LOOZ Battlegroup completed

Well I finally got those trucks finished, and here are the battlegroup on parade.

I'm not at home; so I'm only shooting in the light of the dining room, but the new approach to the manual settings seems to really be bearing fruit with depth of field.

Here are some more shots.

  

Today I have also undercoated the modern US, afghans, and VC from the previous order, along with the Centurion tank, Greyhound and Panhard armoured cars.  Hopefully I'll get some paint on them soon!

LOOZ infantry finished

I've finally finished all of the infantry for the army of the Loyalist Officers of Zumsia.

The only items left to be painted are the trucks in the background of the picture.

It will be good to have them all done.

I'll be putting up full battlegroup photos once their done.  Hopefully there will be a lot more time for painting and modelling over the christmas break.

DIY Hot Knife

check out this little project where someone has combined an old soldering iron and an x-acto blade to make a "hot knife".

Here is the link.

I can see a number of applications for cutting plastic for bases and modelling, and also for cutting and shaping foam.  Maybe some interchangeable tools?

I also have an underpowered soldering iron downstairs......

Taking Photos

I've been pretty busy the last few weeks with non-gaming things, so I haven't got any more progress shots to show at the moment.

I have, however, been researching a few things and trying to pull together content for TPLC.

Recently I came across a very good article about photographing miniatures.

Check it out at : http://www.hodgenet.co.uk/minpics/index.htm

I've been doing it all wrong!  I'd arrived at settings just by playing with the manual exposure settings on the camera without knowing what I was doing.  As a result, the light at my disposal that first time shooting dictated my aperture and exposure settings.  

My aperture settings were set too wide, hence the depth of field issues I was getting on the massed battlegroup shots.  I've just tried setting the aperture smaller on some work in progress, and it does sort out the depth of field issue.  

The only problem now is that with such a small aperture, my exposure time blows out to 1/4 sec which means my shaky hands cause issues.  I think with better light sources, plus a tripod and timer settings, this could start to work.

The only problem is that now I won't be able to hide my dodgy painting behind blurry photography!