Dmian

Martin, what browser do you use? The page source is declared as UTF-8. Could it be that the DB is encoded in ISO-8859-1?

Any idea why a lot of foreign characters got corrupted in the database? I noticed this a couple of weeks ago. The name of the international forums got weird characters. Some bullet lists have weird characters too (for example at the top of the "Request Expert Infantryman Status" forum). Any change in the DB recently? Cheers.

Well, maybe we can talk then. I'm thinking of selling the SDS. Send me a PM.

Yes, I think you'll find out that there's a HUGE diference in color. I have both an AP and an SDS. The SDS is acrylic capped ABS, it looks a very milky white. The FX I've seen look blueish in comparison. So I'm not sure if it will match an FX armor at all.

Hi Stephen, sorry for the delay. I'll try to do my best, as I can barely see the weapon on this one. Can I use the first one on the thread? (it's very similar, only bigger and the black parts are more visible.) I have another pending pic and I'll try to put yours after that. Cheers.

Hahahaha!

Pat, just click on the lower right "YouTube" logo.

I added a quick translation for you. I'll ask the guys to add subtitles to it. This is the event poster:

Quick translation:

Awesome Nasir! Great job there, you just nailed it. Congrats!

Happy 4th of July to all the American troopers! Today is also my father's birthday.

Patrick Boivin Web: http://www.woolflapin.com/en/

Your own EIB request thread is where we usually take them from.

Congrats Lou! My best wishes.

I loved it!

I wanted to give some guidelines to improve the quality of the images used in the EIB profiles. Also, to ease the work of the combat photographers and speed up our work, so you'll have you profile image sooner. For your EIB profile we'll need an action shot of yourself. Here you have some recommendations: Size Anything from 640 x 480 pixels upwards will do. Anything smaller will give us small margin and might be problematic to work with. An ideal size will be anything bigger than 1MP (1280 x 960 pixels). Try to take it with the best camera you have access to. The better the image, the better the result will be. Save it in JPG format with a high to maximum setting (8 to 10). Use the "high quality" settings on the camera. If you're proficient with Photoshop you can also use a PNG with an alpha mask. Light Try to take your pictures with good light. Direct sunlight is not good, as it gives hard edges. Using flash is also bad, as it creates too much contrast, colors turn out weird and will concentrate light on one point. You can put yourself next to a window during the day to get a nice indirect lateral light, without the need to use flash or additional light sources. See the profile pictures for examples. Background Try to use a medium grey or red background. Too dark or too light backgrounds are problematic, as the white armor parts or the dark underarmor parts tend to blend with those backgrounds and we'll have to guess some of the parts and where to mask. Red works best as there are no red parts in a stormtrooper armor, so any red cast can be easily taken off from the image. Try to use a solid color background, or at least a consistent, simple one, as too noisy backgrounds are difficult to handle too. Posture You can pose in any way you want, but keep in mind that the images have a vertical orientation. Also, the decoration (borders, etc.) give us some costrains. Try not to cover your helmet with your blaster or hands. And try to be looking forward. But you can be as creative as you want. Again, you can look for examples in the existing EIB profiles.

Awesome Stefan!

Congrats AL! Don't worry, that picture will be used on your EIB profile.

Congrats Stephen!

That's because even Rich's hands look blueish... he looks cyanotic! I don't know what happened to Rich's camera, but the whole set has a blue tint all over. The AP is a neutral white to my eyes, and it closely matches the only acrylic capped armor I've seen (the SDS.) The "blue" AP from the old batch is noticeable, as well as the blue cast from the FX. Here's something for you to see: These are part of my EIB application set. Other than resizing, I've done nothing to these pictures with Photoshop. All the changes are in the light and the white balance of the camera (a Canon 400D). --------- Top picture: more direct sunlight (see the shadows in the wall.) Bottom picture: clouds covered the sun, changes to white balance made to have a more "cooler" overall hue. This is the same AP, under different light conditions and with different White Balance applied to the same camera. In the top picture it looks almost yellow. In the bottom one, it has a blue cast. But you can also see the differences in the wall. Funny, isn't it?

Well, I think that seeing that the AP had a blue hue in the pictures and reading about an AP with a blue hue, Mark must have assumed you were one of his old customers, and not one of the newer. But we'll have time to compare Conny's armor with mine if she comes to Toledo. Will she come finally? Please! please! Find someone to take care of the dogs and make her come!

