Okay my friends, I want to post a bit of an update. My photographer friend Richard Krall and I took the Bulldog to the old granary site for some location pics almost two weeks ago. It was pretty cool watching him work; it really made my own photo efforts look pretty amateurish (appropriately so
). Well, we took a bunch of photos, arriving there a bit late for the best light but still managed. He sent me the files a few days later.
Uh oh. In every photo that clearly showed the commander's M2 machinegun, that damned gun was tilted in its mount. Hell, it looked like it was mounted on some sort of
ball-swivel ! Richard said he learned so much from his first model photos that he would like to shoot them again. And of course, I was up for that!
In the meantime, I ordered a lightbox to try to get some better inside "detail" pics. My first try with it showed a pretty good learning curve. I talked with Richard over the phone for some advice in using my camera with the box. I ended up using our Nikon D3300 DSLR on a tripod, in manual mode with a 1/30 shutter speed, f13 and ISO 400 for the best of my indoor shots. The lightbox came with eight or nine different colored backgrounds, but I've only tried the white thus far.
It turns out that that M2 caused
even more issues. It is an Eduard resin product, and while nicely detailed (oh man, that
teeniney "butterfly" trigger on the M2 is about the smallest PE I've ever fooled with!), I swear that thin barrel has a spring-steel core. I had worked hard trying to get that barrel straight in both the up and down,
and left to right axis. One direction would look fine, but the other was curved, then the opposite would happen! I thought it looked okay when we went to the granary.
It didn't. Not only was it still curved upwards, but also tilted as explained above.
Crud. The tilting had resulted from the fact that the aftermarket M2 didn't fit the pintle mount as securely as the kit's gun. And after getting it in place, I was hesitant to bend around on it too much.
I should've though. As I sort of zeroed in on the camera settings and distance that seemed to work best with the lightbox, I wound up with 30+ pretty fair photos, but that M2 barrel looked like Bob Hope's "ski jump" nose! That just wouldn't work! Jackie and I had visited our son and his family yesterday to see their "new" house, and of course, dinner after that. We didn't get home until about 10:30 last night but all the way home I had been thinking about that gun. I decided that I would straighten out that barrel
even if I had to break off and glue it back on right!
So, I went to work on it then, and soon did completely dislodge the gun from its mount. I kept at it, glueing it back in place and gingerly tweaking the barrel. I bent it so severely I was sure it would break. I stopped when it seemed pretty straight. But this morning, that damned spring-steel core curved her up again. Back to it I went, bending that resin barrel
even farther this time...
until finally it did look better. Not perfect, but I'm afraid to press my luck further.
So, instead of waiting for Richard's return to Cameron, I'm planning on taking the tank back to the granary with my home-made base and camera gear and try my own location pics. I have about 10 or 11 lightbox photos to retake now that the M2 barrel looks better. So, until I can get the remainder of the pics done, here are a few final "sneak preview" shots. I hope to post a Finished Model article in the near future with all the pics.
These first three are from the session with Richard. He took 8 different "bird's eye" shots and I liked this best. The sunset pic would work if not for that damned M2!
This is one of my lightbox pics:
And just to show how bad the curved barrel looks, here's one of those:
Thanks for your interest in the Bulldog tank, and thanks for having a look at her so far!