Photographing your minis

When I'm not working for a living or playing 40k I take photographs, a lot of photographs! Mostly portraits, weddings, families and business, but, thanks to this game, I also dabble in a little product photography. So I thought I'd share my set up with you and give you some ideas on what you can do to get great looking photographs with a point-and-shoot and a couple of desk lamps.

Firstly, here's how I set up the lighting for the shots of the Helldrake featured in last week's post and my update on 40K Global's site:

It's a two light set up with my main light firing through a white umbrella at 45 degrees to the lens. My second light is set up roughly head-on to the main light, through the built in diffuser, at half the power of the main light. To fill in the shadows, I've got a reflector set-up to catch some of the second light and throw it back on to the front of the model. I'm using an 80-200mm zoom lens so I can get nice and close, and the camera is set up at f11 and 1/200th shutter, everything is synced via radio triggers. At that speed I could have gotten away with hand-holding but a Tripod is always a good idea to ensure the final image is as sharp as possible.

That's a lot of fairly expensive kit just to get a photograph of a £40 model but you can get pretty much identical results with a point-and-shoot camera and a couple of desk lamps. The only thing you'd really need is a tripod or some way to stabilise the camera as you'll need a longer shutter speed to compensate for the fact that the table lamps are going to be far less powerful than photographic lights.

To set this up you'll want to set the lamps up in the same way as the flashes are set in the photograph above but they'll need to be much closer to the model. You may want to diffuse the light from the lamps otherwise you'll get shadows on the model which will hide details. A simple way to do this is to hang a thin white cloth in front of the lamps, however the lights are hot and cloth can be flammable so be careful! An alternative to this could be to rough up a piece of clear plastic with some sandpaper, slightly more work but far less flammable and it'll give you the same result. Lastly for the light set-up you can substitute the reflector with a piece of tin foil.

As for the camera set-up you'll need to make sure the on camera flash is turned off. If you have manual controls on the camera you want as small an aperture as you can, f11-16 will be fine. You'll have to experiment with shutter speed to get the right exposure, depending on the amount of light your lamps are throwing onto the model. However shutter speed shouldn't matter as you'll be stabilising you camera to take the photograph so an exposure of a second or more shouldn't be an issue. If your camera doesn't have manual controls I suggest you put it into landscape mode that should get you roughly the right settings.

I hope that's at least a little helpful, if there's anything on this subject you'd like more info on, let me know.

Age of Armies - Month 1: Helldrake - DONE!

Khorne Helldrake - DONE!

It's the end of the first month of 40K Global's Age of Armies Campaign and I'm pleased to say that I completed my commitment to paint a Helldrake and I got my first experience with an airbrush. I've already posted about the technique I used to paint the Helldrake (here) so I thought that I'd give you my first impressions on using the airbrush to accompany the pictures of the finished product.

Quick Tips

There are a couple of tricks which you're not going to be able to get from any research you do before buying an airbrush. Firstly, correctly thinning your paint is not easy and takes a little while to get right ... and then you need to change colours and you have to thin the next one! I will say that I've found the Vallejo Air paints are about the right consistency straight out of the bottle but they do tend to dry fairly quickly in the brush. This causes clogs and will have you cleaning the brush a bit more often than you probably want. Thinning the paint with a drop of water mixed with "Flow Release" 9/1 seems to solve the problem nicely.

Secondly before you blow trigger air through the brush you absolutely must spary onto scrap paper otherwise you'll blow whatever residue is left in the nozzle or on the needle all over your model. I've done this in a few places on the Helldrake and it's bugs the hell out of me!

Give it a Blow

On the whole I really like using the airbrush, it's far more precise a tool than I thought it would be but it also takes exactly as much practice to use well as I thought it would. As such I'm expecting that my next attempt at a Helldrake (a few months down the line) will look noticeably better than this one.

If you're on the fence about getting one I would say that if you do a reasonable amount of painting, and can afford to, it's worth giving it a go. Once you see the results you can get you'll want to use it on as much as you can. I know I do. I'll be painting up two Khorne Bezerker units and a lord on a Juggernaught next month and I'll be using my airbrush at least for base colouring and applying some basic shadows and highlights.

On with the Show

Anyway, enough of that, here are the pictures of the Helldrake, please let me know what you think in the comments below.

Baleflamer detail.

Baby got back!

Flame pattern detail.

Top down.

Parting shot.

BOLS and Faiet212 MIA

Just a quick one to spread the word.

In case you're in the dark over the sudden disappearance of BOLS and Faiet212 you can find out more over at Blood Claw who, as far as I'm aware has the scoop!

Troubling times.

Armageddon It!

I've decided to take the plunge and organise a club campaign. I've coerced five others to join in with me, giving us six players in total to recreate the first war of Armageddon.

The first war of Armageddon, for those not in the know, was the conflict between the defending Imperial forces and the marauding Khorne Legions, led by Angry Ron, the Daemon Primarch of the World Eaters. In our game, we have the following forces:

Squat Guard (me)
IG / Terminator Marines ( John H)
Eldar (Graham W)

Khorne Daemons & CSMs (Andy)
Orks (Daryl)
Necrons (Duncs)

The campaign will be every man for himself - a six-way fight for control of Hive-City Anthrand, an Imperial manufactorum to the east of Armageddon Prime, the main continental land-mass on the planet. Floating above the planet is the warp-twisted Space-Hulk classified as the Abominous, from which the forces of Chaos have descended.  

