Macro Videography Behind The Scenes - Shooting Miniature Cars

Making a miniature object look realistic is no easy task but there are are people who do that for a living. On the video above recorded by B&H, Cinematographer Mark Raker demonstrates how he lights and shoots miniature cars.

This is a pretty interesting behind the scenes looking at the way you shoot a video of a miniature car and trying the find ways to make it look like a full size car. Using reflected light from several powerful LEDs, a slider and of course a good macro lens (Raker used a Samyang and a Canon for this shoot) he tried to find the right angles where shooting the miniature will not give away its size.

One issue we noticed right away in this shoot is dust – when you are shooting a small object and bombarding it with light – especially if that subject has a very reflective surface like a toy car – you will need to work very hard to remove dust all the time. This is relatively easy to remove in post when shooting stills, not that much when you are shooting video.

There are people who developed careers on shooting miniatures that looks like the real thing. Photographer Felix Hernandez is one of the and you can see two videos with some projects he made (he has some really amazing things – many of them he builds or help creates on his own with lots and lots of time, effort and meticulous work):

You can find a lot more lighting tutorials on our photography lighting section here on LensVid. If you are interested in macro photography – check out our extensive macro photography section.

Iddo Genuth

Iddo Genuth is the founder and chief editor of LensVid.com. He has been a technology reporter working for international publications since the late 1990's and covering photography since 2009. Iddo is also a co-founder of a production company specializing in commercial food and product visual content.