Tag Archives: #Canon EOS7D

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14 Years Ago on the Former Erie Railroad

On August 22, 2010, I’d spent the day photographing trains on Norfolk Southern’s former Erie Railroad mainline in western New York state.

This had been familiar territory for me back in the 1980s, when I was studying photography at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, NY.

One of the trains that caught my attention this day was Norfolk Southern 048, a special for the James E. Strates Show that ran with spotless ‘simonized’ former Conrail SD60M 6777.

In this view, I aimed to recreate a photo that I made in 1988 of an eastward Conrail freight at the same location immediately east of milepost 314 in Cameron, NY. I was standing on a vestige of the old westward main track, which was converted to a set-out spur when Conrail single tracked this portion of the railroad back in 1994.

Exposed using my (then new) Canon EOS7D with a prime 24mm Canon lens. Below are two versions; one is made directly from the RAW file without modification; the other involved a series of adjustments aimed at improving highlight and shadow detail and overall color balance.

In reviewing this photo, I’ve decided to add it to my screen savers. It brings back some fond memories of my days photographing the former Erie Railroad. I wonder what this location is like in 2024?

This is a JPG scaled without modification from the Canon CR2 (RAW) file.
Adjusted file to improve highlight and shadow detail.

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August 6, 2012—East Windsor, Connecticut

On this day nine years ago, I paid a brief visit to the Connecticut Trolley Museum at East Windsor, Connecticut where I made a selection of digital photos using my Canon EOS7D.

I made my first visits to this museum in the 1970s when it was then known as the Warehouse Point Trolley Museum.

The trees were taller in my 2012 visit than way back in the 1970s.

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North Pownal Eleven Years Ago

On this date, July 17, 2010, I exposed this series of digital images with my Canon EOS 7D fitted with a prime Canon f2.8 24mm lens.

This camera was very new to me at the time. It was my first digital SLR and I had purchased it on advice of Chris Guss just a month earlier.

I bought it to augment my first digital camera, a Lumix LX3 (first of four similar cameras).

I was traveling with David Hegarty, and we caught Pan Am Southern’s intermodal freight symbol 22K passing through the curves on the Boston & Maine Fitchburg line at North Pownal, Vermont.

This famous photographer’s location is located in the far south-west corner of the state.

This morning, I made some nominal adjustements to the Canon RAW files using Adobe PhotoShop to correct for color temperature and bring in detail in the shadows and highlights.

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Amtrak’s Empire Builder on the Milwaukee Road

Historically, the Seattle-Chicago Empire Builder traveled on Burlington’s rails east of St. Paul, Minnesota.

Amtrak’s modern incarnation of the Empire Builder uses CP Rail’s former Milwaukee Road east of St Paul, following a route across central Wisconsin.

Today, the Empire Builder is among the oldest names still used by an Amtrak train.

I made this photo near Reeseville, Wisconsin on a photographic adventure with John Gruber back on August 22, 2011.

Exposed using my Canon EOS 7D with 200mm lens.

Tracking the Light is a daily rail-photo blog by Brian Solomon

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This Day 9 Years Ago.

On December 12, 2011, I photographed Irish Rail 083 leading the down IWT passing Islandbridge Junction in Dublin. This was an unusually heavy train.

The locomotive was wearing the relatively short-lived silver, black & yellow livery introduced in 2007, and since vanished into history.

It has been 13 months since I last visited my favorite vantage point.

Exposed using a Canon EOS 7D with 18-135mm lens set at 38mm Canon zoom.

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Cobh Branch October 2014

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Working with my Canon EOS7D, on October 7, 2014, I made these photos of a Cobh-bound Irish Rail 2600-series railcar pausing at Rushbrook, Co. Cork.

Irish Rail’s Ken Fox was giving me a detailed tour of the line.

I made my first visit to the Cobh Branch in 1999. The same 2600-series railcars worked it then, but in a bright orange, black and white livery.

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400mm four-photo sequence near Rogers Crossing

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The former Maine Central Mountain Division crests a rise just east of  Bartlett near Rogers Crossing (where the railroad crosses Route 302 west of the Attitash Ski area).

Friday, I set up here with my Canon EOS 7D fitted with a 100-400mm telephoto zoom lens to capture a Conway Scenic work extra west led by GP35 216.

The extreme visual compression afforded by this lens exaggerates the grade profile of the line to show the effect of this rise.

This sequence of images is intended to show the train climbing the grade.  

I selected my focus point manually and initiated the camera’s autofocus independently of the shutter release in order to control the focus to my satisfaction. This separate focus-control is among the features of the Canon EOS 7D.

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