weird color issues

[Mercius]

I have been getting a lot of feedback lately on my miniatures that my highlights are not high enough...while this is undoubtably true, my highlights are coming across in the photos I take much less bright and "poppy" as they do in the hand. For instance, at the moment I am working on a dwarf slayer. I basecoated his hair and beard with a deep crimson, then highlighted up to a bright orange and cream mix in about 7 different layers. In the hand the hair really pops out at you when you look at the mini, just like a slayer's hair should....however when I photo the slayer his hair looks deep red, with a slight highlight of a brighter red. I can't see any orange in the hair at all, it is as if it vanished...when I showed my wife the pictures she was amazed at how much variation there wa between the miniature and the photos.

 

So my prediciment is, what causes this, is it a camera issue? Is it an issue with my lighting?

 

I am wondering if it has anything to do with the lighting because when I take pictures outside in the sun, the hair still shows up and 1-3 different shades of red, with no orange. Is it a camera issue? is there some unknown setting that needs to be tweaked? I am using a Canon Rebel XT DS126071 which I brought brand new 2 years ago, it is an SLR and is supposed to be a very nice camera, granted I am a complete noob with cameras. If you guys could offer any insight or help I would be much appreciative as I feel that my painting is MUCH better than my photos are showing off. Thanks in advance and have a great day!

[Spike]

Do you have any photos of the dwarf slayer you mentioned? Also, what sorts of bulbs are you using?

 

I looked at the photos you've put in Showoff, and they all seem pretty well white-balanced and fully saturated. The only thing that might be "wrong" is that your contrast seems kind of high. That is, the shadow areas are so dark that the areas you would naturally not highlight are even more in the dark, therefore your effort to shade is in part lost.

 

It seems you like to light your minis from almost straight above. Try adding some fill light from the front or sides...or both.

 

Also, if the XTi is like the XSi, you can go into your menu mode (same place you go to set white balance) and customize a picture style with lowered contrast.

[Mercius]

I kind of fixed the color issue, playing with my camera settings...the contrast is high because I only have one light, so I am taking pics with the light directly above...being unemplyed I don't have a lot of money to spend on lights, and my light box is a home made one with cardboard and vellum.

[Doug Sundseth]

First, the sharpness of shadows depends on the apparent size of the light source illuminating the object. (For an excellent example of this, take a look at this car photo and its accompanying article). When the sun is shining directly on an object, it subtends 32' minutes (just under 1/2 degree) of arc.

 

If you are taking pictures in the usual sort of cheap softbox (like the one in this article), your light source subtends something like 170 degrees. The much larger angle effectively eradicates almost all cast shadows. This leaves only the painted shadows on the figure for contrast. If those aren't strong enough, that will show up particularly well in that light.

 

Second, tungsten light is much more yellow than sunlight. If you are using tungsten bulbs, you'll lose some contrast in yellows and oranges relative to what you would seen in direct sunlight (or even more so in shade).

 

That said, it's almost certainly not your camera, which is a bit old, but is a fine body for any sort of photography. You can take a look at the white balance settings on the camera, you can play with levels and curves in Photoshop, you can change your lighting color ... if you are using automatic white balancing, you can even change your background color. Each of these will have a significant effect on the photo you get. (And most of them only cost time to play with.)

 

I will say that I highly recommend Strobist, the blog that I linked twice above. If you want to understand color balancing and lighting for digital photography, you would be hard pressed to do better than starting with the Lighting 101 and Lighting 102 series there.

 

If you have examples, especially examples taken in different lighting conditions, I might be able to help a bit more. If not, I hope this helped.