Accuracy of AMMO by Mig Jiménez RAF WWII Colours

[Jochen Barett]

The MIG RAF colors shown are just travesty - and none of the "period" color(ized) photos matches the museum's book's paint chips (and no two pics of the museum's book's paint chips match each other). Total disaster.

[alt-92]

3 hours ago, Graham Boak said:

 

I must  heartily agree with Claudio, and my particular hate is the "good enough for government work". 

Best not tell Dana then. He seems to have a different view to strict adherence on minute levels in practice. 

 

Which brings me to the following: when even expert researchers have such different viewpoints, perhaps you should cut those modellers who do their best to get as close as possible to the Real Thing without having recourse to colour chips (as stated before: rare as hen's teeth and pretty expensive) a bit of slack?
Friendly advice to get a better result: OK.

Lambasting because they did not pick your favourite brand/colour: Mmmmm....

 

I also frequently encounter preferred paint brands and colours that are either long out of stock or only available in certain countries - which makes for poor comparisons.

 

[Rolls-Royce]

20 hours ago, fubar57 said:

Interesting test @Troy Smith. I'm 63 and scored a "0". I'm using an HP laptop. Looking at your bottom two photos, the Spitfire green looks green and the Hurricane green looks a darker shade of grey. I just finished this last night using Tamiya XF-81 Dk. Green 2 (RAF) and Mr. Hobby Aqueous H72 Dk. Earth. I'll say straight up that the lighting is off but the colours are close to what I really see, a wee bit darker but not by much

 

You may be interested to know that the Tamiya RAF Dark Green 2 measured the closest to an available reference of any paint I have yet tested. That was a dE of 0.69 to the color given for Dark Green in Nick Millman's Ministry of Aircraft Production monograph. I don't have any of the Mr Hobby, so can't measure it.

Please note that this is not a condemnation of any other paint. I have tested only a relatively few water-based acrylics, mostly because enamels are getting harder to find here and I needed to find other available paints that "looked the part".

Edited April 2, 2021 by Rolls-Royce

[Dave Swindell]

4 hours ago, Graham Boak said:

I must  heartily agree with Claudio, and my particular hate is the "good enough for government work".  This appears to be the exact opposite of the truth: government contracts include standards that have to be maintained.

That rather depends on your understanding of "government work". I've always understood "government work", or a "guvvy job" as it was often referred to, wasn't the production of equipment for HM Government, rather it was a reference to doing work or making something on the Company's time and with the Company's materials for your own use, with the inference that the work wouldn't have to meet the exacting standards of a government inspector.

This now appears to be misused or misunderstood to be a reference to poor inspection standards for supply of government equipment, which as you rightly state wasn't the case. 

[dogsbody]

I've always understood "good enough for government work" to mean that whatever was being done fell into the range that government inspectors would allow, especially during full wartime production, when getting everything needed out to the troops as quickly as possible and that it would all work when needed. So if one paint batch was maybe just a touch lighter or darker or bluer or reddish than the " government set standard ", it would be used anyway, because it was " close enough ".

 

 

 

 

Chris

[Graham Boak]

Chris: I'd agree with you that this could be the origin, but that's not how it is used on this forum, where the implication is "anything goes".

[alt-92]

5 minutes ago, Graham Boak said:

where the implication is "anything goes".

I'm still waiting for the first pink and blue Blenheim to show up  can't be that bad then.

 

[Dave Swindell]

11 minutes ago, alt-92 said:

I'm still waiting for the first pink and blue Blenheim to show up  can't be that bad then.

 

Would that be sky blue pink with yellow dots?

[alt-92]

BS 356 or 368?

/runs very far away

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

I've quickly shot a 15min video showing what I said earlier in action with real pigments in real time. It's uploading to Youtube at the moment and I'll post a link in this thread when it's uploaded and processed.

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

Youtube video link as promised:

 

[Nobby Clarke]

Most instructive. Thanks Jamie

[Ed Russell]

12 hours ago, Graham Boak said:

 "good enough for government work".  This appears to be the exact opposite of the truth: government contracts include standards that have to be maintained.  

You are completely correct. This is extracted from here

https://fcw.com/blogs/lectern/2018/01/good-enough-for-government-work-kelman.aspx

which is typical of many reviews of the phrase. First perversion of use may be in 1960, in an aircraft context, no less!

 

the somewhat-contemptuous phrase, "good enough for government work," used to discuss production that is mediocre at best and slipshod at worst. What few know, however, is the origin of this phrase, as discussed by Doris Kearns Goodwin in No Ordinary Time, her 1995 book about the home front during World War II.

It turns out that the original meaning of this phrase was the exact opposite of the meaning it has since been given. Originally, it described war production that was done to such exacting quality and performance standards that it could be used by the military to help win the war. Originally, the way the phrase was pronounced was not with the accent on "enough" (good enough for government work), but on "good" (good enough for government work).

 

Like modelling, English is not static and this phrase is probably going to end up the opposite of what it was coined for.

Just like A scientific symposium (drinking party - changed long ago). A moot point (important discussion - changing now) .Literally true (literally true - no idea when this happened).

