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MINIATURE WARGAMES 33

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Ah, the shame! A photo taken by the Editor in the stygian gloom of Kelham Hall during The Other Partizan, September 2007. Can even this be saved?

Wargames photographyThe Editor returns to a subject previously raised in issue 361, because he’s received so many requests for advice in the interim! Here then is the start of a mini-series providing more top tips for getting the best results from your hobby snapping.

Master your digital camera or phone: part 1

Back in issue 361, I wrote quite a lengthy piece about digital photography for wargamers. It covered pretty much all aspects of taking pictures for use either on your own blog, Facebook or Flickr feed, as well as the extra

requirements for printed publications. I also gave some advice about choosing a suitable camera or, indeed, smartphone to give you the best possible chance of getting great pictures. But most importantly, I laid down some principles, the “Five Rules for Perfect Pictures”:• Lighting• Focus• Depth of Field• Composition• Output

Well, I’ve had more positive feedback about that article than almost anything else I’ve ever done! But I’ve also had a huge number of queries, asking me to expand on that advice and provide more in-depth information. So, this will be a short series, sometimes covering more than one of those principles in a single issue, but occasionally, as now, devoting more space to a single one of the ‘rules’, such as now, as we begin with by far the most important of all.

LIGHTINGPoor lighting makes taking decent photos virtually impossible. This is a particular challenge for wargamers, because the vast majority of our images are taken indoors. As a result, unless the miniatures or game are set up inside a light and airy artist’s studio, with white walls and professional, colour-neutral photographic lighting, you are already going to be facing problems before you’ve even pressed the shutter.

The first problem is that the room is likely to be too dark. There are a number of ways in which a digital camera compensates for lack of light:• It increases the exposure time. The corollary to this is an

increased risk of camera shake. With a ‘proper’ camera, you can overcome this by using a tripod. With a mobile phone, or if you’re holding the camera in your hand, it’s much more tricky. It really helps if you are, at the very least, holding

your camera in both hands, rather than just one, and close to your body, rather than teetering at arm’s length.

• It switches to a different ISO rating. In the old days, when cameras actually had film in them (remember that?), you used to purchase film according to it’s ISO or ASA rating, which indicated the film’s sensitivity to light. A lower speed index – say ISO 100 – requires more exposure to light to produce the same image density as a more sensitive film – say ISO 800. But the reduction of exposure corresponding to use of higher sensitivities generally leads to reduced image quality (via coarser film grain or higher image noise). In short, the darker the room, and the higher the sensitivity auto-selected by the camera, the grainier the image will be. Higher film speed ratings have always been useful for recording fast-moving scenes – typically, sporting events and some wildlife photography – but we wargamers tend to get the best out of the lower ratings of ISO 100 or perhaps 200. Very occasionally, I might deliberately choose to push this to 400. My iPhone camera, whilst pretty amazing in many repects, does not allow me to manually select the ISO rating, though this can be done by downloading additional apps such as 645 Pro. My Fuji S7000 and now my new S4500 on the other hand, do permit me to select the ISO rating, as will any good bridge or full SLR camera.

• It uses flash. We talked about the use of a flash previously. It has one enormous drawback: it tends to ‘blitz’ the scene, completely washing out the foreground and plunging the background into tomb-like darkness. Many cameras have

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made improvements for portrait photography, introducing ‘anti red-eye’ systems, which fire the flash twice in quick succession: the first burst makes the sitter’s pupils contract, and then the photo is actually taken on the second flash a fraction of a second later. Great for eliminating an image of all those blood vessels inside the eye; utterly useless for wargamers!So, how do we go about putting the odds back in our favour?

• Use a tripod. I’ve already mentioned this, but it’s worth re-stating. You don’t need to buy a large, expensive, one. You can pick up a decent tripod for around a tenner on Amazon or eBay or other specialist sites. It helps to have two: a ‘normal’ tripod for setting up around the edge of a wargames table; and a small, ‘mini’ tripod for placing your camera in amongst

the action (but always ask for permission first!). A popular type is the ‘gorilla’, which has arms you can bend into all sorts of contortions to conform with uneven terrain, or the ‘bean bag’ shown here. And yes, there are now umpteen tripods, or tripod mountings, available for iPhones and other mobile devices. I just saw one on Amazon for under a fiver.

