Tag Archives: #400mm lens

photography

BNSF, Bridges and a Barge.

In June 2010, I stood atop a bluff in the Mississippi Palisades Park at Savanna, Illinois and made this photo of a westward BNSF intermodal train working west along the former Chicago, Burlington & Quincy. A Mississippi River barge was working up river and in the distance is a highway bridge and beyond is the former Milwaukee Road, now operated by Canadian Pacific.

I was using a Canon EOS-3 loaded with Fujichrome Provia 100F and fitted with a 100-400mm zoom. Hazy summer light led to a predominant blue cast.

After scanning the slide to create a RAW file, I imported the photo into Adobe Lightroom where I made color and contrast corrections to result in a more natural looking and better balanced image.

Below are the uncorrected scan and the scan following post processing.

Scaled RAW scan.
Scaled corrected scan.

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photography, Tips and Technique

400mm on the Hill

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At Conway Scenic Railroad, we call the stretch of line on the Conway Branch running up to our yard at North Conway, ‘the Hill’. This uses a prolonged man-made fill to lift the railroad to its necessary elevation to serve the town. It is the steepest grade on the railroad.

Yesterday, July 30, 2020, I opted to work with my Canon EOS 7D with 100-400 lens to catch former Maine Central 252 on its northward run with the second Conway Valley train. This engine will soon be reassigned.

Canon RAW file scaled from internet.

I hadn’t used this camera in almost a year. When I went to download the files to my laptop, I realized—to my disgust—that I’d left all the cables and card readers specific to the 7D, elsewhere!

The Canon 7D uses the larger ‘CF Card’ (compact flash card) rather than the now standard smaller size ‘SD Card’. I went to Staples hoping to buy another card reader. But when I asked if the carried a ‘CF Card reader’ all I got was a blank stare and ‘A what?’ After five minutes of explaining and describing the device I concluded I was wasting my time and theirs.

While I’ve ordered a card reader from B&H Photo in New York, that won’t arrive until next week. In the meantime Kris Sabbatino came to my rescue. Among her collection of card readers and accessories, she found an old USB2 ‘All-in-1 Card Reader’ and this did the trick!

Hooray!

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Tips and Technique

400mm view at Stateline Summit.

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Using my Canon 7D with a 100-400mm zoom lens, I exposed this view of New England Central 608 approaching Stateline Summit on the Connecticut-Massachusetts boundary.

I selected this perspective to illustrate the undulating grade profile of the former Central Vermont Railway approaching Stateline Summit. The train is crossing the ‘false summit’ while the top of the grade is the rise in tracks near the switch stand.

I’m standing north of the state line looking south; the train is in Connecticut.

Looking south toward the northward New England Central 608 at Stateline.

While this camera-lens combination doesn’t represent my sharpest equipment, it is useful for photos like this one.

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