Tag Archives: Estonia

photography, Tips and Technique

Brian’s Field-Finder Cab-View of a Soviet Electric.

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To see the full image click on Tracking the Light.

In July 2002, I spent a week in Estonia photographing railway operations.

It was organized for me take a cab-ride on an empty oil-train in a recently imported former Union Pacific General Electric C36-7 diesel.

I wrote about this adventure in my recently published book The World’s Most Exotic Railway Journeys produced in the UK by John Beaufoy Publishing Limited. (Available on Amazon).

I was working with three cameras. Previously I’ve published color views exposed with my Contax G2 rangefinder and Nikon N90S single-lens reflex, however until today most of my  black & white photos remained unpublished and unseen.

I made  my black & white photos using  a Rollei Model T twin-lens reflex (120 size film camera). So, rolling along at about 30 mph east of Tallinn, I made this view of a Riga-built Tallinn-area electric suburban train.

Exposed with a Rolleiflex Model T twin-lens reflex fitted with a 75mm Zeiss Tessar. Kodak Tri-X processed in Ilford ID-11 1:1 with water. Scanned at 3200 dpi with a Epson V600 flatbed scanner. Scaled for internet presentation using Lightroom; however there was no post-processing manipulation to density, contrast or sharpness.
Exposed with a Rolleiflex Model T twin-lens reflex fitted with a 75mm Zeiss Tessar. Kodak Tri-X processed in Ilford ID-11 1:1 with water. Scanned at 3200 dpi with a Epson V600 flatbed scanner. Scaled for internet presentation using Lightroom; however there was no post-processing manipulation to density, contrast or sharpness.

Significantly,I made this image by using the Rollei’s field-finder— which is nothing more than a pair of open squares that allow you to frame up a photo while holding the camera at eye-level.

Normally, I’d focus using the camera’s built in magnifying glass on the waist level viewer (which supplies a view through the top lens arrangement that projects onto a Fresnel screen. The down side of this viewing mechanism is that you must look down into the camera and the image is in reverse.

So exposing photos from a moving locomotive cab using the waist-finder is not only impractical, but can lend to sea-sickness.

Another advantage of the field-finder is that you are actually looking at your subject without any distortion caused by a lens. In today’s photography it rare that you actually see your subject at the time the shutter is released. You’d be amazed how this direct viewing can improve composition.

Also, the Rollei’s mechanical shutter release is virtually instantaneous.

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photography, Tips and Technique

The Lost Slide File: Trams ala Baltic: Tallinn, Estonia 2001

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It was a week before September 11, 2001. I’d taken the ferry from Helsinki to Tallinn. During my first couple of days I rode around on the tram exploring the city.

Comfort class on a Tatra. Exposed with my Contax G2 rangefinder on Sensia 100 slide film.
Comfort class on a Tatra. Exposed with my Contax G2 rangefinder on Sensia 100 slide film.

In short 2001 was a very intensive year photographically. A week after ‘9-11’, I’d headed off to Spain in search of General Motors diesels and TALGO trains.

When my Estonian slides came back from the processing labs, I’d quickly picked out key images and the rest were filed away, largely unedited along with a host of other trips from the same year.

For years, I wondered what had happened to the Tallinn tram photos. I recalled riding the trams, but the slides were not mixed in with my other Estonian photos.

Trams by the Baltic sea at the Kopli terminus. Contax G2 rangefinder photo exposed on Sensia 100 slide film.
Trams by the Baltic sea at the Kopli terminus. Contax G2 rangefinder photo exposed on Sensia 100 slide film.

Complicating matters, I returned to Estonia a year later for an even more extensive trip and many of my photos of railway operations around Tallinn were exposed in 2002.

Last week, I found these images along with the photos I made in Spain, Finland, and Ireland, plus those along New York’s Southern Tier, northern and central Pennsylvania, the Berkshires of Massachusetts, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Charlottesville, Virginia and Vermont, all of which were exposed over an 8 week span.

They didn't paint cars like this in Soviet times! Contax G2 rangefinder photo exposed on Sensia 100 slide film.
They didn’t paint cars like this in Soviet times! Contax G2 rangefinder photo exposed on Sensia 100 slide film.
Near the main railway station. Contax G2 rangefinder photo exposed on Sensia 100 slide film.
Near the main railway station. Contax G2 rangefinder photo exposed on Sensia 100 slide film.
Contax G2 rangefinder photo exposed on Sensia 100 slide film.
Contax G2 rangefinder photo exposed on Sensia 100 slide film.

I’m glad I kept notes to sort it all out!

Tracking the Light Takes Many Angles on Photography!