Ulthwe Falcon

[morsla]

Back to painting posts again... I've finished two lots of work over the last week, ending in a fairly busy weekend.

This is a Falcon grav-tank in Ulthwe Craftworld colours, and my first real attempt at painting black armour - something I've never really liked, as it always ends up looking too grey... I've used some of the P3 colours (Thamar Black and Greatcoat Grey) and kept the highlights to small areas like the edges of armour plates. It seems to have worked - next month I'll be painting a few more units for the owner of the Falcon, including some jetbikes.



I really need to figure out how to get the whole model in focus :) (Pic taken using macro mode, F/22 and a 1/2 second exposure - I can't increase the aperture setting any further, so I'm at a loose end as to what I should try next time...)

Comments

[psuedonym777.livejournal.com]

I should show you my death company sometime. I managed to get a really decent black going by doing 2 coats of black without undercoat.

Of course, that does mean even attempting to paint anything white or yellow becomes problematic, but bone seems to come out ok for some reason....

[morsla.livejournal.com]

Does the paint tend to rub off the miniatures? I always spray on a black undercoat, as I find that brushed-on paint just doesn't stick to the metal very well... especially with GW's new metal figures.

[psuedonym777.livejournal.com]

Hard coat over the top. Otherwise you are quite right, the paint doesn't stay.

These are also minatures from the range released at 3rd ed. So they may be of a different quality of metal/finish.

The other thing that I have been noticing, I haven't done highlights on mine. I think that really makes a difference in the black/grey feel of the colour scheme. The lighter the shading, the greater the contrast. Maybe try a darker shading and see if that gives you a result more to your liking.

Personally, I think the minature looks awesome as is, but that's just my opinion.

[umbra-mentis.livejournal.com]

Looks awesome :)

DoF is always a problem for detail macro work - here're a couple of websites you might like to look at.

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/depth-of-field.htm
http://dvinfo.net/articles/optics/dofskinny.php


This one's only useful if you're willing to composite several images in a photo-editor, in this case Photoshop:
http://www.photomigrations.com/articles/0603200.htm

Again if you're willing to composite you'll probably like this one as it links to a program designed to composite for you:
http://www.wonderfulphotos.com/articles/macro/focus_stacking/

[moniemonstar.livejournal.com]

wow! that looks excellent!1

[morsla.livejournal.com]

Thanks :) 'twas fun to paint.

[virtual-munkee.livejournal.com]

hey apparentlt it was the 25th anniversary of Warhammer 40 K last weekend? There are two mega nerdy nerds in 3rd year geology, who were discussing it on the bus round KI. Apparently one of the nerds doesnt compete, cause he is 'too competitive and nasty in tournaments'. Whatever! I bet he sucks at it :lol:

[morsla.livejournal.com]

Most of the tournaments have points for winning games, and points for things like sportsmanship :) It means that there are plenty of people who might be really good at winning games, but who are complete pricks, and so they probably won't win anything...

[fetnas.livejournal.com]

The focus problem relates to depth of field. Macro has a very shallow DoF, resulting in a shallow band of focus resulting in fuzzieness in the nearest of furtherest it of the photo (I'm guessing you already new that bit).

Have you tried turning marco off, moving the camera away from the models allowing the use of a longer focal range of the lense and then zooming back into the area of th photo your're interested in? The main drawback with doing this is again DoF related. The image will begin to look compressed, meaning there will be less depth from the nearest part of the photo to the furthest.

So your options are either buy a crazy expensive lense and DLR or find a compromise between fuzz and flatness.

[morsla.livejournal.com]

Another problem is that you lose DoF by getting too close, but you also lose it by zooming in with a telephoto lens... without a macro lens or playing around with stacking multiple shots like in Emily's links, it's difficult to find a good compromise.

I think I'll try with the macro mode off, to see how much difference it makes. I'm also keeping an eye on the prices of macro lenses (I already have the DSLR to attach them to...) - unfortunately they aren't things that often go on sale...

[rendragon.livejournal.com]

If you have a nice high pixel rate with your DSLR, you could try taking your pic in a "raw" format and then zoom/cropping in photoshop to get it "bigger".

Not sure if it will get you what you want, but might be worth a try.