Space Marines? ... Iron hands

[Aqui]

Yep, I do like them. It's just such a shame that the Iron Hands are one of the few First Founding whom don't have a Character model specific to them :)

[Brother Argos]

The new Sons of Medusa chapter master in IA10 would do a NICE job of that role ... I plan to use him .. retasked to the Iron Hands obviously.

[Brother Argos]

It was a good day today, I got the final piece of a jigsaw puzzle I have been working on for the last 15yrs. In that time I have often photographed miniatures, but it has always been a casual thing, I never had the quality of image I desired. I have slowly improved my camera till it did what I wanted, never the best as they cost a lot of money, but I have a reasonable camera for taking pictures of my miniatures. My wife has a better camera than mine in most peoples perceptions, it has 10 megapixels to my 5 megapixels, almost the same optical zoom and a slew of options for taking pictures on the fly and getting a good shot. What mine has that makes it work for me is a power socket so I can power it externally from a wall socket, therefore it never needs charging. It has a good macro option with a x5 optical zoom and finally I got a wireless card for it, so that when I take pictures they magically appear in my Pictures folder sorted by date for me.

So a camera I can leave on all the time, that transmits the pictures to my computer automatically and has a good macro ability is what I have, its a Casio Exilim Pro Ex-P505 for those interested (a bit old now). However one of the important parts about taking decent pictures is the lighting and in that area I lacked significantly for a while till recently I discovered a supplier of cheap photo studio lamps! They are a bit pricey at £30 ($45) each, but come with a very good 135w (light output not electrical drain) set of daylight bulbs. Over the last 3 months I have been buying one a month and the last arrived today, so I got to setup my "Studio"!

Here you can see the setup for yourselves: -

My Camera is mounted on a small Slik Mini tripod, the lamps surround the area and I do not need a light tent as I have diffusors that cover the bulbs (being fluorescent they are not that hot). There is a "Lazy Susan" turntable in the middle with some white plasticard stuck to it. I have marked the centre of the plasticard/turntable so I know where to put figures and it is aligned with my camera on the tripod. Behind the turntable and stuck to the wall is a sheet of plasticard to give a decent white backdrop. Luckily it in a position which is semi permanent, the only thing I would need to use there is the book scanner its sitting on top of, which to be honest is used rarely in these days of black library publishing electronically.

Here is a close up view showing what I see when I am taking a picture, Note I use the grid setting on my camera for alignment on my shots and have a Histogram display showing the light range so I could in the past try and adjust for poor lighting. The diffusors covering the lamps help to distribute the light evenly over the area and reduce bright reflections, my wife thinks they look like small shower caps <sigh>

The bulbs are an odd umbrella shape which you can see in the two pictures below: -

From the side:

They throw out a huge amount of light, approximately 405w into a tiny space and have the significant advantage of being a constant colour, unlike before where I had a mix of incandescent bulbs, halogen bulbs and fluorescent. With that degree of diffused light, you can get a decent bright well lit photo without too much photoshop work being done after!

From on top:

Its taken me a while to get the components I wanted, but I am quite happy with the result.

You will get to see some of the results yourself in my next major post ... which will be a Green stuff / sculpting post ;)

[Wildfire]

Yikes. I don't think I would ever spend that much just to post up pics of my models. But then, my models are just basic 3 colors slopped onto a standard model. I don't have the time, talent, or interest to do cool paint jobs or conversions.

[MaleOpener]

Jeal~ous!

 

Great job all around, and I'd love to see an army created <_<

[LoneSniperSG]

Brother Argos, if it makes you feel better I know the feeling. I've spent 5 years with Space Wolves, and in that time I've dealt with my own conversions, old models and brand-new models. Kicking around with Grey Knights, Sisters and Imperial Guard helped keep down the boredom with painting SW Gray over and over.

 

Now I'm moving into Salamanders. Green is a heck of a contrast to blue-gray. Entirely new visuals to think about, like reptile skins and fire instead of wolf pelts and snow.

 

I still love my ale-chugging Space Wolves though.

[Master Melta]

Argos... I am dying over here man. Hope all is well.

 

Post already!

 

Updated BLOG!

 

Please view and comment!

 

MM

[ServiceStud]

Gotta say, I'm jonesing pretty bad here, too. Been working on my own little IH army and this is a very inspiring thread.

[Doghouse]

Very nice stuff! That squad is looking really nice.

 

I like the idea of theming the squads to each fit a room, that's be brilliant!

[The Emperor's Champion]

New toys kept arriving and going into the "Space Marine" box, money spent on a pile of plastic that was getting bigger and bigger. It is disconcerting to be the owner of one of the biggest Space Marine websites in the world and not have the urge to play or paint Space Marines. You feel in some strange way disloyal, a bit of a failure, almost like living a lie. I have always liked Space Marines, loved my Salamander Marines, I created the best space marine painter program on the web ... hell my namesake even got a place in the Salamander books by Black Library. But I could not stir any interest in picking up and painting a Space Marine, "Sometimes you just get tired of painting Green ..." kept going around in my head.

 

Maybe that is the problem, perhaps I am too hooked up "Painting Green", being THE "Salamander" player. So I am going to try and paint some other Space Marines and try not to feel oddly guilty and importantly I am not going to try and make them "works of art". The nearest I ever got to the Demons was making the cut in 2003 at Baltimore, its time to put that dream away and just enjoy painting some stuff to whatever standard takes my fancy.

I get this completely. I very very rarely painted or built anything until shortly before the Stormraven came out. All my urges were to get a Trygon and paint it (just because it's awesome) and similarly heretical things that made me feel weirdly disloyal, being THE Ultramarines guy. But yea, sometimes you just gotta do something else though to keep from giving up entirely.

I worked on my Necrons a bit, built some terrain, ignored 40k entirely for a few months...

 

Anyhow, good choice of Chapters (ditto to Bannus) :tu:

My other other Marines are Iron Hands (the first "other" belongs to my Grey Knights), and my brother has Salamanders (which are my second favorite Chapter, after the Ultramarines, obviously).

 

I try and paint my Marines to the best of my ability, which is well above simple tabletop quality, but your Iron Hands put my skills to shame :ermm:

I can't even imagine how you crank those guys out in 2 hours each.

That's some fantastic work you've got there. The bases, the battle damage, the bitz selection, the converted rocket arm... Great stuff.

[Wildfire]

How's the project coming, Argos?

[KJB]

How did you find the weathering powders? I've just bought some of the Forge World ones to use for dust/mud effects on my Salamanders - any tips on their use would be appreciated

 

You ever going to go back to your Salamanders?