I collect diecast fire truck models and replicas. Many are museum quality and cost in the hundreds of dollars. Some are literally toys. Aside from time spent on shelves in my living room, I enjoy showing them off at fire-related events.
I have an antique (1880's) hose reel in my shed that I intend to restore. It cost me $300 when I bought it and who knows how much it will take to restore it, especially as the wooden wheels need work, not to mention paint, etc.
I picked up an antique beacon light at the Frankenmuth muster a couple of years ago - a chance purchase. It sits on my mantle. That was another 1000+ mile trip. All because I like fire-related stuff. If I can afford it, why not?
I'm not in it to make money. Neither are the vast majority of railfans. The trips also include things I do merely for my own enjoyment, like trainwatching at Deshler.
This coming weekend, I'll be volunteering on the Adirondack Railroad as an engineer and conductor. Aside from a motel room one night, it's all on my own dime.
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
DSLR and mirrorless?
It's been fun. But it isn't much fun anymore. Signing off for now.
The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer, any other railroad, company, or person.t fun any
zugmann hmmm. Are we sure it was the cameras?
hmmm. Are we sure it was the cameras?
Oh, yes, it WAS the cameras.
Matter of fact, places of purchase upon return put stickers on them labeling them as defective.
Nikon went through months and months and months of returned cameras. They were getting a horrible reputation that may haunt the company for years to come.
Nobody is forced to be a railfan. Nobody is forced to take long drives. Nobody is forced to buy a DSLR. It's a hobby. We spend money on it because we find enjoyment in it and consider it money well spent. If you don't, maybe you should find something else to take up your time. In 4 weeks, I'm driving to Scranton, Reading and Pittsburgh, PA to railfan the R&N, W&LE and URR, with a little AVR thrown in, if I have the time. Am I concerned with how much it's going to cost me? NO! I'll be enjoying myself driving 1500 miles in three days. I love roadtrips.
With my oldish Nikon I can bracket automatically, It will shoot up to 9 frames bracketed over +-3 Fstops. I can use it in any burst mode it has.Do I use it, nope. I'd need to reference the manual just to use it.
Every hobby gets expensive, if you want it to. But that's money that you don't mind spending. It's when you have to pull out the wallet for a new furnace or replacing car tires and a brake job that it grinds on you.
croteauddThe dilemma photographers face is the novelty of seeing one’s photos published vs. the real cost of taking those photos.
About the only cost is that of the photographic equipment used, assuming one is shooting digital. The electrons are basically free, and media, like thumbdrives, is cheap. I always keep several on hand in case I want to immediately share an image or three with interested parties.
Of course, there can be a wide range of costs, from camera bodies to lenses (possibly more important than the body).
My Digital Rebel XT runs about $1,000 and takes acceptable images. I have a friend who shoots a lot of sports and has several lenses that probably run in that range (and more) by themselves.
But that cost gets spread out amongst all the images one captures, including family birthday parties and cute kittens.
Something that hasn't been mentioned is what comes under the heading of experience. I started out with a hand-me-down Argus C-3 with manual settings for everything and NO built-in light meter. It was a great camera for developing my skills and finding out what works best. I graduated to a Canon AE-1 and A-1 and learned to use the built-in meter as a guide only. Even now, i check the situation with the meter long before a train comes so I know how to adjust the settings on my own.
Like the ad line for Pielstick diesel engines, nothing beats experience.
tree68You're not going to be able to adjust the exposure if you've selected the rapid fire setting. In fact, on my DSLR shooting in RAW won't give you as rapid as shooting in JPG simply due to the size of each file.
I never shot anything on a railroad that was moving at slower than about 1/250. The tradeoff (for those who don't know) about that 'shorter shutter opening requires wider aperture to get enough 'exposure' -- and with wider aperture comes shorter depth of field for a given lens focus' is how much of the long thing you may be shooting in ¾ classic view will be blurred. So your 'high speed' switcher might have its train increasingly blurred... or even the rear part of the cab or hood. Might not be Trains material there!
I never understood 'bracketing' to be anything other than aperture. In fact back in the days of Nikon Fs and Canon A1s, while it was very easy both to adjust and to 'see' aperture when adjusting on the fly (there was a little prism in the viewfinder that showed the colored etched aperture numbers on the lens barrel) I don't remember a corresponding display in 'aperture priority' for the shutter, and the shutter-speed control was a small knob on top, in the horizontal plane; you could adjust this if the camera were on a tripod, but not in normal hand shooting...
You're not going to be able to adjust the exposure if you've selected the rapid fire setting. In fact, on my DSLR shooting in RAW won't give you as rapid as shooting in JPG simply due to the size of each file.
Your shutter speed is the determining factor in the speed of the train. A fast shutter speed will reduce the amount of blur. If you are at 1/1000 second, it will be virtually nil.
Aperture determines depth of field (as well as how much light is admitted). A wide aperture will result in a fairly narrow depth of field.
Aperture and shutter speed have an inverse relationtionship.
But if you know your camera, you can certainly still bracket.
croteauddIt was surprising the slant this thread has taken, i.e., bracketing. I was thinking more in terms of submissions to TRAINS, and the necessity of one’s camera taking only RAW photos, which photos cannot be altered.
Those of us with less 'splendid' cameras, not shooting with an eye toward publication of every shot, would probably use HDR of some kind. This takes multiple 'bracketed' images (albeit probably not the way a photographic maven would choose to adjust between frames) and then adjusts a final image so the various areas have a 'correct' tonal range and perhaps depth of field. This might be better for most 'railfans' than shooting in RAW and then tinkering in post. But that's better suited for railfan memories.
