I am not a pro, but I wanted to share how I take pictures, as some people were interested.

Photo Setup

Things to notice:

• Fully illuminate the model, with diffuse light of the same color temperature
  • All the lights (both work lights and the overhead light) are the same color (same bulbs in all the lights)  The ambient light is dim, thus not throwing a strong differently colored light.
  • Lights come from multiple angles to fully illuminate model and reduce strong shadows
  • White cardboard is placed out of the camera frame on the sides to reflect and diffuse light from the work lamps
• Steps are taken to reduce camera wobble – the zoom is so high and subject so small that even a small wobble will affect photo quality
  • Camera is a tripod, which reduces wobble
  • The photo is taken on a 2 second timer to reduce wobble
  • I take more pictures than I need.  Usually 8 positions (every 45 degrees), 2-3 pictures per position.  I delete all but the best.
• White balance card is placed in frame, but positioned so that it doesn’t throw strong shadows
• My backdrops comes from Hanger 18 (sadly no longer in business).  TableWar sells a similar product: https://tablewar.com/collections/macromats
• My camera isn’t super-nice, but it is a DSLR.  It is a Sony a5100.  You can take good pictures with a cellphone, but the DSLR just does it nicer
  • I take photos in RAW format at maximum resolution

Photo straight out of camera

The colors are wonky, because the camera tries to balance the colors across the whole image.  But the backdrop is blue, which it tries to turn into grey, mangling the other colors.  You can see that the white balance card has a bit of a yellowish hue.

I keep the model in the center of the image, well away from the edges (it has a hard time focusing near the edges of the frame, and there can be dimensional distortions).

White Balance Adjustment

Step one is to use the white balance tool, click on the medium grey in the card to set the white balance.  This value should come out to be about 50% pure neutral grey.  The backdrop color is now accurately represented.  Note how the skin in particular is yellowish in the first image (yellow is the opposite of blue) but pink in the second.

Auto Leveling of contrast, gamma & output levels

Because I throw so much light on the miniature, colors can get washed out a little.  The auto-level tool basically picks the darkest color on the picture and makes it black; and the brightest color and maxes out the intensity.

Crop the Image

Crop the image so that the miniature takes up most of the frame.  How much backdrop is visible is a matter of personal taste, but don’t show all of it.  I have started cropping to square images for instagram, but usually try to keep the image aspect ratio similar to the ratio of the actual mini.

Capture One

I use Capture One, which came with the camera, but I think it is free with website registration.

Here’s what Orsus the Chained looks like once everything is done.