the setup / Shoot your miniature scene
1 The backdrop
We used an array of old books placed on a vintage writing desk as a backdrop for our project. Books are a good choice as you can scatter them around the frame, but you could also set up any kind of miniature scene you like – so don’t be afraid to get creative!
Tripod
A tripod isn’t essential, but it frees your hands to perfect the composition and gives you the option to drop your shutter speed, use a low ISO, and vary your aperture – helpful for shooting with weak light from a tungsten lamp.
2 Posing doll
A small posing doll not only aids us in visualizing the finished image and perfecting the composition, it also casts realistic shadows that we can use later on in our composite image. A small artist’s posing doll like this is ideal, but you could also use a toy action figure.
Camera settings
Use any camera mode you like. But if you’re using a tungsten lamp, like us, it’s likely you’ll need to get set up for a long exposure, which means using a cable release or self-timer to prevent shake. We’re in Manual at 2 secs, f/9, ISO100.
3 Lamp
We’re using a regular tungsten desk lamp to light our scene. We’ve positioned the light behind and to the left here, which gives us atmospheric backlighting. We also placed a second, weaker, lamp near to the camera position, to provide a little fill light.
Focus distance
We used a wide angle of 24mm for our shot, which exaggerates the perspective. When the camera is this close to the subject (we’re at minimum focusing distance here) then depth of field can be quite narrow, even at higher f-numbers.