Designing a shadowbox diorama

[Carlo]

Can I do stacking with pictures from an old iPhone 6?
Don't you need manual focus to do that?
Carlo

[finescalerr]

Havard, are you actually running Affinity on the iPhone or just thinking about the possibility? I use it on my computer and never thought beyond that.

Carlo, the iPhone 6 should be capable of shooting a series of photos where you focus on a different point each time. The yellow box on the screen will move if you drag it with your finger. Touch inside the box to establish the focus. Put the phone on a tripod and shoot with a ten second delay to make sure the vibration after touching the phone has subsided. Load the images onto your computer and then do the post processing. If I failed to answer your question clearly or properly, I'll walk you though everything on the phone.

As I've said, I consider Affinity equal to Photoshop. Each has strengths and annoyances but the results are the same. I've been using Affinity for the past three years. Regular photos are as easy as when using Photoshop but I've also been using it to create photographic "wallpaper" finishes for models. It works very well and I'm very fussy.

Russ

[Hauk]

Havard, are you actually running Affinity on the iPhone or just thinking about the possibility? I use it on my computer and never thought beyond that.

Carlo, the iPhone 6 should be capable of shooting a series of photos where you focus on a different point each time. The yellow box on the screen will move if you drag it with your finger. Touch inside the box to establish the focus. Put the phone on a tripod and shoot with a ten second delay to make sure the vibration after touching the phone has subsided. Load the images onto your computer and then do the post processing. If I failed to answer your question clearly or properly, I'll walk you though everything on the phone.

As I've said, I consider Affinity equal to Photoshop. Each has strengths and annoyances but the results are the same. I've been using Affinity for the past three years. Regular photos are as easy as when using Photoshop but I've also been using it to create photographic "wallpaper" finishes for models. It works very well and I'm very fussy.

Russ

I am shooting with CameraPixel (instead of the standard camera app) on my iPhone 12. With CameraPixel I can set the range from the nearest to the furtherest point of focusing (In percent, you have to do some tests to find out what it means in actual lengths) and the number of images.

The image below was shot from a focus distance from 5% to 85 %. I set CameraPixel to shoot 10 images. As it turned out, the range was too long, the 2 closets images and the 2 furtherest were totally blurred. It is a great help to be able to shoot the images in a single burst, it saves a lot of time and hassle!

I imported a stack of 6 images to my desktop computer. So I used Affinity Photo on the desktop PC. There is a version for the iPad/iPhone, but I have not tried that one.

[Barney]

Sorry to Gate Crash your superb modelling article - But whilst on the subject of "Affinity Photo" How can I delete photos from my Affinity Photo system - The story so far is I had Affinity Photo installed last year but had many issues that even the AppleMac OS "wiz kids" could not solve it was about the time of Big Sur
( I called the big cock up) was being updated /or introduced so I thought my only way round the problem would to completely drain my AppleOS of its contents and restart from scratch. So not being one to be defeated I have now reinstated Affinity Photo being that I want to start from the beginning and want to delete the photos I have in the Affinity Photo programme how can I do it - Checked on websites and the say it can not be done !!!!! - others say remove the bits you don't want with the brush tool !! But I want to remove the whole photo any Ideas ? I hope my computer jargon is understandable ( Im very basic at these issues) but its the only way I can understand it !!
I think the answers should be put in the Bluenote room to give this superb modelling article plenty of room to continue
Thanks
Barney 

[Bill Gill]

Barney, sent you a private message, not with answers, only a question...

[finescalerr]

Havard, thanks for clarifying your process. The results are beautiful.

Barney, send me an e-mail and I'll try to help. As far as I know, Affinity does not include any "photos". Maybe you are referring to the *.afphoto files it generates.

Russ

[Bernhard]

A really great model, Hauk. It is always interesting to see what beautiful details can be found in old buildings.

Bernhard

[Hauk]

Thanks for all the encouragement!

I have started to look into the painting of the walls with an ambition of keeping things simple and getting on with it.

It seems that brushpainting matte (XF) Tamiya acrylics in two layer will work OK.

I tried sprinkling very fine rock dust into the wet paint, but this just looked wrong for plastered brick walls.

Here is a  sample:



The area closest to the figure looks quite right. What is needed in 0-scale is not so much texture as a slightly uneven surface that suggest a slightly uneven brick wall under the plaster. It needs some weathering, though.

[Hauk]

Another test for painting the walls.
This is just Tamiya XF paint applied quite thickly with a sponge.  After the paint has dried it was lightly weathered with MIG pigments:



But I am open for suggestions for improvement!

