Alan Kiecker, QPSA  

Land Cruiser by Alan Kiecker, QPSA

February 2025 - Land Cruiser

About the Image(s)

Description
This is something a bit out of the ordinary. I have a ’78 Toyota Land Cruiser FJ40 that I enjoy exploring out of the way places down 4WD trails. For my recent birthday, my son and daughter gave me a “Lego” model of an FJ40. This model consisted of over 2000 parts and a manual of 378 steps to assemble these parts into the model that I have photographed.

Technical
The model was photographed as a still life placed in a light box built from PVC pipe. The red cloth was supported by the light box. The sides of the light box held translucent white nylon material. Illumination was provided by two small LED lamps, one on each side. This provided fairly even lighting for the subject being photographed. Focus stacking techniques were used to obtain sharp focus on the subject from front to back. My Nikon Z8 with 105 macro lens was used to capture 50 exposures of the subject. Of these, 17 were used (Helicon Focus) to create the final image. Exposure for each image: 1/13 sec @ f/6.3, ISO 250.

9 comments posted

Alan Kiecker   Alan Kiecker
I thought I'd include a photo of my light box/macro studio to give you a better idea of what I was talking about. My original thought was that it would be easy to disassemble and transport. I quickly found out that once a pipe is inserted into a joint that it was pretty much permanent even without glue, at least it was very difficult to take apart.

This is very much a work in progress as I make additions or modifications to it. The clamps from SmallRig are a recent addition. They are working out very well holding the small Litra LED lamps on flexible goosenecks. I still need to work on the backdrops and light diffusion panels.   Posted: 02/06/2025 22:25:08
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Craig Callan   Craig Callan
Although this is a lovely tabletop shot, it suffers somewhat from the backdrop wrinkles, always an issue with cloth ot paper. I tried to smooth the background by selecting the subject, then inverting the selection and applying a tilt and shift blur to the background to keep the foreground sharp and blur the wrinkles in the background. I finished with a judicious use of the smudge tool to even the remaining areas out.   Posted: 02/10/2025 15:58:51
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Alan Kiecker   Alan Kiecker
I agree. I did not take the care that I should have with the cloth background. Please see my response additional comment.   Posted: 02/17/2025 17:33:55
Josh Lohff   Josh Lohff
Hey Alan - nice build man. These technic LEGO sets are amazing, and you've captured it nicely.

Awesome work with the focus stacking as well, a project that took as much time as this to build deserves to be entirely in focus. That said, your sharp focus from front to back has punished you with a rather distracting background and flooring material, causing the viewers eye to be pulled away from the very thing you've worked so hard to capture.   Posted: 02/17/2025 15:11:55
Alan Kiecker   Alan Kiecker
I agree. I did not take the care that I should have with the cloth background. Please see my response additional comment.   Posted: 02/17/2025 17:33:39
David Kepley   David Kepley
Alan, you are to be commended for trying to put this Land Rover and to pull off a very detailed shot of it. When my kids were younger, they loved to put legos together! Great fun. Ok, setting this in a light box on a colored background using focus stacking is the way to go to achieve the results you clearly had in mind. Bravo! The lighting is spot on! Well done. I agree with Josh that you need to get rid of the wrinkles in the cloth, especially right behind the front wheel. I'm left wondering if red was the right background color choice. The color red really grabs your eye. You could go with blue's complimentary color which is yellow or you might go with a neutral gray. Just thinking out loud!   Posted: 02/17/2025 16:55:03
Alan Kiecker   Alan Kiecker
I agree. I did not take the care that I should have with the cloth background. Please see my response additional comment.   Posted: 02/17/2025 17:33:19
Alan Kiecker   Alan Kiecker
My wife and I took a class this past weekend on table top photography. It was oriented specifically to photographing flower arrangements, but the concepts apply to any subject. The instructor had some backgrounds that I had not encountered before: replicasurfaces.com These would solve any issues with wrinkles or other imperfections that occur when using cloth like I did.   Posted: 02/17/2025 17:31:53
Josh Lohff   Josh Lohff
Very cool, thanks for sharing the link!!   Posted: 02/17/2025 17:37:08

 

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