Shooting Miniatures *NEED ADVICE/TIPS*

[Michael Townley]

Have a commercial shoot coming up next week that involves shooting a game of chess. Director wants the chess set to appear as if its in a large room and the board and pieces are 2-3ft tall. I've done quite a bit of research regarding DOF being very important when shooting scaled objects.

Does anyone have any advice/ tips as to what I can do differently, avoid, ect???

My Plan:

They are building a custom chess set/board that will be slightly larger than a normal set. The set will be on a table top that is the exact dimension as the board.
-I suggested to build 3 wall flats that will sit about 5-6ft back from the chess table (the walls will be movable so we can adjust accordingly) The walls will be 4ft wide and 6ft tall.
-I will be lighting mostly from overhead with a few sources from the sides.
-there will be a slight haze over set.

-a hand model will be moving the pieces as we go through the scenes. the shots will be a mix of closeups, slo mo, overhead, sweeps.


I will be shooting on a RED EPIC. I thought it best to have the camera on a Chapman Dolly the entire day to save time of setups.

My Questions:

-What is the best way to approach lens choices for shooting miniatures?
-How much light do we really need if I plan on shooting at say an f16 (Is there correct math for choosing the best aperture when shooting miniatures to get the correct DOF?)
-Will the walls act as a proper background for this project, making it feel as if we are in a giant room?
-Will the chess pieces look bigger than average?

Looking forward to hearing your advice and answers.

M

 

[David Kuhn]

I've done quite a bit of macro stills work (and a tiny bit of macro video)... DOF is a big pita - it's either razor shallow or you're fighting the diffraction limit of the optics. With stills work you can use focus stacking to give you much better control of your DOF, and if that's possible (depending on how much motion there is in your shot or if the motion is computer controlled) then it might be an option.

Re-reading what you're doing - focus stacking clearly won't work... too much non-repeatable motion.

 

[Mark Wuerthner]

Have a commercial shoot coming up next week that involves shooting a game of chess. Director wants the chess set to appear as if its in a large room and the board and pieces are 2-3ft tall. I've done quite a bit of research regarding DOF being very important when shooting scaled objects.

Does anyone have any advice/ tips as to what I can do differently, avoid, ect???

My Plan:

They are building a custom chess set/board that will be slightly larger than a normal set. The set will be on a table top that is the exact dimension as the board.
-I suggested to build 3 wall flats that will sit about 5-6ft back from the chess table (the walls will be movable so we can adjust accordingly) The walls will be 4ft wide and 6ft tall.
-I will be lighting mostly from overhead with a few sources from the sides.
-there will be a slight haze over set.

-a hand model will be moving the pieces as we go through the scenes. the shots will be a mix of closeups, slo mo, overhead, sweeps.


I will be shooting on a RED EPIC. I thought it best to have the camera on a Chapman Dolly the entire day to save time of setups.

My Questions:

-What is the best way to approach lens choices for shooting miniatures?
-How much light do we really need if I plan on shooting at say an f16 (Is there correct math for choosing the best aperture when shooting miniatures to get the correct DOF?)
-Will the walls act as a proper background for this project, making it feel as if we are in a giant room?
-Will the chess pieces look bigger than average?

Looking forward to hearing your advice and answers.

M

I am not sure exactly what you are trying to do, but if its a fake/forced perspective kind of thing (to make the chess pieces appear to be huge) then that is kind of tricky. You have to fake the size of things by having known sized objects either large or small in relation to each other. As soon as the hand model grabs the chess piece you will instantly know the size of the piece in relation to her hand, thus taking away the sense that the chess pieces are large. Without the hand if you built flats that were on a small scale and put them in the back you might be able to make the pieces look large. To answer your questions:
-use wide lenses, 18-25mm usually
-tons of light. You need a lot of depth of field to make a miniature look big. Shallow depth of field gives away the sense of size. T11 will probably be fine, but remember you need more light for slo-mo
-the wall have to be small in order for the chess pieces to look big. Its all relative. Buy dollhouse furniture and/or a doll house. Test with actual camera/lens if you can.

You probably want to shoot with a borescope lens thing something like the Frazier or Innovision etc.
http://www.innovision-optics.com/prod/hdprobe.shtml
The borescope allow you to get down low and in between things easily, especially if you want to dolly around the chess board. They can also focus insanely close, which a lot of regular lenses can't. Oh yeah, find a 2 year old hand model. Good luck.

 

[Enrique Blein]

Maybe a GoPro 4 and a midget?