• Use something to reflect available light back into the scene. This can be as simple as a piece of white paper, your own clothing (remember the white shirt tip?), one of those reflective screens used to prevent your car interior from overheating when parked in the sunshine (again, just saw one on Amazon for £8.50), or even the aluminium foil found in your kitchen drawer. I might also say a mirror, of course, though transporting it might prove challenging unless you have a convenient handbag.

• Use additional lighting in the room. There are,of course, some very nice lighting rigs for professional studios, but they tend to come at professional prices and by and large, they aren’t terribly portable. The same goes for those lighting rigs often used on building sites, which require either a mains connection, or a car battery. In addition, they give off a huge amount of heat. At home, the more sensible option is to make use of your interior lighting and extra lamps, such as the Anglepoise type, to flood the area with extra light. You don’t want to get the lamps too close to the subject, because they can, like flash, ‘blitz’ the area. In addition, you need to be aware of the colour of the light. “Surely,” you say, “light is white?” Well, no, actually! Some light bulbs give off light that has a very distinct colour cast, usually yellowish or pinkish. Ideally, you need daylight bulbs, which have a bluer, cooler tone which gives a more natural result. Daylight bulbs can be obtained in almost any hardware store or hobby outlet (and I’ve just seen them on Amazon again). They are also known as “Craft” light bulbs.

• Use additional lighting mounted on the camera. Thanks are due to John Treadaway for this lighting tip. I visited him a few weeks ago and sitting on his table was his camera, not dissimilar to my own, but festooned with the most amazing contraption. Having now followed his directions on eBay and Amazon, I too am now the proud owner of a wonderful lighting rig. The brackets come as a pair, simply two L-shaped sections with a slot down the centre of each arm, surrounded by a rubbery material on one side. Each section comes with two screw mountings that pass through the slots, projecting sufficiently on the other side of the metal to allow you to screw into your camera’s universal mount (they are the same diameter as the screw used in a tripod) or your lights. This assembly is given the catchy name of “Double L-shaped Metal Bracket Holder Mount for DSLR Camera Flash Unit LED light” on eBay, and can be found in the Ellie Shang eBay shop. The link is http://goo.gl/8dHlsM. The price? A heady £7.99.

As for the lights, these also have a catchy name: “BestDealUK Video CN-LUX480 LED Light Lamp for Canon Nikon Camera DV Camcorder” and came from BestDealUK on Amazon (though I am sure there are other sources too). As the name implies, they are intended to give constant, regulated lighting for vieo cameras, but they’re perfect for our needs too. They consist of a black plastic housing, inside which arte arranged no less than 48 little LED lights each. Brightness can be adjusted by using filters (supplied, three per lamp, a diffuser together with Magenta and Orange filters) and a dimming knob located on the rear. They are powered by three ordinary AA torch batteries each.

What makes the lights really nifty is that they have a clever moulded arrangement on the sides making it possible to slot them together. As a result, you only need to use the universal joint mounting from one of them, mounted to your brackets, to hold them in place. You can see the arrangement I’ve settled on in the photo here, but of course there are many other permutations possible. The Amazon link to a range of suppliers is http://goo.gl/Dgmiyx. I paid just under £12 each for mine.

• TOP TIP: to save you a lot of swearing, in order to get the screw fittings to pass through the slots in the bars, you need to insert them at the ends of the slots only. I turned the air blue trying to force them through the centre of the slots before John revealed this to me!

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• Photoshop. If all else fails, then there are certain tricks you can play ‘after the event’. Let me make it clear that there’s no substitute for taking good quality photos in the first place, and it’s really easy to make a mess of things when fiddling on your computer, but over the years there are a number of things I’ve found myself doing regularly to improve the lighting quality of images sent to me. Note that I’m using the term “Photoshop” generically here: I’m working in Adobe Photoshop CC 2014, which is a high-end professional tool which costs many hundreds of pounds to purchase (or you can pay a monthly subscription, as I do). You may be using something much more budget conscious, but these days it is likely to have tools allowing you to do the same thing.

• TOP TIP: before you start adjusting your image, do a “Save As...” to create a copy of the original to work on, leaving the photo you actually took safe and sound in case of mistakes.

• Brightness/Contrast: by moving the sliders, you can increase the overall, erm, brightness and contrast of the image! Don’t overdo it. In particular, take care not to ‘bleach out’ highlight ares of the image, which can lose detail rather quickly. The professional alternative is...

