Some more material; apparently this fellow has acquired a reputation:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... odels.html

http://totallycoolpix.com/2013/10/in-th ... aul-smith/

http://www.craftsmanshipmuseum.com/SmithMP.htm

http://www.visitelginpark.com/

Wonder how well all this would work in motion, like for a movie or TV series?

It's been done for movies. Go watch the movie "Tough Guys" and watch how they "crash" "SP 4449" through a border fence and into the sand.

This guy and his work has done quite an excellent job of "going viral," to the point where I'm actually tired of e-mail friend after e-mail friend forwarding me this stuff in amazement. Of course, this craft has been done for decades in model railroading; the only difference between this guy and his predecessors is a great deal of good HTML and Internet.

The most difficult thing with this craft is doing it right with regards to depth of field. Anyone who's done this for long enough--the staff of model or photography magazines, for example--knows what to look for in an ever-so-slight mismatch between the foreground and the background. True "pinhole" camera apertures are the way to go with that; a good lens stopped down to the smallest f22/etc. aperture isn't going to cut it. Also, some auto/paint guys will tell you how the gloss on the finish doesn't quite shrink to the same degree, and therefore the models, when presented as shiny and new, look just that bit TOO "glossy." (If you watch "Tough Guys" frame for frame in the crash scene, you'll see similar problems that give away the crash as "staged" to the trained eye.)

But, yeah, glad to see a new generation being astounded by what use to be seen only by a bunch of modelers.

The scenes remind me of Electro-Motive's display models of their standard design Diesel locomotive running maintenance and heavy repair shops that had cutaway sides (in the basement too) to show all the interior equipment, including oil storage tanks, storage racks, lockers, tool cribs, fork lift trucks, miniature machine tools, wash stands, locker rooms, etc. Their 1940s-era models featured "O" scale EMD F3's and switchers built by General Models and All-Nation, and machine tools built by Comet Authenticast.

PC

Well, I just took a closer look at some of the photos, and it looks like he got some of the gloss toned down; the cars look pretty good to me in that regard. That might be a combination of lighting, and perhaps some digital trickery. The "problems" I see are (a) no people, admittedly an artistic decision claimed by the photographer, which may also have been driven by the difficulty of getting model people to look as good as model cars and structures, and (b) all the cars look too clean, more like restored autos than those in service, particularly for older cars like a Model A which would have been over 20 years old in 1955. He may want to consider a bit of weathering!

Another factor in this stuff is the "index of refraction". Various materials reflect light differently. That's why a black rubber ball will look different than a steel ball, even if they're painted the same color.

For modelers this comes into play when the material the model is made of is not the same material as the prototype. You can easily hide the problem with heavy weathering, but when trying to duplicate shiny metal, it's far more of a challenge.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_refractive_indices

I can't compete with the scientific analysis provided by ADM4 and the other posters above but I think these are pretty cool. I don't know where the guy gets his 1:24 cars, but they are way more sophisticated than the models I knew as a child.

Something else I noticed in the photo descriptions.



That works to his advantage. A small point and shoot, with a tiny sensor, has a much larger depth of field than a full size DSLR. In effect, he uses something fairly close to a pinhole camera. By comparison, a full frame camera will have lots of issue with foreground and background focus.

I chose a different route, embracing the lack of depth...

Maybe not quite what you guys had in mind.

Bob,

You created a 1:87 scale Mitch Goldman?

Rob