Photography tips and techniques for taking better photos of your toys

Here’s a picture of Grimlock, one of my favorite Transformers toys. This is what I would call a product shot — something that might be used in a catalog. The figure dominates the photo and all the details are crisp and clear. If your job is to sell and market toys, this is probably the kind of photo you would want.

Taking a photo like this is not very difficult. Here is a picture I snapped of the very basic set up…

Before taking the photo, I turned off all the lights in the room except for the one spotlight, which is a an incandescent flood light in a reflector, which you can get for a few bucks at the hardware store. I don’t use fancy lighting setups, only because I don’t own any! The camera is on a tripod, which is a must when you are shooting small objects like action figures. I use a remote shutter release since the slightest movement will make your subject appear blurry.

For most of my shots, I set the shutter to F2.8 on the AV mode, and zoom in on the subject as much as possible. I have learned that this setting gives me the best results. For these photos I used a wide angle lens, but a zoom lens would also work great since it would give a low depth of field that would throw the foreground and background out of focus, making the subject nice and sharp.

Here’s another photo that has a little more excitement than the standard product shot…

Action figures almost always look best if you photograph them at eye level, as if you are in the scene interacting with it. It’s also a good idea to try and create a scene or a story with your photo. In this image, it looks like Grimlock is on the prowl.

Here is the set up for this shot…

Did you notice the blurry object in the foreground of the photo? By setting a scrap piece of plastic in the foreground, the photo instantly has much more depth. This is a great trick since it is so simple but can give some great results. Again, the low F-stop on the camera throws both the foreground and background out of focus and really makes the figure shine.

I did some color modification in Photoshop to give the scene a warmer mood, and darkened the edges to highlight the figure more, but most of the work was done with the camera.

Now here’s one last shot that shows the kind of fun you can have with a bit more Photoshop work…

I wanted this last photo to look like Grimlock was being lit up by spotlights from helicopters overhead, or maybe he’s running on the surface of the moon. The harsh, bluish-white tones really change the effect, don’t they? I added a touch of motion blur to give a little action to the photo.

It’s so much fun to photograph figures like this and to experiment with different techniques. Walk around the subject, turn it to a different angle, move the light to the other side — any of these little things can make a huge difference, but keep trying new things and you might be surprised at the results!