The Nikon has always been a bit iffy in regards to photographing figures. I can never seem to get it to focus properly, the depth of field is quite narrow, the battery is almost always dead, and the only way to move the pictures from the camera to anything web-enabled is by taking out the memory card and inserting it into my laptop, or, heaven forbid, finding the usb cable for the camera and using that.
The smart phone is far easier. I can force it to refocus on a specific area (and the focus seems sharper) and the depth of focus seems deeper. But the real advantage is in transferring the pictures to my laptop via sharing by email. Just a couple of taps and off it goes. All I really need is some type of tripod or stand and to figure out if the phone camera has any type of delayed shutter ability. While I have a tripod for the Nikon, it has no delayed shutter feature and I can definitely see a use for that. Even in my youth my hands were not all that steady.
Most likely, I'll go for the phone camera in most cases.
The next step is to acquire adequate lighting. I don't know that I'll go so far as to make a light box. But I do want a seamless background and I could certainly use a few portable lights to illuminate the models and decrease annoying shadows. What I have on hand just won't cut it.
Here are a couple of test shots. The shots of the galley were taken with the Nikon, the galleon with the phone. I was using a piece of craft foam curved up over the laptop, underneath a single desk lamp for these shots. While the craft foam might be a large enough background for single figures, it's clearly too small for anything larger.
Hmm, actually reading the post carefully reveals a "C" clamp does it. Please excuse the request.
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