Hurricane IIC - Desert colours

[Pete in Lincs]

In post 14, on MW336 the same item appears there. Apparently a small hydraulic ram. My guess is the down lock for the retraction links.

Why is it red? It could be a factory fit only item due to a shortage of parts, and would be replaced before the Aircraft is issued.

There are pictures of P-51's, for instance, on wooden wheels at the factory.

 

The red on the tanks is, AFAIK, the self sealing rubber coating.

[Graham Boak]

Perhaps it has not yet been fitted?  However there has to be such a piston somewhere to break the join of the other leg supports and hence draw them up, making the undercarriage rotate.

[Etiennedup]

Here is the origin of the colour photo ...........been there for at least  ten years. https://www.gettyimages.ca/detail/news-photo/engineers-mending-a-hawker-hurricane-aircraft-news-photo/3310743?adppopup=true

[ckw]

On 05/06/2020 at 16:30, Troy Smith said:

KZ295

HurriKZ295tropproductionline by losethekibble, on Flickr

 

note purple hue to the Azure Blue in the parts that are not the near UC door

 

 

I think we have to be careful with the colours here. I believe this is clearly a carefully posed shot and is  using mixed lighting - almost certainly some sort of flash in the foreground (note the harsh shadows around the left hand fitter's arm) with flash spill over and who knows what ambiant lighting on the bulk of the aircraft. Measurements in photoshop show a very pronounced color cast on the white of the roundel, absent from the white overalls and the white panel in the leading edge plus the flesh tones look good. 

 

On the basis of that, and the apparent angle of the flash lighting, I would suggest that the undercarriage door is a good representation of the actual color, any other area must be suspect as it will have been influenced by the ambiant light to some extent,

 

I'm also convinced that this is scanned from a genuine color transparency original. Note the nearest fitter's shoulder - the slightly overexposed whites are eating into the shadows of the folds of the uniform. Having scanned many thousands of old slides and negs of the years, this is a look which is very characteristic of kodachrome, and I've not seen it in black and white. 

 

Cheers,

 

Colin

[woody37]

On 6/8/2020 at 12:44 AM, 72modeler said:

If that is what it is supposed to be, it is on the body of the cylinder and not the actuating rod, so would have no way of  "locking" the actuator.

Mike

Good point!

 

[woody37]

2 hours ago, ckw said:

 

I'm also convinced that this is scanned from a genuine color transparency original. Note the nearest fitter's shoulder - the slightly overexposed whites are eating into the shadows of the folds of the uniform. Having scanned many thousands of old slides and negs of the years, this is a look which is very characteristic of kodachrome, and I've not seen it in black and white. 

 

Cheers,

 

Colin

For some reason, Life magazine comes to my mind with this image, but as no one has mentioned it, maybe I’m way off the mark. Their photos are normally branded but it could of been cropped. They did some quite vivid colour images.

[Etiennedup]

woody37.....................look at post #28 above.

[woody37]

18 hours ago, Etiennedup said:

woody37.....................look at post #28 above.

I must of been speed reading or multi tasking, don’t know how I missed that 😂😂
 

thanks

[ckw]

Looking at the "original" on Getty highlights another problem using digitally converted images to judge color. The Getty version has a distinct yellow cast which has been "corrected" in the Flickr version. But we don't know what the genuine original looked like ... did it have a colour cast due to ambient lighting? Were filters used to correct this? So in using this photograph to judge what the real colour looked like we need to consider

 

1 - the original transparency which was taken using a combination of flash and ambient light (which could have been a mix of day and artificial light) - and of course the effect of aging on the film dyes.

2 - any attempt the photographer may have made to correct colour casts using filters - this does appear to be a professional, staged, shot

3 - the Getty scan - is this a true representation of the original, or was it poorly done? I suspect the later

4 - the Flickr version - is it a correction of the Getty scan, or a new scan of the original. Given that Getty appears to own the archive, the former is more likely so making it a number of removes from the original

 

The Flickr version looks pretty good in so far as the flesh tones look right as do the whites in the foreground - but this of course assumes that the original had equally 'realistic' whites and flesh tones. Even a very slight shift in the balance on whites can introduce huge colour casts (which is what probably happened with the Getty scan). The flesh tones in the Flickr image are quite 'warm'. If there had been a slightly cooler look in the original (due perhaps to daylight influence), then this would alter the way the blue of the undersides look.

 

In short, I have always thought digital images a dubious way of judging colour unless you have some provenance for the scan suggesting it was very well done. The original film is better, but still suspect, because of the behavior of dyes over time. Colour chips with known provenance are probably the only reliable source for truly accurate colour.

 

Cheers,

 

Colin