There's no way for me to get better without knowing what could be done better. More importantly, this lets me know what I should consider getting or changing or trying out to take better pictures.

My philosophy is that i want the pictures to reveal and capture how pretty and perfect the dolls are, and not how I'm the next great photographer or whatever. Anything that let's me make 2B more beautiful is welcome.

I posted a topic in the photography section with some links to currently-free online classes, tutorials etc. that some of the normally paid-only sites are doing to give us something to do while stuck at home due to the virus:

 

Here is another tabletop tripod option. Totally forgot I had this, and I found it while digging around looking for an accessory clamp for my regular tripod. As it happens it's versatile enough that it can work as the very accessory clamp I needed. 

https://www.cowboystudio.com/product_p/cx-3000-tripod.htm

Quick photo shoot trying to recreate some older pictures and get it "more right". I'm super embarrassed about old pictures, just like I'm sure I'll be embarrassed about these in the future. I'm getting better at making her prettier and prettier, though, so I'm happy.

Toobs_mermaid_1440 by Lardroom, on Flickr

 

Toobs_glow by Lardroom, on Flickr

Hah. This one is technically me nt being able to keep the camera stable so she ends up blurred, but it turned into this weird glow thing, while her eyes are still somewhat in focus. Have no idea how this happened, but I kept it around.

 

Toobie_Mermaid1440_3_4 by Lardroom, on Flickr

 

Toobs53-1 by Lardroom, on Flickr

Edited March 29, 2020 by lardroom

1 hour ago, lardroom said:

I'm getting better at making her prettier and prettier, though, so I'm happy.

Art is learned by doing, so keep on doing.

I think these are good.

Nitpicky bits:

• The first pic is cropped a bit tight vertically where it feels a bit crowded. The positioning of the more obvious background elements is a little distracting; if 2B were more between the two brown vertical posts instead of the one being right behind her that would probably be better, as it is in the later pictures.
• Second picture might be improved if her head wasn't cut off at the top.

No complaints on the third or fourth. Specifically, in contrast to my second point above, her head being cropped in the fourth picture is correct since it's a much closer portrait. Cropping of things like that is somewhat personal taste; my kind of arbitrary rule for it is "Does this look intentional or like an accident?" lol.

Keep it up.

Edited March 29, 2020 by cfx

40 minutes ago, cfx said:

I think these are good.

Nitpicky bits:

• The first pic is cropped a bit tight vertically where it feels a bit crowded. The positioning of the more obvious background elements is a little distracting; if 2B were more between the two brown vertical posts instead of the one being right behind her that would probably be better, as it is in the later pictures.
• Second picture might be improved if her head wasn't cut off at the top.

No complaints on the third or fourth. Specifically, in contrast to my second point above, her head being cropped in the fourth picture is correct since it's a much closer portrait. Cropping of things like that is somewhat personal taste; my kind of arbitrary rule for it is "Does this look intentional or like an accident?" lol.

Keep it up.

Thanks. I haven't gotten the hang of cropping yet and tend to over crop to frame just the subject. I'm transitioning out of the "crop with the camera" phase and try to fill the frame with the subject instead of cropping it in post. I still vastly prefer that method and feel a lot better about an uncropped photograph. Need to work on composition of the background together with the subject. I probably should have used a blank background for the full body shots, or picked a background I can make into an unrecognizable blur since I didn't care about them anyway.

 

1 hour ago, BeyondTime said:

Art is learned by doing, so keep on doing.

I take a lot of pictures of a static pose (took 96 this time around) and I junk 75% of them. After dialing in the exposure, most are duplicates or repeats with slight variations.

 

I'll think I'll take out Arle next and let her have some fun. Toobie is so serious, and I need some levity.

16 minutes ago, lardroom said:

I take a lot of pictures of a static pose (took 96 this time around) and I junk 75% of them. After dialing in the exposure, most are duplicates or repeats with slight variations.

Those numbers should go down over time. In a way what you are doing is more complex than regular photography, because you have to learn to pose the doll well too. It's perhaps akin to product photography, still life, or food photography. Lighting is more complex too imo, because the subject is small and photo lights are made to put light on a human sized subject.

Just as a short intermediate:

Thanks for the nice pictures and the interesting discussion.

Please continue ... and stay healthy, everyone.

In random browsing I found this pair of pictures, which are an example of where I think a wide angle lens works for doll photography; the perspective makes these pictures more interesting than they'd otherwise be. In terms of composition, I feel something is missing. Perhaps it would be better if the dolls weren't quite so centered in the pictures.

In spoiler tags so as to not clutter up the thread with other people's photographs:

Spoiler

 

 

Edited April 11, 2020 by cfx

I'm so far behind! ｏ( ＞ ＜)o

 

On 3/20/2020 at 9:32 PM, cfx said:

Exactly. I don't know how I'm expected to be able to tell if something is in focus either in the viewfinder or on the rear screen.

Whether you use auto focus or manual focus there's an electronic rangefinder in the viewfinder saying it's in focus or not. It works really well!

https://onlinemanual.nikonimglib.com/d850/en/08_focus_02.html

In the lower left corner it either shows >, •, or < for the selected focus point. If it's showing > you're focused too close, • you're in focus, and < is focused too far. This will work even if the autofocus is unable to match focus under the focus point. 

On 3/20/2020 at 10:20 PM, cfx said:

The issues seem worse with the 85mm lens than with the 50mm; the 85mm is almost unusable in how unreliable the focusing is; I'll set something up and it focuses, then I try to take the picture and it can't find focus (I have the setting set where it won't let you press the shutter to actually take a picture if it can't focus).

