Railroad Photo Technique
 

I need As much Help With Night Photography of Locomotives as I can get

Railroad Photo Technique
 

I need As much Help With Night Photography of Locomotives as I can get

what is your problem? a little info would help.. color /b&w? moving or
standing trains?
close up or distant.

b/w over expose and slightly underdevelope, you need to get more detail in
the threashold areas, the blacks, over exposing will get build up exposure,
under developing will keep the highlights from burning out, see any zone
system book.

color, shoot at late twilight so there is a bit of fill. for a cool effect,
lock down your tripod (you are using one right) and shoot one at twilight
one stop under, shoot again at full dark with all the lights on.

Railroad Photo Technique
 

(Timothy) wrote in
om:

I need As much Help With Night Photography of Locomotives as I can get

My question was the same as zeitgeist's, and I see you've posted some
links to your photos. But the question remains: What exactly are you after?

For something the size of a locomotive, you'd need a buttload of
professional strobes, or settle for working with ambient light. If the
train is moving, virtually all conditions you're likely to see will require
shutter speeds too slow to halt the motion, and the image will be blurred,
often to the point of total unrecognizability.

Giving guidelines for 'typical' lighting conditions is impossible.
Average streetlights (such as the common amber lights in use nowadays,
which are sodium pressure bulbs) have an extremely limited range of light -
six feet of distance can drop the light levels significantly. so it's
difficult to ballpark anything. Not to mention that the amber light isn't
full spectrum and can't be corrected by filtering. Also, different films
respond in varying ways to long exposures.

So bluntly, experiment, and bracket your exposures heavily.

Stumbled onto this not long ago, but the discontinued Agfa HDC 200
(print) does a marvelous job of exposure under sodium streetlamps. You
might want to see if Agfa kept roughly the same emulsion in any of their
current films. Fuji Provia 100F (slide) does a terrible job - the amber
lights become green.

If you have a stationary engine, you can leave the camera on a
tripod and lock the shutter open on Bulb (as long as ambient light is very
low) and walk around the train firing off a handheld flash to illuminate it
in stages. The guide number of the flash will tell you what aperture
setting to use, and how far away the flash should be from the locomotive
(the camera distance will not matter - it's the flash distance you need to
worry about). Hard to tell how much to overlap, so experiment with this
too, but start at a flash every ten feet, and be aware of your own body
blocking the light bouncing off the train.

You can also do a long exposure of a passing train at night, and fire
off a flash burst to freeze a certain car or detail amid the motion blur.
Chances are, the flash burst will be underexposed compared to the rest, and
will give a ghostly appearance. You would also have to be pretty close to
the train.

Something to start with, anyway. Good luck!


- Al.

--
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Online photo gallery at www.wading-in.net

Railroad Photo Technique
 

Timothy wrote:
I need As much Help With Night Photography of Locomotives
as I can get

Hi

Try he

http://www.trainweb.org

http://www.trainweb.org/members/dire...otography.html



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Lars

e-mail: Remove the obvious.
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Besøg min Foto-links:
http://www.fotolinks.dk or http://www.photolinks.dk

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"Timothy" wrote in message
om...
I need As much Help With Night Photography of Locomotives as I can get

1. Don't Set Up Tripod Shots Directly In Front Of Them When They're Moving Along
The Tracks.

Railroad Photo Technique
 

Hi,

zeitgeist wrote:
color, shoot at late twilight so there is a bit of fill. for a cool effect,
lock down your tripod (you are using one right) and shoot one at twilight
one stop under, shoot again at full dark with all the lights on.

I have seen you describe this technique a few times now, but I (as a
newbee) can't help thinking - won't that give an overexposed picture?

I know that the right answer would be that I should go out an
experiment, and I might also do exacly that, but I would like to hear if
I did get it right!

So you say at twilight a picture one stop under - how do I deside what
is would be the correct exposure? At twilight I can't meter anything ..
or can I? Then I wait until it's totally dark (and in this case when the
train comes) take another one on top of the previous picture. How do I
determine the exposure I need here? The same as last?

