Another can of worms................

[Ian M]

Even black paint looks white if you light it enough.
As for the tank museums... An employee of the Bovinton was overheard at a DIY store buying paint. Just your ordinary everyday house paint suitable for out door use and metal.... What you painting? came the question from the staff member.
A tank
He grabbed a couple of two liter cans of off the shelf green and brown "they'll do"
Just because it is in a museum does not mean its the right colour. something unrestored and sealed in a light proof and airtight box might be close.

if it looks right and makes you happy, then its the right colour. Unless you are colour blind and need all the help you can get. (brown/green blindness is one of the more common forms. Ask how I know....)

[Dave Ward]

As I thought - another can of worms! - and to think of all the time and effort paint manufacturers put into getting exactly the right colour! It just confirms my view that if it looks good to my eyes - it's totally accurate (or I'm too tight to buy anymore paint ) :rolling:
Dave

[wasdale32]

As I thought - another can of worms! - and to think of all the time and effort paint manufacturers put into getting exactly the right colour! It just confirms my view that if it looks good to my eyes - it's totally accurate (or I'm too tight to buy anymore paint ) :rolling:
Dave

I totally agree - I often go a bit off-piste by mixing my own approximations to the "definitive" colours. In particular I hate to see a line-up of identical coloured vehicles when in real life they would all have different stories to tell and would show that in the different levels of oxidation and fading of the paint.

As far as colour perception goes - one interesting thing to do is visit a car showroom that has sample paint swatches and compare them to the cars on show.... then go into the car park and look how two cars in the same finish parked next to each other look at different angles - its surprising how different they can appear especially if one is shaded and the other in direct sunlight.

[Guest]

And yep, apparently grey over basic metal.

The Whippet in Brussels definitely is not grey in (original) colour. Here is the interior of the door, which is painted the same as the outside:

[ATTACH]507654[/ATTACH]

Or the armour around the fuel tank:

[ATTACH]507655[/ATTACH]

[Miko]

Even black paint looks white if you light it enough.

Even the incredible properties of vantablack? Such a weird substance, it's so black it looks like a hole!

Although I take your point, a billion watt light bulb very well make vantablack appear white

As for the tank museums... An employee of the Bovinton was overheard at a DIY store buying paint. Just your ordinary everyday house paint suitable for out door use and metal.... What you painting? came the question from the staff member.
A tank
He grabbed a couple of two liter cans of off the shelf green and brown "they'll do"
Just because it is in a museum does not mean its the right colour. something unrestored and sealed in a light proof and airtight box might be close.

wow! is that true? or just an interesting anecdote?

if it looks right and makes you happy, then its the right colour.

Exactly that! Yep!

Unless you are colour blind and need all the help you can get. (brown/green blindness is one of the more common forms. Ask how I know....)

Ouch!

Miko (according to QI in ancient Greece there was no word for blue, the sky for example was 'bronze'!)

[Steve-the-Duck]

The Whippet in Brussels definitely is not grey in (original) colour. Here is the interior of the door, which is painted the same as the outside:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]n[/ATTACH]

Or the armour around the fuel tank:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]n[/ATTACH]

And here we are with a prime example of selective personal perception. That looks grey to me. Hint of brown, maybe. Well, I am due vr a new pair of specs...

[Guest]

Part of the problem is that we’re viewing these online, which means we’re almost certainly not seeing the exact same colours, and in any case, the colours we do see won’t be exactly those of the real thing. The only way to get the proper colour would be to go to Brussels with a book of colour swatches …

[Miko]

The only way to get the proper colour would be to go to Brussels with a book of colour swatches …

While standing at a distance appropriate to the scale!

It gets to a point where it's more of a stress than it's worth sometimes and maybe we should ask ourselves is the 'exact' shade that super important?

Miko ( errrmmmm?)

[Tim Marlow]

Part of the problem is that we’re viewing these online, which means we’re almost certainly not seeing the exact same colours, and in any case, the colours we do see won’t be exactly those of the real thing. The only way to get the proper colour would be to go to Brussels with a book of colour swatches …

While standing at a distance appropriate to the scale!

It gets to a point where it's more of a stress than it's worth sometimes and maybe we should ask ourselves is the 'exact' shade that super important?

Miko ( errrmmmm?)

