Lightbox: McFarlane - Cooperstown (ton of pics 56K beware)

sonny_c

Just for the hell of it I made a lightbox last weekend. 1 card board box, tissue paper, poster board as my back drop, duck tape, and 3 desk lamps with GE Reveal 60w light bulbs. This is only my third attempt. MAN IT'S TOUGH! For these shots I used all three lamps. 1D MKII N, Canon 85mm, tripod, Canon RS-80N3 remote switch and no flash fired. I might try wax paper or tracing paper next. Seems like the tissue paper did not let in as much light as I would of liked.

Feel free to leave any feedback.

After looking at these again I noticed a fill light is needed directly in the front and I REALLY need to clean my sensor.

My setup

• ISO: 200
• Exposure: f/22
• Shutter Speed: 1.3s
• Focal Length: 85mm
• Meter Mode: Evaluative

Mickey Mantle - The Commerce Comet or The Mick


Babe Ruth - The Bambino or The Sultan of Swat


Nolan Ryan - The Ryan Express


Carlton Fisk - Pudge


Ted Williams - The Splendid Splinter, The Kid, or The Thumper


Johnny Bench - Little General


Steve Carlton - Lefty


Willie Mays - The Say Hey Kid


Willie Stargell - Pops

Serrator

Very cool looking statues! You did a fine job capturing them with your setup too!

Rhuarc

Wow!! Some of those look so real I had to do a double take!! Nice work!!

It also inspires me to try my hand at a homeade lightbox setup. I'll probably try for something a little larger, with brighter lights.

pathfinder

These statues are very impressive, complete with dirt on their knees even!!

Some of the first images seem to have a slight blue cast to them. The later images seem better color balanced.

The backgrounds seem VERY grainy - not sure why. What ISO were these shot at? I agree that you may have some dirt on your sensor too:D

Overall, your light box seems to have done a very nice job. These are nicely captured.

Skippy

sonny_c wrote:

Just for the hell of it I made a lightbox last weekend. 1 card board box, tissue paper, poster board as my back drop, duck tape, and 3 desk lamps with GE Reveal 60w light bulbs. This is only my third attempt. MAN IT'S TOUGH! For these shots I used all three lamps. 1D MKII N, Canon 85mm, tripod, Canon RS-80N3 remote switch and no flash fired. I might try wax paper or tracing paper next. Seems like the tissue paper did not let in as much light as I would of liked.

Feel free to leave any feedback.
After looking at these again I noticed a fill light is needed directly in the front and I REALLY need to clean my sensor.
My setup
Mickey Mantle - The Commerce Comet or The Mick
Babe Ruth - The Bambino or The Sultan of Swat
Nolan Ryan - The Ryan Express
Carlton Fisk - Pudge
Ted Williams - The Splendid Splinter, The Kid, or The Thumper
Johnny Bench - Little General
Steve Carlton - Lefty
Willie Mays - The Say Hey Kid
Willie Stargell - Pops

Hi Sonny, the actual statues look great, but I don't like the backgrounds.
I am sure you can do much better with the background, the grain in these really detract from the statues.

Man they are beautifully crafted, love the detail in them
That's quite a setup you've got there

I'd love to see you post some more of these with better backgrounds

Thanks for sharing.......... Skippy
.

sonny_c

Thank you for all the responses!

Here's my EXIF data:

• ISO: 200
• Exposure: f/22
• Shutter Speed: 1.3s
• Focal Length: 85mm
• Meter Mode: Evaluative

These figures are called McFarlane's Sportspicks named after Todd McFarlane. Check out his web site http://www.spawn.com/. He does all the major American sports plus Nascar. Not only sports but also movie, tv, music, comic book, horror, fantasy, and sci-fi characters as well http://www.spawn.com/toys/.


OK..so now on to the background. I drove over to Michaels (a local craft store) and purchased 5 different poster boards. The black and blue poster boards are like construction paper (not exactly that's just how to describe it) but a little higher quality. One poster board is high gloss black. It looks beautiful and creates a gorgeous reflection of an object. The downside....it is VERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRY "staticy". I snap off a few test shots and you can see every piece of dust, lint, andcarpet fuzz. Not so pretty with all the crud on poster board. Now I gotta figure a way to clean it an discharge the static. The fourth piece of poster board is has metallic grey finish. I have not shot with this one yet. And the fifth was another plain white poster board.


Thank you pathfinder for pointing out the blue cast. My WB is off in these photos. Since I have the blue and black poster boards I thought I was using the blue one. Hahahaha...not so! During post processing I did a custom WB using some of the whites on the players. This caused the blue cast and threw off the background color. Carlton Fisk has the correct WB and background color. I do have a grey card but it's 20" anf the box is much smaller. Guess I could use a blank sheet of printing paper?

As time permits I will correct my WB mistakes and continue testing the other poster boards

Thanks again for your comments,
-Sonny