Here is my rendition of Tamiya's 1/48th Sherman. Like my Tiger this has taken an absolute age to complete, working shifts - young family - etc. All photos taken with a Nikon D80 18-70mm lens plus 2+,4+ macro filters -

General Shots of the completed diorama




Over head Close Ups





Details





Smile for the folks back home !

Really good work Steve. Is the stowage home made?

Cheers !. The stowage is from the Verlinden set.

cool stuff

a little bit off topic: i was planning to get the D80 but I am not sure. Looking at your photos, I think it would be nicer if you can get more depth of field - in the photo where you are looking at the shermies butt, the electric pole is out of focus - was this intentional?

D80 is a brilliant camera and takes good photos - have a look at my website if you want - www.brodiephotography.co.uk, yeah - the pole is out of focus - will have to reshoot it !!. The reason there is not much depth of field is due to the 'macro' filters plus my first time using them.

Put it in Aperture Priority mode. That lets you adjust the aperture size. The bigger the number, the smaller the aperture and the longer the depth of field.

HTH

However, depth of field narrows dramatically with macro photography. Given the image size and resolution with the D80, a better option might be to back off a little and then crop the image.

John

Great kit, nice details. Can't wait to see the Tiger

Hi Steve,

Nice work on the Sherman.

Cheers

Al

I do quite a lot of macro photography (mostly bugs and flowers), and ran into a similar problem. After a discussion with my mentor he told me that using the 105mm lense I was using would limit the depth of field greatly, and said that what I needed was something in the 300mm range. I used a Sima 105mm EX lense on a Fuji S3 pro (they are made off a Nikon body, but use their own electronics and color sensors). I shoot nothing but hard lined JPEG at 12meg, and have since learned to back off a bit and just blow the pictures up to where I want them. I might add here that the depth of field for a 105mm lense in macro is something close to 3/4" if not a little less.
Your pictures were fine, and actually pretty good. A ring light would have helped a bunch, but a series of lights from the side would have been even better. The trick with the lighting from the side is to keep it soft.
gary

A ring light will give you even, but fairly flat illumination. Take the lights from the side into a reflector, you'll get a large, soft illumination without the flatness of a ring. this is why portrait photographers use umbrellas or softboxes. Lighting is really the key to photography.

John

Very nicely done Sherman. Everything is spot on. Excellent work.

Doug