Author Topic: 1:32 Amodel Nieuport 16c (Read 12299 times)

KiwiZac · « **Reply #45 on:** July 15, 2023, 08:10:09 AM »

That's a very attractive scheme, I'm excited to see it on the model! It's also interesting to see your experiments to replicate the shellac finish. Very informative.

jeroen_R90S · « **Reply #46 on:** July 15, 2023, 04:47:29 PM »

Looks good so far! I used to make profiles with my kids, I drew the (inaccurate

) outlines from my memory and my kids would colour them up to my liking

I must admit on your photo's I can see only 2 colours. Fortunately we can all do as we like

I have a Special Hobby Nie16 on the go, but my resin engine was incomplete (it was a gifted "rescue me" model that was partially started) and along with my Lukgraph Albatros I ordered a 3D printed LeRhone so hopefully I can update my build later on -yours is a great inspiration!

Jeroen

Davos522 · « **Reply #47 on:** July 15, 2023, 11:22:59 PM »

Thanks, Zac! I'm having a lot of fun with this project so far, and made great progress yesterday on replicating the Levasseur dark red/brown.

And Jeroen, I used to do the same thing with my kids! And I find it's interesting you should make that observation about the two colors, as it validates one of the theories about the early Nieuport schemes. It's possibile that the dark green and brown were so close in value—the relative lightness/darkness of the color, unrelated to its hue or chroma—that they photographed as one tone on the old orthochromatic film, thus making it look like the scheme was only made up of two colors. So I carefully adjusted the value on my dark green and brown accordingly to see how it would look, then desaturated it to check:

If you look closely on the colored profile, the rear fuselage is actually two colors, my vert foncée under and just ahead of the horizontal stabilizer (the area bisected by the diagonal shadow), and the brown forward of that. When you remove the chroma, or "saturation", it's practically impossible to tell that there's any difference in the dark area at all.

There's other variables that could have affected the old photos, of course, the red/blue sensitivity of the film emulsion being one of them. I'm playing with a method of adjusting the Curves tool in Photoshop to compensate for that too, just out of curiosity...

Dave V.

RAGIII · « **Reply #48 on:** July 16, 2023, 12:32:12 AM »

Really interesting work you are doing! Still one wonders if we can ever be really sure

RAGIII

Davos522 · « **Reply #49 on:** July 16, 2023, 01:42:07 AM »

Nope, Rick, not unless somebody invents a time machine...

DV

Big Sky Modeler · « **Reply #50 on:** July 17, 2023, 08:25:52 AM »

Dave,

Here is a autochrome photo of a Nieuport 11, N.940 flown by Jean Chaput. It shows the 4 colors quite well. A good book with profiles of these 4 colors on Ni-11 and Ni-16 aircraft is "Nieuport Flyers of the Lafayette" by Jon Guttman.

Not sure if you knew of these sources but I thought I'd mention them.

uncletony · « **Reply #51 on:** July 17, 2023, 09:14:59 AM »

Quote from: Davos522 on July 15, 2023, 11:22:59 PM

There's other variables that could have affected the old photos, of course, the red/blue sensitivity of the film emulsion being one of them

There used to be some open source photoshop filters that would take a color input and output various b&w emulsions: ortho, pan-x, tri-x, etc.

RAGIII · « **Reply #52 on:** July 17, 2023, 09:27:52 AM »

What we need is DSA and his Magic Copying Machine that read Grey Scale perfectly!
RAGIII

Borsos · « **Reply #53 on:** July 17, 2023, 08:44:24 PM »

Quote from: Big Sky Modeler on July 17, 2023, 08:25:52 AM

Dave,

Here is a autochrome photo of a Nieuport 11, N.940 flown by Jean Chaput. It shows the 4 colors quite well. A good book with profiles of these 4 colors on Ni-11 and Ni-16 aircraft is "Nieuport Flyers of the Lafayette" by Jon Guttman.

Not sure if you knew of these sources but I thought I'd mention them.

Hm, this famous photo in fact shows only three camouflage colors

Andreas

Davos522 · « **Reply #54 on:** July 17, 2023, 11:43:39 PM »

Some progress on props, although I ran out of the wood I was using and spent part of yesterday pawing through the billets I inherited from a wood-turner friend some years back. I'd thought the stuff I was using was Honduran mahogany, which I have about twelve pounds of, but then realized it was nothing of the kind... it might be quarter-sawn cherry, or Swiss pear. I found some straight-sawn cherry that should serve, though. The battle continues.

