A great model deserves eye-catching photos. How do you take a quality photo? Well there’s a lot of stuff you can do to take your photos to the next level, and in this guide I’ve combined top tips from the best of MakerWorld designers! 17 people contributed so far! If you have anything to add, please leave a post below and let me know! I plan to update this often. Without any further ado, here it is!
Get a good print
Most of the time, you will want to print using matte filament. This will minimize reflections when taking photos. Some models do really look best in silk filament though, so there are tips for reducing reflections later on. You will also want to choose a good color. For example, I won’t want to print a model in matte white if I’ll be photographing it on a white background.
The camera
Which camera should you buy? None! Your phone is probably adequate. (If you already have a camera, try comparing the quality of it vs your phone and see which is better!) I use my Pixel 6a (which is fairly low-end and is older) for all my photography, and it turns out great. @jakobdam recommends setting your phone’s zoom to 2x. I’ve been doing this the whole time, as it just looks better, and the way he explains it makes a lot of sense!
Although it might be worth the investment to get a camera:
Get a clean background
Your model is not the only thing to worry about. You also want a clean background.
You can use a simple piece of paper or a poster board to create a clean “Sweep” or “Cyclorama” background. I use a simple white poster board that I purchased for under a dollar, taped inside of a cabinet. This gives me a lot of room to work with.
You could also purchase other colors for more variety. Make sure not to pick an annoying color, like hot pink or neon green. This could make it hard for people to see the model. You can also print a stand like this for the paper: Photo Studio Stand by franceschellifederico
You can also check this one out:
There are also purpose-built photo boxes, like this one that @MalcTheOracle uses. As it’s unavailable on US Amazon, I’ve found an alternative:
You can also 3d print one. As long as your printer is dialed in (or if it’s a Bambu ) it’ll look pretty good! This one suggested by @Square3D looks pretty awesome!
Or if you want a really fun and customizable backdrop, follow this suggestion from @kertgartner:
Sometimes your model doesn’t really fit in a photo box, or it needs to be displayed “In action” - @Josh-3D’s cat wheel demonstrates that this is still ok!
Make sure any large distractions are cleaned up, and above all make sure there’s good light (that’s the next section, don’t worry!). These ones also look amazing!
Sometimes you want props though. This tapeosaurus uses a good set of stuff that isn’t distracting. He also used a bit of background blur to make sure the main focus stands out.
Light is a crucial element in any photo. This photo doesn’t have enough light, so it looks pretty bad. But once light is added, well, you can see the difference.
A large light will make the background more evenly lit, and will reduce reflections and shadows. If you only have a smaller light source, you can use a reflector (a large sheet of paper/poster board works well on a budget). If you have an adjustable color light, play with the color temperature. Usually a mid-range color works best, but it can depend on the look you’re going for and the model colors. The sun always works as a good light as well. It’s pretty dang big, so shadows are usually pretty soft. You can shoot outside or near a window to take advantage of the natural light. I recommend trying to shoot photos at the same time of day whenever you need them. This will make the lighting more consistent across your uploads.
Make it Move!
A lot of people add GIFs to their models to showcase them better. @BrentPeterson shares his tips here:
Post Processing
Once you spend a good amount of time taking photos, you can start editing. I personally used Canva for a while, but I recently switched to the Affinity suite (Mostly Affinity Designer), which has a 6 month free trial. You can also use Photoshop, or the free online alternative Photopea. There’s also GIMP and paint.net (suggested by @Quietman). Adjust the brightness, colors, and etc. as needed, and then you can add text if you want. As a general rule, don’t use more than two colors of text/graphics, or it will make it seem cluttered. Choose a decent font that is easy to read, and make sure there’s breathing room between elements. @MalcTheOracle suggests:
Canva has some pretty good tools as well. If you select a photo, click “edit” → “adjust” and then switch to background, you can increase just the background’s brightness.
In general, don’t go too overboard with text and graphics. If you choose to include them, keep them consistent. @MalcTheOracle uses a specific style for each line of designs he makes. Sometimes graphics really add to the story though. This model by NaraaPrints uses a really well designed background. While it is somewhat busy, I really like the look of it.
Get a Quality Print: Matte filament is often best for minimizing reflections, though silk filament can work with careful lighting. Choose contrasting colors to avoid blending into your background.
Camera Tips: Your phone camera will likely suffice! Try using the 2x zoom, equivalent to a 50mm focal length, to avoid distortion.
Background Setup: Use a clean, simple background like a white poster board or a lightbox. Options range from DIY setups with inexpensive poster boards to ready-made or 3D-printed stands and photo boxes. Experiment with different backdrops, from grass mats to printed designs or even LCD TVs for interesting reflections.
