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Plate 10:  Two different trial illuminations of a toy vehicle
(This plate added FEB 2004)

HE two photographs on this page were taken under different lighting conditions. Because the photographer's removable black setting for small displays had not yet been constructed, the toy vehicle, a military armored car, was posed on top of the slipcase for the dictionary seen in Plate 1, and the entire black matting board, seen in Plate 4, was positioned upright as a backdrop.

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SUBJECT: 1/54 scale model Ferret armored car, non-flood illumination CAMERA: Sony DSC-P92 Cyber-shot MEDIA: Sony MSA-64A Memory Stick at 1.2 megapixel resolution FILE: JPEG from Sony Image Transfer version 1.00.1015.01 EDITING: Adobe Photoshop SUBJECT: 1/54 scale model Ferret armored car, floodlamp illumination CAMERA: Sony DSC-P92 Cyber-shot MEDIA: Sony MSA-64A Memory Stick at 1.2 megapixel resolution FILE: JPEG from Sony Image Transfer version 1.00.1015.01 EDITING: Adobe Photoshop
This photograph, at 1.2 megapixel resolution, was illuminated by an everyday 60-watt bulb in the light fixture shown in Plate 6 This photograph, at 1.2 megapixel resolution, was illuminated by a 100-watt floodlamp in the light fixture shown in Plate 6
The toy vehicle, according to the manufacturer's packaging, is a Weasel Tank, and it bears the characteristic markings of the United States Army. However, according to a book in his library, the collector has concluded that this is actually a model of a British Army Ferret armored car. The book that provided the information for this conclusion is British Armoured Cars Since 1945.

The scale of the vehicle was not provided by the manufacturer, but the collector has calculated the approximate scale as 1/54 ("one fifty-fourth"). This means that the length of the toy is about one fifty-fourth of the length of an actual Ferret armored car. The calculations made by the collector to determine this scale are:

1.   The length of the toy is about two and three-quarters (2.75) inches.

2.   The length of a real Ferret armored car is about 3.8 meters (according to the collector's reference book).

3.   3.8 meters equals about 150 inches (here the collector multiplied the length of 3.8 meters by the conversion factor of 39.37 inches per meter).

4.   The length of the toy (about 2.75 inches) goes into the length of the real Ferret (about 150 inches) approximately 54 times (that is, 150 divided by 2.75 equals about 54). This means that the scale of the toy is about 1/54 ("one fifty-fourth").

After a serious appraisal of both photographs, the collector and the photographer both agreed that they preferred the illumination provided by the 100-watt floodlamp.

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