Russian Navy Varyag 1:350 Full Option

Well, just two pages not an overkill. I don't have laptop, tablet or smart phone, just an old desktop PC running Windows XP and an android TV connected to Internet

I tried setting to "A" mode, probably "Aperture priority" and the camera seemed to focus on the middle row same as the "S" mode mentioned earlier, so I didn't use that mode. Still relying on "I+" mode, one which white balance cannot be set (the options are grey instead of black). Yesterday I took some pictures under low fluorescent light during nighttime and one of my artists (AI) said that they look good with black background. You might want to view how it works without White balance setting:

falconbbs.com/model77a.htm

By "ModelManiac's Manual" I just meant "the manual for ModelManiac's camera."

Copying those manual pages longhand seems like overkill. Do you have a laptop, or a tablet, or a smart phone? If so, just keep it with you when you take pictures. Then the whole 300-page manual will be at your fingertips.

Your two test shots confirm beyond all doubt that the white balance is set wrong for the shots you're trying to take. In both shots the sheet of paper ought to look white.  In the first shot it looks blue, in the second it's got a more purple cast - and that shot, as you said, is out of focus except in a stripe down the middle. (I have no idea why it's out of focus. Switching to "shutter priority" may have done it - especially if the paper was curved a little bit.)

I'm wondering if the fundamental problem is that, by the camera's definition, you simply don't have enough light. That might explain the whole problem; cameras often get fooled by low light. Try this: take two pictures of a blank sheet of white paper, in the same setting you use for shooting models. In one shot, leave the white balance and everything else set where they've been. In the second shot, use the camera's built-in flash. I'm betting the first picture will look bluish and the second will look just right. If I'm right, you need more light - a lot more - on your models. To your eye the light may look fine, but the camera sees light differently.

You might try taking a few model pictures with your built-in flash. You may not like the result, but it may be better than the blue pictures you've been getting.

Model photography is, by nature, a little trickier than taking snapshots. Your camera is perfectly capable of taking good model pictures, but it will take a little extra effort.

I take model pictures once a year for the members of our model club. I start by setting up two specially-balanced lights on stands wit umbrella reflectors, at different heights, pointing at the model from different angles. And I use a big paper backdrop. The camera is mounted on a tripod, so I can use slow shutter speeds. It's quite a ritual; it takes the best part of an afternoon to shoot four or five models. And the gear (not counting the camera) cost about $200.00. I don't suggest that your setup has to be that elaborate, but it looks like you need to make some changes to your shooting venue.

I think you need a little help from somebody who isn't on the other side of the planet. Is there a good camera store in your neighborhood, with a manager or employee who knows about light and white balance? Or a friend who's a photography enthusiast?

Another idea: do a post in the "Photographing Models" section of this Forum. Some real photography experts hang out there. Don Stauffer, for example, takes excellent pictures of his models in natural light.

i have a feeling that once somebody figures out just what settings to change I your camera, your pictures will look a lot better. Good luck.

What do you mean by "ModelManiac's manual"? I never wrote any manual.

As for the 2-page RX100 manual, I don't have a printer to print out so I made a hard copy using my handwriting. I wanted to compare the images before and after White Balance setting so I took two images. The first one in my regular mode (I+ or Intelligent+). After that I changed to S mode (shutter priority) and set White Balance to "Shade" (adjusts for a shady location) and took the second image. The second one is whiter, but only the middle strip is in focus, (I resized images and rotated them 90 degrees) while the upper and the lower strips are out of focus. As seen in these 2 images:

Where did I go wrong?. My new page (coming later tonight) has the same problem with this.

I recently bought a little super zoom bridge camera myself -  a Nikon P-520. Initially I was irritated about the manual, which wasn't there. Just a printed, almost useless "Quick Start Guide" and a CD. I ran the CD, which had a fine, detailed manual on it, on my desktop Mac. (The features on that little apparatus are unbelievable!) I started to print out a hard copy, but I quickly realized that such a document would be four inches thick. Not the sort of thing that I want to lug around on the family vacation trip next month.

Then I discovered that the whole thing is also online. I googled "Nikon p-520 manual," and there it was - in a form that lets me access any page of it instantly. Then it hit me: all I need to do is keep my I-phone with me when I'm using the camera. The phone takes up a lot less space than an old-fashioned printed manual.

I googled "Sony RX100 manual," and got the same access to ModelManiac's manual.

The camera manufacturers are, as usual, several jumps ahead of me. If you've got your phone, you've got your camera manual. Pretty cool.