• Levels: using Levels gives you much more control over not only increasing the brightness or darkness of your image in the highlight, mid-tone and dark ranges, but can also help you to remove colour cast in an image. You are presented with a graph-like control with sliders underneath. The left hand end of the graph represents the dark areas; the right

hand side indicates the light. By clicking and holding down on the little triangles underneath the graph (see screenshot), you can shift them to the left or right, and assuming you have “Preview” checked, you will see immediately how the changes will affect the image. By making changes with “Channel: RGB” selected on the dropdown menu, you are only changing the overall brightness and tonality of the image; but you can be more subtle than this. Is the lighting too yellow? Select the blue channel only, grab the right-hand marker and drag it slightly to the left. You’ll immediately see the highlights becoming less yellow. Is your lighting too pink? Select the Green channel and do the same. You just need to remember that in photography, everything is based on Red, Green and Blue and their opposites are Cyan, Magenta and Yellow respectively.

• An alternative to Levels is Curves, which works in much the same way, but is trickier to master.

• Once you’re happy with the adjustments you’ve made, click OK and “Save” your image. You did make a copy as I suggested, didn’t you, using the “Save As..” command earlier...?

• The ‘eyedroppers’ on that dialogue window allow you to define what you want to be the highlight tone, the mid tone and the darkest tone respectively.

• Just play around and experiment and eventually you’ll have a sequence of actions worked out that are really easy to remember for a series of images taken under similar conditions.

• TOP TIP: don’t forget to make sure that your actual screen brightness is not set too low! You could end up over-brightening an image that is actually perfectly okay, so check your system preferences first.So that’s just about it for lighting. Trust me, get the lighting

right and everything else becomes so much easier, and you’ll start getting far better results from your photography.

Our image of the Prussians at Plancenoit adjusted using simply the Brightness/Contrast control in Photoshop. This upgraded filter is now highly effective.

Here, the image is adjusted using Levels instead. See how I’ve been able to eliminate the slightly pinkish cast and reduce the shadows to show more detail.




Wargames photographyThe Editor continues his mini-series of helpful hints for the hobby photographer wanting to get better pictures of their wargames and collections. This time, we’re looking at the thorny problems of focus and depth of field.


The subjects of focus and depth of field are inextricably linked, so I’m going to deal with them both this month. Obviously, we want our images to be ‘in focus’, but what do we mean by that? In general terms,

that means that we want the detail to be crisp and sharp. For wargamers, it’s even easier to define: we want to be able to see the faces on the miniatures, the buttons on their coats, the heraldry on their shields, the number rolled on the dice, the individual blades of grass modelled on their bases and so on.

Depth of field is, if you like, ‘focus+’. The starting point is to ask yourself, “How much of this image do I want to be in focus?” Generally speaking, for most wargames photography, the answer is, “As much as possible, from the foreground to the background”. But there may be occasions when you want the viewer’s attention to be drawn to a particular section of the battlefield, or a particular unit, or even an individual figure. That’s where the ability to control depth of field comes in.

FOCUSSo, let’s look at the issues that can affect you achieving a crisply focused image.

Lighting

• If you follow the advice I gave in the last issue about lighting, many of the problems associated with focus will simply disappear. This is because the sensors inside modern digital cameras and phones are primed to focus on whatever is best lit within a scene. Unsurprisingly, therefore, if the entire scene is in gloom or dimly lit, the sensor has no idea what to focus on.

• This is also why it’s a good idea to avoid using flash wherever possible – the sensor is programmed to home in on those bright spots created by the flash, and in my experience, that’s rarely what you actually want to make the centre of attention. In a shot of ancient or medieval miniatures wearing lots of shiny armour, the result can be chaos. In a horse and musket game, bayonets and buckles suddenly jump centre stage.

• As previously discussed, what you really need is good,

even lighting, preferably from multiple sources, or you should set up your lighting to deliberately accentuate the details you want to capture and home in on that, like a spotlight on a theatre stage, to create a deliberate effect.

Camera shake

• Buy a tripod. I gave some examples last issue. There, that was simple, wasn’t it?

• Seriously, though, there may be occasions where you don’t have your tripod with you, or it isn’t convenient, or you’re trying to achieve that ‘reportage’ look. To minimise the risk of camera shake under such circumstances, you need to think of taking a photograph in the same way as a marksman thinks of firing his rifle, as follows.

