How to Photograph Painted Miniatures With What You Already Own

Most miniature photos fail for the same three reasons: one hard light source directly above, a background pressed right up behind the model, and the camera looking down from above instead of level with it.

Fix the setup, not the photo

Editing cannot recover detail that the lighting flattened. Getting the light positions and camera height right at the point of shooting does more than any amount of adjustment afterwards, and it costs nothing.

Plan it before you set up

The photography setup planner works out light positions, how far back the background should sit, camera angle and framing for either a phone or a camera, and gives you a printable shot checklist to work through.

The background is half the result

Distance is not the only thing that matters — tone does too. The colour-scheme and backdrop matcher picks a backdrop that gives your scheme enough contrast to survive a lens. And a model sitting at a sensible height on a display stand is far easier to shoot level than one flat on a desk.

Free, no sign-up. The rest are on the tools page.