We join the action in the early stages of the war. The six armies are spread over the plains surrounding the Hive-City, and also engaged in skirmishes aboard the space-hulk Abominous. The theatre of war is divided up into jungle areas, desert, rough land, a space-port and of course the Hive-City itself. Scenery and terrain will be selected according to the area being contested - for example, jungle battles will be fought on densely-packed forest boards, whilst desert battles feature great expanses of open ground with only the occasional patch of low cover to hide the warring armies. Control of the Space-Hulk will be determined by a series of engagements to be fought in a Zone Mortalis board.

The six players begin the campaign by taking turns selecting territories. In this way, players can choose the boards whose terrain best suits their style of play and the strengths of their army. Then, the war will be divided into a series of campaign rounds, each comprising one game per player. In each round, the players will have the opportunity to challenge one other opponent for control of one of their territories.

Will you go all-out to lay claim to the Hive-City immediately?

Or will you build slowly, strategically claiming control of the space-port and Space-Hulk, using the special rules these territories provide you to claim victory in the long war?

In the War for Armageddon, only one thing is for sure. The road to Hive-City Anthrand will be long, and littered with the broken armies of all but one victorious warlord!

Best 40K Cosplay Ever!!

Just a little insomnia fueled blog post here to update you on my Helldrake progress and to share a pretty amazing piece of Cosplay I just spotted via Kotaku.

OMG!!!

Firstly this has to be the best attempt at a Terminator suit I've ever seen and extra props go out to Roses & Boltshells for keeping it Imperial Fists! Love it! Check out the Kotaku article (there's a video of the suit in action too) or visit Roses & Boltshells on their Facebook site.

The burning question.

I had a great game against Grazer yesterday at Warhammer World. Dave (Smokey D) was also there having a great time playing  a 200pts Kill Team campaign, but I'm sure he'll want to talk about that himself!

I lost my game, but it was an interesting test of my daemons. This time I played a 80/20 Tzeentch/Khorne list to try some combinations out. I won to go first, so I plonked my army down ready to do fly all the big stuff 24" and everything else between 12"-18". As we had rolled Hammer & Anvil this would have put my right in Grazer's face ready to do some big monstrous creature punching of his tanks.

However, he stole the initiative and so he proceeded to hurl ordnance and a mass of Str 5-7 weaponry at me. I lost a Soul Grinder and took a collection of wounds but most of my big stuff stayed in the air through my 'magic' dice. He had vendettas in reserve which scared me more.

On my turn I got a lot closer to him and fired a reasonable amount of (mostly psychic) shooting at him. I took at least one chimera down, but more importantly I would be within range for next turn. Also, my troops started to deep strike now and were in good positions.

Turn 2 was a turning point for me. Most of Grazer's shooting was ineffective although a couple of my big dudes were down to one wound now. This helped even out the battle somewhat, and over the next few turns I started to work my way through his tanks and infantry. I took his vendettas down on turn 5/6 if I remember right.

I didn't however win though. I grabbed the relic on turn 4, but he hauled up a Chimera and unloaded a squad which overwhelmed the 3 horrors defending. On turn 6 I blasted them off it again, leaving the relic undefended. In fact at the end of turn 6 Grazer had a solitary Storm-Trooper Squat left, I had about 10 troops, some flamers, an immobilised Soul Grinder and a Tzeentch chariot remaining.

But I lost on points in the end, a good game though and I'm really starting to get a handle on my army now.

I discussed with Grazer the possibility of a house rule on my Burning Chariot of Tzeentch. If you search the interwebz, you'll know all about the controversy surrounding the heavy weapons on the rider. It means you can't move and fire. Normally as a fast skimmer it would be able to fire 12" and fire both weapons, but I think the intention is that it can move 12" and fire ONE weapon. Until this is FAQ'ed I'm going to suggest that we play it where it can move 6" and fire ONE weapon or move flat-out and fire none. This seems a reasonable compromise between RAW and RAI.

Other than that, I'm loving Kairos. He (it?!) isn't as powerful as before, but he's a LOT more fun to play!

AoA Khorne List – 1st Play-Test

Grazer offered to give me a game this Thursday and was happy for me to proxy my little heart out to try out a Khorne CSM/Daemons list I’d been thinking about for the Age of Armies project. So, I’ll just dive straight into the list (and the proxies!):

Chaos Space Marines (Primary)

HQ
Chaos Lord (Mark of Khorne, Axe of Blind Fury, Juggernaught) (Carnifex)

TROOP
Khorne Bezerkers (x8 w. Rhino) (Assault Marines & Rhino)
Khorne Bezerkers (x8 w. Rhino) (Assault Marines & Rhino)
Cultists (x15, Sgt w. Shotgun) (Grazer’s own Squats!)

FAST ATTACK
Helldrake (Baleflamer) (Winged Hive Tyrant)
Helldrake (Baleflamer) (Winged Hive Tyrant)
Chaos Spawn (x5, Mark of Khorne) (Raveners)

HEAVY SUPPORT
Maulerfiend (Tervigon)

Chaos Daemons (Ally)

HQ
Bloodthirster (Swarmlord)

TROOP
Bloodletters (x10) (Genestealers)

FAST ATTACK
Flesh Hounds (x8) (Various 40mm Nids)

HEAVY SUPPORT
Soul Grinder (Trygon)