Basic Photography information

There are 3 main and 1 minor components to Gunpla Photography (and other forms of Photography as a
whole).

- Aperture
- ISO
- Shutter Speed
- White Balance (minor, but still important!)

Aperture – Also known as “F/Stop”, typically shown as “f/” with a number (Ex. f/1.4, f7, etc). The
Aperture controls how much or little depth is in focus around the focus point. A faster aperture (low
f/stop number) lets in more light, but also has a narrow focal region (also known as a the “Depth of
Focus” or “Depth of Field”). As the aperture is slowed down (making the f/stop number higher), the
focal region is made larger meaning more things are sharp and in focus, but less light is let in.

Faster apertures (lower F/Stop numbers) show a smaller “Focused”

area. The person in front is blurred, while the subject is sharp.

As the Aperture is slowed (F/Stop number is increased), note that

some of the pipes behind the subject are now in focus.

As the aperture is further slowed, (higher F/Stop numbers) a larger

“Focused” area is seen. Note that much of the background is now in focus.
ISO – ISO is a measure of how much artificial brightening will be added to the image. The lower the ISO,
the less light is added to the photo (the “base” number is 100), and each time you double the ISO, you
double the amount of light in the photo! Sounds great, but the catch is that it adds “Noise” to a photo,
which reduces sharpness and creates that fuzzy or grainy effect you sometimes see in photos.

You can see in the example below how in ISO 100, it’s very clear, but in the ISO 3200 side, it is extremely
noisy (fuzzy).
Shutter speed – Shutter speed is all about how fast you want to capture the world. Shutter speed
interacts closely with ISO because they both affect the amount of light being let into the camera’s
sensor.

- The faster the shutter speed, the less light will hit the sensor since it’s only open for a very short
amount of time, but the more “frozen in time” the image will look. This is great for sports and
action shots to give great details!
- The slower the shutter speed, the longer light will be able to hit the sensor, but can give images
a “ghost” like feeling. This can be taken advantage of in static photography (like Gunpla or
product photography) to make an image lighter.
White Balance
White balance is a camera setting that establishes the true color of white. This produces a baseline from
which all other colors are measured. White may not appear “white” under all lighting conditions, so this
helps correct it. White balance can be automatically determined by the camera, chosen from a list of
presets, or manually set by the user.

This plays into Colour Temperature and a bit of understanding of that is required. You can see some
visualized examples of colour temperature (measured in kelvin or “K”) below. The lighting selected for
your photography is very important, as it can affect everything! Typically the most “true” whites are
shown with 5000k to 6000k.
Gunpla / Scale Model Photography
Photographing Gunpla or other scale models is relatively simple, and you don’t need much in the way of
professional tools to get some professional looks!

You will want a few items for a 3-light setup, specifically:

- A few lights (You can do a 2 or 3 light setup. The 2-light setup is shown on the next page)
- A camera or phone capable of “pro” mode
- A tripod to hold the phone or camera (this is strongly suggested for getting sharp images)
- A background (not required, but it can add nice effect)
- The model kit or figure that you want to take photos of!

Camera setup:

1. If you’re using a phone, put it into Pro Mode, if you’re using a camera, place it into “M” or
“Manual” mode. If your phone doesn’t have a Pro Mode, then put it in portrait mode.
2. Adjust the ISO to 100. Make sure it is not on auto. Note: You can increase this up to 800 if
absolutely necessary, but anything above this will give you fuzzy
3. Adjust the Aperture to your preferred setting (remember, higher numbers mean more is in focus)
4. Adjust the shutter speed lower until the photos look how you want and take some photos! Note
that anything under 1/200 sec shutter speed you will want a tripod. If your photo is too dark,
adjust the shutter speed to be slower.

Shoot location setup:

1. Set your lights up like

shown here.
2. Your camera
placement should be
between 1 and 2.
3. Any backdrops
should be added in.
4. Take any photos you
want and adjust as
necessary.

IMPORTANT!
Always cover the light with
either a thin piece of paper
or tissue paper to prevent
direct light from hitting the
model. This will create
harsh reflections and make the model not look as good!

