I’ve often wondered how miniature painters actually film their videos for YouTube. What camera do they use? Where does it sit relative to the model? How do they frame close-up shots without blocking the view with their hands? There’s plenty of finished video content out there, but surprisingly little written guidance on the camera setup behind miniature painting videos. So instead of overthinking it, I decided to test a simple, practical camera setup and see what worked—and what didn’t.
Lighting ended up mattering just as much as camera placement, and I relied on the same setup I use for miniature painting and photography (see my guide on the best lights for painting miniatures).
In this article, I walk through how I set up my camera to film a short miniature painting video, including the equipment I used, how I positioned the camera above the desk, and the video settings I settled on.
- As someone who learns best by-doing, I decided to just dive in!
- I already own a decent camera for still-life photography.
- I purchased it a while back to improve my studio work for miniatures (and for some freelance real estate gigs), but never cared to mess with the “movie” mode.
- The purpose of this video was to 1) see if I could capture good, sharp footage to show the granular aspects of painting with close-ups, and 2) determine how much time I would need to invest in creating these videos on a regular basis.
The finished ~2-minute video is included at the bottom of this post.
Equipment
I borrowed some of the main equipment for this project. Specifically, I think any camera that can capture 1080p or 4k at 30-60fps with a high bit-rate (>30M) would be fine for what I was able to do.
- Sony mirrorless camera
- 55mm prime lens
- iPhone (wireless tethering) as an external monitor
- Video and photography lighting
- c-stand
- Joby Gorillapod 5k with quick-release ball mount
- iMovie application (free) on an iMac
Video Settings
I knew I wanted to shoot high-resolution footage, and ended up going with 4K video (30 fps). I was a little concerned with the limited battery life of the camera and having enough memory.
To ensure I had enough resources, I made sure that I turned off recording when I didn’t think it was necessary. This was a bit disruptive to my usual painting flow, but when you have a lens dangling by your head… you’re already in a different situation. I worked with it.
I’m not a video expert, but I think I kept the bit-rate high enough to get good enough color and digital information that I could have edited more aggressively (with better software).
As it was, I used “iMovie” which is a free application that comes with every Apple iMac. My options for editing white-balance, color, and contrast were already very limited.
But, I wanted to future proof myself, so 4K it was.
Editing Video
As I mentioned, I used iMovie.
I had about 20 minutes of “test” footage, which I lined up in the timeline. I cut out about 19 minutes of this video (because most of it wasn’t very good), added text captions, and exported in 1080p (a format that is good for YouTube).
Because I was shooting in 4K, I had the resolution to crop into some of the video and still maintain sharpness and quality. The 30fps was okay for slow-motion effects, but I wish I had a camera that could have captured at 60fps to smooth these transitions out. But, it’s either slow motion or sharp resolution, not both with my equipment.
I did not add any voice-over work. Though I hear that the “best-bang for your buck” upgrade is a good microphone, and a friend recommended a Rode shotgun microphone. Audio is another level of work to edit or lay-out properly on video.
Summary
I think the video came out well. I learned a lot. It took about 2 hours for me to edit the raw 20 minutes of footage down to its 2 minute runtime.
Really, that means that this video-side of the hobby is a totally new and huge time investment if I wanted to do this on any regular basis. That, and I have no voiceover work on this film.
I expect it would take a lot more time to get more detailed tutorials out in video format.
I guess only time will tell if I am going to add this to my list of hobby things I want to do. For now, perhaps I’ll keep making these videos only for the topics and things that the film media would work best for, and only if similar videos don’t exist.
There are already a lot of great painting videos on YouTube.
I hope you enjoy the video. Learning all these peripheral aspects of the miniature painting hobby has been fun and exciting.
Here’s the video (~2 min runtime)
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Happy painting!
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Definitely a good start on the video side of things, having watched a lot of crafting Youtube channels, pretty much a day is used to do a 20-minute video. As you say it is a huge time heavy undertaking.
Exactly! A 20 minute video edit would take waaaay longer.