Re: Lead Painters' League Photography

[NurgleHH]

You should also give some points for the quality of the pictures. Some pictures are really terrible! 

[Plynkes]

But that is something subjective, and not easy to quantify along the same lines as "Does this conform to the theme?" or "Is this a new team?"

Anyway, I think that already gets reflected in the votes they receive. There is at least one match this round where the paint-jobs don't seem too far apart quality-wise, but the photography badly lets one of them down and it really shows in the difference in votes they've got.

[Ray Rivers]

Taking photos of your minis is almost an art in itself, with quite a steep learning curve.

The League encourages folks to push their skills to new frontiers, and that includes photography.

As such, points for photo quality would be inappropriate.

[Heldrak]

You should also give some points for the quality of the pictures. Some pictures are really terrible! 

Without straying into the perjorative, we do seem to have a lot of problematic photographs in round 2 - Blurry, or underlit/overlit, or having white balance problems. Personally, I found Orctrader's tutorial very helpful in improving the quality of my photography:

http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=6052.0

[Blue in vt]

thanks for the link heldrak!!

Very helpful.

Blue

[NurgleHH]

Sorry, but sometimes bad pictures won the round... And there are very objectiv things in voting the quality of photography, Sharpness, Light, and so on

[Orctrader]

...I found Orctrader's tutorial very helpful in improving the quality of my photography:

http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=6052.0

Good to know it was helpful.   

It's actually on my Website - LINK

I hope to update it in the not too distant future.  Using a different camera now as my Coolpix "died."  A Finepix S1500.  More manual control.

I don't think anyone should be penalised specifically for "bad" photos or rewarded for "good."  Who is to judge?  (Though mine, of course, are "good"     But always looking to improve.)

[Captain Blood]

I've split this topic (photography) out from the rules thread, in case more people would like to comment on things to do with taking pictures in general, in reference to the LPL.

It's certainly true that the LPL is as much as a photography competition as a painting competition. There are people who say every time that it shouldn't be so, but it is, unavoidably. Yes, it helps if you are good at painting, but there are plenty of good painters whose presentations are let down by photography, and equally, some perhaps less good painters who have nonetheless managed to compose and shoot a really good picture.

The thing that I've noticed (and I'm not sure it's any different from previous LPLs to be honest) is not just a few fuzzy and less than perfectly focused pictures, but that composition could often be better. I'd advise anyone who (even occasionally) takes pics of their figures to acquire some basic picture editing software (nearly all PCs and cameras come with something) and practice cropping your shots to put your subject in the middle, and get rid of extraneous surroundings 

[Flashman14]

Google's free Picasa has been terrific. Many the problems I've seen over the last two rounds are easy fixes with it. In changing computers I lost whatever editor I had before and Picasa was a much better improvement on it and again it's free and non intrusive.

[Calimero]

... Anyway, I think that already gets reflected in the votes they receive. There is at least one match this round where the paint-jobs don't seem too far apart quality-wise, but the photography badly lets one of them down and it really shows in the difference in votes they've got.

That’s so true.

I’ve sold a lot of painted figures during the past 2 or 3 years and I often received the comment that they look “better in the flesh”… No matter how I try I can’t take a picture that reflect the actual color of the figure. I’ve said it before, my photo skills seem to get from bad to worst… to a point were I’m starting to wonder if the quality of the pictures a numeric camera can take goes down as time past.

[Bugsda]

Taken circa 2005 with £350 worth of brand new Nikon Coolpix



Taken last year with a £40 secondhand Fuji Finepix S5700 + pukka light bulbs and thousands of hours of practice and experiment.

And compared to Capt Blood or Frank I'm crap at it

The moral is if you ain't got any latent talent practice and copy other people

[Heldrak]

Here's a question for the forum-

I'm usually pretty on top of my lighting, framing, focus, color balance, cropping, etc., but one thing I have problems with is maintaining image quality when reducing pictures to the dimensions required for the contest, Any suggestions?

[Bugsda]

I've got Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0 it does all that for you, just click "save for web" and type in 800 pixels wide and Bob's your uncle.

[Heldrak]

I've got Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0 it does all that for you, just click "save for web" and type in 800 pixels wide and Bob's your uncle.

Thanks, I do have Adobe Photoshop (although I freely admit I have almost no idea how to use it...  ). What about the new requirement limiting entries to 500 Kb in size?

[D@rth J@ymZ]

I also happen to be using Photoshop Elements 2.0...

You can set the file size when saving images to maintain a certain quality with Photoshop.  It will ask you for a 1-12 "Quality" rating when saving the file, regardless of image size.  For an 800x800 image, a '10' Quality file is about 500kB (although that depends on the size of the initial file that you are saving which will be larger for composite entry photos of for cameras with higher megapixel sizes - mine is only about 5 megapixels)