Lighting Matters: Soft, even lighting is essential. Ring lights, softboxes, or natural light (especially near a window) work well. Use a reflector to reduce shadows if only small light sources are available.
Post-Processing: Enhance images with tools like Photoshop, Photopea, or Canva. Adjust brightness, color, and contrast. Simple text or graphics can add context without cluttering the photo.
Happy designing, printing, and photographing! If you enjoyed this, please check out some of the models above and the people below! Massive thank you to all those who gave advice in the original thread!
Great
You have it all or almost all right there. Will follow this for sure since i am too starting to enjoy more and more doing photography for my models.
Edited: already shared to lots of groups that will be interested in this.
Nice write-up so far! I’d like to add some additional tips, perhaps, hehe. I’ll edit them into this post as I think things up. Wanted to comment on this real quick.
I highly recommend this too. Going telephoto in general. It helps you push the background out of the way.
When you use a wide field lens, you’ll distort the view. It’ll have larger depth of field too, so it’ll be harder to do things like push the background out of focus. As you use a tele photo lens, it flattens out that distortion, and narrows the background quit a bit, giving you better control over avoiding distracting background elements. It’ll have a much thinner depth of field too, giving you better control over blurring the background out.
Cheap cameras don’t always give you such full control, but you can push the camera in a way that gives you these benefits. When you push the camera to the most telephoto it can go, you can start to push it to get that depth of field blur you’d want to help isolate your subject.
In terms of 35mm lens sizes, I’d try and avoid anything less than a 50mm, with a 100mm+ focal length being more ideal.
Also, lights! Generally you put a big boxy softbox in front of your model and it’s gonna look clean, well lit. But you should explore and push the lighting setup. Move the lights around, get some more dynamic looks. Think about rim lighting, back lighting. Ways to help pop the forms of your model, and highlight it’s silhouettes.
Here’s an interesting book about lighting that I’d commend.
I am now usually using a 40mm equivalent and I’m pretty happy with the field of view I think I like it better than 50mm
100mm is a bit too much in my opinion, unless it’s a small object, the longest I’ll go in product is 75mm~85mm also because I don’t have a studio, and need to do makeshift setups around my apartment
Other than that I completely subscribe to a strobist approach, I’m using two myself a godox ad200pro as my key light (and depending on the design this is paired with either a 50x40 rectangular softbox or a 90 octabox) and a speed light for the background just straight flash and sometimes adding color gels to it
Also in terms of positioning of the key light, I go usually for a 45 degree angle from the side, as it’s a pretty well known setup that just works well
@Zammer3D this is an awesome tutorial and roundup in one, well done!
A point source will give a harsh light and therefore shadow. The best option is of course a softbox, but these might be hard to get and are quite big. When I need more light I just use a high lumen LED bulb and reflect it off a wall or the ceiling. I also bought some LED panels (those for office space ceilings, I believe 40x40cm) for a project once and these also work quite well as a softbox substitute and are almost flat and quite affordable.
One thing somebody mentioned in the original topic was that phones tend to auto-brightness the shot. So if you have a white and well lit background it still reduces the exposure and thereforethe background comes out gray anyway. Most phones let you tap on a specific point to focus, try tapping on the darkest part of the object and it will brighten up the shot (with longer exposure). In essence longer exposure is equivalent to more light (you just need a more steady hand or a tripod, but more light is always more better)
You are right, i used that “trick” to make it play it the exposure. In many phones you press and hold in the darkest spot and it will lock the exposure and then you can move it as you wish and it will not compensate.
I do this a lot with my strobes, instead of getting fancy with umbrellas or soft boxes. A wall is a bigggggg soft box when used right.
The idea really is to diffuse the light, and you don’t need to get some fancy setup to do that. I’ve used thin sheets before. Before I got my current softbox, I was shooting my strobe through the container my desiccant came in. It was transparent, but milky, so really bounced the light around.
I shoot in the 75-120mm range, there abouts. I’m cramped for room, so it’s kind of tough. I have a sigma 150mm Macro lens I like to shoot with, but it’s a Nikon mount, and I use fuji now. It’s not all that pleasant to work with, to be honest, but I like the pictures from it. If I had the room, I’d probably shoot with that more. I especially like taking Macro pictures of 3d printed stuff, and it’s beautiful for that.
Anyway, I guess it’s down to personal style, upbringing, taste in lens, and I don’t know. I’ve never looked at any of your photos and thought yuck those wide angles. Rather, I keep thinking about how pleasant the photos all look.
I’ve looked at the ad200pro a bit. I ended up with a MS300V though, with a V850II for my secondary because I’m a baller on a budget at the moment. I have one of their (Godox’s) wireless triggers for my camera. I’m pleasantly pleased.
