Tamiya Jaguar XJ220

[Spiny]

Having started back in the first lockdown (if you call spraying starting), I've reached the end of building Tamiya's Jag XJ220. The kit might well date back almost 30 years (to 1993), but it's a good detailed kit which (mostly!) goes together very well. There were a few issues towards the end, but I can't guarantee that they are the fault of Tamiya rather than the fault of the builder. If anyone is looking for an XJ220, this one is well worth getting, although they do seem to have gone up massively in price since I got this one.

 

Onto the model, and decided to go with the usual silver as below. I know it's the usual colour, but I do think it's a colour which suits the XJ220.

 

 

If anyone wants to see how this came together, here's the build thread:

 

 

That should give a bit more detail of how it came together, but for this thread I'll jump straight into the photos. A word of warning though - the camera appears to have been particularly merciless tonight.

 

First of all, the engine bay which being under a glass cover is on display. I know Matt has done excellent work on his Jag a few years ago and did lots of detailing in the engine bay, but only added a few of the more noticeable bits - to be specific the throttle cable conduit and some braided cables (which is still more than I've done on any other engines). I struggled to get a decent shot, so this is the best pic I have of it:

 

 

Similar story with the interior, with reflections posing a particular problem. And don't ask where that dust comes from - I honestly couldn't see it when I took the photo and still can't see it now - makes me think that my camera must have an 'add dust' function...

 

 

One good thing about having so much glass is that I can show quite a bit of that detail with a 'top-down' shot. Shame about the reflections

 

 

With those done, time for picture overload with a walk around the car:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And to finish up, the obligatory shot where I was messing around trying different things with the camera...

 

 

 

 

[keefr22]

Very tidy build, and the silver really does suit it - can I ask what paint you used as the flakes look nice and fine.

 

Cracking Jag!

 

Keith

[Windy37]

Good clean job that , Mr Spiny . Turned out well , what a big car though ! 
Gary . 

[JeroenS]

Nice one Spiny, too bad she gave you such a fight at the end, those headlights especially. Some nice pics there, showing the shape of the car beautifully. 

[Homer]

Very nice work, enjoyed looking at the build aswell .Well done 👏 

[swralph]

Very nice build.😀

[galaxyg]

Excellent stuff, a very clean result.  There are a couple of kits in my stash I've earmarked as "to do for sure in 2021" and the Tamiya XJ220 is one. I'll be reading your WIP shortly.

[Toftdale]

Lovely build and the photography not too shabby either 👌 

[Spiny]

Thanks to all who liked and commented - very flattering

 

23 hours ago, keefr22 said:

Very tidy build, and the silver really does suit it - can I ask what paint you used as the flakes look nice and fine.

 

Cracking Jag!

 

Keith

 

The paint is Tamiya's TS-30 Silver Leaf with their TS-13 Clear on top. The Silver Leaf looks very metal-like when it's not covered, but as I discovered when spraying you have to handle it very carefully - just a fingerprint which I couldn't see on the original colour coat was very obvious when the clear went on and I had to respray.

 

22 hours ago, Windy37 said:

Good clean job that , Mr Spiny . Turned out well , what a big car though ! 
Gary . 

 

You can say that again - the Honda is to the same scale (although it is as small as the Jag is large)!

 

 

14 hours ago, JeroenS said:

Nice one Spiny, too bad she gave you such a fight at the end, those headlights especially. Some nice pics there, showing the shape of the car beautifully. 

 

Can't help thinking that the shape of the XJ220 has aged well which has helped, hard to believe it's almost 30 years old

 

6 hours ago, galaxyg said:

Excellent stuff, a very clean result.  There are a couple of kits in my stash I've earmarked as "to do for sure in 2021" and the Tamiya XJ220 is one. I'll be reading your WIP shortly.

 

I'd definitely recommend it, as I said at the start it's a good kit. Matt's build on here is worth a look too.

 

20 minutes ago, Toftdale said:

Lovely build and the photography not too shabby either 👌 

 

The background is an A1 piece of heavy black paper from Hobbycraft - cost about 80p I think - which is clamped onto a newspaper rack to form an infinity curve. After that, it will mainly come down to what camera equipment you have and a phone will do a decent job, but if you have a 'normal' camera the best bet is to use a tripod if you can, set the ISO as low as possible, the aperture as tight as possible (highest f-number) and the exposure as long as needed. As a rough guide, these are all ISO100 and f8 which is as good as I can get with my camera. Most of them have a 5 second exposure time. Setting the countdown timer means the camera won't shake when you press the button. I used a number of magazines underneath the black card to adjust the height relative to the camera. Typical shooting distance is about 3-4 feet for most of these apart from the close-ups (lens almost touching the model) and the last shot where I angled the camera and had it about 6" away.

