There are times when I wish magazine pages were smaller. For a future edition, I needed some figures and when looking at those available, one thought was running through my mind:

“What will these look like really, really close up.”

Look at your layout normally and you view it as though you are seeing the scene from a nearby field. Even in 7mm, the view is similar to that you might get from 50 feet away. The same scene, on the page will be viewed as close as you see your dentist – near enough to watch the hairs up his nose.

The camera might not lie, but it's very rarely kind to model making. An awful lot of the images you see in a magazine are reproduced larger than life size. Because of this, any little errors are magnified for all to see.

I know of one P4 layout where they didn't spot a tiny rail misalignment until they saw a photograph of the model. Then it stood out, but in real life, even for the most fastidious modellers, it was invisible.

A couple of years ago, I was politely taken to task by a figure manufacturer who asked that review samples weren't shown many times their real size. There was nothing wrong with the models – indeed they are superb and I don't know any modellers who would hesitate to have then grace their layouts. It's just that a 4mm scale person magnified ten times or more, will look crude unless the mastering is of a quality comparable to a Fabergé egg and produced at a similar price.

Anyway, my little diorama will be in 7mm scale and make use of people from the S&D Models range. All I have to do is paint them up to a standard that will stand scrutiny. So far the hair is OK, but I need to work on the eyes. Perhaps I should look for a set of photo-realistic transfers, or is this a step to far?