Ok, so we (well, some of us) know about the change in Tamiya XF-62 OD to a somewhat greener colour.
In the last week I have picked up a few other colours and noticed the following looking at the paints in the bottle:
XF-57 Buff is slightly less pink than it used to be XF-59 Desert Yellow is visibly less orange than that of old XF- 60 Dark Yellow has less of the old familiar greenish tinge
Is it my imagination? Wishful thinking? Batch variation? Or have the colours really changed? Has anyone else noticed this?
Phil, the appearance of the paint in the bottle is a poor guide to the color as it will be when thoroughly mixed and applied to the surface. However:
The pigments used by paint manufacturers change, sometimes with every shipment. This has to do with what supplier has the least expensive material.
Binders also change, sometimes necessitating a change in pigments.
When properly done, these changes lead to little change in the color as applied, since test batches, and production batches, are tested and shaded to a standard. While shading, even (or especially) computer aided, is non-trivial, the results are variations that should not be particularly obvious. There are two exceptions: sometimes the changes mentioned above result in a color that cannot be made to a close match with the standard. The other is that if you compare paints manufactured at sufficiently different times (years) there may be a color drift, again due to cumulative changes in pigment and binder.
Poor manufacturing practice (but widely done) is to match one batch to one or more of the previous batches, rather than a fixed standard. The advantages to this are obvious, but it leads to significant color drift over time. It’s fine if the standard is used to check the drift periodically, but sometimes that isn’t done.
Actually I’m not comparing paint in the bottle to a painted surface - what I am looking at is bottles of paint of the same colours, obviously from different production batches. I’m aware that minor variances can occur between production batches and that minor shifts may be considered to be within a “tolerance range”.
However, in recent times there has been much discussion about the difference in XF-62 Olive Drab, which has changed significantly. The difference in the XF-59 Desert yellow is quite noticeable, and as we know, certain characteristics of Tamiya acrylics have changed markedly over the years.
Maybe I am seeing something that isn’t there, or is there, but within manufacturing tolerances. [:D] Just putting it out there to see if anyone else has noticed anything similar.
If you are going to tackling a large project that will require several bottles of paint. Mix them together first then divide them back into smaller bottles. This will blend them and help avoid shade batch differences.
This is something the professional painters are supposed to do on a large project—which is why they always buy more paint than they know they will need. Nothing gets the client upset like the one wall, or half a wall, that’s a very slightly different shade than the rest of the house…
This is also what was frequently done when camoflaging aircraft and vehicles in the field—and “military specifications” varied (still do) rather a great deal, not to mention what was available. Yet another reason the “paint nazis” at contests and elsewhere are always wrong—if the color is close, it’s probably authentic![(-D]
There was a movie, way back when, that featured a submarine painted pink because of such a situation. Can’t remember the name of the film… …by the way, what were we talking about…?[zzz]
Depends on the desert. Most deserts aren’t yellow, but some shade of buff, even grading into pink. But the other reason is the light dust haze that is often present. Red tones tend to fade to the human eye at distance and in poor atmospheric conditions. That’s one reason fire trucks are frequently that bright chartreuse color, these days.
