What I tested
Ran the first full lighting pass on the corridor miniature. No style choices yet - just trying to get a baseline that tells me if this build can actually hold up on camera.
The setup
- Corridor shell at 1:12 scale, styrene walls, hand-painted
- Two dimmable LED panels through diffusion (before I switched to tungsten full-time)
- 24mm equivalent lens, fixed camera height, low angle to sell the scale
What worked
Key light falloff looked natural. At short camera distances the inverse-square law is your friend - the light drops off fast and that gives miniatures the depth they need to feel real. Exposure stayed stable across multiple takes and camera movement felt believable at low speed.
That was the good part.
What didn't
Fill spill killed the shadow detail on the back wall. I had the fill panel too close and too open. It flattened everything. The corridor went from "mysterious sci-fi hallway" to "well-lit office corridor" in about two stops of fill.
One panel also created a hot edge on the glossy surfaces where I hadn't dulled the paint enough. That's a build problem, not a light problem.
Next step
Rebuild the fill side with tighter flags, probably go negative fill instead of active fill. Then repeat the same pass for an A/B comparison. I need to see if the shadows can carry the mood on their own.