 

I have compared some of the MIG paints to colour cards (done for a friend, I don't use their paint) and real samples and they don't match very well. I didn't expect them to as they are meant to be "scale colours". I suppose they could have 72 times or 1/72 as much pigment 😀

[Werdna]

12 hours ago, Ed Russell said:

I have compared some of the MIG paints to colour cards (done for a friend, I don't use their paint) and real samples and they don't match very well. I didn't expect them to as they are meant to be "scale colours". I suppose they could have 72 times or 1/72 as much pigment 😀

 

Although I've no experience of the RAF set, I have tried a few of Mig's Luftwaffe colours.  The two worst offenders for me are their RLM 75 - which (by any other standard reference) should be a mid-grey - but dries to a kind of mauve/violet, and their RLM 81 - which should be a mid/dark brown, but is in fact a kind of violet/terracotta shade.  In both cases I can only assume that they've taken the (unofficial) reference terms of 'grey-violet' and 'braun-violet' far too literally, but certainly the colours are a long way from the generally accepted references.  The logic being that either Mig knows something about the true nature of those colours that nobody else does - or that they've not been properly researched.

 

On the other hand, their metallic colours are excellent...

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

21 hours ago, Nobby Clarke said:

Most instructive. Thanks Jamie

 

You're welcome. Hopefully it illustrated my point about the right basic pigments putting you somewhere inside a certain envelope depending on ratios and how well they're mixed, but to go for a walk around the colour-wheel you have to introduce significant quantities of other pigments too - something that needs quite a big explanation before accepting I think

[Tour de Airfix]

I'm sure it was referenced but can't see for looking now .. found a copy of the British Aviation Colours of WWII book in PDF format. Very interesting!
https://www.seawings.co.uk/images/colour charts/British Aviation Colours of WWII.pdf

Edited April 8, 2021 by Tour de Airfix
typo

[Geoffrey Sinclair]

Science is not totally sure all humans see colours the same way, even for those classified as having normal eyesight, before we talk about colour blindness and tetrachromacy.

[Graham Boak]

Basically is what I see as blue you see as green, but are culturally conditioned to think it should be called red?  One for philosophers I fear rather then practical for modelling purposes.  I do however feel that all humans see any given colour as the same each time, given similar light conditions and surroundings.  Otherwise there's be no constancy at all, and no actual science of colour would be possible, let alone constant with time and space.

[Aidrian]

9 hours ago, Graham Boak said:

Basically is what I see as blue you see as green, but are culturally conditioned to think it should be called red?  One for philosophers I fear rather then practical for modelling purposes.  I do however feel that all humans see any given colour as the same each time, given similar light conditions and surroundings.  Otherwise there's be no constancy at all, and no actual science of colour would be possible, let alone constant with time and space.

Philosophising can be illuminating sometimes, and can lead you down some very strange rabbit holes at other times.

 

There are individual differences in perception which are not necessarily due to imperfect colour vision and which can be cultural as well as simply variations in interpretation. For example blue as a distinct colour was not known to many ancient civilisations; the dark yellows that some, like me, see as a dark greenish shade can apparetnly look brown to others - which latter, I suspect, might be one among many reasons for some of the electrons and ink (and vitriol) expended on discussions of PC10.      

Edited April 8, 2021 by Aidrian

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

35 minutes ago, Aidrian said:

which latter, I suspect, might be one among many reasons for some of the electons and ink (and vitriol) expended on discussions of PC10.      

 

That in itself is a good justification for trying to steer clear of qualitative and often vague discussions about greenishness and brownishness and instead discuss quantitatively using CIELAB coordinates which don't suffer these nuances

[Geoffrey Sinclair]

1 hour ago, Aidrian said:

There are individual differences in perception which are not necessarily due to imperfect colour vision and which can be cultural 

Yes, I believe one group of researchers administered the Ishihara plates colour blindness tests to various language groups and discovered a connection between ability to read the plate and whether the language had a single word for the colour involved.  If you like English has blue and green and something between tends to be blue green, another language might have a single word for blue green but not say blue.  The correlation to language showed up in the results.

[alt-92]

2 hours ago, Graham Boak said:

I do however feel that all humans see any given colour as the same each time, given similar light conditions and surroundings.

Weird, could have sworn I've seen posts on here regarding red-green colour vision deficiencies in men being way more prevalent than in women.

https://www.nei.nih.gov/learn-about-eye-health/eye-conditions-and-diseases/color-blindness

 

[Troy Smith]

29 minutes ago, alt-92 said:

Weird, could have sworn I've seen posts on here regarding red-green colour vision deficiencies in men being way more prevalent than in women.

https://www.nei.nih.gov/learn-about-eye-health/eye-conditions-and-diseases/color-blindness

 

I posted this earlier, but as we are into colour perception, and faults of...

 

"Are you among the 1 in 255 women and 1 in 12 men who have some form of color vision deficiency? If you work in a field where color is important, or you’re just curious about your color IQ, take our online challenge to find out. Based on the Farnsworth Munsell 100 Hue Test, this online challenge is a fun, quick way to better understand your color vision acuity."

 

https://www.xrite.com/hue-test

 

Used to have  more squares, and was thus harder, but still gives an idea of how your colour perception is.

 

On 03/04/2021 at 19:42, Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies said:

Hopefully it illustrated my point about the right basic pigments putting you somewhere inside a certain envelope depending on ratios and how well they're mixed, but to go for a walk around the colour-wheel you have to introduce significant quantities of other pigments too - something that needs quite a big explanation before accepting I think

Very very informative, and one that needs to be shared more often, especially when scaled up to wartime production and the sheer amount of raw materials needed.   

 

The comment on the relative cost and rarity of pigments, and thus how most camouflage colours are of low saturation, It also made me think of the famed Pilawskii Soviet bright blues and greens,  another reason for them being incorrect. 

 

 

[JackG]

I have a feeling though, that Mig Jimenez products are not necessarily a consequence of a different colour perception, but more an influence of the Spanish school.  Results are more about stunning the viewer, which isn't always about accuracy or the real world. 

 

regards,

Jack

[alt-92]

Methinks you may have handled that carpenter's tool very well there