If you found one, you’re a lucky bastard, they are very rare and often expensive. I have one that I picked up at a show years ago.
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Yeah I noticed that, I found one on eBay for $70 USD. Pictures of it look good.
Colin 
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Are we entirely sure the differences aren’t down to some tankie finally stirring the pot before applying?
I find the base colour isn’t so important once all the shading and weathering gets applied…
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I think that’s the problem with all these color discussions. People don’t (can’t?) separate “Which paint best matches the standard for the color?” from “What color should my model be?” Contrary to what Tom has written above, I think the best path for those who care is to start with a match to the standard then weather, shade, thin, lighten, darken, or glaze to your heart’s content. Clearly no one would start with lemon yellow for dunkel gelb or kelly green for olive drab, so it’s clear there are limits. I just figure that if you come as close as possible to the standard value in the bottle the appearance of the model after we apply our whims will represent the modeler’s abilities and desires rather than the quality control or commitment of the paint manufacturer.
The other problem with these threads are the people who simply cannot accept that others enjoy the hobby differently than they do and fight or ridicule anyone trying to do better in their modeling. That’s why you see the “We just used house paint so anything goes” posts and reason after reason why color can’t be evaluated objectively. No one says these folks have to change how they model (who would listen anyway?) but they sure act like they’ll HAVE to throw out all their paints if somebody makes an honest effort to learn something.
KL
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Remember also that exposure to weather has a significant impact on paint so dunkelgelb (or any shade, for that matter) that’s been in the field for awhile will be a different color than when it came out of a paint gun. Ever seen olive green after it’s been in the weather for a few years? It turns almost pink!
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This same discussion has been going on since mid-February over at:
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Thank you my friend for that thoughtful reply to a novice to intermediate modeler like me who wants to get it right. I don’t mind the friendly jibes from members but I think the jokes would be more fitting for someone who is already an experienced modeler asking, right?
I’m no dummy. When I read conflicting accounts and sources from what appear to be authoritative sources I start to wonder why I’m lightening my DG base coats. But as the “Top” has pointed out, there has been some real issue with the issue.
Maybe asking more stupider [sic] questions will get me funnier memes?
Dan
Sorry mate, absolutely didn’t mean to offend, wasn’t my intention at all.
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As a decorator by trade, I can tell you that even though there are ‘supposedly’ standardised colours in the paint world, colours under these standards vary from manufacturer to manufacturer. For example, BS08 B 15 Magnolia ( BS= British standard ). You cannot use Dulux Magnolia on the same wall as Crown magnolia, unless you are going for a 2-tone effect, and that’s the same with Laura Ashley paint, B&Q paint, Homebase paint, International paint, etc., etc. And this is true with paint companies with the same parent company, as is the case with Dulux and Crown, whose parent company is Akzo Nobel. The standard is just a guideline, which makes things not very standard! In reality, you have to take ‘standard’ paint colours with a broad stroke of a brush.
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Adding to this, you really want to mix all the paint together for a decorating project, as I’ve found variations within a single manufacturer’s colour. (I usually use half a can, then pour in half of the next can, and repeat as it gets used, just to blend out the differences if there are any.) It can be a batch thing (some brands put the batch number on the can so you can get all the same one from the same mixing vat), or sometimes a quality-control issue. I would expect wartime paint to have much wider variations than our peacetime house paint for obvious reasons…
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I read an article online a couple of years ago on the variations of Soviet 4BO and they had this amazing pic
(courtesy: Britmodeller, Question - Your preferred paint manufacturer's Green for Russian armour. - AFV Cold War - Britmodeller.com)
Just really illustrates the point you are making re wartime variations in one paint colour. Although I would expect the German paint manufacturers to be a little more precise than the early Cold War Sovs were, but the underlying point is the same.
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Small comment:
These ex-Soviet APC’s have aged a few more years than a German tank in WW II had the opportunity to …
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True indeed.
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. . . And as if I had summoned the Devil, all that I mentioned appears in quick succession.
KL
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Yes? I’m always here.
What do you want now?
Eh, if believed you existed I might ask for something.
Note that all these posts boil down to: “What you want to do is impossible! More importantly, STOP TRYING!”
Why do they care?
KL
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That piece of insight spreads way too slowly in the population.
There will always be those who keep on trying and striving, and failing, for the ultimate perfection
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Well just to throw two more cents into this thing…I was lucky to be able to visit Normandy last year, and took photos of a lot of gear that had (I think) original dunkelgelb paint sitting in some of the numerous museums there. I do not refer here to stuff like tanks, artillery pieces etc. that had, of course, been repainted since 1945. I mean small junk like random roadwheels, jerricans, radios, periscopes, metal boxes and junk like that that litters Norman museums.
After seeing and photographing a lot of that stuff it was blindlingly obvious that there was no single “correct” color on the actual items. I cannot say with certainty that they hadn’t been repainted, but, it sure looked original to me, with remnants of stencilling, bits of rust, etc. If you’ve been to some of these sorta low-end museums you know what I mean. Somebody grabbed a bunch of this stuff lying around their town many decades ago, refurbished a barn and called it a museum. So I think the odds they were original are very high.
We know there was a standard that all the manufacturers during the war were supposed to use; we know there are lots of hobby paint attempts to match that; we can get very stressed about this if we want to. But “BringupthePIAT” made a valid point, which is that the real items are a variety of shades that cluster around the standard, but are not the same.
This is not an “anything goes” argument at all. There was a single color that everyone was supposed to use, and then there was how that got implemented, and it wasn’t fundamentally different from all those BTRs in BringupthePIAT’s photo.
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H.P.
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