Photographing Miniatures with Smart Phones

[Death]

Hello All, what is everyone using to photograph their figs?

Obviously a DSLR is probably the best but with all the new upgraded smart phone cameras I imagine they do a good job of taking pics for instagram and online. Especially since the instagram app is on the phone and there is no shuffling of the pics between memory cards and the computer.

I was thinking of buying an iphone7 that has a 12 MP camera with 1.8 aperature.  Any use one or an older model for their photos?  I am trying to find a less intense camera since the phone costs a lot even compared to a dslr camera. Thanks for any input!

[Lord Raglan]

A shitty galaxy s6 from work, worst phone I have ever had 

[fred]

I used to use a DSLR for photographing minis, but it was a lot of effort to setup. Which meant I didn’t take that many photos. I have been using iPhones for several years to take photos of minis, and they work great. I have used a few different models over time, 3S, 6 and XR, the newer one has always been better than the old one.

You certainly don’t need the newest iPhone just to take photos of figures, any of the more recent ones will do.

More light always helps - I often use a piece of white card underneath the camera to bounce a bit of light back onto the figures. I have a cheap small light box which I sometimes use, and this definitely helps. I have found phone cameras struggle with white backgrounds - tending to under-expose significantly, using a dark or mid-tone background definitely helps the camera get the light settings right. 

[sundayhero]

Personaly I'm using a cheap used camera I bought for about 20euros. Macro mode, all settings can be changed by hand or kept automatic. Zoom is optical.

Smartphones are usually OK for work in progress pictures, but for final pics it's often not that good.

Here's an example of bad night light pic of WIP small scale (20mm) figures, taken with my cheap camera.

[Cubs]

I use an old (but very nice) camera, a Fuji Finepix S4500. It only has 14mp, but it does the job - I use a tripod, stick in on SR-AUTO setting and it does the rest. I used to fiddle about with the settings to try to get the perfect shot, but to be honest the camera is better at that than me, so I stick it on auto nowadays, put it on a 2sec timer and let it go. I'm guessing you can get tripods for phones as well, so it should work in a similar way.

My 'studio' for photos is a big A3 sheet of black paper lightly sprayed with white paint to give a gentle cloudy effect, blu-tacked up against the wall at one end, then curving down gently and blu-tacked onto the table at the other end. The models sit on this and it gives a nice smooth foggy background. If there is too much light coming in the window making unwelcome shines, I hold up a sheet of paper to block the direct light whilst the photo is taken. 

Example below -