Tag Archives: #Nofolk Southern

Announcements, photography, Rail transit marathon, Tips and Technique

The Sun, the Clouds and the H23.

Norfolk Southern’s H23 was approaching at the pace of a casual jogger.

I’d arrived at Greystone Road in Manheim, Pa., a couple of minutes ahead of the train.

I made a test photo of the old mill by the tracks in bright sunlight. Clouds rolled quickly across the azure sky. The chiaroscuro effect of sun and clouds made for a lottery of light.

As the train neared, the clouds obscured direct sunlight. But as the local began whistling for the crossing, the clouds thinned and in the distance the sun was out again.

Then as the lead engine nearly filled my frame, the clouds parted completely, bathing the train in brilliant sunlight!

Hooray!

In the middle of this slow-motion digital sequence, I also made a photo on Ektachrome with my father’s old Leica M4—you know, for the record.

On this December afternoon, Tracking the Light does just that!

Announcements, photography, Rail transit marathon, Tips and Technique

Tyrone—Ektachrome-1

Last October, Kris, Seamus and I chased a westward Norfolk Southern freight on the former Pennsylvania Railroad Middle Division from Huntingdon to Tyrone, Pa.

Although I exposed a few digital photos, I’ve been waiting for this image for months.

Yes, I still occasionally expose color slides. However, where I once would shoot several rolls a day, these days it took me almost eight months to work through four rolls of Kodak Ektachrome. Finally, I boxed these up and sent them off to AgX Imaging in Sault Ste Marie, Michigan for E6 processing. https://www.agximaging.com

On Monday, my four boxes of slides were returned to me in good order.

Owing to exceptional selectivity, I had a high ratio of success with the processed photos. A few were disappointing (mostly as the result of underexposure), but there are many very satisfying photos in the selection.

I made this image from the station platform at Tyrone of the NS westward train as it reached the apex of the curve. I was working with a vintage Nikon F3 with f2.0 135mm lens loaded with Ektachrome E100. I scanned the slide using a Nikon LS-5000 slide scanner.

Below are two versions of the scan. The first is the unmodified scan, more or less the way it looked right out of the scanner (converted to JPG and scaled for internet presentation). The second is after some nominal post-processing. More slides to follow!

unmodified scan
Adjusted scan.

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Announcements, photography, Rail transit marathon, Tips and Technique

Overexposed on the Branch

Among the remarkable qualities of the Nikon Z cameras is their exceptional exposure latitude.

I don’t set out to make bad photos, but every so often I simply have the camera set incorrectly.

The other day, on our Sunday drive, Kris and I spotted Norfolk Southern’s local freight on the New Holland Branch at Leola, Pa. I pulled over and made a photo using my Nikon Z6 with 70-200mm lens set to 175mm. The problem was that I had the ISO set at 1000 and the f-stop set to f2.8.

The camera gave me the fastest shutter speed, 1/8000th, which still left my photo more than a stop over-exposed. Working with Adobe Lightroom, I was able to recover most of the data from the NEF RAW file and present a decent representation of the image, including considerable sky detail.

I also made a series of properly exposed photos, but I’m aiming to demonstrate that even in situations of extreme overexposure, it is possible to adjust the file to present a decent image if your equipment has captured the data in RAW.

NEF RAW file, converted to JPG without adjustement. This is at least one full stop overexposed.
This is the same file as above, but featured my first round of adjustments to correct for the over exposure. In my opinion, the photo still needed some work.
NEF RAW file after my second round of corrections.
This is my Lightroom work-window that shows the postion of the slider controls and the degree of adjustments necessary to correct for the overexposed photo.

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