A baby step into figure photography

I love looking at photographs of anime figures but I've never tried to take any nice photos myself. First, I felt I didn't have the necessary equipment. Second, I didn't have any knowhow and didn't know where to start. But I've recently become the reluctant owner of a DSLR (Nikon D200) and trying to learn how to use it was the impetus for me to go read the tutorials over at HappySoda. This post shows a preliminary attempt to apply super rats' write-up on figure lighting.

Overhead lighting used an ancient National FPL27EX-N inverter desk lamp at 27W. Diffuser made using tracing paper and the RightStuf box in which my MariMite Season Two and Aria Season One boxsets were delivered in, bought a Philips desklight from Best Denki for SGD 39.90 but the bulb was only 11W (60W output, Cool Daylight, 6500K). At this point I am still using my Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX7 as the D200 is just too daunting - currently reading the manual and trying to figure out how to get stuff into focus.

Overhead lighting only and flash. I would have been perfectly satisfied with this last week but now I'm just seeing how dark Shiki's shadow in the background was. And the plasticky texture of her hair.

But, ah well, at least the one above was in focus. But the softer distribution of light, even without a reflector, gave me a much more pleasant feeling about the photo. Still not a decent photo but I hope to build on this experiment, to learn from it and from the advice and experiences of others.

Related posts:

1. A four-choose-two figure dilemma
2. What would an ideal figure display be?
3. April figure haul