• Control your breathing. Take your time. What you want to do is reduce your breathing and pulse rate to the point where you are completely calm, so there’s less chance of your own body ruining the shot. The aim is to press the shutter firmly but gently at the end of a long, exhaled breath, just before you inhale again.

• Control your aim. This is also why I always prefer a camera with a viewfinder, rather than just an LCD screen on the back. With mobile phones, of course, you have no choice.

• Using a camera with a viewfinder, make sure you hold it comfortably, so you get a good view of the scene through the viewfinder, but without pressing the camera right against your face. Try not to squint too much, as your face could twitch at the wrong moment! Imagine you’re holding a rifle – tuck your arm under the camera to support it,

Grrrr! Camera shake! Nothing’s in focus here. You can spot camera shake by the ‘doubkle edge’ effect – look at the dragoons on the right.




so the camera, your forearm is as vertical as possible, taking all the weight of the device. Your right hand is then free to press the shutter, in a smooth, controlled motion: don’t ‘stab’ at the shutter, rather ‘squeeze’ it as you would a trigger. This technique is particularly important if you have a full SLR camera with a longer lens attached, or you are using the lighting rig shown last time.

• For smartphones and cameras with only a screen, try not to hang it out over the table with your arms fully extended. This is asking for trouble. If you’re lucky, and the light is good and the camera uses a fast shutter speed or ISO setting, you might just get away with it, but trying to hold a position like this while you compose your shot is hugely risky, both in terms of the risk of camera shake and, of course, the risk of wobbling and accidentally colliding with someone’s beautiful soldiers on the tabletop!

• If you can find the space at the edge of the table, your elbows make an acceptable bipod. It’s certainly better than hanging your camera in mid-air. Other acceptable platforms might be the back of a chair or, at a pinch, a willing bystander or partner who permits you to rest on their shoulder – as long as they keep still!

Confused Camera

In the old days, you either had an Instamatic, which had such a wide depth of field that everything as far as the horizon was in focus, or you had a ‘proper’ SLR, in which case you had to manually adjust the focus ring around the lens, set the aperture, adjust the zoom and so on whilst composing your picture. Nowadays, all digital cameras and mobile phones have an ‘auto-focus’ facility, but the vast majority of people don’t exploit the simple tools at their disposal. It’s rather like Microsoft Word, where people persist in using multiple spaces or tabs to align stuff across the page when there’s been a perfectly good tab alignment tool included for the last 25 years! The fact is, we’ve become so used to technology doing almost everything for us, we’ve got lazy. Well, if you want to take better pictures, pay attention!• With a digital camera – whether it has a viewfinder or not –

frame the picture you want to take, without pressing the shutter, but have your right finger hovering close to it. Now look at the scene, and decide which thing or area you want to have the most crisply in focus. Depending

on the overall lighting, this may not be the brightest part of the scene.

• What I want you to do now is remember the scene you are currently looking at, then ‘aim off’ slightly (you could think of this as ‘adjusting for wind’ like a marksman) so that the thing you want to focus on is dead centre of the screen.

• Now, press the shutter HALFWAY until you hear a ‘beep’. Then, keeping your finger where it is, return to the original scene, steady yourself, and press the shutter the rest of the way. Incidentally, it’s always a good idea to hold the position for a few moments afterwards, to give the camera time to complete the exposure.

• Let me explain what you’ve just done. Having decided on the overall picture, you have then, by ‘aiming off’, told the software which specific part of the scene it should use to determine the camera settings, such as focus, depth of field, ISO setting and, therefore, exposure time (shutter speed). This can be really helpful, especially if the interesting part of the shot is slightly too dark, because the camera will now have compensated for that, brightening the area (and everything else).

• On a mobile phone, such as an iPhone, it works slightly differently. You compose your shot as above, but then you use your finger to tap the area on screen that you want to camera to focus on, without actually moving the device. On the iPhone, a little square border appears to acknowledge the area you have selected. Then press the shutter button as usual.By playing with this technique of ‘aiming off’, you’ll also

start to learn something about composition, a subject we’ll discuss next month.