Mike, thanks for your kind words.

jtilley, thanks for the link and the guidelines. I've been loading it in another tab for some minutes now and will take some more minutes and I'll surely read it. Thanks again.

GMorrison, what's RPN?

Russian cruiser post? Nyet comrade.

I grew up in HP town. They beta tested the HP 35 calculator in our high school math class. I actually made it through the ninth grade using a slip stick.

Whoever the genius was who invented RPN, I hope they retired a long time ago.

Here's the link to the online manual for the Sony RX100:docs.sony.com/.../DSCRX100_guide_EN.pdf

White balance is explained on pages 102 and 103.  Easy.

On the first page, click on "Menu Items (Shooting)." Then click on "White Balance." You'll be taken to a page that explains just what white balance is, and how to set it. You can pick from several pre-set options, or customize the white balance by shooting a picture of a white piece of paper.

Believe me, it'll make a difference.

Nice build!

Mike

arnie60 mentioned about the Bulletin Boards, so I think I'll share my past. I remember oh so well that I bought my first computer in 1986. It was a local brand Tavon, with 256KB RAM and 2x360KB floppy disks. Intel 8088 CPU running at around 5.7MHz. My first modem was 1200bps and I operated the longest-serving BBS in Thailand - Falcon BBS - for 16 years straight, long before the time of Internet (but not long after its arrival). During that time I upgraded my modems many times - to 2400, 9600, 14400, 28800 and 33,600 bps. That's why my website is named falconbbs.com. At that time I was quick to upgrade my hardware - to 286's, 386's, 486's, Pentium and so on, more storage, more RAM, more add-ons. I remember paying 12,000 Baht ($400) for just 16MB of RAM. I spent real lot of money on computer hardware and peripherals - over one million bahts as far as I can remember. But not anymore for the past 10 years. Now I'm still using my old PC with 1.6GHz Celeron Processor, 1GB RAM, 60GB WD HDD running Windows XP. The only luxury add-on is TEAC UD-H01 USB Audio DAC for music listening enjoyment. As for cell phone, I've never owned or used one all my life. No need to charge batteries, pay phone bill, or worry that it'll be hacked or stolen.

BTW, try my "Pop Songs" Playlist. You'll re-discover many good old songs that you've forgotten! They will remind you of good old days.

Had to ring in on this.

My first real computer (bought in 1982?)was the Tandy 2000 (made and sold by Radio Shack) with a CPU running at 8 Mhz (screaming fast for its day) 256K of RAM, a 360k floppy disk drive, 330 baud external modem, and a state of the art CGA monitor. If I remember right, I paid around $1000.00 for it all. A frikin fortune at the time. You had to learn to write batch codes in MSDOS back then in order to run and install programs. Windows was in its infancy and was little more than a very basic graphic interface, and the Web was little more than a way to access files on Bulletin Boards (remember those ?). My first computer game was Zelda, which had no graphics, just text. Now my Iphone is easily a thousand time more powerful and fits in my pocket for less than $200 and a two year contract w/ AT&T.

The desktop Mac I bought a year ago doesn't have a built-in CD drive either. The salesman at the Apple Store explained that the manufacturers are trying to phase out the CD. in the near future, just about all digital information will be stored in "The Cloud." I bought, for about $50, an external CD drive that lets me access the stuff I've put on CDs. I still have some floppy discs that I'll probably never be able to open again - but the computer lab at the university can do it.

I fought off the Computer Revolution for years. I was still using an electric typewriter as late as 1985. I think it was about 1990 when I bought my first computer (a Tandy - does anybody remember that brand?). What forced me to take the plunge was the discovery that my students were speaking a language, computer-eze, that I couldn't understand.

I also hung onto my film camera long after the Digital Revolution, and I retain nice memories of shooting expeditions with my dear old Pentax film camera. (My recollections of the film processing costs aren't so rosy.) That camera still works perfectly, though finding film for it is getting harder.

But as soon as I made the switch to digital, I knew I'd made the right move. Digital photography does require a little attitude adjustment, and a grudging acceptance that the camera is smarter than I am. (The film camera is too, but it doesn't make it so obvious.) But the payoff is tremendous.

One thing that I muse over occasionally is how some terminology from the film era is hanging on. If (gawd forbid) I were twenty years old, I wonder what I'd make of the term "digital darkroom." (What's dark about it?) or the "dodge and burn tool" in Photoshop Elements. And when I make a PowerPoint presentation for a class, the program refers to the pictures as "slides." Why? They don"t slide anywhere. (Most of my students have never laid eyes on that mysterious antique, the "slide projector.")

