Tag Archives: tips for railroad photography

photography, Tips and Technique

Spruce Creek, Pennsylvania.

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Conrail westbound freight on September 23, 1997.

Looking back, I’ve found that 1997 was an extraordinarily busy year for me photographically. I spent a lot of time traveling and exposed more than 500 rolls of slide film. That’s a lot of slides

This image was made on one of several of my week-long trips to Pennsylvania. On this day I’d followed the old Pennsylvania Railroad Middle Division. The railroad was busy and there were lots of opportunity to make photos.

I exposed this vertical view of a westward Conrail freight near the Spruce Creek tunnels using my N90S with an f1.8 105mm lens.

Exposed at 9:42am on September 23, 1997 on Fujichrome Provia 100F color slide film using an Nikon N90S fitted with a manual focus Nikkon f1.8 105mm lens set at f2 at 1/250th of a second. Scanned with a Epson 600 scanner with contrast and color balance adjusted in post processing.
Exposed at 9:42am on September 23, 1997 on Fujichrome Provia 100F color slide film using an Nikon N90S fitted with a manual focus Nikkor f1.8 105mm lens set at f2 at 1/250th of a second. Scanned with a Epson 600 scanner with contrast and color balance adjusted in post processing.

Here’s some suggestions for better photos on dull days: try to work from locations with elevation and crop the sky (as much as possible). Also, if you pan a little, it helps to set the train/locomotive apart from the background and has the effect of improving depth and minimizing the effect of low contrast lighting.

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