Moose135

Great idea for a forum, Dennis. I'll kick this new forum off... I'm the unofficial, official photographer for the Long Island Scale Model Society. As such, I do the club photography for our annual RepLIcon show. Here's how I shoot the models at our shows. Here's a look at my show set up: I shoot with a Canon 40D DSLR on a tripod, with a Canon 580EX flash. I have two side lights - the fixtures are Home Depot clip-on lights with 60(?) watt bulbs. I clip a sheet of copy paper over the bulb to act as a diffuser. The model is placed on a sheet of light blue poster board, taped to the wall, to create a seamless background. For camera settings, I use ISO 100, and an aperture in the f/7.1 - 11 range for acceptable depth of field. I'll take a few test shots to check the exposure - my settings usually result in a shutter speed around 1/8 - 1/15 second. In the setup above, I'm using a program called DSLR Remote, which allows me to control the camera from my laptop via the USB cable. I can adjust settings, and preview the image on the laptop, and photos are saved directly to the hard drive. Here are some examples of my results: I shoot in RAW these days and use Photoshop CS3, but I try to keep my post processing to a minimum. I'll crop the photo as necessary, and use a little sharpening (USM - Unsharp Mask filter) and save as a JPEG. I'll probably do a little experimenting before we host NorEastCon 2010 - I'm not wild about some of the shadows I'm getting (although some of that is being caused by the lights in the facility.) That's probably a bit of overkill if you are photographing your in-progress models, but here are a few ideas for that as well. If you can, use a tripod, or some other method to steady the camera. Set your aperture to a mid-range - f/7.1 or 9.0 for depth of field, and keep your ISO low. That's where a tripod will come in handy, so you can get a nice crisp shot at slower shutter speeds. If you can avoid using a direct, on-camera flash, that will help avoid harsh shadows in your photos. A desk lamp or two should give you enough light, especially if you can use a slower shutter speed. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. You can see more of my photos at http://www.moose135photography.com

Welcome aboard, King! Have you checked out this book on the KC-135 and its variants? You may want to drop a note to the author, Bob Hoskins (his e-mail is on the "author" page). He's a good guy - we flew KC-135s together at Grissom AFB 20-odd years ago, and he's covered the various -135 models in his book. I don't have my copy at hand to see what it has on Rivet Ball, but I remember that he goes into extensive detail on most of the -135 mods. If you do get in touch with him, tell him Moose from Grissom sent you! ETA: Apparently, Bob is a model builder (which I never realized before). Checking the list of his other published work, he wrote an article on building the AMT/ERTL RC-135V Rivet Joint for the IPMS Journal in 1994.

Very nice work, Doc! I saw that upclose at RepLIcon, and it is really is a sharp looking model.