iBorg

Those look like AMT NASCAR tires. During that era AMT was using gray plastic. The wheels also look like NASCAR but that seat doesn't. What scale is it?

Looks like the one I had but the wheels were white, more than likely steel.

As it's almost 2025, I'm curious as to what kits are scheduled to be discontinued in the upcoming year. Anyone got a list?

I really like the smoked decals. Nice approach to a difficult problem.

A great backdrop is foam core poster board. I've got two sets of two boards, one black and one white from the dollar store. Total investment $5 plus tax.

I do agree with you that phones are really improving. While most phones don't allow you to control the depth stop, I do know Apple has a portrait mode which in essence produces much the same quality. Most auto functions for different shooting conditions are actually adjusting what would typically be done on a camera by adjusting shutter speed, ISO/ASA sensitivity and aperture. One thing I've observed over the years is a huge emphasis on Mb size as a marketing ploy. As Peter says, you can do a lot with 5-7Mb. I'll go back and reemphasis what I said previously, Google shooting photos for eBay using an iphone. Most modern phones have capabilities that DSLRs of 5 years ago struggled with. The inclusion of AI will only make this better. You can create excellent photos with a modern camera phone. The mention of stochastic screening having a lower resolution requirement is accurate. Most printing that is done digitally prints clusters of toner or ink and in essence is a variation of stochastic. Stochastic was first introduced in the 1960s and has a history of being a hot topic for a few years and then dieng off due to being a great theory but lacking the technical ability to use it. After seven years or so it returns and has repeated the cycle. I think the inventor of it was Heil Graphics. Only now with direct imaging is it finally technically feasible for large production runs. And with that, I'm going to climb out of the rabbit hole.

I guess I'm going down a technical rabbit hole. An ink jet printer, which is the most common way to produce a print, can produce acceptable quality at a lower resolution than offset lithography which is the standard for quality magazines. You can get by with 75-100 pixels per inch for an ink jet printer. To print with offset lithography the standard for a medium quality printed photo is 133 dots per inch. Photos printed by offset lithography are converted into halftone dots. (please let's not dirty this conversation up with discussing stochastic or FM screening) The relationship between DPI and resolution is typically 1.5-2.0 pixels per inch per halftone dot which equates to 200-266 PPI per DPI. A higher quality magazine may go to 150 with some printers claiming 180 but to the naked eye, 150 is the highest practical resolution. That equates to 225-300 PPI to achieve that DPI. When you zoom in and crop the subject with a fixed lens camera such as a phone you are throwing away pixels. In essence, when you zoom in, you're actually viewing the image at a lower resolution. This is the concept of a digital zoom which is typical of point and shoot cameras and cameras built into a phone. The DSLR with the ability to focus the lens by changing the optics does not resample the pixels to make the object larger. It changes image size by moving the optical elements of the lens. This is the concept of optical zoom. You can produce some nice large prints with a modern phone camera if, and only if, you fill the frame with the image and don't rely on digital zoom to crop the image. That rule can also be bent somewhat on how much you crop and how large a resolution your camera has. Phone cameras have become so good that the entire category of point and shoot cameras disappeared about 5-7 years ago. Remember when big box stores carried a whole display of cameras? Those went away as phone cameras improved. I do believe you can use a modern phone camera and produce magazine quality photos at a 5 x 7 size but getting much larger than that the interchangeable lens of a DSLR produces better quality. For web use, learn to use a modern phone camera. You might be surprised what you can achieve.

From a former professor who taught a photography class. The main advantages of better digital cameras are interchangeable lens and pixel depth or resolution. The lens matter most when you're taking really close (a macro lens) or far away (telephoto). Neither are the case with a model car unless you're zooming in for really close, specific part details. Resolution is a non issue when you're publishing on the web. For print, resolution is an issue but most modern phone cameras will reproduce reasonably well for a 4 x 6 or maybe a 5 x 7 printed image. My advice, google using an iphone to take Ebay photos. There's some amazing resources available which will help you take good photos for use on a web forum.

March 17, 2024 https://kustomrama.com/wiki/Steve_Scott 20

Since Scott is RIP, I won't expect to see it from him. I would also not be surprised to see the molds magically appear and be reissued now that he can no longer be a hindrance to the kit being reissued.

Looks good. The manifold came out much better than I would had expected in the first photo. The intake is stunning. Great work.

I'm curious as to why you ask about the hose. Can you elaborate?

Sir, if this makes you mildly happy, I'd like to see what it takes to make you happy. It looks amazing, especiallyknowing what you started with.

I asked Mike Sullivan several years ago about info on the blue and white Fiat. He told me at the time he didn't have any pictures or know of any chassis shots. Even the Steve Reyes feature of it in DRUSA is very lacking of chassis details. The linked restoration pics are great but are not the original chassis. Unfortunately the hard drive I'd stored every thing on crashed so like most of my research materials, they're gone.

I need to build a Kyle Petty car or buy an exceptional diecast. I've got several of the Kyle Petty AMT cars and just haven't considered them. I'll need to change that. Nice build showing the possibilities of this kit.

That's an impressive conversion.

I'd love to know what kits are included. I hope they are of the quality to encourage people to build.

I'd be all over getting a couple more Fireball dragsters.

Several kits to choose from.....my favorite is from the Revell drag kits.

I may be interested......what kits do you have?

The leaves look really nice as does the finished bush. What scale are the leaves supposed to represent?

SWEEEET!

I've seen pictures of this car before. It looks like you nailed it.

NICE!!! One of those details no one would notice but it contributes greatly to the realism of the car.

Looking at this again.....really nice. What did you use for the front axle?