A mule and some new lighting

This post, my first in a long time, hits two birds with one stone. It is a picture of what I just painted and it talks about a new photography gimmick I found. First the picture:



It's nothing special, just a pack mule (Foundry I think). I've been reorganising storage on the attic a bit (to make room for more figures, of course) and came across a box with a few Old West type figures that were half painted years ago. I'm now finishing them, and this is the first of them off the table.

Now to the second point. Notice how the picture is one of the best lighted I have taken in a long while. As you all know, [lighting is everything](http://www.nirya.be/cgi-bin/mt/mt-search.cgi?search=photography+lighting&Template=ttm) when taking good miniature photographs. I've experimented with a lot of lighting setups (see some of the posts behind that last link) and while I have been able to get occasional good results, many of them were unwieldy (several lights) or not readily available (sunlight of the right sort).

That's when I came across this silly looking gizmo on eBay (clicking it takes you to the item listing):



It's a flash diffuser. You slide it in the hot shoe for an external flash and the white bit then sits in front of the pop up flash on the camera and diffuses the light (a bit). The result is seen in the picture of the pack mule - it was taken with the flash diffuser, and I only did a quick adjustment of output levels and a crop in iPhoto afterward.

Highly recommended! You get the advantage of a flash (no fiddly lights, no long setup) without (most) of the disadvantages (overexposure, washed out harsh highlights).