Toys and Creative Lighting

Earlier today (or make that yesterday) I decided to spend a little more time in having a little "trial and error" moment with my camera as I was bent on learning the tricks of the trade when it comes to applying creative lighting principles to my toy photography. Having to photograph your toys in low-light situations posed as a big challenge for me since I have tried it over a dozen times yet failed to capture that perfect mood over and over again. Whenever I get too lazy to take out my DSLR, my next best option would be using my trusty ol' point and shooter... but it made me realize later on that some of these compact digital cameras have their limit, and attempting to do low-light photography with a digital point and shoot camera resulted in poor, disappointing photo quality, oftentimes getting grainy pictures with a lot of noise going on. So it was high time to take out the big guns and let 'em do all the work for you.


After spending a good number of hours inside my room trying all the different shooting modes that you can find on the dial, I personally find the Shutter Priority mode to be the appropriate one for me since the camera captures only the details that you wanted to see on your subject while it gets enveloped in a background of total blackness. Using a mini LED flashlight and a gashapon figure of Rei Ayanami from the anime Evangelion as my subject, I was somehow making progress with my trial and error with creative lighting though I know I still have a long way to go in perfecting that skill. But as I look back and compare the previous photos with the ones I took earlier, I can humbly say that everything looks more better now than it used to be. Here are some samples of the test shots I did:

Rei Ayanami test shot 1

Rei Ayanami test shot 2

Rei Ayanami test shot 3