Martin

Railroad Photo Technique
 

"Martin Djernæs" wrote in message
news:78iib.546551$Oz4.468454@rwcrnsc54...
Hi,

zeitgeist wrote:
color, shoot at late twilight so there is a bit of fill. for a cool
effect,
lock down your tripod (you are using one right) and shoot one at
twilight
one stop under, shoot again at full dark with all the lights on.

I have seen you describe this technique a few times now, but I (as a
newbee) can't help thinking - won't that give an overexposed picture?

I know that the right answer would be that I should go out an
experiment, and I might also do exacly that, but I would like to hear if
I did get it right!

So you say at twilight a picture one stop under - how do I deside what
is would be the correct exposure? At twilight I can't meter anything ..
or can I? Then I wait until it's totally dark (and in this case when the
train comes) take another one on top of the previous picture. How do I
determine the exposure I need here? The same as last?


Your bigger concern is underexposure, with long exposures you start to get a
bit of reciprocity failure, the longer you expose the longer you need to
expose cause the film gets slower. overexposure will give you too much
detail, give you a twilight effect that just seems muddy. A little
overexposure you can print down, one reason you want to give the night scene
a bit of twilight exposure is to prevent too much underexposure. Here's a
few lights, here's a bit of black area, with a base expo, you still have
lights, but the blank areas have a bit of shape and definition, (of course
if you lab thinks its day light expo, or the guy tries to help you, geez
this pic is underexposed better lighting it up some...)

One stop under will just drop the tones in value, remember a meter assumes a
medium gray. so one stop under will give you a range of detail but slightly
muted. doing a twilight shot can put you in the area where reciprocity
failure can start, but that's OK, if your background exposure is 1.2 or even
1.5 stops under it shouldn't matter that much. You want to get a threshold
exposure on the neg, that will make the image much better and easier to
print, there will be some detail available. If you want to do better, get
specific amounts of detail, well then you need experience, and what the pros
do is bracket, which is hard with a roll film camera, but the ones I've seen
do this will use 4x5's and sheet film, load the holder, shoot, take notes.
wait a couple hours.

exposure for the lights, you can get guestimations from guides, sometimes
the film box gives a hint, but generally its an artistic choice, (or happy
surprise when you get the film back) You can go for warm glow or bright
wash out with the length of exposure. Its a matter of your taste, you can
always try again, eventually you will hit on a combo that works for you. I
haven't done it in years and can't remember what the heck times I used.

Oh, and two shots that are one stop under will give you one fully exposed
neg.

Railroad Photo Technique
 

Hi,

zeitgeist wrote:
I have seen you describe this technique a few times now, but I (as a
newbee) can't help thinking - won't that give an overexposed picture?


One stop under will just drop the tones in value, remember a meter assumes a
medium gray. so one stop under will give you a range of detail but slightly
muted. doing a twilight shot can put you in the area where reciprocity

Now I get it (I hope) - at twilight I meeter the scene and take the
first shot one below. Now I wait and take the second shot at the same
exposure setting. I think I was expecting that the meetering should be
redone!


........................ but generally its an artistic choice, (or happy
surprise when you get the film back)

So basically .. trail and error .. and try again :-)

Thanks for the detailed explanation.

Martin

Railroad Photo Technique
 

Railroad Photo Technique
 

"zeitgeist" wrote in message .net...
I need As much Help With Night Photography of Locomotives as I can get

what is your problem? a little info would help.. color /b&w? moving or
standing trains?
close up or distant.

b/w over expose and slightly underdevelope, you need to get more detail in
the threashold areas, the blacks, over exposing will get build up exposure,
under developing will keep the highlights from burning out, see any zone
system book.

color, shoot at late twilight so there is a bit of fill. for a cool effect,
lock down your tripod (you are using one right) and shoot one at twilight
one stop under, shoot again at full dark with all the lights on.

OOP MY BAD
I shoot color and then convert it to B&W
The B&W's look good if the train is Not moving or moving at a speed
under 10mph anf faster then that I wont shoot it

i'm using a 2.0 mega pixel Camera which is able to take great night
shots like this one at St. Louis