NOTE: If you adjust the aperture to be a higher number, ensure that you adjust the shutter speed to be
slower the same amount. For example, 3 steps higher in aperture needs 3 steps slower on shutter
speed.
Results of the 3-light method

Note that there are

very few shadows
shown so that all
details are shown.
The extra light helps
add illumination on
darker setups where
the background is
black or grey.
The background here
is a piece of black
bristol board and the
bottom is a piece of
paper with a marble
pattern printed on it.

Gunpla / Scale model photography – 1 or 2 light set up

As not everyone may have the space for a 3-point setup, this portion will describe the process of setting
up a 1 or 2-point setup.

You will want the following items:

- 2 light sources (ideally one strong one and one weaker one, but two that are the same are good)
- A camera or phone capable of “pro” mode
- A tripod to hold the phone or camera (this is strongly suggested for getting sharp images)
- A background (a white is preferrable, but not required)
- The model kit or figure that you want to take photos of!

A few optional items that will be useful, but are not required:

- Reflector (and rigid white surface like bristol board will also work)
- Clamps or magnets (to hold your reflectors or background down)
- Light Booth (these can help amplify the light of
Camera setup:

1. If you’re using a phone, put it into Pro Mode, if you’re using a camera, place it into “M” or
“Manual” mode. If your phone doesn’t have a Pro Mode, then put it in portrait mode.
2. Adjust the ISO to 100. Make sure it is not on auto. Note: You can increase this up to 800 if
absolutely necessary, but anything above this will give you fuzzy
3. Adjust the Aperture to your preferred setting (remember, higher numbers mean more is in
focus)
4. Adjust the shutter speed lower until the photos look how you want and take some photos! Note
that anything under 1/200 sec shutter speed you will want a tripod. If your photo is too dark,
adjust the shutter speed to be slower.

Shoot location set up:

1. Set up your background so

that it curves towards you
and creates a flat surface.
Secure in place if required
using clamps.
2. Place your subject in the
center of the flat surface
of your background. Fill Light
3. Set up your main light.
Your main light should be Key Light
set up closer to you,
shining towards the
subject.
4. Set up your secondary light (fill light). This light should also be off to the side, facing away from
your subject, towards the background.
5. Make any slight adjustments to your lighting, posing, or camera settings. Adjust to your
preference.

Results of the 1 or 2-light method

Key Light Only Fill Light Only Both Fill and Key Light
Example Photo Setups
Special thanks to WilliamSilly, The.Salty.Robot, and Kalapattar for the photos!
Light Booths
You can also use a Light Booth
to offer great lighting effect
with minimal lighting!

These can have a major

outcome and look amazing! As
you can see, there’s lots of light
because a light booth has
reflective surfaces and light
(typically white) backgrounds
and surfaces to bounce the light
and illuminate the model kit.

Sometimes, a little extra light

can be helpful, so it may help to
illuminate the subject better if
there is additional light at the
opening of the booth.

The light used doesn’t need to be a specific light,

just something that puts out light is fine, so even a
standard table lap works great!

As you can see from the finished photo here,

these are ideal for “Solid Background” style
photos! They provide lots of light, especially from
the top, so it’s very easy to see all the details and
have photos coming out beautiful!
Photo Editing
Now that you have your photos, it’s time to clean them up and make them the best that they can be!
This can include colour correction, cropping and sizing, and any other items that need to be completed.

There’s a lot of options available to us for photo editing, and each of them has their own pros and cons.
Typically, Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop is known as the benchmark, though it does come at the cost of
a monthly subscription.

The Sliders

There’s a few things that are key to working with photo editing
that are pretty consistent across all of the programs. These are
the slider bars. These allow you to adjust various aspects of the
photograph such as:

- Exposure, which defines how much light is in the photo.

Note that increasing the exposure will cause noise to be
produced.
- Contrast, which is the difference in brightness between
light and dark areas of an image.
- Highlights, which focuses on the brighter points of the
subject and is the parts that are highlighted by extra
light.
- Shadows, which focuses on the darker spaces in a subject and parts that may be obscured with
darkness.
- Whites, using this slider will make the bright and white spots in the photo, brighter. Note that
this affects all white spots, not just highlights. This can be helpful for making a background fully
white.
- Blacks, using this slider will make the dark and black spots in the photo, darker. Note that this
affects all black spots, not just shadows. This can be helpful for making a background fully black.

