Regiment of the Day
Today we look at a unit of Prussian light infantry, that fight as part of 9th Brigade, with von Keist's Corps at Dresden ... AND ... experiment with my new all-weather, all-hours-of-the-day photo booth setup.
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1 base of light infantry + 1 skirmisher stand. Figures by warrior miniatures. I have stated before that the warrior range is quite limited in the figures available for each nation, but they are proving to be nicely versatile. In this case, they do include a few special Schutzen figures such as the Jager Officer here. Nice casting !
Bear with me here, as I am having fun playing with my 'new' photo booth setup. Using terrain boards here setup on the painting desk, with a few backdrop panels. It is going to take some experimenting to get the lighting right though ! Maybe this is a dawn shot, with the sun peeking up strongly over yonder hills. |
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| Notable differences on these troops - the 'Rifle Green' jackets, black leather equipment, and yellow facings tell that this is a Silesian Schutzen unit. |
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Grrr - the lighting here is playing havoc with the paint shading. Note that the unit base (the one with the 3 figures), has only 1 officer, and the troops are randomly positioned ... the flank troops are sort of pointing out to the side rather than straight ahead.
I like to make the light units look slightly irregular in their formations. |
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Shot from the rear - note that Prussian turnback colours on the jackets remain red, regardless of the province the unit comes from. I think this is correct for Schutzen as well, but I am welcome to stand corrected on this one.
One thing I am trying on swords now is to paint the sword black, give it a light wash in dark gunmetal, and during the final paintstrokes, only do the blade edge in bright silver.
Doesnt show up too well here, but I will try and zoom in on that effect for some other troops. It does look a lot better than all bright silver I think. |
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| Fixed the lighting problems, but having issues with the macro focus now .. still, its a fun shot. |
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Excellent - thats more the effect I am after. Figures are shown nice and sharp, and the background has a distinct 'toy town' look to it. Seems to work best when the backdrop hills are slightly out of focus .. this is a good shot for sure.
I think I will settle on this look for a while with future photo shoots.
What do you think ? |
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| Vorwarts ! Schutzen greift die Feind an ! |
I think your final shots nailed, it, Steve. Outstanding photographs It really shows how much shading you did do with these figures.
ReplyDeleteI think these chaps would more properly be Silesian Jagers, Steve, though - wearing the same uniform as the Line regiment they are attached to, but with the dark green jackets. They will work just fine for them as is.
The Silesian Schutzen (literally, "sharpshooters") were a very distinct and elite unit, and was rifled armed (as were many Jagers). Both Knoetel's "Handbuch der Uniformkunde" and David Nash "The Prussian Army, 1808-15" (by Almark, great book but long OOP, my copy dates back to 1973 I think)give the Schutzen as having black collars and cuffs piped red. IIRC, Funken also shows the same thing as well. I have this unit in my smallish 1813 Prussian army, using the spectacular (but expensive!) 28mm Calpe figures - the only Calpe unit in my army!