MR need photo help

[jfugate]

Rick:

The biggest problem with box lights or umbrellas is they are bulky and you need room to maneuver them around. The average model railroad has aisles under 36" wide in a lot of places, and bulky lighting fixtures like you mention will be hard to position and maneuver because of the limited space.

The halogens I mentioned have the advantage that they are easy to maneuver, but they even can get in the way.

If the layout is reasonably well lit, using a digital SLR camera makes things pretty easy. You can white balance to the room lights, and then using a tripod and the camera timer you can shoot long exposures under just the layout lights and get great looking photos.

I shoot my Siskiyou Line layout this way all the time and the photos come out looking quite good. The only supplement I might make to the lighting is to use a white card or piece of foam core to provide some fill for the shadows.

In my opinion, spend your money on the camera, lenses, and tripod if you are going to shoot layout photos. Then get yourself some cheap portable lights like photofloods or halogens and you should be good to go.

Here's some photos taken on my layout without any extra lighting at all. The only thing done to supplement the lighting was a piece of foam core held low to reflect some fill into the shadows.

[Anonymous]

Thanks guys for the timely response.

The reason for my request is two fold:

1) I'm gettting studio lighting anyways with said attachments, but I do understand what you are saying about room being a challenge for umbrella's and soft boxes. I will be using a soft box in portrait shots and wondered about the use of it in MR'ing photo shoots.
2) A number of layouts locally are coming up for write ups in magazines, I'll provide you with a link to one I'll be doing a seperate thread on called the "Friday night Gang", but for example, John Green wants to do a write up and pics of his layout in the near future for MR and other pubs and I know I'll end up the photo shoot guy. This link will take you to a nice write up of John's layout in the Vancouver Courier just done this past couple of days:

http://www.vancourier.com/issues04/114104/news/114104nn1.html

Mike Chandler is mentioned in the article, along with me; Mike is the chap who won the modelling contest at the NMRA Convention in July for his Bershire engine that took him 5 years to scratch build. He will be writing up his layout and will want photo shots of his layout. His is a way freight free lanced layout set in 1932 in Montana.

With John's layout, I'm probably the guy who is going to have to learn CAD to draw up John's track plan for submission as John - who has bought the CAD track planning software - will never have the time to learn it.

[jfugate]

Being budget minded and one who began serious photography in the early 1970s, I have not spent a lot on lighting equipment.

I use good old shop halogens, the kind you can buy at Home Depot for cheap that come with their own stands. For $100 or so, I have three sizes of lights, one that takes 150 watt bulbs, another 300 watt, and another two 500 watt bulbs. This gives me three light sources I can mix and match to get what I want.

I also use a lot of white foam core for bounce lighting, plus if the room has a white ceiling, I typically take the two 500s and point them at the ceiling to get a nice soft white light to fill the scene. Then I will take medium halogen and use it as a point source to get the direct sunlight look. Finally I will use the smallest halogen as fill light or as a kicker to separate the subject from the background, depending on what I am photographing.

Where I spend the money is on the camera equipment itself. I have a Canon 10D digital, with an assortment of lenses. The 10D is wonderful, because you can get it to automatically white balance by taking a picture of a white card under the lighting, then telling the camera to use that photo as a white balance reference.

From there, all your photos will be perfectly white balanced. The 10D will go down to ISO 100 speed, and up to 30 seconds on shutter timer. Like any SLR I can stop the lense down to f32 for good depth of field, and use whatever lense I like since the 10D is a full SLR digital camera that uses all the Canon EF lenses.

And since the camera is digital, you can immediately check your photos to see how they look. At 6.3 megapixels, I can use the 10D to take cover photos for MR, or photos of any subject for inside the magazine. The 10D LCD display allows you to zoom into the photo up to 16x to check it's focus, etc right in the camera at the moment, which is a great boon for getting great photos during the shoot. As a result, your digital photos will almost always turn out perfect, with little muss or fuss. If you do get a bad photo during the shoot, just correct the issue, delete the bad image, and take it again.

Finally, I have an extra tall heavy duty tripod with quick release shoe so I can put the camera on the tripod or take it off the tripod quickly. The extra tall tripod allows me to get the camera up to hide layout lights or whatever so I can get just the angle I want without having to put the tripod on a chair or something like that.

Here's a quick photo I took under the existing layout lighting with the 10D to illustrate how to make tall grass scenery.



And here's the full sequence of photos taken with the 10D to illustrate the techniques:
http://siskiyou.railfan.net/silflor.html

[Anonymous]

I've shot quite a few photos for the hobby magazines (just over 800 published so far) including layout tours and how-to articles. All of my work has been done with much cheaper and simpler photoflood lights. I used plain 500 watt bulbs in reflectors for most of my work, but acquired two 600W halogen lights in the past few years. Simple stands that collapse into easy to transport sizes.

Most of my shooting has been with film - slides then print film for magaines, and being able to see the effects of the lighting with photofloods was a benefit. Of course now with digital, you can see the results with your studio flashes right away.

Whatever you use, keep in mind space is often restricted when shooting layouts, as they were probably not designed to accommodate lots of large fancy photo equipment such as soft boxes. And umbrellas, I can't imagine there being room and/or ceiling height to effectively use them. Many times I had a hard time placing my photoflood lights for effective lighting on the backdrops, mountains, etc.

Most of my film photography has been done with 28mm and 50mm Canon lenses on film, and I don't think I've ever used anything longer due to the lack of depth of field. My layout shoots were usually done quickly, usually in an evening with not a lot of time for too much fuss. The lenses you listed should be more than enough for layouts. I haven't done any layouts with my digital equipment yet, just shots of my own HO and On30 models for possible submission to magazines.

Whatever you choose, be sure to bring along your own extension cords as layout owners hardly ever have enough or ones of sufficient size to handle the current. I ran the cords for my photofloods into a power bar with an on-off switch which was draped over my tripod for easy access.

Good luck!

Bob Boudreau

[Anonymous]

I've posted this else where but since I'm not getting much of a response and since MR might very likely be the beneficiary of my expenses, I'll ask the question here. My question is simple. I'm wanting to "get serious" about shooting with "studio lighting" for layout shots and shots of rolling stock (though I know I don't need high end for rolling stock shots). A number of guys are beginning to get serious about writing up their layouts for MR and want photo shots for their articles - eventually I will be in the same boat (or track).

I will be using the studio lighting for other uses so I'm planning to purchases at least two strobe kits, complete with umbrellas and stands - shooting wireless with one, the other one fired by its slave.

A couple of questions:

1) Are Soft boxes of any use? I'm thinking diffuse lighting as well as space challenges around the layout.
2) What wattages (minimum) could the strobes be?
3) Are snoots and barn doors of any use in layout shooting?
4) I will be using circular light panels (white and gold).

I am shooting Digital in RAW format.

I will be using 17 - 40 Canon L lens, a 100 macro lens, and a 28 - 135 zoom; are there any other lens I should be considering?