In my museum studies course I have each student write a paper analyzing some three-dimensional artifact. A few years ago one student brought in a slide rule, and another brought an LP record. None of the other students had ever seen such things. "Oh. So that's why they call CDs 'compact!'")

I feel old....

Digital photography opens up all sorts of fascinating opportunities - and makes them easy. Believe me, that online camera manual is worth a look. I think you'll be astonished at some of the things that little apparatus can do, once you learn how to talk to it.

I bought my wife a new laptop. It is so advanced that it no longer has a hard wire port for ethernet/ internet. Just wifi.

So I bought USB/ ethernet adapter because wifi is sketchy where she works (old brick building).

The instructions are on a CD, but the laptop doesn't have a CD drive.

Yes, I know how to work around that, but still?

You can pick up a roll of background paper that's plenty big enough to fit any model for about $25 - in the U.S. I don't know what the situation is in Asia, but given the popularity of photography over there, I suspect finding a roll of background paper in a camera store would be easy. Background paper is available in every color in the rainbow.

You don't have to reset the white balance for every shot. Just try the options, pick the one you like, and leave it set there for the rest of your session.

I recently bought a little Nikon super-zoom camera that's apparently about like yours. It came with a small, printed, almost useless "Quick Start Guide," and a CD with the full manual on it. I thought about printing it out, and I quickly figured out that a full hard copy would have about 300 pages. But finding "white balance" on the disc was easy. On my camera, changing the white balance requires clicking on a menu item twice. Takes a few seconds. Apparently the need to look up instructions on a computer is an activity that we all have to accept as a price for living in the twenty-first century. I don't like it much, but it does offer some huge benefits - in lots of areas far beyond photography and model building. (And various other activities.  My wife and I recently bought a washing machine that has an online manual.)

It's not my job to pronounce what's "right" and "wrong" about anybody's pictures - or models. But to me it doesn't make sense to spend hundreds on a camera and be satisfied with sub-par pictures that could be fixed by clicking a few buttons.

jtilley, my background sheets are not big enough to bend and curve as you suggested. Perhaps I should look for bigger ones. My camera didn't come with a hard copy user's manual and I've been too lazy to even look for it from Sony's website. For each new page I usually take 100+ images and it takes at least 1.5 hours. If I have to set white balance for each and every image then it'll take much more time. Thanks for your suggestions anyway.

Bill, sorry I don't know the answer.

highlanderburial, you are right, red really stands out so well and looks fearless. Thanks for your kind comments on the build.

Rob, thanks for your kind comments! Another Russian warship is being built and it's even bigger & more lethal than this one.

Excellent ship!! Love Russian subjects. The Helix? really pops on the aft deck!!

I always thought the "red" decks on the Russian ships made them stand out so well among other modern Navy ships. A great model btw, well done.

I have a small detail question. I notice that the ship mounts a Soviet-era red star on the bow while flying a Russian Federation flag. Is this correct for Federation-era ships?

Bill

Blue is an excellent color for backgrounds. Swapping the lighter and darker shades might look fine. You also might try using just one sheet. Lay it on the horizontal surface and curve it up gently to the vertical. That way there will be no line in the background.

It's fairly obvious, though, that the real problem with the colors in these photos is white balance. For some reason your camera just isn't getting the white balance right. (An easy way to see the problem is to look at the parts of the picture that are supposed to be pure black and pure white - e. g. , the white hull numbers and the various black-painted details). They ought to look black or white (or grey, depending on how the light is hitting them). They don't. They look blue. When that happens, you need to reset the white balance manually.

It takes about twenty seconds. The camera's instruction book explains just how to do it. (If you can't lay hands on the book, you can almost certainly download it from the manufacturer's website.) One of the huge benefits of digital photography is that you can adjust the white balance, take a picture, and see immediately whether you got it right. If you didn't, trash the picture and try again. No need to waste film - or wait for the pictures to come back from the lab. 

We established in an earlier thread that you have a good camera; it's perfectly capable of taking fine model pictures. It just needs a little help from a human eye.

Thanks for all kind compliments!

For colored background I have only two choice - black or blue, and I think blue looks more natural. Maybe I should have used the lighter blue as the sky instead of the darker one?

Artama did a nice job there. I wish you used a different colored background, but that's life.

I've seen that thing in the flesh, and it's a really lethal looking customer with great lines.

Beautiful work sir, thanks for posting!

Love those Russian designs, nice deck painting.

ICIT