Estes Corvette Space Corps Rocket
 

Here is my Estes Space Corps Corvette build ready for all those decals. Sorry about the glare in the pictures, really the fins are a solid color. Rocket is a simple build, all done in one day including 3 coats of Brodak Balsa sealer for smooth fins. I shot one coat of white primer, lightly sanded smooth followed by Rustoleum Professional light great an hour after the primer dried. I had to wait 48 hours to mask and paint the darker grey. Tomorrow I will apply the decals and call her done.

Nice! I apparently did NOT look closely at the kit description. I thought this was an “E2X” type of kit, with plastic fins and a colored body wrap. Good to see that it has balsa fins and large number of decals.

The Estes Corvette is complete and ready for flight. When I bought this kit I was not sure I would like it, but now she is done I had to order another. The decals are large but went on with no issues. Final weight is 2.8oz minus engine and wadding. Instructions list finish wt at 3.0oz.

It's incorrectly listed as an E2X on AC Supply's web pages. At the Estes site it's listed as "Intermediate".

As if I need another project. Very nice model and build!

Very nice--it looks better than mine!
----however, on your's is the vertical "SPACE CORPS" decal just a BCH crooked (CW)--or is it just camera angle?

Yeah, we'll go with camera angle.

Just camera angle.

Camera angle.

Yeah. :D

Wow Scigs!
Smooth fills and very clean mask lines!

Jeffyjeep, I think it is the picture angle, I have to adjust my pictures so they show up straight when I post. I am looking at the rocket right now and it looks straight. Of course it could always be off since I just eyeball placement when applying decals. You can see from the close up pictures I don't try to straighten those pictures.

Yes, there appears a gentle 'curving' or bowing of vertical lines (like those of a rocket in this case) by the nature of the lens you are using. It is kind of a very, very slight fish-eye effect that is common sometimes. The Saturn V in the right foreground has a small bit of curvature to it as well.

But, not anything you are doing 'wrong'...just the nature of the lens in relative close-up shots like that.


Earl

I use my wife's fancy camera, of course I have it set to auto then point and shoot.

The curved/fisheye effect is due to a wide angle lens setting compared to the size of the imaging sensor. If you have zoom capability, zoom it in a little and back away from the shot to fill the frame properly. Most of your "all in one" cameras that zoom will go out pretty wide and cause a pretty strong fisheye effect.

The "zooming in" refers to physical lens zooming, not digital zooming like those infernal smart phone cameras. That won't do anything to change the actual focal length of the lens. Unless you have multiple lenses on your phone, you will have the same image focal length, regardless of how little or how much you digitally zoom. I don't know of those phones with a second or third wide angle lens use the same sensor or what, so I don't know if they suffer from image distortion at wide angles. I've never used one.

My smart phone doesn't suffer from the fisheye effect because the imaging sensor is physically very small and matches well with the lens. I'm not familiar with other smart phone cameras. I have a Galaxy S7 and that's the only smart phone photo exeperience I have.

For perspective for you older folks that used to have 35mm SLR film cameras, the optimum lens for no image distortion was about 50mm for the 35mm film size. That gave the most accurate image. Today's digital SLR's with very few exceptions, use a smaller image sensor, so putting the same 50mm lens on it will get you a slight telephoto effect in comparison to a 35mm film camera. My Nikon digital SLR would need a 24mm lens to be equivalent to the 35mm camera image with a 50mm prime lens. Some of your true top of the line professional DSLR cameras have a "full frame" 35mm imaging sensor. They call them FX format cameras. Lenses will perform like they did with the film cameras.

I'm not delving into the aspect ratios other than to mention that 35mm film cameras and FX DSLRs have a 3:2 ratio where DX format DSLRs usually have a 4:3 ratio. I don't know what the "all in one" digitals have, but they are probably 4:3 or maybe even 16:9 ratio. I've never really looked at them.