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.
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
OK, first off, good tries, I think the last few at the crossing IMO are the best of the bunch. Also, your very first one is pretty good in a non railroading way, I love how the steam from the cooling towers looked. So maybe try going back and just getting that part in the frame.
Next, The star streaks in the third one just happen, I may be mistaken but I am pretty sure that it is just caused by the glass in the lens. I tried the same thing and learned that it is reduced if you keep away form letting it hit the lens directly. I think you are just trying to get something like this, right?
Just a few questions, What camera are you using? Film or Digital?
Also, a good photo hosting site if you are still looking is, photobucket.com
Well, all that is just what I think, maybe Chris will get on here and be able to help out more.
One photo-hosting site that I used for a few years was Epson Photocenter http://photo.epson.com. They have some ads, but they’re not all that bad, usually for Epson products! Decent site, and you can sort your photos into albums.
What settings where you using…full auto, shutter priority, or full manual? Digitals set on full auto or auto shutter priority, will change the f-stop and virtual ISO to get the “best” exposure. That’s probably what caused the color shift between the 6th and 7th picture.
A polarizing filter may cut the star streaks in the third picture. Using a higher f-stop should cut the streaking down too, but that will require a slower shutter speed.
Keep experimenting. Use different ISOs, shutter speeds, and f-stops. If you’re not try shooting in full manual mode. It may a trickier at first, especially if your not used to shooting in manual mode, but you’ll have much greater control over the finished product.
Artistically and techincally, the first picture is great. Although, I would focus in on the cooling towers and stacks - crop out most of the sky, and the right side of the photo.
Hi all. I promised those night pictures, and here’s a chunk of my major stuff I’ve snapped since then. Also note that I have another camera, though it seems its use during the night might be limited, though it can do a few things my current camera can’t. So, enjoy having a look at all these when you get the chance, and feel free to weigh in, either on general opinions, or ideas on how to make improvements if you’ve got any. Listed will be the pictures, camera settings, and additional comments. Pictures snapped with Kodak Z760 digital camera. Sorry for taking so long to post these. I forgot about them.
I think the lens flare (star effect on lights) is working against you here. I have a fair amount of experience in night photography (not of trains though) and while the star effect (caused by a high aperture = small lens opening) works great for stationary lights, when there is movement in the photo the star can detract from the photo, depending on how drastic it is. If it obscures the whole train, that’s not what you want. Try experimenting with a lower aperture (larger lens opening) to lessen the star effect.
date taken: 1/25/07, time taken: 9:16 PM, shutter speed: 32sec, aperture: f3.4, focal length: 39mm, ISO: 100
Another night, traffic, as usual, interfered with 156’s shots, but I got a few of them. Only one had actually focused correctly. I chose the one where the crew-change van was turning around to park near the X-ing.
Heh, someone squeezed ina reply there. Thanks for the info. I used to try playing with the f-stop in manual mode to keep the star effect at bay. One thing I had learned though, was that I was best just working in Shutter Priority mode, and hopefully the f-stop would cooperate, for most of my pics. I have found from experience, that trying to do so much playing around in manual mode in a fast-action setting like that was hard to do, and I usually would be too late at getting the settings correct once I got that dealt with. In Shutter Priority, I still missed a few, but usually the simplicity gave me enough time to start grabbing my shots.
That reminds me of a couple things…my Z885 can’t seem to use Shutter over 8", though ISO can go up to 3200. It would seem my old one (the Z760) would still be best for getting these pics, except if I want to grab suuden-moment shots. Also remember, that the brightness of the pics may vary from monitor to monitor, by a significant amount, so some of you may see more details while others see much darkness.
May I suggest that you if you include it at all, you compress your exposure information into one or two lines? Having to scroll down through all that white space to seek out your images tends to make me want to just skip the thread entirely.
Yeah, some other guy metnioned Photobucket. Since these are already uploaded, I can’t do much about it now, but from now on if I post any new ones, I’ll use Photobucket. Does it have a limit on filesize? Also, the '08s are already uploaded, so they’ll also be on imagedump if posted. And you’re right about the spacing. That is horrible. It’s fine in MS Word, which I pasted all that from, but it doesn’t quite seem to do teh spacing correctly pasting it here. I’ll smash all that together manually. Look for a much easier-to-look-at-thread in a little bit…
