I’m a professional photo/video guy when I’m not building models of aircraft and I’ve been traveling a lot and going to air museums cataloging aircraft (Stills and video) for my database.
I’m thinking of creating a website where they are all posted for fellow modelers to use as needed. The videos would be on youtube by aircraft, the stills on a website also categorized by aircraft. There are some overall wide shots, but mostly it is the kind of details that I’m always looking for that are difficult to find for my models. For example, I’ve seen the exhaust area of the F-4 done so many ways (sometimes with perfect vertical lines, other times with streaks, other times just flat metallic), that I wasn’t sure what they should actually look like. Sooo, I’ve been photographing and videoing them wherever I find them (see below).
Would others be interested in this database? Right now, it is mostly jets and has about 15 aircraft in it, but I plan to build it out as I get time.
@Samphoto I think that is a great idea! If you are willing to run/maintain the website, I’d be happy to contribute all the stills I’ve taken at the USAF museum.
That would be great, the more the better. In fact, seems like a great FSM group project. I can handle the website and anyone that wants
to contribute can.
That’s a great idea. Always searching online for reference material and not always successful. I would gladly contribute photos for an endeavor such as this.
Very cool idea indeed. I spend soo much time looking for ressources everytime !I’m saddened to say I wouldn’t have much to contribute, so I’d be a shameless leecher
If nobody has yet called you a hero let me be the first. Don’t know how many hours I’ve spent scouring the net looking for those impossible to find items. You go boy!
LOL, thank you. I’ve only been back to modeling this year and found the reference photo process to be a real pain so I initially did this for me, until I realized that others might also like it. I never expected that so many would want to contribute to the cause!
I’m going to be working on this over the weekend and I will publish my results and then we can figure out how to have others contribute. I’m excited to get this in place, it’s going to be a great community resource.
Something that could be of help to people, I know I’ve been using this a fair bit. Helped me draw the rivet lines on my il-2. Honestly people may already be aware of it but here we go :
This is a big reposit of airplanes blueprints and other informations. While it’s easy to browse for a family it may be hard to find a specific model/variant.
Just about everything that is anything to model is there …
About half of what I have comes from prime portal anyway, the rest from Tech manuals of mostly military ground equipment I’ve collected over the years… (the actual tech manuals)
Your welcome to it all, and prime portal has walkarounds for most of the tech manuals I have…
It’s a free archive supported by donations to anyone to access or share to…
If that is what you were talking about Samphoto, sorry to point out it’s already been done…
ABSOLUTELY! Not telling you this to dissuade you, I’m bringing it up cause a lot of what I have was found there… I only have a few small things that are oddball, but they are still internet caps, all open source of course but internet d/loads of course…
So one thing to consider as your planning this, are you looking for original works or is anything open source good as well… Foundational things like that… search engines as well, there is a lot that goes into it to make it basically functional…
Oh, I didn’t take it that way at all, in fact I saved that site as I’m likely to use it. It looks great and I had no idea it existed which is odd considering the 100s of searches I’ve done for aircraft photos.
Always searching online for reference material and not always successful. I would gladly contribute photos for an endeavor such as this.