Recently, Bachmann Europe, posted a teaser picture on their Facebook page. It's a close-up of the pipework in the soon-to-be-revealed LSWR Adams T3. Some of the comments were interesting:
Very poor moulding......you can do a lot better than this !
Cheap moldings the excess plastic squeezing out of the molds
To me, thats not the best finish of the piping .And, is that the tender or cab ?
Firstly, who can't tell the difference between the cab and the tender when they can see the firebox?
Anyway, obviously, there were plenty of "experts" desperate to rubbish the model because of the excess plastic on the pipework. To put this in context, this isn't a production model, and Bachmann has fed back to the factory. And that copper pipe on the far right, is only 0.8mm wide. These parts are tiny.
When I am feeling mischievous, and this sort of comment pops up on RMweb, I like to ask to see the commenter's layout. Since my job is to find the best model railways to photograph, any layout where this sort of issue is The Wusrt Thing In The World (TM) must be absolutely amazing.
The question is usually met with an angry response that they haven't built a layout yet, but have a human right to an absolutely perfect model in any case.
All of which makes me wonder if we were all a lot happier when taking this sort of photo required specialist gear such as a set of bellows, or at least, extension tubes, so people didn't bother.
What we relied on was the good old human eye, sometimes aided by a magnifying glass. Anyone resorting to a jeweller's loupe, was considered a bit weird.
As a layout photographer, my job is to make whatever is in front of me look as good as possible. This sometimes means pulling back a bit, and giving a wider shot because I realise the hard close-up will be cruel to the model. A magazine appearance isn't a competition for perfection; it's there to entertain and hopefully inspire the readers. Showing up some wobbly modelling does no-one, in my opinion, any favours.
And before you ask, we don't fix things in Photoshop. Skies replace backscenes and the owner's tummy. Lighting is sorted out. Otherwise, what you see is what is there. OK, some clever shot choices make layouts look larger than they really are, but these are mostly the same view you can have at a show.
My guess is that the T3 will look magnificent on any layout it appears on, and like most RTR models, will be the best model on the baseboard. Again, my opinion is that a scene where everything is a similar standard looks better than one with a few standout models, on a background that isn't anything like as good. I'm looking at you people who ballast with something from a garden centre...
Do we all need to find a little perspective when looking at these extreme close-ups?