DEPTH OF FIELDThis subject is admittedly confusing – even I am perfectly capable of getting things topsy-turvey!God Bless Wikipedia, because their definition is very good:

“In optics, particularly as it relates to film and photography, depth of field (DOF) is the distance between the closest objects in a scene and the farthest counterparts in the scene that appear acceptably sharp in an image. Although a lens can precisely focus at only one distance at a time, the decrease in sharpness is gradual on each side of the focused distance, so that within the

Taken within moments of each other, two shots of the same scene, under the same lighting conditions, but re-composed using focus alone. Left, attention is drawn to the mass columns of Confederation of the Rhine infantry, whereas on the right, they now just form part of the backdrop, as the focus switches to the French dragoons. I set the camera to f.3.2 using its Aperture Priority function; the ‘film speed’ was ISO 400 and the shutter speeds, determined automatically by

the camera, were 1/12 of a second (left), and1/15 (right). Note how shallow the depth of field is for the right-hand close-up – those cavalry bases are about 25mm wide, so it’s no more than around 125mm (5"). If only I’d moved back a little and taken another one focusing on the dragoons, they would all have been in focus.

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DOF, the unsharpness is imperceptible under normal viewing conditions.

In some cases, it may be desirable to have the entire image sharp, and a large DOF is appropriate. In other cases, a small DOF may be more effective, emphasizing the subject while de-emphasizing the foreground and background. In cinematography, a large DOF is often called deep focus, and a small DOF is often called shallow focus.”All well and good. unfortunately, the several thousand words

that follow on the page at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth_of_field are extremely technical indeed!

In essence, ‘wide’ or ‘large’ apertures correspond with the small f-stop numbers on your camera. So an aperture of f/2.8 is wide, while an aperture of f/22 is very small.

Focusing distance also has an effect, with wide apertures offering a great deal more depth of field when focused on a subject far away than when focusing on a something close to the camera. But the simplest way to affect depth of field is to change the aperture setting. For purists, making this change can blur the picture slightly, but for wargamers shooting most things within a few metres or even less, you won’t notice.

As I mentioned back in issue 361, larger apertures (lower f-stop number) let in more light, so you can use faster shutter speed to freeze movement, such as at a sporting event. Fortunately, wargamers don’t tend to move very fast! A smaller aperture reduces the amount of light passing through the lens, requiring a slower shutter speed – and thus increasing

the risk of camera shake or subject movement. As mentioned last time, if your camera permits it, you could compensate by increasing the ISO, allowing you to use smaller apertures to increase the depth of field and use faster shutter speeds.

TOP TIP: when using your ‘macro’ setting, and placing the camera very close to the subject, the problem of depth of field is exacerbated. I have seen many photos where the front of a miniature is in focus, but the back is not! The answer is to

move away from the miniature, re-focus and try again. With cameras taking such high resolution images nowadays – even my iPhone 5S is 8 megapixels, and many phones are much higher than that – you can always crop the image down afterwards with no worries.

CONCLUSIONLearn to control focus and depth of field to really unlock your creativity. I’ve only had space to give you a few examples here, but you can clearly see that your photos will begin to tell stories, by either showing the broad, overall picture with almost everything in focus, or homing in on little vignettes and incidents around the table. Practice makes perfect!

A good use of a moderate depth of field to focus on the knights, using f.8 and a long a shutter speed of 1.2 seconds on a tripod to combat the gloom of Kelham Hall at Partizan 2009.

Dramatic use of shallow depth of field, again at Kelham Hall, where I spotted this column of Prussians in a League of Gentleman Wargamers’ game.

The choice was f.5 and an exposure of 1/5 of a second using ISO 400, a combination which both throws the command group into sharp relief and

exaggerates the length of the column disappearing into the distance.

The version on the left (f.8, 1/12 second) is very much a group shot; switching to f.3, 1/90 second) clearly makes the marshal stand apart from the others.




Wargames photographyThe Editor concludes his short series with an explanation of the subtle art of composition, rounding off with some technical notes about how to output your images for various media.


Rounding off this series, I thought I’d do my best to give you some insights into what might be thought of as the most ‘arty’ aspect of photography: composition. You

may feel intimidated, stepping into a strange realm which may, at first, seem dangerously ‘touchy-feely’, especially if you’re the sort of chap who likes his facts nailed down and his measurements strictly Imperial. But fear not, help is at hand.

In fact the composition of an image has been reckoned, by some, to be just as measurable as the range of a longbow or the rate of fire of an MG42 or the penetration power of an 88mm round.

