On January 16, 2010, I paid a visit to the Mid-Hants Railway in the UK.
I was relatively new to digital photography, having only acquired my first digital camera a few months earlier. This was a compact Lumix LX3. Originally, I anticipate using my first ‘Wee Lumix’ primarily for social photographs; snap shots of friends and family, and architectural studies of buildings in my travels.
However, not long after buying it, I experimented with the camera for railroad photos and found that I had a range of capabilities.
On this misty day visit to the Mid-Hants, I exposed dozens of images with my LX3. Although I simultaneously exposed in both RAW and JPG formats, in my early days I didn’t have advance image processing software, and so tended to primarily work with the in-camera JPGs.
Last night I decided to revisit my photos from January 16, 2010, and retrieve this selection from an old hard drive and processed the RAW files using DxO’s PureRaw4. This allows me to see the full image as captured by the camera, while correcting for a variety of lens defects. In situations where the camera’s zoom was at its wider setting this interpretation results in non-parallel edges to overcome barrel distortion and other defects.
Rather than crop the RAW images to rectangular format to match the JPGs, I’ve opted to show the full file which displays camera’s RAW capture that shows the whole field of view. This reveals detail at the edges of the image that has been hidden away all these years
The LX3 allows the photographer to set the aspect ratio at the time of exposure. This 5.1mm view was made using the 1:1 ratio.LX3 photo; 5.1mm focal length using the 1:1 aspect ratio.12.8 mm view made using the 4:3 aspect ratio.5.1 mm view made using the 4:3 aspect ratio.11.1 mm view made using the 4:3 aspect ratio.
Some years ago I made a list of three popular places I wanted to visit but had managed to miss in all my travels:
Cape Cod, Niagara Falls, and the Grand Canyon.
Having grown up in Massachusetts, the first location may seem incongruous.
The first place I managed to ‘tick’ on my list was Niagara Falls. Previously, I’d visited the city of Niagara Falls, New York where I’d made numerous railroad photos of the yards and bridges over the gorge. However, I never managed a view of the waterall.
My opportunity arose when I traveling with Pat Yough and Chris Guss in February 2010. We had visited Toronto, and on our way to Buffalo, I asked if we could swing by the waterfall, which we did.
I made this image of the frozen falls from the Canadian side using my Lumix LX3.
Interestingly, several years later I paid a visit to Cape Cod with Pat Yough. Since then, I met Kris who has strong Cape Cod connections, and we were engaged on the Cape in 2021 and now pay annual visits there.
This year will mark twenty years of LUAS tram operations in Dublin.
Construction began several years previously, and the first trams arrived in 2002 and were stored at the Red Cow tram depot prior to service.
I was away from Dublin for most of 2004, but returned briefly in April, where my friend Hassard Stacpoole invited me on a pre-service tour of the new Green Line, and then again in November that year, just a couple months after services began on the east-west Red line.
I made the photos in this selection of the Red Line extension to the Point Depot using my Lumix LX3 at the end of March this year. This route opened in 2009.
Over the coming weeks and months, I plan to present some of my many photos of the LUAS expose during its early months of operation. These are among the 1000’s of slide I brought back from Dublin on our recent trip.
The LUAS at Mayor Square as view from inside a coffee shop.
The LUAS at Mayor Square as view from inside a coffee shop.
The LUAS at Mayor Square as view from inside a coffee shop.
I barely recognized the LUAS stop at Spencer Dock. The urban landscape has been completely transformed in just a few years.
I barely recognized the LUAS stop at Spencer Dock. The urban landscape has been completely transformed in just a few years.
I barely recognized the LUAS stop at Spencer Dock. The urban landscape has been completely transformed in just a few years.
It is difficult for me to comprehend, but this space was once occupied by an Irish Rail freight yard. Although made from a different perspective, I have photos of the yard—topic for another post on another day.
It is difficult for me to comprehend, but this space was once occupied by an Irish Rail freight yard. Although made from a different perspective, I have photos of the yard—topic for another post on another day.
It is difficult for me to comprehend, but this space was once occupied by an Irish Rail freight yard. Although made from a different perspective, I have photos of the yard—topic for another post on another day.
An outbound tram approaches The Point. The old row houses to the right of the tram are all that’s left of the old urban scape.
An outbound tram approaches The Point. The old row houses to the right of the tram are all that’s left of the old urban scape.
An outbound tram approaches The Point. The old row houses to the right of the tram are all that’s left of the old urban scape.
At 22 years old, the 3001/4001-series trams may be reaching the end of their useful lives.
Dublin Area Rapid Transit is an electrified suburban service focused on Dublin’s Connolly Station. This shares routes with diesel powered trains and provides a regular interval passenger service.
The oldest of its cars are the German built 8100, 8300 series units that date to beginning of the service in the early 1980s. I first photographed the DART in 1998.
I made these photos on Satruday using a Lumix LX3. Kris and I were on our way to Malahide, which is the northern extremity of the DART service.
Following its recent re-introduction to my camera arsenal, I’m continuing to experiment with a Lumix LX3, after nearly a decade since my original LX3 failed following more than 65,000 exposures. The LX3 was my first digital camera.
It was cascading rain when I made this grab shot of a Comboios de Portugal suburban train arriving at the station in Coimbroes in suburban Porto on 4-4-2014.
Exposed with a Panasonic Lumix LX3 at ISO 200 f2.8 at 1/200th of a second.
This is a good exercise in seeing, and a great way to preserve the effects of change (or not, as the case may be).
Below are two views of Irish Rail’s tracks as seen from atop the Phoenix Park Tunnel off the Conyngham Road in Dublin. These images were exposed exactly one year apart.
In both situations, I was walking back to my old apartment at Islandbridge in Dublin and made a photo of the tracks with a Lumix.
The March 1st, 2014 view was made with an LX3 and exposed as a RAW File; the March 1st, 2015 photo was a JPG made with a Lumix LX7.
The vantage point was nearly identical, although the focal length and framing was slightly different.
On this day (April 6th) 2014 I exposed a sequence of digital images of the Lisbon Metro (no, not Lisbon, New Hampshire) using my Lumix LX3.
Although I was soon to replace my trusty Panasonic Lumix LX3 with the more advanced and flexible LX7 model, I feel that in many ways the end-picture quality of the LX3 was preferable over the that from the LX7.
Recently, through the kindness of Tracking the Light reader Wm Keay, I now have in my possession my third LX7, which makes it my forth Lumix digital camera.
I’m looking forward to the next round of photos from the ‘wee Lumix’—long may it serve me!