Mmmm, I think there's a bit of a misunderstanding here. Let me see if I can clarify a bit. First, I've never seen a TM directly. I think Rich's will be the first one I'll see live, so I can't speak for the TM. I'll speak about an SDS instead, that I've seen in front of me. The SDS is acrylic capped ABS, as the TM. I don't know how it compares to the TM, so don't think that the TM might look like an SDS at all. I mention it because it's different from the FX and the AP. We'll have time to compare the TM at our September 25th event in Toledo, when Rich will probably sport his TM. I'll promise I'll take comparison pictures of it against the APs (old and new) and the FX and SDS, if available. About Rich's pictures: Rich took the pictures outside, at what looks like a balcony. Most modern cameras have Automatic White Balance (AWB). I think Rich's camera took the "pure white" sample from the TM. By comparison, the AP turned out blueish, probably because it reflected the sky a bit. The Spanish Garrison has a lot of its members with AP, so we have samples from different AP batches. My AP is from the new ABS, the one Mark is mentioning. On one recent event (fund raising at a shopping mall) we had a FX, several APs (old and new), one custom made HIPS armor (GF lineage) and an SDS. On subjective comparison, most of us agreed that the armor mostly perceived as "white" was the newer APs. The old APs appear blueish by comparison. The FX is the blueish of them all. About the SDS, I can only cite a comment by one of our mates: "who was the 'yellow' trooper?" The reason why the SDS appeared yellower may be that, as acrylic capped ABS is shinnier that the ABS used in APs, and we had some afternoon sun light coming from the top windows of the mall (sun gets more golden hues as it settles) it reflected the gold hues more than the APs. But that doesn't mean that the SDS has a yellow hue, it's just that acrylic capped ABS is shinier than regular ABS. The shinnier the armor, the more it reflects the light it gets from the environment. So, please, don't jump into conclusions by seeing pictures taken under non-optimal light conditions with cameras set to AWB. The only way to decently compare the different hues would be to take a studio picture with controlled light and using a color correction chart. Here you have a picture of the event: ----------- From left to right: FX, new AP, SDS, old AP, HIPS armor (matte finish) The light is not ideal. Which one looks whiter? Which one has a blue hue? White is a tricky "color" to handle. Most white objects have a hue to it (even paper.) It may be imperceptible or notable. Hue can be blue, red, yellow (most common) or green (less common) depending on the pigments used. The whitest pigment usually used is titanium white. White is prone to pick up hues from environment's light. A white object might never appear the same hue if you change light conditions. So if you are inside a mall with fluorescent light you may appear blueish, and if you go outside with natural sun light you may appear yellowish. We expect certain hues to white depending on our perception of the white object. For example, "snow white" is expected to have a blueish hue, if it has a yellow hue, it may not work for your brain an will be perceive as "weird" (this is important in graphic design. If you have to make brochures that may have snow pictures, you have to make shure the paper you print on has a blue hue.) So, as Rich said, both the TM and the AP look a nice shade of white to him. The fact that the AP turned out blueish in the pictures might be from several different reasons, including ambient light, the way the camera made AWB, etc. We have several new APs in the SG, and all appear to be the same color, so AP batches are consistent as far as I can tell. As a little experiment, I took one of Rich's picture and modified the white balance using different parameters. Bear in mind that the picture already has hues applied to it, so it's very difficult to get rid of them without changing the original colors. ------------- Top-left: original picture. top-right: white point taken from AP part. Look how some red hue start to get into TM, as it was reflected from the floor. botton-left: white point taken from the wall. Look how both have a slight blue hue. bottom-right: color balance correction to reflect a standard perception (Rich might have perceived something closer to this). Cheers.

I'd go more towards a ROTJ armor than a ANH armor. I think ROTJ is more suitable for the task, as it's smaller and has the "lip" on the edge, that makes it safer for the performers. An accurate ANH armor is a bit uncomfortable, and the unprotected edges are a real threat! So, just changing the handguards for the correct ROTJ ones, painting frown correctly (black and overlapping the teeth area) and the ab buttons too (smaller, with a black/dark blue scheme) and applying the correct decals to the helmet (tube stripe section) will make a lot for accuracy. The links Paul put for the CRLs are the #1 source of information. Cheers.

Way to go Rich!

Other than Richard and Conny (TK 6043), our GML Ben (TK 285) is from Las Palmas. Also gianco (TK 3379), from Tenerife. And Adeious (ID 2365) is going to get a TK soon. And there are a couple of guys with armors, but not members of the 501st.