The Little World

They say that you can believe the evidence of your own eyes. Yeah, right – tell that to a successful stage magician.

No-one asks you to believe the evidence of someone else’s eyes ( except in a jury ) when it comes to scale modelling. Much less need you believe the evidence of their ” Well I once saw an article… “. If the article is not placed before your own eyes it doesn’t exist.

Here the internet has served us well – and the modern digital photograph as well. Both can be called on to present pretty good visual evidence of what a lens has seen – but only if the sources of images are multiple. One photographer can take one picture and alter it to show anything – I do this all the time in my studio – but a dozen photographers taking views of something from a dozen different angles with a dozen different lenses – and then posting the results up quite independently of each other – may present an accurate composite view.

I search the net for references of things I wish to build. Some subjects have only one or two images because that was all that was ever taken. Some have literally thousands. Seek and ye shall find and sieve and ye shall finally get the picture of the landing gear in good light.

And remember that with the modern images, you are getting to see what something looks like NOW. The historic ones not so much – they can be flawed and incomplete, and are so often no reference for colour at all.

Distrust most images that do not have another well-known colour to show at the same time as they show the bit you’re interested in. The lighting of a museum can be well-off – the colour temperature of some bulbs resembles that given off by burning a horse. Even outdoors light – nominally a fixed Kelvin number, can be different in different locations or times of day.

If you ever venture to take reference pictures for your own or other’s benefit, consider setting your camera to take a neutral colour balance and include a pocket version of a McBeth or X-Rite colour checker card in the shot somewhere. It can provide a solid basic colour reference point that you can use to correct everything else you see. Don’t lie to yourself or others just to please the paint makers…or the anoraks.

Note: A friend in NSW has been given a Facebook ban and scolding for using the word ” anorak “. Apparently a faceless book censor classifies it as hate speech…

Oh, my dear goodness. We are indeed in the land of the Pushme Pullyous.