A total noob tries digital camera photography

I went into this as a digital (and manual) camera noob feeling like all the terminology was mysterious, overly technical and very confusing. I hope to remove at least a bit of that mystery and confusion.

My mother-in-law who gifted me my camera is an avid amateur landscape and wildlife photographer so she was kind enough to show me the different settings and what they do and how they're related. She's not used to Nikon cameras or close-up photography, but it was a huge help to get hands-on advice from someone who knows what they're actually doing with a camera!

Here's my setup:
• Camera: Nikon D810
• Lens: Tamron SP 60mm F/2 MacroShooting distance 12-14 inches / 30-36cm
• Shooting mode: manual
• Lighting: one household halogen bulb (28W 230V 2800K 370lm) It's a bit warm and not super bright. I'd like to try something closer to 5000K with a high CRI
• Stability: I'm not using a tripod but I have the camera sitting stable on the desk, using a cabled remote to trigger the shots

And here are all the settings and factors coming into play...

ISO
It helps me to think of ISO as basically the camera's “light sensitivity” setting. This may not be the most technically correct explanation but it's layman's terms which help wrap my brain around it.
• Low ISO (100–200 or even less) = camera is less sensitive to light resulting in darker, but cleaner images
• High ISO (1600–6400+) = camera is more sensitive to light → brighter, but more grain/noise

After reading and watching some tutorials asserting that certain ISO settings (anywhere from 100 to 600) were objectively "the best", I read that for my specific camera, ISO 64 is often more ideal. So after trying ISO settings anywhere between 100-800, I switched to 64 (immediately saw cleaner photos) and stuck with it and adjusted every other setting around that.

Aperture, f-stop, depth-of-field. Oh my!
For me, the terminology around this was (and honestly still is) the most confusing part.
Aperture is basically the size of the hole in your lens that lets light into the camera. A bigger hole lets in more light and a smaller hole lets in less light (a lot like our pupils). That part makes sense to me.

The weird thing though: aperture is expressed as the letter "f" followed by a number (like f/1.4 or f/2 or f/4 or f/8 or f/16, etc ... also known as the "f-stop") and (here's the weird part)
• the lower number actually means a bigger hole (more light)
• and a higher number means a smaller hole (less light)

Even more confusing is you might hear or read phrases like "stop down" or "stop it down" which usually means the light goes down (smaller hole) but the f number goes up ! 🤯

Anyway! The other very important thing that aperture influences is depth of field. If "depth of field" isn't a familiar term, it relates to how "deep" the camera can focus in relation to the main focused area. Imagine you're photographing a mini wearing a backpack and holding a hammer in front of them. You might zoom in on the mini's face and get it focused nice and sharp, but then the backpack in the background and/or the hammer in the foreground becomes a bit blurry/unfocused. In this situation, the "depth of field" is quite low or "shallow". It might actually be exactly what you want, but if you want to get the entire mini in focus, then a higher f-stop/aperture setting can help (the tradeoff is less light and potentially diffraction of the light leading to less sharpness).

But also know that moving the camera farther away from the mini will also give a deeper (rather than more shallow) depth of field. So if you want the whole mini in focus, your 2 options are changing aperture to a higher f-stop number and/or moving farther away from the mini.

Now that all that is clear as mud, here's what I ended up doing for my particular camera/setup...
I read that an aperture of around f11 might be ideal for shooting small things with my camera so I started there, but in my situation, i found i wasn't getting good depth of field so after some experimentation, i ended up going with f16.

Shooting distance
 As mentioned with the Aperture topic, changing the distance between the camera and the subject influences depth of field. Closer gives less depth and farther away gives more depth. I settled on shooting from around 12 inches / 30cm away (maybe slightly more). I started closer but ended up moving back after some trial and error. So far, I've only been photographing 32mm scale minis. I'll probably have to back up more for  larger models but I'll burn that bridge when i get to it.

Lighting
Lighting is also a huge factor. Currently I have a pretty regular household halogen bulb (28W 230V 2800K 370lm) installed in my ikea architect desk lamp with 3 paper towels over it to diffuse the light. Caution! Light bulbs - especially halogens can get very hot. Diffusing with paper towels is a fire risk!

I have the light pointed straight at the front of the mini but a bit above from an angle of around 45 degrees (maybe slightly less). Most tutorials recommend a similar setup at a minimum and many go beyond this to also include a light on the front-left and front-right of the mini to help reduce shadows. I'd like to expand to a 3 light setup eventually but the one light setup is working okay for now.

I do shoot with the room overhead light on but I also use some sheets of paper to block that light to not create shadows on the model and not introduce a second light source (it's also a basement room with only a small window so having the overhead light on is not too different in the daytime and the nighttime so I don't have to think about different settings for day and night)

Exposure time (a.k.a. Shutter speed)
Exposure time in layman's terms can be though of as how long the camera "looks at" the subject. The longer it looks, the more light gets in (higher exposure, lighter images). The shorter it looks, the less light gets in (lower exposure, darker images).

Given all the other contributing factors above, I'm finding that in my lighting conditions, a 5 second exposure time is working well for me. 4 seconds for less light or 6 seconds for more light are also pretty decent but 5 seems to be the sweet spot in my setup. Currently I leave the camera on my desk and trigger the shot from a cabled remote so that everything is super stable and motionless.

White balance
All of the above were getting me pretty good quality shots, but they were a touch warm (my light is a touch warm so no surprise) . I was fixing this with warmth and tint adjustments in photo editing software (i'm currently using the native photos app on my iphone 17 non-pro for post-editing). But then I realized the camera had some icon-based white balance settings. I switched it to the icon that looked like a light bulb (presumably meaning I'm shooting under artificial lighting) and now the colors look a lot more accurate.

Metering
I don't fully understand this one, but I believe it has little or no effect (on my camera) when shooting in manual mode. Just mentioning it here as it might be worth looking into for some setups.

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So far, I've shot or re-shot the following projects with this approach:
• Goblin Shaman
• Hammer Maiden
• The Gray Matter Connoisseur
• Big Boss
• Rat Man
• Dwarf with Big Gun
• Space Marine
• Necromancer
• Blue Space Marine

I like some better than others, but they're all a lot better than I could manage previously on my phone. Let me know if you have any advice for increasing the photo quality. I'd love to push this even further!

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GitGud Painting has a very nice YouTube video on mini photography with a digital camera. It's definitely worth a watch www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahw-ExizoO4

And Richard Gray did a really nice breakdown of the GitGud video adding some of his experiences richardgraycreations.com/photographing-m…

I think the really important thing to remember is all cameras are different and people have different lenses and lighting conditions. So take precise advice (like specific settings for ISO, aperture, white balance etc) with a grain of salt. The advice is likely in the ballpark but it's also likely you'll need to tailor it to your camera, lighting, lens etc.