Tamiya 1/48 P-38 Lightning

[Guest]

On the case thanks Paul. Shame it's the weekend but hopefully I'll get a positive reply soon.

This is tucked back away in its box for now awaiting the outcome.

[Guest]

Thanks to a very speedy resolution by Tamiya's UK agent, The Hobby Company, a replacement boom sprue arrived on Wednesday so I was able to have at it again today.

Here's the new part with a bit of pre-painting inside the radiator cowlings and view of how the other BB weights fit. You can also see the substantial alignment pins and holes, there's no getting this wrong, especially with a couple of smaller ones dotted about too.

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And joined together, with the oil coolers added too.

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The fit was good so didn't really need any filler, except for a couple of places where I was a bit enthusiastic in removing the sprue gates. Mistakenly I though these would be hidden by the radiator cowling, but a bit of Mr Dissolved Putty was brushed over the whole joint to seep into any gaps and hide my error. The panel line to the rear is one that is present on the real thing according to the instructions, so that gap is actually moulded into the seam, with directions not to fill it.

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[scottie3158]

Andy,
Glad to see this on the go again a great response from the Hobby Company.

[BigGreg]

superb... the cockpit is sooooooo realistic.. ;-) :-) love it

[Guest]

Thanks guys.

I would have liked to have gotten the cowlings on tonight and fit the booms so they could set up overnight but it would have made sanding the filler a bit tricky, so instead I left that to dry properly for 5 hours (a gag for the Plasmo fans)

[topgazza]

Looking good Andy. I'm enjoing this. Beaufighter up next for me same as your build. How are you taking your photos ? I should know but I'm struggling mainly because I take mine in the evening

[Guest]

My pictures are all taken in the shed so I have no natural light. I have a couple of rubbish fluorescent stripes for general light and two small daylight led strips above the bench. I also have a desk lamp I sometimes put on to fill any shadows.

Recent pictures are taken on a Huawei P30pro, often using its "super macro" mode, which is good but messes with the colours a bit.

The best tip I got (I think it was from Jakko) was to not try and get too close but just crop the pictures afterwards instead. A simple process on Windoze 10.

There are two pictures over in my Stug blog of a weld bead. They are both the same snap but one is the original, other is cropped and zoomed.

Hope that helps.

[topgazza]

I've spent 20 years as a serious amateur photographer. Industrial landscapes, macro, insects, flowers etc but I've reduced my kit to a minimum. I think I might revert to the iPhone for this sort of shot rather than try and be clever.

Like me you do the detail in the cockpit even though its hidden. Very relaxing

[Guest]

crop the pictures afterwards instead. A simple process on Windoze 10.

You can probably also do that on the phone itself. I’m not familiar with Android, but on iOS and iPadOS, when you’re viewing a photo in the camera app or the Photos app, you can click on an Edit button (I’m guessing that’s the English name anyway) and crop the picture there:

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Saves a lot of transferring photos to and from computers

[topgazza]

Thanks Jakko I'll try that

[Guest]

You can probably also do that on the phone itself.

Sure, there is quite a good editing suite on my phone.

However, since my peepers aren't what they used to be I prefer to do it on a PC. All of my pictures are transferred automatically via WiFi & Dropbox as soon as I take them since my Unifi AP reaches as far as the shed. Then when I come in for a cuppa and a warm I'll delete any poor ones, do any edits, and copy the finished snaps to the relevant blog folder and Imgur.

[topgazza]

Oddly pictures like this often do better with "lower" quality cameras as in phones. A higher quality camera does not guarantee better pictures. Those are great shots Andy and I'm finding my iPhone takes more suitable pictures than my Olympus. Looking forward to the rest of the build. Love your attention to detail. I'm working up to that standard so it might take a while loner. When you start painting describe the techniques for morons like me please

[colin m]

Photography is a black art indeed. Only recently, I had to read the instructions to my camera, after about 5 years of ownership. No rush....

[yak face]

Good to see this one back on track Andy , lovely looking wheel wells , cheers tony

[Guest]

Oddly pictures like this often do better with "lower" quality cameras as in phones. A higher quality camera does not guarantee better pictures. Those are great shots Andy and I'm finding my iPhone takes more suitable pictures than my Olympus. Looking forward to the rest of the build. Love your attention to detail. I'm working up to that standard so it might take a while loner. When you start painting describe the techniques for morons like me please

Thanks for the compliment Gary and I'll try and talk through what I'm doing. My Aspergers makes me prone to over-sharing anyway so adding more details shouldn't be a problem lol. Just be aware that I've only been at this model making for less than a year so I'm still a relative newbie compared to the wealth of experience on this forum. So don't take my methods as gospel, I'm just a guy fumbling around trying to get close to some of the excellent work I've seen here :smiling3:

Colin, I haven't even dipped into the clever features on my phone yet, I just stick it on auto and let it figure things out for itself. Kinda funny when it sees shapes and patterns in rivets and decides to go on portrait mode though! It does have a Pro mode where I can mess around with aperture and the likes to increase depth of field, but it seems to be doing a decent job on it's own so I'll not nerf it up by messing around too much.

Thanks Tony, glad to be back at it.