 

[keefr22]

1 hour ago, Spiny said:

The paint is Tamiya's TS-30 Silver Leaf with their TS-13 Clear on top.

 

Thanks Spiny

 

Keith

[Old John]

Great build & photo's.Happens I am on the middle stages of one myself.Engine done body primed & silver coated.Sure it will not turn out as good as yours.Not a lover of the latter stages of any build,for me that's when things go wrong.

[HOUSTON]

'Nuff  Said !

STUNNINGLY GORGEOUS. 

 

[Spiny]

11 hours ago, Old John said:

Great build & photo's.Happens I am on the middle stages of one myself.Engine done body primed & silver coated.Sure it will not turn out as good as yours.Not a lover of the latter stages of any build,for me that's when things go wrong.

Don't worry, I'm sure you'll be fine. In the main it's one of those kits which goes together well, just watch those headlights. In fact, if I can offer one tip it's to make sure the headlights slot into the body freely and the mechanism works smoothly before gluing the light buckets in place. Hopefully if you do that you'll escape the headlight flaws I ended up with. The engine was about half of my build, so you're well on the way if you've got it done.

[Paul H]

That looks very smart, and great paintwork - whilst as you say, the normal colour but it really does suit them.  This is making me regret even more selling the unbuilt one that I had!

[Old John]

Thanks for info Spiny.

 

 

[modelbautony]

I'm with you Spiny on the camera 'dust' app. I'm meticulous about removing dust before any photos - but it still appears although not to the naked eye. Thank goodness for photoshop is all I can say.

 

And yes, the cost of an XJ220, Tamiya, Italeri, whichever, IF you can get hold of one, is quite ridiculous.

[cmatthewbacon]

Don't know how I missed this one, but that looks fabulous. Classic colour combo and the engine bay work looks excellent in the finished product. You should be very pleased with that! Brave effort on the black background as well.... I can never get it to work and look like one of those Zumbrunn shots 😜

best,

M.

[Spiny]

22 hours ago, cmatthewbacon said:

Don't know how I missed this one, but that looks fabulous. Classic colour combo and the engine bay work looks excellent in the finished product. You should be very pleased with that! Brave effort on the black background as well.... I can never get it to work and look like one of those Zumbrunn shots 😜

best,

M.

I'm glad you like the way it turned out - your build and your advice certainly gave me a lot of encouragement to try to do a good job and get near to the standard of your green/tourmaline machine.

 

Must admit that I hadn't heard of Zumbrunn until you mentioned him, but looking at his work I'm flattered you think my pictures have even reached the turnstiles of getting into the ballpark of his shots. I think maybe I need to reduce the exposure a bit though as the background still looks  abit light to my eyes. That said now I've looked, there was another shot (which didn't make this thread due to showing off the unaligned headlight covers) where I held an inspection lamp above it which may be closer to his style:

 

 

As I said in the original post, it can be fun to play around with the camera too

[cmatthewbacon]

I think I must have lucked in; I got all of his “... Auto Legends” books in remaindered bookshops over a couple of years for less than a tenner each. They are pretty inspirational, and somewhat useful (often have a good under-bonnet picture...) There’s a nee one on the way, with a less familiar selection of vehicles...

best,

M.

pS: it looks like at least the British Auto Legends” can still be had from Amazon used in good nick for less than a tenner... definitely worth it, IMHO

[Spiny]

Well, there's goes a bit more money on the credit card...

[FunkyChiken]

Beautiful build, and the photos are amazing... How did you get such depth of field in focus? 

[Spiny]

If you're after a good depth of field, aperture is the key. The smaller the lens aperture (or the higher the f-stop number) the greater the depth of field. So I always go for the highest aperture value my camera has (8.0). While it does have an aperture priority function which should allow you to set the aperture to whatever you want and the camera does the rest, it won't go over 1 second exposure, and upping the f-stop will mean you need to do one of three things to keep the lighting adequate:

 

1 - Slow down the shutter speed. This is what I normally do and, depending on ambient lighting, my shutter speeds have generally been between 0.5 and 10 seconds. This set were taken with a 5 second exposure. The downside for this is you really need a tripod to keep the camera steady - even braced 5 seconds is too long to hold still by hand.

2 - Add more light. That will compensate for the fact that a smaller aperture lets less light in. The downside is that it can disrupt the effect you're trying to achieve.

3 - Increase the ISO. This one is a bit of a last resort as it tends to make your photo grainy. I tend to stick with the minimum setting (ISO100) on my camera as I have a tripod so can cope with a slow shutter speed.

 

Hope that helps.