THE GOLDEN RATIOThe most important piece of terminology commonly used in connection with composition by artists is ‘The Golden Ratio’. What do we mean by that? And where does it come from? The Golden Ratio – or Golden Mean, or Golden Section, or

Golden Rectangle – was used extensively by great artists of the Renaissance such as Leonardo da Vinci (when it was known as the Divine Proportion), and is still used today. It was being investigated and exploited hundreds of years BC by Pythagoras and Euclid, a well-established principle of geometry and mathematics. What it boils down to is the diagram at the foot of the previous column. The idea is that the blue square is in perfect proportion to the red rectangle, and that together, they in turn create a perfectly proportioned rectangle.

The principle is described thus: a golden rectangle with longer side a and shorter side b, when placed adjacent to a square with sides of length a, will produce a similar golden rectangle with longer side a + b and shorter side a. Got it?

This ratio has also been used in computing to generate fractals, and has been discovered to be how nature has created things like the shells of snails and ammonites. If you really want to get in to this (and it is a strangely spellbinding

process), then take a look at http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio. You’ll also find lovely diagrams like this, showing how to create objects sharing the Golden Ratio:

Now, don’t start worrying that I’m going to suggest that you indulge in a spot of algebra before you press the shutter on your camera or mobile phone. Perish the thought! Nor would I want you to imagine that you should concentrate entirely on composition, when in fact, whilst you are gaining confidence, it’s just as important for you to think about the lighting, focus and depth of field we talked about previously. And in any case, there’s a much simpler rule of thumb you can use that will serve you just as well in 99% of all the hobby photographs you are

The rule of thirds works with the way we naturally

view a scene.




likely to take. Indeed, with experience, you will learn to apply the same principles to your other photos too, such as holiday snapshots or family portraits. And there’s even better news: your camera is already set up to help you, with the solution completely built into even the cheapest devices – The Rule of Thirds.

THE RULE OF THIRDSThe theory is that if you place points of interest at the intersections or along the lines that divide the picture plane into thirds, your photo becomes more balanced and a viewer will be able to interact with it more naturally. It has been found that people’s eyes naturally alight on the intersection points, rather than the centre of the shot, so using the rule of thirds works with the way we naturally view a scene, rather than against it.

As so often in this series, a picture speaks a thousand words, so let’s look at some images. We can try to achieve these effects in post-production by cropping, but the idea is that over time you will learn to adjust composition instinctively when you are looking through the viewfinder (or, nowadays, usually at the LCD screen on the back of the camera).

As mentioned above, your device is already set up to help you. There’s almost always an option to turn on a grid to help you compose your pictures. Most people think that this is just to help you get a level horizon, but now, you can look at this facility more creatively. Look, there it is, two horizontal lines crossed by two verticals – the manufacturers haven’t provided this by accident! From now on, you’ll never look through your viewfinder in the same way again; instead, you’ll be making use of those lines to create more interesting pictures.

Just bear in mind that symmetry = dull. Of course, we must also be aware of purpose. If you’re taking photos to demonstrate painting techniques or uniform details, then be as dull as you like, so that the viewer can concentrate on the minutiae you’re showing them.

By and large, we must take photos of what is there. Gamers get a bit funny if you lunge over their table to pick up and move units that aren’t quite in the right place for optimum composition... This means you need to move around the table, constantly looking for the best angle. Don’t forget to kneel down and take a look from the ‘miniatures’-eye view’ too. This is where those tiny tripods prove very useful.

Now let’s go a stage further. Having created a pleasing, but relatively static, composition, let’s add some movement.

Obviously, I’m not talking about movement in the literal sense, as we are dealing with still images (though moving images make use of precisely the same principles). However, by making use of perspective, we can add drama to our shots.

We’re all familiar with perspective: things closer to us appear bigger than those farther away. (And no, I can’t get that Father Ted scene out of my head either, as he tries to explain the principle to Father Dougal using miniature cows and a real herd standing in the field outside...) More importantly, perspective uses the principle of ‘vanishing points’, where lines converge, usually on the horizon. Perspective is commonly described as one-, two- or three-point perspective, depending on the number of vanishing points. Our images can make use of this to convey a powerful sense of movement and drama. For an in-depth explanation, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perspective_(graphical).

The thing about most wargames, from Ancients through to the late 19th century, is that they are jam packed with units in linear formations, both as individual units and as brigades, divisions and so on. This allows us to capture a tremendous sense of depth and distance, particularly in connection with the depth of field techniques described last time.