RE: the colors:

- Big Sky, thanks for bringing that photo up! I had seen it, and studied it closely. The original was found by Marc Chassard in 1999, and shows Jean Chaput's machine 940 of Esc. N.57. But in a lot of ways it raises more questions than it answers... and so we fall down the rabbit hole of the Great Nieuport Camo Debate :-) The problem with most of the versions on the web is that they seem to have been zapped in Photoshop with the "Saturation" tool. As near as I can figure out the original autochrome was much less colorful, as in this copy from Albin Denis's monumental Escadrille site:

Marc Chassard, who was also a co-author of a book on early Nieuport doping schemes, decided after much study that that red-brown on the front of the machine was in fact simply the varnished "cheeks", the side pieces made up of diagonal laminations of mahogany veneer. And it does seem a suspiciously close color match, as seen in this photo of the Belgian N.17 undergoing restoration:

This whole question was addressed by Xan in a wonderful post titled "Camouflage Francais Deux Tons (3? 4?)" on the French 1914.forumactif.com forum back in 2018, where he laid out his reasons for going with a simple two-tone green/brown scheme. But there are valid reasons for going with three, or even four, as others have pointed out (including Andreas, replying on the same forum).

I know I'm probably re-hashing stuff that a lot of you are already familiar with (and are probably sick of reading!) but I'm trying to document my reasoning for the choices I'm making as I go along.

- Uncle, likewise thanks! I wasn't aware of the plug-in, I'll do a search for it. I'm altogether too prone to trying to re-invent the wheel.

- Rick, I had a lot of respect for Dan-San, but he sure did have his opinions! I had an exchange with Ray Rimmell a couple of years ago where he referred to his arguments with DSA with some humor, and obvious fondness in spite of the latter's curmudgeonly ways.

- Andreas, I especially liked your comment to Xan on the 1914 forum RE: the argument that the photo of the Nieuport factory only showed two spray-guns, therefore only two colors. And your 3-color Special Hobby N.11 was a work of art, and I'm seriously considering using it as inspiration for this project.

Thanks all, and sorry if I'm rambling!

DV

RAGIII · « **Reply #55 on:** July 19, 2023, 09:38:01 AM »

This is really great research Dave! Perhaps when you finish we will have a New Mold CSM kit to use your results on

RAGIII

Davos522 · « **Reply #56 on:** July 19, 2023, 12:15:42 PM »

Yes! I saw Mike's post earlier... well, at least I'll have a bunch of props to go with it. I'm up to nine so far :-P

But I think I've got that particular problem licked, they're actually starting to look like Levasseurs now. Probably be moving on to a seat, or maybe the Lewis & mount next.

DV

Tim Mixon · « **Reply #57 on:** July 20, 2023, 10:21:32 PM »

Beautiful work on the props.
As far as the cammo pattern goes, I tend to prefer the two tone or possibly three. Can’t get used to seeing four tone on these birds. I guess I’m just conditioned from all the past line of thinking.

All the best,
Tim

Davos522 · « **Reply #58 on:** July 20, 2023, 11:33:29 PM »

I tend to agree at this point, Tim, three colors looks best to me, although which three I haven't decided. I'm doing my profile digitally (in Procreate on my iPad), which allows you to play with the colors by isolating each of them on a separate layer, which can then be adjusted with the Color Balance sliders:

It's still a Work In Progress, besides the camo there's much detail to figure out and add; gun mount, wires, and did the port side of the rudder have stencil data on it? No photos I've been able to find show that side... the starboard didn't, but I've read that often it was one side only.

The Battle of the Props rages on unabated, I think I'm up to ten now. But I've carried it nearly as far as I can, the lightest one on the bottom is yesterday's effort, and while it still needs some refining it looks about as much like a Levasseur No.484 as my current skillset will allow (shape-wise, anyway):

There's still the colored shellac finish to dial in, and I'm waiting for the prop hubs to arrive. Time to move on, I've been working on this project for over a month, and have yet to touch the plastic :-P

Dave V.

Tim Mixon · « **Reply #59 on:** July 20, 2023, 11:50:08 PM »

Lol. Dave with my current skill set you could pull any one the four props out and tell me it’s correct. They all look great.
What a neat program you are using for the profiles. I’m tending towards the first one if it were my choice.

All the best,
Tim