All Aboard the Holiday express.

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JaniceL

JaniceL

Super Moderator
Staff member
Had a great time today at Nina's Studio. Nice to place some faces to the names. Sorry Jake, LOL.

One of the perks was being able to catch the 4449 which was brought out to carry passengers just for the Holiday Season. Having not been this close to a steam engine, I was amazed at the size. Much harder to photograph than I expected. Here are a couple of my shots.

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Then I decided to make a detour on the way home and stopped at the Oaks Park, just in the nick of time.
 
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Very nice photo with the front lights. You must have had the shortest drive home or just wanted to beat all the rest to the punch. LOL Good Job.
 
Digital Latte said:
The second one is my favorite, Woot Woot
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I like that one for the smoke but don't care much about the tower. The challenge is the d#@% fence. and I could not step away far enough to catch a little more of the side of the train. I could not quite match what I planned in my head. But then it is so massive, that I will have to adjust my vision.
 
Judy N said:
Very nice photo with the front lights. You must have had the shortest drive home or just wanted to beat all the rest to the punch. LOL Good Job.
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I think I live in a different direction from everybody too. Somehow I think Bob might have something under his sleeve. He took some photos last night I think and maybe this morning.
 
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Nice shots Janice, I especially like the one at twilight.

As for the fence, you can hold your camera out at arm's length. But you never quite know what you'll get, so use a wide angle to allow for croppping.
 
BobH said:
Nice shots Janice, I especially like the one at twilight.

As for the fence, you can hold your camera out at arm's length. But you never quite know what you'll get, so use a wide angle to allow for cropping.
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That is the big advantage to having Live View on the 3" LCD on back of the A55, for instances just like that

Great shots Janice!
 
BobH said:
As for the fence, you can hold your camera out at arm's length. But you never quite know what you'll get, so use a wide angle to allow for croppping.
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I should have done that, I could have used live view on the LCD, hard to teach an old dog new tricks. :)
 
Nice shot Bob, I have a picture of the train going in the other direction where I caught you catching the train.
 
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It was great to meet you guys

It was good to finally put faces with names. I was sorry to have to leave early, but I knew you guys would have plenty of captures of the 4449 for me to look at. ;)

JaniceL said:
...One of the perks was being able to catch the 4449 which was brought out to carry passengers just for the Holiday Season. Having not been this close to a steam engine, I was amazed at the size. Much harder to photograph than I expected....
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I've always said that photographing trains is much more difficult than people realize. You have to find a good location, have good light, be able to visualize what the resulting photo will look like without all the elements present (namely the train), have a good understanding of exactly how big the train will be - before it gets there, and have an interesting train to shoot. Plus, big black steam engines are fairly hard to meter on. :)

And then, after 25 years of doing it, I still find myself mezmerized by the headlight and end up getting it perfectly centered in the frame - which only serves to fool the meter - and maybe the autofocus, too. Oh well, I'll keep practicing.
 
It was fun yesterday, I am so glad I got to come and visit.
here are a couple of the shots I got yesterday.

Ummm Bob, There's a train behind ya.
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Sassy said:
Janice, Love the shot you did down at Oaks, beautiful!
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I enjoyed meeting you too. Maybe a waterfall tour would be fun this winter.

Nice capture of the train. I don't mind the fence at all now that I see it in your shot.
 
Mike-PDX said:
I've always said that photographing trains is much more difficult than people realize. You have to find a good location, have good light, be able to visualize what the resulting photo will look like without all the elements present (namely the train), have a good understanding of exactly how big the train will be - before it gets there, and have an interesting train to shoot. Plus, big black steam engines are fairly hard to meter on. :)

And then, after 25 years of doing it, I still find myself mezmerized by the headlight and end up getting it perfectly centered in the frame - which only serves to fool the meter - and maybe the autofocus, too. Oh well, I'll keep practicing.
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Very well put! I said pretty much the same thing myself. I mean how hard can it be? They're huge, outside in full sun, you know where they're going to be (and sometimes even when they'll show up) should be pretty simple right? It's not like you're chasing little brown birds around trying to get a photo.

Well, you're exactly right, it's harder than it looks. The group realized that yesterday as I scurried off down the trail to get to a place where the engine would be in full sun. They couldn't figure out what I was up to until after the shot was over, then they understood. (It stopped just short of Nina's studio, so we had to walk a short distance.)
 
Sassy said:
Ummm Bob, There's a train behind ya.
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Yes, I was well aware of that. So, why was I looking at my camera, instead of paying attention to the train? Well, first of all, it was backing up, so it wasn't a great shot from a train fan's point of view.

But, more importantly, I had just finished composing my shot, and doing a couple of test frames. I shot on program mode, letting the camera choose the exposure, then checked the results, and switched over to full manual mode, using the exact same settings. You grabbed a shot as I was changing my settings.

OK, Bob, so why go to full manual, only to use the same settings your camera used in program mode. What does that accomplish?

As Mike said:

I still find myself mezmerized by the headlight and end up getting it perfectly centered in the frame - which only serves to fool the meter - and maybe the autofocus, too.
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Even if you don't center it up, the extremely bright headlight on most trains will totally confuse your lightmeter. It tries to make a light that's designed to be visible for miles (literally) into 18% grey. If it actually manages to do that, it also makes the rest of your photo into, well, night.

Typically the effect is a lot less, but still it's common to get a stop or two under-exposure due ot the headlight fooling the meter.

So, meter the ambient light in the scene before hand, and go full manual.
 
My night photo wasn't nearly as cool, since it was totally dark by the time I got there. I set up a tripod for this shot, which is OK, but not really what I was hoping for.

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