How they Work

To state the obvious, camoflague works in two ways, by disrupting the shape of the object it covers and by blending its contours into the surrounding environment. In clothing, this is usually done through either DPM (disruptive pattern material) or photo-realistic image patterns. While analogue or digital (pixilated) DPM patterns are generally the preferred option for military use, that is not the case in the civilian market. Many serious shooters, bird watchers and country users do not want to be seen to be to be ‘militaristic’ and are looking for ‘civilian’ patterns.

 

Photo-realistic or Photo-unrealistic?

Photo-realistic patterns are so called because they are usually a collage of photo-realistic leaves placed onto a tree bark background. The leaves are photo-realistic and can look three dimensional, but the overall effects are also usually ‘unrealistic’ as far as European environments are concerned. Most of the popular US derived patterns available in Europe are generally designed for use in tree stands. Even in green trees, the tree stand is placed against the brown tree trunk and the environment is mainly timber trunk with few leaves.

Within Europe there is less reliance on tree stands and most camo users are on the floor: a completely different environment into which to blend. Instead of the foliage being between the camouflaged person and watching animal, fish or bird, the foliage of is behind the person. This is a much more exposed position and the camo must be greener and blend to this external environment rather than the environment internal to a tree.

As the people from Natural Gear will tell you, such camouflage patterns should be basically vertical... ‘just like trees and grass in nature. Thanks to gravity, things that grow (trees, bushes, grass), grow vertically. Ask any deer hunter how to spot a deer in the woods and he'll tell you to look for horizontal lines, which stand out among all the vertical lines.’ This has to be balanced against pattern repeats. Better patterns have complex pattern repeats. Some of the more simplistic patterns on the market are ‘blocky’ when made into garments.

Another photo-unrealistic problem even seen in some of the more popular patterns is that of shadows. Again, the boys from Natural Gear say of shadows. ‘ They occur naturally, so you don't need them in your camo pattern. In an effort to create shelf appeal, some camo makers have incorporated shadows into their patterns. Unfortunately, if you happen to be hunting in an open area, those shadows are way too dark and cause you to stick out like the proverbial sore thumb. Shadows occur naturally. That's why there are no shadows in the NaturalGear pattern.’ There are none in the StornKloth Aston pattern either.

DPM (disruptive pattern material)

DPM patterns are specifically geared to concealment to the human eye and night scopes, which brings in different parameters to concealment for other animals and birds.

The British army used a disruptive pattern material for the famous Dennison Smocks issued to parachute troops from the early 1940s. The first examples of this design were hand-painted.

A general issue British DPM was developed in the 1960s, and in 1966 the Army introduced for the first time a camouflage field uniform. In doing this the British army was the first to adopt a camouflage uniform universally.

The 1966 pattern DPM design used the four basic western European temperate colours of black, dark brown, mid-green and a dark sand to make a very effective camouflage that has survived in its basic design, with slight changes to the colours, until today (2006).

Before the 1966 Pattern equipment had reached all units a slightly revised design of garments and DPM fabric were introduced in 1968 as the 1968 Pattern range. The pattern changed slightly with subsequent issues; 1984 Pattern has fewer dots and the brown is much darker, 1990 and later has a band of new shapes and is smaller, 1994 has an orangey colour instead of a tan. The Soldier 95 and Soldier 2000 issues of clothing have similar colours to the 1966 uniform.

Although slight changes have been made to DPM and the colours, the pattern is easy to recognise. There are also jungle versions of DPM where the colours are brighter, on one variation the tan is darker than the green. Desert DPM is only two shades because a four-colour desert version was used by some Middle Eastern countries, notably Iraq.

Recent innovations to the DPM pattern have been the introduction of digital, or pixilated, patterns. These have been designed using squares of colour to produce the disruptive pattern without the hard horizontal edges of the traditional DPMs.