How to photograph 28mm miniatures with a phone: our setup, step by step

After the fight to get a sharp photo of a 10mm unit, 28mm was a relief. Same phone, same corner of the shelf, same lights, and nearly every shot was usable straight away. Here's the whole process we used for our painted 28mm figures from Reconquer Designs, terrain and bases, the settings the phone chose, and the photos that came out of it.

Camera

iPhone 17 Pro Max, main camera at 2x

Light

Two LED tube lights

ISO

50 to 160

Editing

One colour correction, a gentle crop

Why 28mm is so much easier than 10mm

• More pixels on the model. A 28mm figure is roughly three times the height of a 10mm one, so at the same distance it covers about nine times as many pixels. The phone has real detail to work with instead of guessing.
• The right camera turns up by itself. At 2x the phone stays on its main camera, its best one, with no digital zoom. With 10mm we had to fight it off the ultra-wide.
• More of the model is in focus. Because you don't have to get as close for the model to fill the picture, the sharp zone is deeper, so a figure's face and its base are sharp in the same shot.
• A crop is fine. We cropped every photo here a little to frame the model, and each crop still kept about 2,500 × 1,900 real pixels: more than any web page needs. At 10mm the same crop ruins the picture.

The setup

Nothing here is special kit. It's a corner of a bookshelf:

• Two LED tube lights. One rests across the top, above and a little in front of the model; the other lies along the front edge of the shelf, low down, filling in the shadows under hat brims and inside cloaks. A long tube spreads its light along its length, so it's soft without a diffuser.
• A black turntable against a dark, curved backdrop, so the background fades smoothly from grey to black with no edge.
• The phone in a clamp on a small tripod, in the middle between the two lights, pointing slightly down at the model.

Turn the room lights off, so only the tubes light the model and the colours stay even.

The camera and the settings it chose

Every photo in this article came from an iPhone 17 Pro Max with the camera app set to 2x. That's a crop of the middle of the main camera's 48-megapixel sensor, so it frames like a 48 mm lens, keeps the main camera's bright f/1.78 aperture and still saves a full 12-megapixel photo with no digital zoom.

We didn't touch the exposure for 28mm. With the model bigger in the frame and less black backdrop around it, the brightness came out right without it.

The one thing that still went wrong

Twice in the session, both times on the tent, the phone switched to its ultra-wide camera without warning because it decided the tent was close enough for macro. The ISO jumped from 80 to 250 and the picture changed completely:

Main camera, ISO 80

Ultra-wide, ISO 250

The fix is the same as at 10mm: turn off automatic macro switching in the camera settings, and if a shot looks odd, swipe up on it in Photos to see which camera took it.

Step by step

1. Clean the model and the turntable

   Blow off dust and loose flock, and run a lint roller over the turntable. At 28mm a speck is less obvious than at 10mm, but it still shows on a dark backdrop.

2. Lights on, room lights off

   Both tube lights on, nothing else. Mixing in a warm ceiling light gives one side of the model a yellow tint.

3. Set the phone to 2x and frame with some room

   Put the model in the middle of the turntable and move the tripod until the model fills about half the height of the picture. Leave room around it: a gentle crop later is fine at 28mm, and room lets you turn the model without re-framing.

4. Tap to focus on the face

   Tap the model's face (or the front of a piece of terrain) so that's the sharpest part. On a figure, a sharp face matters more than anything else.

5. Take every side

   Use the self-timer, take the shot, then turn the turntable and go again: front, three-quarter, side and back. We took three or four photos of each figure in under a minute.

6. Film a slow spin

   While everything's set up, film the turntable doing a slow full turn. Ours run about 18 seconds each, and make the best short videos for social media.

7. Colour-correct and crop

   Phone photos look flatter on a computer than on the phone, so raise the black point a little, take the shadows down a touch and add a little colour (the 10mm article shows how much). Then crop gently to frame the model.

The results

Here's what came out of that one setup, after the colour correction and a crop. Nothing else was done to them.

And here's the archer at full size, pixel for pixel. This is the detail a 28mm photo can hold when the light is right: the creases in the coat, the fletchings in the quiver and the frayed fibres of the bowstring.

Bases and terrain

Bases and terrain photograph the same way, but tilt the phone further down: the top surface is the point. For the pictures on our home page and product pages we go one step further and cut each base out of its photo:

1. Stand the base on plain white card instead of the black turntable, so its dark rim shows up clearly against the background.
2. Take the photo, then one more of the empty card from exactly the same spot (the "blank").
3. The difference between the two is the base, rim and all, so it lifts out cleanly with no guessing at the edges.
4. Colour-correct it like any other photo, and scale every base in a set to the same width so they read at one size.

Dwarven ruin

Lava field

Crystal outcrop

The 28mm photo checklist

1. Dust off the model, lint-roll the turntable.
2. Two soft lights, one above and one low in front. Room lights off.
3. Phone on a tripod at 2x, automatic macro off.
4. Model about half the height of the frame, tap to focus on the face.
5. Self-timer; front, three-quarter, side and back.
6. Film one slow turn of the turntable.
7. Check a shot's details: main camera, ISO under 200.
8. Colour-correct, crop gently, and check it on a computer.