Graham Line That's a pretty impressive bridge. Plastruct and Evergreen should be offering you a lifetime discount. If the overhead light is strong enough, there's no reason not to use it. The light-colored walls are giving a nice bounce fill effect. White foamcore panels make nice reflectors for directing light to even out shadows. If you can avoid mixing lights of different color temperatures, you can rely on the camera's auto-balance and auto-correction capabilities.
That's a pretty impressive bridge. Plastruct and Evergreen should be offering you a lifetime discount.
If the overhead light is strong enough, there's no reason not to use it. The light-colored walls are giving a nice bounce fill effect. White foamcore panels make nice reflectors for directing light to even out shadows. If you can avoid mixing lights of different color temperatures, you can rely on the camera's auto-balance and auto-correction capabilities.
Hey Graham-
Thanks. I agree with your comment about Plastruct and Evergreen. I think it is a pretty good idea, but some retailers get a little finicky about giving away their stuff.
I also like the idea about home-made sort of lighting equipment. I'm not photographing Christy Brinkley or trying to hide Jennifer Anniston's blemishes, so there's no reason to get all gung-ho about fancy and expensive stuff. I plan to get a couple of portable shop lights. I'm talking about those simple light-bulb-and-a-wire kind of things. They have a cone-shaped shiny aluminum pie pan reflector and a big barbecue tong sort of clamp so that they can be attached to a ladder or a bookshelf or something and easily repositioned as needed. Maybe add a cheese cloth curtain to drape in front to diffuse the light. I plan to use LED bulbs. Speaking of which . . .
The train room is lit by fourteen 15-watt LEDs in adjustable track-lighting fixtures on the ceiling. They are all 5000K white daylight, or some such designation. There is plenty of space along the track rails to add at least twice again as many. They use very little electricity and generate almost no heat. The room is about 25 feet by 24 feet with a fairly high ceiling (9'-4" ceiling, benchwork nominal height 52" above floor) and has a pleasant bright sunny sort of disposition to it. I plan to use the spotlights and reflector panels (as you suggested) when composing scenes for future photos.
My question is do I have to have all lights the same 5000K color? I set the white balance of the camera to 'Auto', or rather it came that way from the factory and I didn't change that setting. Plus, and more importantly, is there something about LED lights that make these photos unusable to publishers (either traditional paper publishers or electronic e-zine publishers)?
Robert
LINK to SNSR Blog
Here are a few more photos taken just for fun. Well actually, this activity could fall into the work/study category. It is fun and it isn't really very much hard work, but the purpose is to familiarize myself with the camera and the software and try to figure out how to push all the buttons and ring all the bells and whistles. Tough job, but somebody's gotta do it.
There is a D5300 manual, like DoctorWayne referred to, but it is only 105 pages long and the first twenty or so are lawyerly disclaimers and safety notices. I can never figure out how or why anyone would try to eat this camera or any part of it, but apparently you have to tell them not to.
I cleared off the workbench, but I didn't vacuum or clean up the dust. I figured that wouldn't do much good, and it might just accentuate the oldness of the workbench/door. Workshop, remember.
As an indication that I am actually learning something, I know what caused that annoying discoloration at the near end of the bridge in the third photo. All photos so far have been taken using available ambient light, and this room was getting pretty good sunlight through an east window. That yellowish pall is a shadow from the window frame while the rest of the bridge is getting a decent amount of filtered sunlight. That was hard to notice with the naked eyeball, and at the time I thought it was just lack of clarity of the on-screen image because the preview window in Helicon Remote is only 640X480 or something. Exposure for these photos was f5.6, 1/2 second shutter, ISO 125.
Back to the work/study/fun business . . . this post pretty much illustrates one of my basic issues in life: I have a tendency to put the cart in front of the horse. Here I am playing with a new toy taking photos of a layout and structure that are no where near 'camera-ready' when I should be spending time and energy actually working on the layout. Oh well.
ROBERT PETRICKHere I am playing with a new toy taking photos of a layout and structure that are no where near 'camera-ready' when I should be spending time and energy actually working on the layout. Oh well.
Don't be so rough on yourself, Robert.
You will certainly want to document the progress of the layout with plenty of photographs. It is never too soon to start taking photos.
Cheers! Ed
The lighting should be the same colour temperature, prevents weird shifts in places.
You can probably do a custom white balance and apply that to the pictures, something that should be in the manual, somewhere. A quick search on the internet should find a page with helpful hints on settings you should use with your camera as well.
I did read something regarding depth of field (DOF): Put the camera in aperture mode, set the iris to f16, and let the camera figure out the rest.
gmpullman...Don't be so rough on yourself, Robert. You will certainly want to document the progress of the layout with plenty of photographs. It is never too soon to start taking photos....
I agree with Ed. Beyond that, I wouldn't worry too much about anomalies in your photos, such as lighting or even depth of field, if you're showing an on-going project to us here. It's a real distraction to document any project, whether it's a layout build or a scratchbuilding project, and in that case a not-so-perfect photo is preferable to no photo. If you're taking the photos for publication, though, that's a different story.
Wayne
gmpullman Don't be so rough on yourself, Robert. You will certainly want to document the progress of the layout with plenty of photographs. It is never too soon to start taking photos. Cheers! Ed
Hey thanks, Ed. I don't think I'm really being too hard on myself, I'm only just joking around.
The fact is I like my new toy, I like playing with my new toy, and I like writing about playing with my new toy. I see it as just another branch of model railroading, and I can see a lot of new possibilities opening up. Doing this at this particular time is not really subtracting from the other things I could (or maybe should) be doing. On the contrary. It helps focus my attention on what needs to be done next and what can be done next, whether on the layout itself or on scratchbuilding projects that are currently on the workbench. All of this stuff falls into the fun category. There's a reason they call this the World's Greatest Hobby.
I like learning new things, and I expect that not too far into the near future I might actually turn out some pretty decent photos. Maybe not Pulitzer Prize winning stuff, but stuff I won't be ashamed of either. Model railroading is a very visual sport, particularly when it is shared over the internet of things. Whether writing or drawing or photographing or publishing or whatever, I plan to keep piddling along with my meager tools and my limited talent. And have a ball while doing it.
A couple more test photos of an N-scale Atlas (BLMA) crude oil tanker. The painting, printing, and overall details on these cars is slightly above average for N-scale.
The first is the standard glamour shot composed of four images photo stacked. The micro text print is kinda legible, but not too sharp. The actual print on the model, particularly the capacity and weights, is pretty dang small.
The second is the closest and maximum zoom I could get with the 18-55 mm lens. The printing is a little easier to read, but still not as sharp as the actual printing on the car when observed through a 10x loupe. I don't plan a whole lot of these kinds of closeups, but I just wanted to see what I could do at this early stage.
When and if I take more photos of this nature, a photo stack setup would be necessary due to the printing on the rounded tank. I would also need another type of true macro lens, possibly a prime lens. But in any case, no camera can add detail or clarity that the subject does not have to begin with, so there is a limit out there as to what can be done.