With utilizing these slides, there’s a LOT of things that can be tweaked and fixed in a photo. There is no
real right or wrong when adjusting an image, however use caution as you can easily make things look
fake if the settings go too high! The human eye is very good at detecting things that don’t seem right, so
when editing, use your gut. Zoom out and look at the whole photo and see if it matches what you see
when you look at the finished subject!

Some other commonly used sliders are for Noise Reduction and
Sharpening.

- Sharpening makes lines less smooth and more pointy. This

can help if a photo is slightly out of focus, but too much
and it will look very pixelated!
- Noise Reduction falls into two categories. Standard Noise
Reduction reduces grain from the ISO being too high. Colour Noise Reduction helps when your
camera has a hard time taking a clean photo of certain colours. This often happens on very
vibrant colours and they can look splotchy.

Examples of all these settings on the next pages

Standard Photo with no sliders used. Standard Photo with a high exposure.

Standard Photo with high contrast. Standard Photo with high Highlight.

Standard Photo with high Shadows. Standard Photo with high Whites.

NOTE: These examples simply show the sliders

going to their highest points and is only done to
give an idea of what these settings do. A lot of the
time you will want to make subtle changes, or even
decrease the sliders!

For example, if you have a very bright photo, you

may want to lower the Highlights or Whites slider
to show more details.
If you wanted a dark and brooding photo, you
could decrease the Shadows or Blacks.
Standard Photo with high Blacks.
Sharpening and Noise Reduction Examples

Standard Photo with no adjustments. Standard Photo with lots of sharpening.

Standard Photo with lots of Noise Reduction. Standard Photo with lots of Colour Noise Reduction.
Cropping
Copping a photo is another big step in presentation of something. You can take a photo and crop in.
Nearly every photo editing application out there has tools to make this easier- even ones built right into
your phone!

One trick is that most phone-cameras and dedicated cameras now take large enough photos that you
can zoom right in, so you can take a shot that’s larger and still crop in without much concern of losing
details! So experiment with it, take some photos further back and crop until you’re happy!

We’ll use this photo as an example to show cropping. Note that the photo has already been “cleaned
up” using the “Healing Brush” to remove imperfections (like the paper lines behind it).

Our photo, freshly out from using the sliders, and a some help from Adobe Lightroom’s “heal” tool
to remove the edges of the paper

Note the detail still in the photo, you can even read the decals when viewing it all the way zoomed in!
Typically, the more Megapixels (MP) a camera has, the larger the image and more details will be present.
The Cropping menu
Cropping can have a massive effect on a photo! It can be very
helpful and beneficial to do a nice crop, or in some cases
absolutely essential for a photo to fit in a certain spot- like the
Cerulean Project’s book or magazine!

Aspect Ratio
The Aspect Ratio is one of the most important things to look at
when cropping. You should know what ratio you want to use.
Different social media websites prefer different ratios.

Some common aspect ratios for social media

Instagram prefers an aspect ratio of 4:5 --

https://help.instagram.com/1631821640426723/?helpref=uf_share

Facebook prefers an aspect ratio of either 9:16 or 4:5 depending on which feature you plan to use.
https://www.facebook.com/business/help/103816146375741?id=271710926837064

Twitter prefers an aspect ratio of 2:1 and 3:4 --

https://twitter.com/TwitterSupport/status/1390039099768193026?lang=en

Aspect Ratio Choice

There are many aspect ratios to choose from, and the one you
choose will vary depending on your intended audience and oh
what platform.

For example, the “Hero” shot for the Cerulean Project’s book, is
an 11 x 8.5 ratio in landscape.

A photo for social media however is typically best posted in 4 x

5 portrait so that it fits better on a mobile device!

You can also enter custom aspect ratios. This is incredibly

useful if you need to have an image exactly a specific ratio
(like sizing an image for a book).
Tilt / Straightening
When cropping in you will also have the option to “Straighten” the photo. There is an auto feature, but
you can also grab the darkened part of the photo and manually tilt the image.