I’ll say for the record; photography shouldn’t be hard or a chore. It should be something one approaches with creativity and fun in mind. It’s a chance to express one’s self, and their creations. Talking shop for a moment reminded me that it’s not just a thing to do, but something in of itself that we can have fun with and geek out over.
Yeah I get it, I’m also starting to enjoy macro, I recently purchased an old second hand 55mm f2.8 micro-nikkor ais plus an adapter, as I’m also a Fuji shooter I’m going to be having some ultra close ups showing in my models soon but I do like the “natural human” view you get from a 40 to 50mm field of view
For the second flash I also went the budget route, it’s even a lower spec than yours, I have the tt685ii, and it’s perfectly fine for using it as a background or hair light, and even key light sometimes depending on the subject
A few additional tips for people with iPhone/iPhone Pro:
Ensure that your phone is set to highest possible resolution and RAW if you have a Pro model. Shooting in RAW (Apple ProRES RAW) gives you the full data set from the phone, and using an appropriate image editor (either on the phone or a desktop computer), you can manipulate the demosaicing algorithm itself. This means that denoising and sharpness can become MUCH improved, but for most people, the thing that’ll really matter, is that white balancing and color profiling can now be done without sacrificing any image quality.
This is because the white balance and tint are always being made by the device’s demosaising algorithm when it’s converted to JPG or HEIF/HEIC, and a color profile is slammed onto it (usually sRGB or in Apple’s case, Display P3). But by shooting RAW, the editing software will rebalance the algorithm based on your chosen values using the RAW bit depth output.
This means a lot, since ProRES supports the full 12 bit/channel sensor output, which becomes 36 bits in total since we have 3 color channels (and 3 x 12 equals 36). Now consider a JPG which by design only can house 8 bits per channel, which equals a mere 24 bits in total.
24 bits equals 2^24 = 16.78 million colors. That’s a lot, right? Not really - because if we end up having gradients, those have a much more limited range. Imagine a black-white photo or a sepia toned photo or a red print subject on white background. Such a photo will only (/mostly) utilize one channel, which is 8 bit. And 2^8 equals a mere 256 different colors. This means that banding can become evident and other issues may arise. However, for ProRES, 12 bits per channel are actualled upsampled to 16 bits per channel using advanced dithering, and 2^16 equals 65,536 colors. Now that red print on white background looks much better, and if you want to adjust contrasts, go ahead. Yes, you will need to export it as JPG in the end anyway as you upload, but now all the editing has been done on a base that features 65,536 colors rather than 256.
Do not use “finger zoom” to choose odd values such as 1.2x or 2.4x zoom. Use the fixed 2x zoom. If you have a Pro model, you can go to Portrait to enable the artificial bokeh which tries to emulate true low depth of field created by a lens’ aperture. However, on iPhone 12 Pro and prior, this looks pretty dubious in my opinion. If your background is static (white, green or whatever) using Portrait is not recommended.
One thing more: Going above 2x to 5x zoom (iPhone 16 Pro) is not recommended, as image quality decreases noticably.
Try to avoid making a close focus so the camera switches to macro. This is because the shift will decrease image quality significantly - even worse than using the 5x tele lens on the iPhone 16 Pro/Pro MAX.
You can actually switch to full manual mode and fix the ISO at the lowest setting to enable better signal-to-noise ratio, which affects image clarity and noise levels. However, this happens on the expense of a longer exposure time - and a phone stand could become necessary. ISO-vales are an expression of the sensor signal boost, and higher ISO will provide more noise in order to create a brighter image. But since the voltage to the sensor increases, the well depth for each pixel’s charge is decreased - which results in lesser dynamic range and discolorations.
Another suggestion, I take all of my photos in portrait mode. This makes sure that the object you are taking a photo of is actually focused and it blurs the background slightly which is very helpful.
What do you guys think of this before and after? MONTHS ago I bought two ring lights and a backgrounds kit, this thread motivated me to finally open them and set them up. These were taken with a Pixel 8 Pro.
It looks great! The light properties of the ring lights, which cover a larger area, really creates a good texture and feel of the highlights and shadows. The hard directional light from a smaller light source on the first photo creates less sense of the overall shape. That in itself can also be used creatively; certain fashion photos are taken this way nowadays - but it’s not good for “still life”, which product photography is a sub category of.
I would probably mask the background and desaturate it, as the red hue detracts from the golden colors of the print. Our you could make is cold (slightly bluish) for a duo-complimentary effect.
) it’ll look pretty good! This one suggested by @Square3D looks pretty awesome!
I’m going to be having some ultra close ups showing in my models soon 