After taking most of the Summer away from the bench, I decided to get back into action with a quick & easy build. I don’t build many Jets, but I’ve had this one in the stash for nigh on 10 years & decided to give it a go. I do find the early straight winger’s to have a lot of appeal. When I opened the box, I found a True Details resin detail set & an Aeromaster decal sheet that I had stuck in there & forgotten about. Build was mostly OOB, as most of the TD resin turned out t be defactive.
My stash of Alclad was running low, so I finished this one using Floquil Old Silver, Bright Silver & Platinum mist. The panel variation doesn’t show as well in the pics as it does under normal lighting. One of the drawbacks of using studio flash for photographing NMF models.
Thanks for looking. Comments/questions welcome as always.
Gorgeous Rick. Taking the summer off does not appear to have affected you in the slightest.[tup]
I don’t know mush about jets, even less about the oldies. Were those drop tanks at the wings tips? Wonder what that felt like when the tanks were dropped and the wing flexed up form the weight/drag suddenly disappearing[:O]
Thanks Frank. No secrets to my photography, but I do have equipment the casual shooter may not have or wish to purchase. These were taken with my latest DSLR, a Nikon D80, fitted with a Nikon DX AF-S Nikkor 18-135mm ED lens. The camera is always mounted on a tripod to minimize any camera movement. I use two small studio flash units from Morris Electronics. One is hooked to the camera as a master flash & the other is triggered by a slave unit. The master flash is mounted on a light stand & bounced from a 36" white photographic umbrella. The master flash is positioned about 2’ higher than the camera lens & about 2’ to camera right. It’s angled down toward the model & serves as the main light. The slave flash is also mounted on a light stand & bounced from a 24" white umbrella. The power setting on the slave is set at 1/2 the power of the master. It’s also positioned about 2’ higher than camera lens & about 2’ to camera left. It’s also angled down toward the model & serves as a fill light. My set up is temporary, so the model is actually sitting on a folding card table. The background is a roll of photographic portrait paper (basically high quality construction paper), suspended over the back of the table with another two light stands & a holding bar. The paper is taped down flat at the front of the table, but allowed to gently curve up at the back of the table. You do not want any sharp angles on the background. I’ve experimented with various background colors & the medium blue seems to give the best results for most of my models. I set the flash power so that I get an f-stop of f-22 (f-32 if doing macro close up work) in order to maximize depth of field. I use a zoom setting in the 100mm range in order to avoid the perspective distortion often seen when wide angle lens settings are used. I usually shoot in JPG large/fine mode, unless it’s something really special in which case I use RAW. Post-processing is done in Photoshop Elements 5.0 where I can tweak the pics as needed & re-size for the Web. I always use the Unsharp Mask feature of Photoshop as the last step in post processing. And that’s basically all there is to my “secrets”.
I could get even better results using soft boxes instead of umbrellas, adding a third flash for some dramatic back lighting & positioning reflectors to minimize some of the lost shadow detail, but I’m too lazy & cheap for all that [:)].
I want to know. How is the kit detail? What were the, if any, trouble areas? I am needing a T-33 for a ANG build I am doing for my son’s unit. Also, can this plane be converted to an RF-80 without too much hassle?
Stunningly beautiful work on the model and the photography. An armed T-33 is fairly unusual, especially with the F-80 style, underslung tip tanks. IIRC, the USAF used that set up in the early 50s for awhile.
Randie, Darwin, Dave, Black Sedan, thanks for looking. Appreciate your comments.
Randie, the kit is typical of most HobbyCraft kits (also re-boxed by Academy). Adequate recessed panel lines, fairly accurate outline, minimal extra detail, decent fit, easy to build. Not in the same league as Tamiya or Hasegawa, but a pretty good kit for the $ I’m really not a Stovepipe Guy, so I don’t know what it would take to convert the basic kit to an RF-80. Just looking at pics, it looks like a lot of work might be required, especially on the nose.
Darwin, I wasn’t sure about the ordinance either, but I did find a couple of pics in one of my Korean Conflict references that showed a T-33 in this configuration.
Simple and beautiful, Rick. It really captures the beauty of this plane.
I agree with you about the old straight wing jets. I’ve got an F-84G on the bench as we speak (my first jet), and a P-59 in the stash. I crawled all over the actual airacomet yesterday at the Dayton Air Force Museum and took a tone of pics.
Now you’ve convinced me I need a T-33 in my collection!
Thanks Guy. Doing an NMF kinda depends on what you’re doing it with, but the one thing in common with all techniques is to get the basic surface as smooth as possible.