[Bill Gill]

Hauk, The bulk of plaster walls I have seen have been limited to residential rather than industrial settings, so that norm was to have as smooth a surface as possible. In general walls were worked with a wide trowel, any residual tool marks reflected that.
In your first test photo with three colors of plaster, the two on the left appear mostly like "scratch coats", The area behind the figure is smoother, but has a lot of narrow lines/shallow scratches mostly running at a slight diagonal angle up toward the right. That doesn't look like the surfaces I've seen, which have more of faint broader, longer arcs barely visible (if at all) under most indirect lighting. If you google plaster walls and images you can see lots of examples. The photos of more heavily textured plaster seem like a more modern affect used in residents.

In your more recent photo the surface is much smoother and could represent a plaster wall or a "sheetrock" "wallboard" wall with a very light, but uniform painted texture (except for the few scattered "pimples")

A neighbor who renovated his house a few years ago to look more like colonial American house inside and out had sheetrock installed, but then had it skim coated with plaster to give the surface the slight look of having been handworked with a long trowel. Does that help at all?

[Hauk]

Hauk, The bulk of plaster walls I have seen have been limited to residential rather than industrial settings, so that norm was to have as smooth a surface as possible. In general walls were worked with a wide trowel, any residual tool marks reflected that.
In your first test photo with three colors of plaster, the two on the left appear mostly like "scratch coats", The area behind the figure is smoother, but has a lot of narrow lines/shallow scratches mostly running at a slight diagonal angle up toward the right. That doesn't look like the surfaces I've seen, which have more of faint broader, longer arcs barely visible (if at all) under most indirect lighting. If you google plaster walls and images you can see lots of examples. The photos of more heavily textured plaster seem like a more modern affect used in residents.

In your more recent photo the surface is much smoother and could represent a plaster wall or a "sheetrock" "wallboard" wall with a very light, but uniform painted texture (except for the few scattered "pimples")

A neighbor who renovated his house a few years ago to look more like colonial American house inside and out had sheetrock installed, but then had it skim coated with plaster to give the surface the slight look of having been handworked with a long trowel. Does that help at all?

It always help to hear what others thinks of your work. Especially when it evokes that "I did not think about that" feeling. If we don´t build models only for our own gratification, it is important that what we are trying to express is interpreted correctly by the viewer. You interpret my last example as a sheetrock wall, something that I can fully understand. But it is not the effect I am looking for, and that is what make your feedback so valuable. More experiments have to be made! And lets be clear, these are experiments, please feel free to tear them apart! Don´t hold back!  

Here is the last wall experiment. A little variation in the coloring (sponging on a slighly different tone as a top coat) as well as a light sprinkling of talc. The pendulum might have swung to far to the other side, but hopefully I am getting closer to a wall that resembles a more aged wall with traces of calcium/lime deposits and right before the paint starts to flake off (suggestions for making flaking paint and lime deposits?):



It´s been some days since I made this test, and looking at it now, it is not quite as promising as I remembered it, so our little friend will probably have to pose in front of a lot more wall panels.

Another area were  I have started to test techniques and build skills is finishing white metal castings:



These anvils was first dunked in Birchwood Casey blackening solution. Somewhat surprisingly, this worked quite poorly. Went ahead anyways with dark rust and black pigments on the bottom and polished the top with gun metal pigments (all pigments by MIG). The best thing that can be said is that I like the top surface, and the anvils look like they are made of metal. But what should be a dark rust color really looks like copper.  

I tried the same blackening on my CHB kits, and what a difference!


In seconds, they turned black. In fact, the process went so quick that I started to worry that the process could destroy the castings. But close inspection shows no pitting in the surface, so I hope they are good.

I rinsed and scrubbed them with water. The white on the edges are therefore signs of the blackening getting worn off, it is not some of the dreaded white deposits that sometimes form on blackened brass parts.

Suggestions on how to proceed with painting the machines? They are going to be painted a green color, but I am uncertain if I should use an airbrush or not, and if the paint should be gloss or matte. I am leaning towards gloss paint applied with an airbrush, then weathered by washes and finally pigments.

[Ray Dunakin]

I don't know what to tell you about that wall, without seeing a prototype photo of the type of wall you're trying to replicate.

The anvils look really good except near the bottom, where they do indeed look a bit coppery.

[Hauk]

I don't know what to tell you about that wall, without seeing a prototype photo of the type of wall you're trying to replicate.

Thanks for the feedback!
This gives me the opportunity to elaborate a little:
A goal for me is that the modelling should look "right" even if the spectator have never seen the prototype or pictures of it. I suspect I am not quite there yet...

[SandiaPaul]

As for the milling machine...what you achieved on the overarm support looks perfect. The table top and the ways(all sliding surfaces) should look like that too. What era are we doing here? Is this the machine you got from me? Most machines made in the 1800's were black, color didn't come until later. The gloss level would have been shiny when new and less so in use. If you go for color green and "machine tool gray" would be right. There were many variations of both of those.

[SandiaPaul]

I tried to find a free copy of this article for you but no luck...I have a paper copy somewhere

https://www.jstor.org/stable/40968876?refreqid=excelsior%3A4f240a8dd833be9742b595ecab1f9637