Let’s look at a really simple example opposite. The first photo shows Regiment von Eintopf from the front. Even using the Rule of Thirds, there’s only so much that can be done with an image like this. How can we improve it? Simple: move to the side and re-take the shot looking down the line of troops. What a difference! We know they are only static miniatures, but isn’t it amazing that now, the perspective created by all those nice,

Through the viewfinder of the Editor’s S7000. Pressing the Display button allows the user to select various options, including the 3x3 grid.

A better shot. Note how the column of infantry passes through not one, but two of the nodes and the building in the foreground creates a sense of depth.

The grid is more subtle on an iPhone, but there it is. Here the division of the composition into approximate thirds is obvious, with the colour party of Regiment von Eintopf close to one of the ‘nodes’. A pleasant, but dull photo.

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smart ranks implies a sense of movement, in this case from right to left. If you’re really clever, you’ll take photos of your games from a consistent viewpoint, so that the Red army is always shown moving from left to right, whilst the Blue army advances from right to left. (Note that I took the shot on the right at f.8, and the bottom one at f.3 to focus just on the colour party.)

With modern-era and skirmish games, with fewer figures and vehicles on the table, you’ll be looking to achieve a similar effect by finding clever sight lines, with objects at different distances. Don’t neglect the scenery either – buildings have nice, straight edges that run off to vanishing points in the distance.

You can vary the number of vanishing points by raising or lowering your eyeline: the closer to the ground your camera is, the more dramatically perspective lines drop off to the horizon, whereas a higher point of view produces sweeping battle scenes with the horizon in the far distance.

As with all the techniques you’ve learned in this series, the best thing is to play around. If you combine these lessons, you’ll soon be producing images to be proud of. And nowadays it costs nothing except time to create hundreds, thousands even, of practice images, after which you can simply delete the ones that don’t work. If you’re lucky, one of them will be a winner, and the more shots you take, the better you’ll get at knowing what works best.

FINAL TOP TIPSIt so often happens that when you’re concentrating on the techniques, you miss some of the really obvious things that will help you to produce good pictures.

1. Bent bayonets and spears. I have lost count of the number of otherwise perfect photos ruined by units whose weaponry looked like a spaghetti factory. Straighten them up!

2. Please, please, please stop taking photos of the backs of your troops, unless it’s to achieve a specific effect! We want to see what they look like from the front!

3. Fluff on the lens. For the couple of quid it costs for a good quality lens duster, there’s no excuse. Always check your lens before starting a session, and use it at regular intervals. Check the miniatures, too.

4. Clutter. I’ve grown to tolerate dice on the table, since they are an integral part of real games in progress, and I’ll even allow the occasional tape measure or ruler to creep in. But playsheets, magazines, books, drinks cans, coffee cups and goodness knows what else on a wargames table can absolutely ruin the effect.

5. Wargamers’ err... ‘midriffs’. One of the unfortunate but unavoidable aspects of wargaming is that all our beautiful scenery and miniatures are displayed at somewhere between knee and navel height. A row of denimed crotches is enough to turn even the strongest stomach. The best solution is to politely ask those playing to step to one side for a moment.

6. Resolution. Be aware that images that may be perfectly fine for your blog are unlikely to be sufficiently detailed for use in print. The reason is simple: publications are printed at 300 dots per inch, whereas screen resolution is a mere 72 dots per inch (or occasionally 96). The solution is obvious: make sure that you are making use of your camera’s maximum image size. You will be able to check this in your camera’s settings. Mobile phones are usually automatically set to capture images at their highest setting. If necessary, invest in a higher capacity memory card so that you don’t suddenly find you’ve run out of memory halfway through an event. You can always reduce image resolution and preserve detail, but if you try to enlarge a low-resolution shot, it gets fuzzy.

7. File type. For use online, you want JPG or, at a pinch, PNG formats. For print, you can send high quality JPG images or TIF files. PDF should only be used for images that are produced from artwork combining text and images. It is important to remember that JPG images are ‘lossy’ – they reduce file size by actually dumping information (detail) irrevocably, so always use the highest quality setting (80%+). Always save files in RGB (Red, Green, Blue) – leave the conversion to CMYK for print to people like me.And that, my friends, is enough from me. Get snapping!


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