Hi guys. On the night of Tuesday, April 3, I noticed an empty coal train preparing to leave the power plant at Shelocta, PA. Since the weather was nice, I figured I’d go out and take a crack at some night photography again. I was also counting on the moonlight to illuminate much of the ground, and I thought I could get some nice shots with its light included. The “getting skunked” rule quickly came into play, however. To start, when the train was about to leave, clouds from an approaching cold front insisted on moving in the way, getting rid of my precious full moon’s light for the rest of the night. And of course, to add to the mess, even though the highway barely had any cars going by at all, as luck would have it, someone would show up just as I was to take my shot at the crossing. It didn’t turn out as bad as I thought, but that was still another kick in the pants. I’ve included most of the pictures I took. Try to ignore the sleazy ads off to the left of the pictures. This is the only photo site I know of.
http://www.imagedump.com/index.cgi?pick=get&tp=496124
(shutter speed-48 secs)
Here, I just did a generic shot while the train was waiting to get a feel for what shutter speed I should use. Since I’m not very experienced in night photos, I had to do a couple test shots, and this is what I was able to pull off from those tests. After the 1st one, I did a couple zoomed-out shots for the crossing, using a couple different shutter speeds to guess how to shoot it. Once the train was on the move, I tried one that I hoped would show the streaks of light from where it started through the whole crossing. I wasn’t able to pull it off, but this is the next shot I got. Since I didn’t get the whole thing and that car had moved in the way, I didn’t try to get a
Hint Use photobucket.com. You might want to try flashbulbs. The crew may try to maim you, but youll get your picture.
THink O. Winston Link and his use of multiple flash photography. Elaborate, but very effective.
As far as the two pictures with different colors, I can think of two possible explanations.
The first is that the longer shutter speed caused the foreground to blow out from the light of your flashers and go to pure white, rather than retaining the detail and color. Notice how much pure white you have in the foreground that lacks any detail. I suspect that this was a result of the longer exposure time.
The second possibility is that you popped your flash at some point during the exposure. You don’t mention doing this, but, since the light from a xenon strobe is much whiter than the normal night time illumination, you can end up with a different color balance. Combine flash with a long exposure, and you can really get blown highlights as the second example shows, as the flash will illuminate the foreground plus you get a lot of ambient exposure.
For me, night photography is all about the dramatic colors you get from all of the different color temperatures of artificial light that come into play. For that reason, I love the one where you can clearly see a yellow patch on the grass in front of the crossing from your car flashers.
The previous poster mentioned flash bulbs. That’s certainly an option, however you need a whole lot and they’re not cheap. The last I checked, a full box of a dozen GE #5s or Sylvania P25s were selling for anywhere between $25 and $40. You’d probably need a couple dozen to satisfactorily illuminate a night scene, and more than that to account for the fact that there will probably be some duds. Especially if you’ll be shooting color, since the blue varnish or blue filters necessary will rob a fair amount of light. Also, flash bulbs aren’t that great at shooting action. They take around 1/60 second to reach their peak, and give off light for close to a full second. This is not a great recipe for stopping action. Electronic strobes are much better in this respect, but for a given number of flash bulbs, you need at least twic
All of your shots look just like the NIPSCO power generation plant on the North Shore of Michigan City, In.
I could take some pictures that your would swear was out of your portfolio in PA.
Were you using a Digital Camera?
I just picked up a Canon 10 MP. As soon as the weather clears up I will attempt to shoot some and show you how simular they are.
I hope mine come out as good as your.
I would love to see your pics and compare them.
BTW, I was not using a flash. In fact, since this camera allows me to turn it off completely, I simply never use it. (My old one didn’t have such a feature, and the flash would get troublesome if I forgot to turn it off each time.) I’ve got a Kodac EAsyshare Z760 digital camera. And thanks for the info, guys. I won’t be buying flash bulbs given that kind of price, but if I get to do some serious nightime railfanning, I may try the strobe thingy.
Hi Ski!
I really liked the second pic.
hey guys, I got some more night shots. For the time being I won’t be going with flash bulbs (the expense mainly), but I did get some more to look at and give opinions on. I had to reduce the sizes for imagedump. Some of these are old ones I posted at the start to compare to. Let me know what you think, including any further hints. here’s my post:
I’d like to ask some questions to those of you more experienced with night photography, as well as show some pics to anyone interested. It is rare that I get to take any night shots, so I don’t have much opportunity to practice. But I have noticed some patterns from the shots I did take that turned out decent and the ones that didn’t. In addition to these, I’m wondering if you guys have any additional pointers. Here are some samples of my latest night shots (just the good ones). All are from 2007 and taken with the Kodak Z760 Digital Camera, 6.1 MP, and zooms up to 3x. Shots were in Shelocta, looking at the Keystone Generating Station, and both Anthony Run road crossings a short ways down. There is one road crossing between these, but never enough time to get to it. I’ll refer to the plant one (Route 156) as 1st crossing, the 1st of the Anthony Run Road as the 2nd crossing, and the 2nd of the Anthony Run Road as the 3rd crossing.
4/04/07-
http://www.imagedump.com/index.cgi?pick=get&tp=496124
(164)
Train is waiting before departing plant.
Shutter-48 sec
Aperture-4.1
Focal length-91mm
ISO speed-100
http://www.imagedump.com/index.cgi?pick=get&tp=496125
(169)
Train departing 1st crossing
Shutter-32 sec
Aperture-3.4
Focal length-39mm
ISO speed-100
http://www.imagedump.com/index.cgi?pick=get&tp=496128