I did a lot of shooting "back in the day" (early to mid Seventies) using a Nikon F (photomic TN) with a 1:1.8 lens. The reason I chose that is that, when you put the Ektachrome slide in a handheld viewer, the effect was to put you 'back in the scene again' ... which I suspect for most railfans is The Point Of Photography: remembering the day or the experience.
Now, the subgenre of "photographs or it didn't happen" is a foamer issue we might take up in one of these thumb-your-nose rail photography threads. Might be some street cred shooting in a format that 'hasn't been tweaked' to avoid accusations of Photoshopping, deepfake, etc. Might have been some point in shooting RAW with careful bracketing, etc. to get the anomaly published in Rail News Photos or whatever, if anyone still cares about pictures appearing in Rail News Photos weeks or months later. If you try linking on the Kalmbach forums to enormous RAW images, those of us that don't have the connection bandwidth may be irritated you were too lazy to make JPEGs at correct screen resolution, or whatever.
croteauddIt was surprising the slant this thread has taken, i.e., bracketing. I was thinking more in terms of submissions to TRAINS, and the necessity of one’s camera taking only RAW photos, which photos cannot be altered. With that, only perfect photos are to be submitted to TRAINS, as Photoshop-type photos are frowned upon because they open the field up to fraudulent photos. I’m sure a non-qualifying photo would be used if it was the only news photo TRAINS could get its hands on, but RAW is generally the name of the game. One thing about multiple photos in fast succession, as I understand it, only stopped trains could be multi-taken in fast succession. Fast succession photos I don’t believe can have the F/ stop adjusted, the whole point in taken multiple photos, as pointed out earlier in this thread!
One thing about multiple photos in fast succession, as I understand it, only stopped trains could be multi-taken in fast succession. Fast succession photos I don’t believe can have the F/ stop adjusted, the whole point in taken multiple photos, as pointed out earlier in this thread!
The REAL PROS can do it. So can you - if you can develop some skills like multiple cameras with multiple settings - all it takes is money, ingenuity, composition and timing to get the correct rivet count on the SW1500 tearing by you at 45 MPH.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
It was surprising the slant this thread has taken, i.e., bracketing. I was thinking more in terms of submissions to TRAINS, and the necessity of one’s camera taking only RAW photos, which photos cannot be altered. With that, only perfect photos are to be submitted to TRAINS, as Photoshop-type photos are frowned upon because they open the field up to fraudulent photos. I’m sure a non-qualifying photo would be used if it was the only news photo TRAINS could get its hands on, but RAW is generally the name of the game.
Euclid Backshop croteaudd On public property your great camera is aimed at a SW1500 just inside of a rail yard’s low fence. You anticipate a few outstanding photos, as the sun is just right in the sky. The SW1500 moves only 30 feet. You notice the light meter goes from F/8 to F11, then back to F/8 again. How can you be sure of proper exposure? (To Backshop: I’m sorry if the above post gives you spasms, convulsions, and/or possibly the need to be hospitalized, but English is the only language I know. You may want to try to be nice and helpful, which reportedly improves one’s health and one’s railroad / railfan lifespan!) Easy peasy. Every beginning photographer is taught a technique known as "bracketing". Yes bracketing, as Backshop says. Why not just use your best judgement and take extra shots at different exposures?
Backshop croteaudd On public property your great camera is aimed at a SW1500 just inside of a rail yard’s low fence. You anticipate a few outstanding photos, as the sun is just right in the sky. The SW1500 moves only 30 feet. You notice the light meter goes from F/8 to F11, then back to F/8 again. How can you be sure of proper exposure? (To Backshop: I’m sorry if the above post gives you spasms, convulsions, and/or possibly the need to be hospitalized, but English is the only language I know. You may want to try to be nice and helpful, which reportedly improves one’s health and one’s railroad / railfan lifespan!) Easy peasy. Every beginning photographer is taught a technique known as "bracketing".
croteaudd On public property your great camera is aimed at a SW1500 just inside of a rail yard’s low fence. You anticipate a few outstanding photos, as the sun is just right in the sky. The SW1500 moves only 30 feet. You notice the light meter goes from F/8 to F11, then back to F/8 again. How can you be sure of proper exposure? (To Backshop: I’m sorry if the above post gives you spasms, convulsions, and/or possibly the need to be hospitalized, but English is the only language I know. You may want to try to be nice and helpful, which reportedly improves one’s health and one’s railroad / railfan lifespan!)
On public property your great camera is aimed at a SW1500 just inside of a rail yard’s low fence. You anticipate a few outstanding photos, as the sun is just right in the sky. The SW1500 moves only 30 feet. You notice the light meter goes from F/8 to F11, then back to F/8 again. How can you be sure of proper exposure?
(To Backshop: I’m sorry if the above post gives you spasms, convulsions, and/or possibly the need to be hospitalized, but English is the only language I know. You may want to try to be nice and helpful, which reportedly improves one’s health and one’s railroad / railfan lifespan!)
Easy peasy. Every beginning photographer is taught a technique known as "bracketing".
And in today's digital age - any shot can be enhanced with Photoshop - no need to develop those old dodging skills from the days of trying to make the ideal print from a negative to really bring out the rivet details on the SW1500.
Changes in light can be subtle - a shadow, a cloud, etc, can throw a variable in the exposure. The background can have an effect, too. You may not even consciously notice it - our brains are pretty good at making those adjustments. We don't have a meter on our eyes.
If you have doubts about your camera's exposure meter, about the only solution is an external exposure meter and some testing in controlled circumstances.
Re: Background. One key point made in photography classes, etc, is to notice the background - something folks have a tendency to overlook. This is how we end up with light poles and trees growing out of people's heads, etc. Hence, in that 30 foot move, you may have had a bright building (or something) in the background for part of your sweep.
Our community is FREE to join. To participate you must either login or register for an account.