Dear Massimo,
Bingo!!!
Please thank Mr. Averin and promise him some good bottles of wine if he ever happens to be near Florence, where I live!
And of course, some bottles are always ready for you!
You are absolutely right, we cannot trust digital chips.
But with the information you have just given, we can reach real colour chips.
The first method is to have a colorimeter, then translate the XYZ values to L*A*B* and control how close to the original are the model colours you have.
I do own a colorimeter, but it is rather expensive, and outside the interest of a “normal” modeler.
But we can do a lot, with very little expense.
Let’s take as an example the Kartoteka colour number 734, that according to Mr. Akan is one of the two limits of the colour 4BO.
From the back of the Kartoteka chips, the values are: X=11,0 Y= 11,8 Z=7,7.
You can see that they are the same from the image 008 you have sent, where for colour 734 we have X=11,095 Y=11,807 Z=7,765.
They are the same values, with different decimals: perfect!
Then you can use an xls free file to convert them to L*A*B* values, or use the program “Easy RGB”
at the address
http://www.easyrgb.com/en/ to convert them, and that program lets you find similar commercial colours using the function “Match” and as you can see, the commercial paint “N457 Tikkurila Symphony Opus I and II” is very similar to colour 734.
I suppose that Tikkurila produces real colour chips of their paint, and I am sure that savvy modellers can devise a way to get it.
Then we have the English E-Paint co, that at
http://www.e-paint.co.uk/ has a site where you can insert the L*A*B* values, and compare them to the most common colour standards.
You insert the values and voila! You find that 734 is distinguishable only to the practiced eye if compared to the standard TSD 1-3-5 DIN 6164, but even more important for our practical interests, it is VERY CLOSE to FS595 24098!
As human resourcefulness is very ample, we have another option: we go to sensuallogic “Paintmaker” site, at
https://sensuallogic.com/paintmaker, and after inserting the RGB values of 734, that we have got from easyRGB, we have different mixing options using popular artist oil colours, in this case Winsor & Newton artist oils, and we can produce in our home a colour VERY SIMILAR to Kartoteka 734.
Of course it is human, and so it is not perfect, but for us modellers is a huge advancement and we hope that it will put an end to VVS planes painted in venomous acid green.
Now the work is to extract the colours that have been used on VVS airplanes, to convert them to L*A*B* values, and study the real colour chips that can represent them, and then I think that we can have some acceptable information about VVS colours.
Moreover, if we can produce L*A*B* values for VVS colours, it will be very easy for modelling colour companies to market correct colours.
I am happy and willing to give an hand, but I will be away from home for a medical meeting in the next few days, and I suppose that I will have many time constraints in the next weeks, but I must say that the magical team Massimo- Andrey has stricken a golden ball!
Best regards
Daniele