Set up AF-fine tune in your camera's settings for your prime lenses. Lenses have individual biases for focus when mated to individual cameras due to the amount of precision involved (a precision variance on the camera plus the precision variance on the lens = big unpredictable variance), so you should really set up AF-fine tune for your prime lenses if you intend to focus with shallow depth of field. It's been a long time since I've done it (you only have to do it once for each lens, then never again) so it's best if you do some Googling to find the best method for it. IIRC Nikon's description of how to do it was problematic because it only worked for the center of the lens. 

IIRC the main thing is you get it to focus on something, and then you tell it if it's a little bit too far or too close. Do that for a few distances and then you shouldn't have a problem with it anymore.

Don't bother doing this with zoom lenses, they change too much depending on both zoom & focus.

On 3/21/2020 at 8:09 AM, BeyondTime said:

In 2013 c|net did a cost analysis of Adobe subscription plans, and the cost of the monthly sub to creative cloud was less than the cost buying the Creative Suite packages.

I'm still using my CS6 Suite. It's at the limit of usefulness/compatibility now, but it was totally worth the money.

As a software developer I'm keenly aware of how hard it is for a software company to stay afloat on product-based revenue, but I'm not remotely a fan of subscription software.

On 3/21/2020 at 9:28 AM, lardroom said:

I've been noticing a lot of the Japanese twitter doll pictures are extremely on the soft and bright side. Little to no shadows, not a lot of contrast, some of them even over exposed to hell. They're pretty, and I'm wondering whether to emulate that kind of style. It's like dreamy cotton candy, which may be the point. If I do, it looks like a lot is done in post. I mean, a lot of non-doll photography is also post processing, but focusing on shadows and highlights.

I guess you mean like Kazu? https://twitter.com/Kazu_39suki

IMO the best tools for post processing is Nik Collection, which fortunately has been picked up by DxO after Google let it languish,

https://nikcollection.dxo.com

The primary tools there are Viveza and Color Efex, and Dfine (noise reduction). My post processing flow has settled on using Nikon Capture NX-D for raw conversion, export as 16-bit ProPhoto RGB TIFF, edit in Photoshop CS6 with Nik Collection. Usually I try not to do too much post processing but it can really help some images. Viveza lets you "fix" lighting in areas. The most useful Color Efex tools are Pro Contrast and Darken/Lighten Center (the latter's name really undersells it's functionality). On top of that if you want to get stylish you have Glamour Glow, Classical Soft Focus (maybe?), and Sunlight. You can combine them of course and I can't remember exactly what I did with those images. Also keep in mind how lower contrast affects colour.

On 3/21/2020 at 5:34 PM, lardroom said:

Not sure what the difference would be between having an off camera flash with a sync cord versus setting up a soft box lighting kit.

You do both at the same time (cough).

On 3/21/2020 at 5:34 PM, lardroom said:

Since I'm just shooting dolls, can I get away with those smaller soft box kits? Or is it recommended to just go with the full scale studio/portrait ones.

Your softbox should be the same size as your subject and as close to it as possible. Fortunately since most people photograph human-sized subjects, I was able to get this one on clearance,

It's really hard to aim/setup a softbox without a continuous light source though. I'm using a regular flash with an adapter to hook up to it. It was a lot of trial and error in the beginning to figure out how to use it but I'm pretty good with it now. 

I use the IR-only SU-800 on the camera body to control two remote flashes: one is for the softbox, and the other I use as a global light. The global light is usually pointed straight up at the ceiling, sitting on a table far away from the subject. The softbox's flash lets me control the main lighting on the doll, and the 'global light' lets me balance how bright the background/shadows are. This is a good example.

 

On 3/22/2020 at 12:42 AM, BeyondTime said:

In doll photos if the eyes aren't lit they tend to look like black pits.

Nik Viveza to the rescue! ٩(ˊᗜˋ*)و

I guess this works as a crash course in using it. In spoiler tags because the negative masks are a little creepy.

Spoiler

I do this in just about all my photos. Note that you can get similar results without using Nik Viveza with dodge & burn tools, I think Orchid wrote a tutorial at some point about that.

Here's before & after (not really "black pits", but dull),

What you want to do is dark the shadows of the eyes and brighten the highlights. These are the positions of the control points I used,

There's two on each eye to correct their contrast. The size of them is as small as possible (actually as small as possible is a pixel, so one size larger than that). The circle shows the size of the affected area, and you can click a checkbox to the right on the control point along the right side of the window to show the mask it generates,

This is the mask of the two control points that lower the brightness of the dark part of the eyes,

This is mask (affected area) of the control points I used for brightening the highlights,

This black/grey tone shows how much the adjustments on the control point (I'm only using the brightness slider) affect the image. Stuff that's completely white is being affected 100% by the brightness slider, stuff that's black is not being affected at all. When you do this, it will affect the skin tone of the face somewhat, so you cancel it out by adding a control point on the skin that has no adjustments to its sliders,

Basically, this control point that has no adjustments (actually I probably increased brightness but let's pretend I didn't) created a mask that has a lot of white for the skin. That means this area that's white will override any 'grey' influence the other control points may have had on brightness.

This may be confusing but just play with it to figure it out d(^_^')

A small software history lesson... many, many years ago Nikon replaced Nikon Capture 4 with the non-free Nikon Capture NX which had Nik's Viveza functionality built in, which let you do non-destructive editing of RAW files. It was wonderful. Then Google bought Nik so they could put control points in their photos apps. Nikon replaced NX with the free Nikon Capture NX-D, but had to remove all of Nik's Viveza functionality, which sucked. Fortunately, they recently put back Viveza style control point functionality into NX-D so you can use them there again, for free! It may be related to DxO acquiring Nik from Google 😕

Nikon Capture NX-D can be weird to use and overwhelming when you're new to it, I wrote an article on MFC about how to use NX-D a few years ago which may help.