1/144 Dragon Jagdtiger w/ my new digi-camera!

Little bite-sized RC beasties! I've seen 'em, but I haven't seen 'em run.
The only thing that ruins the detail is a huge thing sitting on top.

Found 'em for sale here:
http://thetoyfederation.com/xcart/customer/home.php

These things are cool.

I've seen some miniature R/C tanks at my LHS. They even have the early and mid production versions of the Tiger I!! I believe that they are 1/144 and they run about $50.00

Roy

1/144 RC??

What I want to know is, how the heck do you make a 1/144 scale RC?? How do they get a motor and controls in something that small?? I can't even get a paint brush in one!! They'll be trying to make a 1/285 scale RC next! The Japanese can miniturize anything!

Bill

Hi, Bill!
Thanks for the good advice.
You're absolutely right: just gotta experiment with it and see what kind of results I get! Good to have a basic idea, though.

You're right about the Dragon RC tanks, too. Kaiyodo makes the 1/144 RC tanks, and Dragon does the excellent 1/72 RC beasties. Haven't seen the soon-to-be-released M1A2, but I bet it's cool!

Brian,

Panzerman was correct. increasing the f/stop and using a longer exposure time will give you more depth of field. Wish I could remember the formula from my college days, but it's something like 1 f/stop doubles the exposure time. So if you went from f/11 at 1/1000 exposure to f/22 (f/16 is a half stop, I believe) at 1/250, the pics should have the same amount of exposure, but the depth of field would be longer for the f/22 shot. I'm going back a few years here (a few, did he say???!), but I think that's how it works. With a digital, you can always play around and immediately see the results. Kinda the best of Polorid with none of the short falls!!

I would love to have a collection of those tanks. I hope they come into ready supply here in the States. I haven't seen them anywhere, yet. They are cool. btw...I think Dragons RC tanks are 1/72, not 1/144.

But Brian, please don't try to mod one of these Tiger II's into a Bovington! Oops, I probably shouldn't have put THAT idea into your head!!

Best always, Brian

Bill

Hi, folks!
Thanks for the info, Roy! I looked at those too, but everything with 5 megapixels was just way over my digicam budget. I think I got the best machine for my yen.
I checked out the Sony (I'm a big Sony fan, actually!), Konica, and Olympus offerings, with all kinds of different memory cards, but I just didn't wanna spend that kinda dough.
My Canon has all the features you just mentioned, just lacking the extra 2.8 mp.
Just gonna have to make do with what I got. I'm sure once I get it figured out I'll be able to take some decent pix.

Sony is always accepting resumes for sales positions!
Put yours in today!

J-Hulk,

Cool tank bro, even if you didn't build it. I'm still envious of you being over there in Japan and I'm stuck in the states! (I'm an anime' fan as well) Look, I do not, in any circumstances mean to sound critical, but if I were you, I'd consider taking that camera back and upgrading to Sony's latest 5.0 Megapixel camera. My wife got hers from Radioshack for $500. Of course, I don't know what you paid for your camera, or even what you are willing to spend on a camera. Megapixels, in "redneck speak" basically refer to resolution. The more megapixels, the better quality photo, and the more options you have when dealing with photographing objects at a distance and showing detail in close up items, like scale models. I can't for the life of me remember the full designation of the new camera, but it's a Sony and it's the new one with 5.0 megapixels. This little thing has several options such as a beach mode for bright conditions, and it even tapes up to 90 minutes of video that you can playback with audio. Break out the included cables and it plugs directly into your TV and you can watch and record it onto a VHS tape or burn a DVD. Man, I should be a Sony sales rep. At least that way I could probably move to Japan!

Roy

Be careful now J-Hulk and don't sneeze. You might blow that baby to never never land. (he-he-he). But seriously now, it does look cool. So small yet so detailed for its size. For 3 bucks, I'd like to have some, too. Too bad there's nothing like that here.

Cute little thing huh?
www.explorephotography.com has some good articles.

Further detailing in 1/144th scale! Here I was thinking that superdetailing 1/76th-1/72nd armour was for hard core builders .

Guess I'll need to buy those magnifying glasses after all.

J-Hulk, try talking to the Camera Shop staff that sold you the camera, or a specialist camera shop if you bought it from a department store. If it is anything like over here, you will be surprised by how much these guys actually do know about using the camera's they sell. (Especially if they think they have an opportunity to cross-sell you an accessory for it while you talk - Would you like fries...err, a tripod, with that?)

Failing that, experiment. After all it is a digital and you don't need to pay for film or developing

Peter
Happy Modelling

Konichi-wa, Brian-sama !
would u believe it, i saw one of these little treasures at my local hobby shop the other day and just had to have it ! now i have the winter camo tiger and the same jagdtiger as u... i love the little diorama bases that come with them over here; no candy though !
didn't Dragon just do a couple of built-up tigers in 1/72 ? i seem to remember something about a Michael Wittman version...
have fun with ur new toy, i'm looking forward to seeing more of ur work !
frosty

Yeah, Demono, those RC tanks are neat!

Panzerman, ahhh, like F22, lotsa light, and a longer exposure time?

I am not to familar with digital cameras, but try increasing your f-stop (smaller aperature). You will need to increase the amount of light on your subject. this work on a "normal" camera.
Good Luck

Wow, for being so small they sure do have a lot of detailing [:0]

Have you seen the 1/144 R/C tanks? Very cool! They actually set up contests with obstical courses for them to run on. Dragon again, if I recall correctly. So far, I've only seen the Tigers. Great camo on them, though. Very detailed.

demono69

Hey, Demono and DJ!

Yeah, these Dragon tanks are cool little beasties!

The camera is a Canon PowerShot A70. Not too expensive (compared to some of the stuff I looked at!!), but packed with features I thought I could use, like macro focus down to 2 inches, full auto or manual control, all the software and cables needed for Direct Connection (Mopar, anyone?) to my computer, and 3.2 megapixels of whatever a megapixel is a measurement of. Resolution, perhaps? The number of pixels in a given area? It's all new to me!

Thus, the journey begins!
Now I just have to build more models to take pictures of!

Plenty in the boxes, though...

Seen pics of the Panther too and I have to say they look stunning. Thanks for updating us on that!

As for your digicam, I'm absolutely hopeless... My Nikon Coolpix 775 seems to do all that hard work for me... Amen

At least you opened the box. That's farther than many of my kits get.

Pics look good. What type of camera is it?

demono69