IBM 4704 F107 in RAL 7030 Industrial Gray

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XMIT
[ XMIT ]

26 Aug 2015, 21:51

I just got my F107s back from powder coating: one for me and one for pyrelink. I've only had a chance to take one good photo so far.

The white sheet of paper in the photo is 96 brightness 20 pound copier paper. As you can see the 1985 Industrial M in the center of the photo is certainly darker than RAL 7030. I suggest going with something darker for color matching purposes.

Otherwise, the keyboard is a delight. I'm typing on it right now. This is the first usable Model F I've ever owned. Very nice. (Sure I have others but they are all in various states of repair. This one still needs a little work but it is close enough to "done" that I can actually use it.)
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Muirium
µ

26 Aug 2015, 21:58

Your picture's very yellow. Here's a quick edit with the paper adjusted to neutral white:
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Does that look a bit more realistic? They all looked nasty brown to me, with that strong yellow cast! But lighting is impossible to ever really compensate for, remotely.

Engicoder

26 Aug 2015, 22:12

Looks great!
Maybe you should paint some white numbers on it :D
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Last edited by Engicoder on 26 Aug 2015, 22:58, edited 1 time in total.

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XMIT
[ XMIT ]

26 Aug 2015, 22:34

Yeah, that's a little better, thanks. The above photo is unretouched apart from scaling. I'm in the middle of too many things right now and just wanted to get something - anything - posted for reference.

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dorkvader

27 Aug 2015, 00:30

very nice, similar to the colour I went with. I prefer sparkly, but dark grey goes with anything:
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0100010

27 Aug 2015, 03:15

They both look amazing!

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faycheung

27 Aug 2015, 03:49

Looks really good. I'm interested in doing the same for my Model F.

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pyrelink

02 Sep 2015, 18:22

I recieved my powder coated case from XMIT yesterday, and I took some pictures. I found the same difficulty trying to get proper white balance on this case. I tried the coffee filter trick to adjust proper white balance on the camera, I tried auto WB in Lightroom, custom WB based off the white sheet of paper, and manually adjusting it.

I will put this one here, and the rest in a spoiler so you don't have 2 hours of loading.
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XMIT
[ XMIT ]

02 Sep 2015, 19:42

Oh, very nice. I hope you're pleased with the result.

I've been thinking about implementing a SUN type UNIX layout on mine. There is no top row but it can be emulated with a Fn key somewhere.

orihalcon

05 Sep 2015, 00:12

Lookin good!

I'm surprised no one has added texture to the paint. The place I had mine done had samples that looked pretty much identical to the original F107 texture. They said it's just an additive that they put into the powder.

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hammelgammler
Vintage

05 Sep 2015, 00:47

Yeah the color looks very nice, but I like the color from dorkvader a bit more I think. It's not as glossy.
If I ever powdercoat a keyboard I will definitely try to get some sort of texture to it, like the Industrial SSK, and of course it should be matte.

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Hypersphere

05 Sep 2015, 01:02

@hammelgammler: Glossy probably looks better in reality than in photos. Black and some shades of red might look great with a glossy finish.

@Muirium: What do you use for photo editing? Photoshop? (Photoshop is too complicated for me, but I am not as much of a perfectionist as you are when it comes to photography).

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Muirium
µ

05 Sep 2015, 01:31

I don't use Photoshop either. (The last version I ever upgraded to was CS1, which only runs on my ancient G4s.) Instead, nowadays I use the excellent indie image editor: Acorn. And don't look back!

Mind, white balance is something you can fix in OS X's built in Preview app. Easy to overlook what a useful editor that freebie is. I spent a good while relying on it and nothing else.

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Hypersphere

05 Sep 2015, 01:37

@Mu: Alas, I no longer use OS X as my primary computing platform. I will need to reply on a photo editor that runs in Linux or Windows.

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Hypersphere

06 Sep 2015, 16:43

The space across the top on the F107 is a handy place to put your cheat sheet for Lotus 1-2-3.

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Muirium
µ

06 Sep 2015, 17:19

Omm…

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