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Posted By:
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Wayne E. Moyer
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Posted On:
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Monday July 9, 2012 at 1:26 PM
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Message:
Commenting on Colors
I had an interesting discussion with our moderator a few days ago and it got me thinking (Dick has a tendency to do that to me), so blame this on him. This will be a bit lengthy, but I hope informative for those who stick with it. I've been through this before with model airplane people.I've been photographing models since the first story I wrote in 1973, and from 1980-1995 I was a freelance photojournalist (i.e, I got pit and trackside photographer credentials and got paid for it) at NASCAR, CART, IMSA, SCCA, SVRAA, and some other acronyms I've forgotten races. My best estimate is that I've had around 12,000 photos published over the 50 years, and I hope I've learned a bit about color and what affects it.First and foremost is light-- "natural light" (which comes in all sorts of shades) incandescent bulbs, florescent bulbs, flash-- they all add color to photos. "Nature" and "people" photographers love early morning or late afternoon "warm" sunlight which adds orange-red. So if you're looking at photographs of the same car-- or model-- taken inside under florescent light or outside at early evening, you'll see two different shades. If you look at photos of a model taken under controlled conditions and compare it to a shot of the real car inside a museum with multiple light sources, I'll almost guarantee you'll see different shades.It's not so much of a problem now but most of our reference photos were shot with film; Kodachrome and Ektachrome gave very different shades for the same color (don't even get into the variations given by black & white film). Now we get variation from the white balance setting of the camera. My camera has 8 different settings and I guarantee that the same model, on the same background (we'll get there) with the same light, will look different with "flash", "photoflood bulb", "preset" (to a neutral gray card), or "automatic" WB settings. Older or simpler digital cameras have a white balance algorithm, you just don't know what it's optimized for. So two photos of the same object, shot at the same time, with different cameras, will most probably have different hues.Background. Light reflects off the background onto the model or car you're photographing, changing the hue. See the photos of the Hisso Xenia below. Trust me, if I'd put that on a green or yellow background you'd see some real variation. So if I'm shooting a photo of a classic car car parked in front of a classic red brick building, with a low morning or evening sun behind me (as it should be), red-hued light will reflect off the building and tint what the camera sees. If the building is ivy covered, the shot will look different (more green).Paint. Modern paints are a LOT different from those used 70 years ago and reflect light differently. Metallics are especially bad-- for true scale look both the color pigments and metallic particles would have to be ground 43 times smaller than that used on the real car. Doesn't happen, and the "out of scale" pigments reflect light differently. The CART car colors during the years of PPG sponsorship were REALLY bad, with very high pearl content in most colors. I did walk-around photos for my own use and moving a foot or so was enough to change the hue in sunlight. Photos shot from one side of the car looked VERY different from photos shot from the other side. So did photos shot in bright sunlight or overcast skies.
So when the car was painted combines with light to change hues.Magazine/Book photos. HERE's the biggie! Magazine and book photos are done with a 4-color printing process. The guy doing the printing has only 4 colors available to mix to make the printed color. A contientious printer will adjust the mix to get what he thinks is the most important color (Dark Blue Bugatti body or the tan skin and yellow bikini of the pretty girl standing next to it? HMMM....) as close as he can. A guy in a hurry or an automated system???? So if you're comparing a model to a book or magazine photo, you're comparing it to something shot with film (or digital settings) you don't know, with unknown lighting conditions, all adjusted by a printer who never saw the car, to a color he thinks is right!I've collected the paint chip pages provided by paint companies to body shops for years and have a pretty full set from 1955-1970 and 1980-1995. I compare a model to those wherever possible, but... some of my chip pages are in pristine condition and some look like they laid out on the shop bench exposed to dust, grease, smoke, bright light and Luigi's salami sandwich for months. So not even that is foolproof.But we're not done yet!! I'll bet a substantial amount of money that your computer monitor's color balance settings are different from mine-- or just about anyone else's. The best single source of paint information is autocolorlibrary which has thousands of those paint chips scanned into a computer so you can find the "right color" for almost any car. But if I compare the color of a chip scanned in and displayed on my computer monitor to a chip of the same color in my hand, IT WILL LOOK DIFFERENT. So if you're comparing a photo (remember all those variables?) of a model seen on your computer to a magazine photo (more variables) of a car (or worse yet, a magazine photo scanned into a computer and seen on your monitor) the odds of seeing what the correct shade or hue should be are awfully small.Sure, we all know of instances where a model is painted in a color that just wasn't available when the real car was built. But those instances are becoming less common. And up through the '60's it wasn't real uncommon for a buyer to pay extra to have a car painted in a shade that wasn't a "factory" color-- dealers and manufacturers would go out of the way to make a sale. My '64 1/2 Mustang convertible was built, at my insistence. in a color combination (Poppy Red with Red interior) that all the Mustang books say was never available-- but ONE was built that way.Bottom line: unless you're holding the model in your hand and standing 43 feet away (yes, there's a "scale effect" to color) from the real car don't let a perceived difference in the shade, hue, or tint of the model's color keep you from buying it and don't be too critical of it.OK, now I'll go put on my asbestos suit again.Wayne
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