And even then it will depend on the lighting prevailing at the time and the pigments the swatch is made of. Different pigments give different colours under different lighting conditions. Two colours can look identical under daylight, but look markedly different under artificial light, for example, and daylight changes from morning, to mid day, to evening, and again according to the cloud cover.
The colours you see also depend on how analytical your colour perception is. As everything in life, some people see colours more accurately than others. They will see nuanced variation where others will see “the same colour”. Hell, in my case if I look at something with both eyes, my right eye, or my left eye, I see different colours. My right eye has a definite red cast that warms up colours that I see. It is also the dominant eye in my binary vision.
Of course, you don’t actually “see” colours, what you “see” is energy waves (or is it particles LOL) that are converted to electrical impulses by structures in your eye which are then in turn interpreted by your brain. This means your mood and upbringing can even effect the colours you see. To give two examples. Ancient Greeks couldn’t “see” the colour blue and determined colours by lightness and darkness rather than in terms of hue, hence the “wine dark sea” description. Himba people of northern namibia are able to easily determine different hues and shades of green compared to western peoples.
What this interminable rambling means in truth is that absolute colour fidelity is a myth. In terms of colour matching near enough really is good enough. Exact matching is influenced by so many factors it is impossible without sophisticated mechanical assistance, and even then external influences would bring some to argue that the results were wrong.
The only way you could exactly match an original colour is to use exactly the same paint, made at exactly the same time, and paint the item at exactly the same time that the original was painted. Even then, different storage and atmospheric conditions will create colour drift over time so the two will gradually become different colours. This is obviously impossible, so go with what seems right to you and tell any naysayer to boil his or her head……..

[dave]

Had a check through my photos and only found one of the WWI gallery at the Brussels Military Museum and the colour is the same as that the one Dave Ward showed

[Miko]

And even then it will depend on the lighting prevailing at the time and the pigments the swatch is made of. Different pigments give different colours under different lighting conditions. Two colours can look identical under daylight, but look markedly different under artificial light, for example, and daylight changes from morning, to mid day, to evening, and again according to the cloud cover.
The colours you see also depend on how analytical your colour perception is. As everything in life, some people see colours more accurately than others. They will see nuanced variation where others will see “the same colour”. Hell, in my case if I look at something with both eyes, my right eye, or my left eye, I see different colours. My right eye has a definite red cast that warms up colours that I see. It is also the dominant eye in my binary vision.
Of course, you don’t actually “see” colours, what you “see” is energy waves (or is it particles LOL) that are converted to electrical impulses by structures in your eye which are then in turn interpreted by your brain. This means your mood and upbringing can even effect the colours you see. To give two examples. Ancient Greeks couldn’t “see” the colour blue and determined colours by lightness and darkness rather than in terms of hue, hence the “wine dark sea” description. Himba people of northern namibia are able to easily determine different hues and shades of green compared to western peoples.
What this interminable rambling means in truth is that absolute colour fidelity is a myth. In terms of colour matching near enough really is good enough. Exact matching is influenced by so many factors it is impossible without sophisticated mechanical assistance, and even then external influences would bring some to argue that the results were wrong.
The only way you could exactly match an original colour is to use exactly the same paint, made at exactly the same time, and paint the item at exactly the same time that the original was painted. Even then, different storage and atmospheric conditions will create colour drift over time so the two will gradually become different colours. This is obviously impossible, so go with what seems right to you and tell any naysayer to boil his or her head……..

Complicated stuff isn't it?

I wonder if Dave is beginning to regret asking? Ha!

Miko (if you mix blue and yellow pigment, you get green, but in light to get yellow, it's green and red???)

[Tim Marlow]

Complicated stuff isn't it?

I wonder if Dave is beginning to regret asking? Ha!

Miko (if you mix blue and yellow pigment, you get green, but in light to get yellow, it's green and red???)

Additive and subtractive in action there Miko. As we only see the light frequencies the object rejects, oranges are really blue…..honest.

[Dave Ward]

I wonder if Dave is beginning to regret asking? Ha!

Not at all! It just confirms that I'm not missing some vital clue ( or having a senior moment...............)
Dave

[Miko]

Not at all! It just confirms that I'm not missing some vital clue ( or having a senior moment...............)
Dave

Yep, senior moments are a thing for some of us for sure!

Miko (more senior everyday)

[Guest]

oranges are really blue…..honest.

TBH, I prefer them a fluorescent greenish yellow-purple.

IMHO, if you want to paint your model of a military vehicle an accurate colour, the way to do it is to research what the real colour was supposed to be, and then pick (or mix) a model paint that you think comes close to that. It doesn’t matter if it’s 100% the same or not, as long as you’re aiming for the right kind of colour. This photo was posted on Missing-Lynx the other day:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]n[/ATTACH]

This is a small part¹ of the vehicle dump at Deelen, in the Netherlands, in 1945 or ’46, and these are all vehicles used by the Canadian Army: British AEC armoured cars in the first row, British Daimler armoured cars in the second, American Staghound armoured cars in the third, British Daimler scout cars in the fourth, Canadian Otter scout cars in the fifth row, and large numbers of Canadian Military Pattern (CMP) trucks in the background. Except for the Staghounds, most will have been painted in SCC 15 olive drab by this time, though chances are that some are in SCC 2 brown; the Staghounds would all have been American olive drab No.9 or No. 22 (which was the same colour, just a different number). Even at first glance, though, the difference in shades is obvious: even the four AECs in the foreground all seem to be different colours.

For the modeller, this of course shows that it’s pointless to aim for an exact match of the official colour unless you’re building, say, a vehicle on the production line — and even then, depending on time and place, those might not all be the same, especially in different factories. But if you know what the colour was supposed to be, you can find or mix a paint that isn’t wrong.

---

¹ This is, what, a few hundred vehicles? There were 35,000 there by the spring of 1946.