I am curious about how people take their pictures here ? I notice that a lot of the MFH factory builds are almost finished in a semi gloss finish like this

however i suspect this is an effect brought on by heavily defused lighting ? What i am getting at is there are no reflections in the gloss paint.

Just lighter and darker areas. I was considering finishing my current build in semi gloss as i always think full gloss looks good but its not a "scale" finish. Now i am thinking this is actually a full gloss finish but with diffused lighting ? any thoughts.

Interesting Paddy, I would like to see, how a factory fresh looking race car would look in a semi matte finish. I finish mine in polished high shine, but you are right about the accuracy scale wise, there is also some vanity included. Usually, I´m pedantic about the shine of materials in modeling, but car body finishes are an exception.

I take my pictures usually in a photo box with my micro four-third camera and a 90mm macro lens , lighted by four strips of LED. High shine finishes often look bad, because reflections of all the LED let the high shine finish looking like there is some orange peel effect. I tried a diffusor sheet, but was not satisfied, either by comfort nor by the results.

I looked at some pictures from the real Matra you are showing here and I´m not sure, the finish was real polished high shine. The pictures from MFH definitely looks dulled somehow, whether it is painted semi matte or matted with Photoshop or AI is the question. Maybe they only have the better photo equipment with studio lighting.

Cheers Rob

Yes most MFH publicity shots for their models are the same as above so I'm sure its done through lighting. I have never quite put my finger on why high gloss seems to look wrong on even 1.12 cars but i think it might be that you can scale down the car but not the reflection.

This Ferrari gives it away

From the front you can see the glass like shine but from a 3/4 angle its almost matt

I will have to get my light box out and play around a bit.

If you look at this YT build up video from Mokei archive, you can clearly see, that the body was painted full glossy. There is no evidence, that later it received a satin coat overall, but I guess, the final pics (which are the official MFH pics) show everything slightly matted. I suspect, there is some photoshopping or AI post processing going on.

MFH 1/12 scale 412T2

Cheers Rob

Oh, there is another option, which may comes into play, when I think about. Besides a diffusor, they might have used a linear polarisation filter. With these filters, you can "steer" reflections to a certain grade. I think, I have some and might try it out.

Cheers Rob

I think its photoshop, i cant replicate it as i only have photo shop elements but photoshop itself has AI filters that remove reflections. I got 2M of defusing cloth today from amazon ;-) I will have a play around.

This is with one layer of defuser cloth , its sort of heading in the right direction, a second layer might take that highlight off the top