Here we have cropped the photo!

As you can see, the aspect ratio is 5x4, a

perfect size for social media.
You can also see that the angle is
somewhat tilted counter clockwise to
straighten the subject out.
The Crop Overlay is defaulted to Thirds, but
but you can play around with the
different options to find one that you
like!....
The Final Photo!
Exporting files
Once you have cropped the image,
and are ready to export it!

You can simply right click and then

select “Export 1 Photo…” then
“Export…” and a menu will pop up
on the right side of the screen.

Once the aspect ratio is correct, set the Dimensions

tab to “Custom” and then set the “Long Side” to the
pixel size required (see the cropping section’s links for
social media sizing).

Typically, this is set for 1080 pixels to avoid compression on social media or 2048 pixels if you want to
get a little fancy. For social media, it is strongly recommended to not go above 2048 pixels.
Exporting For Print
First off, congratulations! Regardless of if you’re
printing photos for yourself or being printed in a book
or magazine, it’s a huge achievement to put photos to
have one of your projects put into print! With that said,
we really want to get these photos looking their best
for this special occasion! DPI and Size (both Image and
file size) become very important to get a good photo!

DPI – Print resolution is measured in dots per inch (or

“DPI”) which means the number of dots of ink per inch
that a printer deposits on a piece of paper. So, 300 DPI
means that a printer will output 300 tiny dots of ink to
fill every inch of the print. 300 DPI is the standard print
resolution for high resolution output. This is also called
PPI (Pixels Per Inch) in Adobe Lightroom.

Image size – This represents the physical size and

resolution of an image measured in pixels. For
example, A 10 megapixel (MP) camera may provide
settings to take pictures in 10.2 MP (3872 x 2592), 5.6
MP (2896 x 1944), and 2.5 MP (1936 x 1296). A higher image size setting means a larger picture and
bigger file size. A lower image size setting makes a smaller picture and smaller file size. Depending on
your camera or phone, there may be different sizes available.

File size – This is the amount of space that the image file takes up on your memory card, or internal
memory if your camera has one. It is measured in megabytes. The actual file size depends on the image
size and image quality settings selected on the camera.
When printing, it is often best to output in the highest quality available to you! When looking at a photo,
you can view the properties and view these. Typically, the printer will ask you to submit your photos in a
certain size, and give you the image size in inches, centimeters of pixels.

Bleed - Bleed refers

to an extra 1/8”
(0.125 in) of image
or background color
that extends beyond
the trim area of your
printing piece. The
project is printed on
an oversized sheet
that is then cut
down to size with
the appearance that
the image is
“bleeding” off the
edge of the paper.

Make sure that you leave some extra room on the edges, so your subject doesn’t get cut off!
Exporting for the Cerulean Project Book

Detail 1
4.7”h x 5.5”w

Hero
8.5” High x 11” Wide
Detail 2
3.75”h x 5.5”w

Hero
- Image Size in the book: 8.5" high x 11" wide
o Note: 1/8” bleed on the top, bottom, and side.
- Custom Aspect Ratio: 8.75 x 11.125 (see below)
- Export the Long Side in inches as 11.125
- Ensure that the Resolution is set to 300 ppi

Detail 1
- Image Size in the book: 4.7" high x 5.5" wide
o Note: 1/8” bleed on the top.
- Custom Aspect Ratio: 4.825x5.5 (see below)
- Export the Long Side in inches as 11.125
- Ensure that the Resolution is set to 300 ppi

Detail 2
- Image Size in the book: 3.75" high x 5.5" wide
o Note: 1/8” bleed on the bottom.
- Custom Aspect Ratio: 3.825x5.5 (see below)
- Export the Long Side in inches as 11.125
- Ensure that the Resolution is set to 300 ppi
Example of what the book will look like with the text and photos imported:

Exporting for the Cerulean Project Magazine

Image Size in the magazine:
- 5.5" high x 8.5" wide
Note: 1/8” bleed on the height and width
Custom Aspect Ratio: 5.625 x 8.625
Export the Long Side in inches as 8.625
Ensure that the Resolution is set to 300 ppi