Photographing Lego

[Andi]

Since about a year I have a Nikon D90. I get wonderful pictures with it, in every situation, in every light.
But why can't I manage to make a decent Lego photo with it without having to use an external flash?

[buriedbybricks]

I'm still working on mastering shooting my LEGO too, but I don't use an on camera flash at all because I use hot lights on either side and from above. It's a lot easier to control the glare and shadowing, especially if you have a light box.

Something like this:


Or check this out here:


Ace sent me the link to the second one and it worked well, until I got a cheap light box.

[Andi]

And how would you put the Death Star into such a light tent?
Or your complete Minfig collection?

It's not so much the small, or the little details - for this I use my macro lens, and then blurriness around is wanted.
It's more the bigger things - the overviews, the collection shelfs, the groups of minifigs etc.
Without external flash it gets blurry and terrible colors.
It's enough to flash the flash on the top, in an angle of maybe 5-10 Degree. But it is needed, without the photos get blurry, look terrible.
Strangely my small Sony W-55 makes good photos in this situations, without using any flash

[buriedbybricks]

I have a 3' x 3' tent so most MOCs fit in it and if I build something that won't fit then I just move the lights out as much as needed and diffuse them like the person in the first pic did, sans tent.

I don't display LEGO, so shooting large display shelves and the like hasn't and most likely won't come up for me.

I'm strictly a build, shoot, destroy, rinse, repeat kind of guy.

[ie10421]

I'm very much an amateur, but for large collection photo, I would use a tripod, longer exposure (up to several seconds), use the timer function if you don't have a remote (avoids camera shake when pressing the shutter button), use a small aperture (higher F number), and the lowest ISO possible. Using a low F-stop number will allow more light, but causes lack of sharpness. High ISO's cause "noise", that would potentially be the "blurryness" you see when zoomed in. Also, if your lens has Image stabilization, turn it off when shooting on the tripod. There are in general 3 technical parts to a photo, How much light the lens let's in (Aperture or F-Stop), How long the light is let in (Exposure or shutter speed), and how the sensitive the "film" is to the light (ISO). For the sharpest photo's you want a very still camera, high F-stop number (less light), a very low ISO (less sensitive), and then adjust the exposure to be long enough to make the picture turn out the correct brightness. Again, I am very much an amateur and just learning all this myself, but there are many good websites and books out there.