For the record, the last thing I want to do in the world is take pictures of my minis.

Without practice and planning, taking quality photos can be a multi-hour effort. Time I would rather spend writing code or painting.

Here are a few things to consider in order to help speed up the process.

Record Camera Settings

A significant portion of my delay in taking photos is tweaking the settings on the camera. Every time I go to use my DSLR, some important settings has been changed. Here are a few settings you should write down so you can easily re-configure your camera:

White Balance - It's better to get the correct white balance prior to post-production. This is doubly-true for cell phone pictures. Whatever light setup you use, know the "temperature" of your bulbs. For example, I use two cheap IKEA desk lamps with 5000K bulbs. For both cell phone and DSLR pictures, I set the white balance to 5000K to ensure that I get close to true coloring. Getting white balance right up front also saves a ton of time in post-processing.
ISO - Try to keep it low, probably no higher than 250. No other setting will ruin your pictures as fast as a high ISO. Even worse, it may take you a while to realize that is your problem.
Aperture - Depending upon the effect you are going for, you will either want this between f/7-10 or f20+. If you are trying to get shots with good bokeh, you probably want to target f/7. It will give you good softening of the background without losing detail. On the other extreme, if you are going for a large group shot, f/20 or higher is the way to go.
Shutter Speed - This is largely driven by your Aperture. Shutter speed will also influence if you must use a tripod. A basic guideline is that your shutter speed should be at or faster than your focal length. So if you are shooting a 50mm lens, then your shutter speed should at least be 1/50th of a second. Anything slower than 1/50th of a second will need a tripod to ensure the picture isn't blurry.
Focal Length - Find your favorite focal length for your favorite lens and write it down. At the moment, I'm shooting most stuff at 55mm on my AF-S NIKKOR 18-55mm 1:3.5-5.6G, the starter lens that came with the camera. The reason is that I trust it to focus more than my AF-S NIKKOR 55-200mm 1:4-5.6G lens. That lens can produce wonderful bokeh when backed out further, and I prefer shooting at 100mm-135mm.

Take a Picture of Your Tripod Setup

Ideally, you want two pictures to refer back to: the tripod extended but collapsed, and the tripod set up to shoot.

These reference photos will help you get ready to shoot faster.

Take a Picture of your Lighting Setup

Again, another key to being able shoot quickly is reference photos of your lighting setup to help you get the lights back into position quickly.

Painting lights actually make wonderful photography lights. If necessary, you can diffuse the lights slightly by taping a piece of paper on them. Even better, if you know the temperature of those bulbs, then you can more easily ensure that your white balance is correct.

Keep Extra Elements Handy

Elements just sounded nicer than "stuff" and "things;" go with it.

I like to have my miniatures standing on something to give them additional context. For Zombicide or Imperial Assault figures, this can be a board tile. For Infinity, the Operation: Icestorm paper board and USAriadna paper board are great. Simply make sure you know where those items are for quick reference.

I also like to use an old, black tablecloth as the backdrop. I throw it over my keyboard and monitors to help ensure that visual focus isn't stolen from the miniatures.

Other good backdrops can be simple pieces of paper. Set your figures on top and bend the paper behind them. This can produce a nice, infinite-white background.

This is a paper towel behind the Necromancer from a cell phone picture. In the seedly editor, I simply added some vignette to help darken the edges and draw attention to the miniature.

The Wrap-up

Let's be real, part of this post is informative, and the other part is my own set of reference settings and images to help me take more pictures. The reason it was nearly a month between the last two blog posts is that I felt it would take too long to get the camera out. So now we