Yesterday (March 1, 2016) I posted a view of a CSX intermodal train working upgrade at Warren, Massachusetts in the nice morning sun. This was a nice start to a very productive day.
What I didn’t explain was the back-story.
Although I’ve been at railway photography for more than four decades and I spend a lot of time at making my photographs. Occasionally I make mistakes.
Some are minor ones. Others can have more serious implications.
On Saturday February 26th, I was traveling with Mike Gardner. We’d met Tim Doherty and Pat Yough at CP83 (near the Steaming Tender restaurant) in Palmer, Massachusetts.
Shortly after we arrived, CSX’s talking equipment detector in Wilbraham sounded, alerting us to the eastward train. We decided to drive to West Warren to make our photographs. We had ample time to do this, but not enough time to waste.
Upon arriving in West Warren, I noticed that both my Lumix LX7 and FujiFilm X-T1 cameras had only a few photos left on their respective cards. I should have checked this the night before and put fresh cards in the cameras.
However, since I had a minute, I hastily put new cards in the cameras and wiped them clean.
Exposed with a FujiFilm X-T1 digital camera.
The day was extraordinarily productive. Mike and I photographed trains on CSX, New England Central, Berkshire Scenic and Pan Am Railways, making it Millers Falls, the Hoosac Tunnel, and Washington Summit among other notable locations.
My Fuji camera was acting strange.
Among other problems, it was taking forever to store the images from the camera buffer to the card. I’d expose a burst of images, and two minutes later it would still storing them.
Meanwhile the Lumix was giving me so much bother, I put it down and instead opted to work with my Canon EOS 3 loaded with slide film.
By the end of the day, I notice that the 32GB card in the Fuji was nearly out of space, but I’d only exposed about 150 frames. (Normally I get about 840 images saved as RAW and JPG on a 32GB card). Something was wrong.
I was getting a bit worried, because the next day I was booked on a transatlantic flight, and there’s nothing worse than having serious camera trouble when traveling.
Digital cameras don’t start acting strange because they are in a bad mood.
However, when I went to down load my photographs, I quickly discovered the source of my problems.
In my rush to put cards in the cameras, I inadvertently put the card formatted for the Fuji in the Lumix and vice versa. Also, rather than re-format the cards, I simply wiped them. Each type of digital camera uses different protocols for storing data, which is why the cameras were acting slow.
I put new cards in each camera and re-formatted them (which effectively erases all data on the card). Problem solved.
Tip for the day: Don’t mix your cards up, take the time before embarking on a fast-paced day to make sure you have clean, formatted cards in your digital camera(s).
Or, if you use film, to make sure your camera is loaded and that your ISO setting is correct.
Wow, you got a lot of traveling in in one day.. WOW!
Great shots to go with the efforts.. with petrol cheap, good light, good friends, what a day you had!
Dan
Comparable mistakes in the old days were forgetting to take the lens cap off (for non-SLRs), finding the back cover of your camera had opened, letting light in onto exposed film, and putting a film you had just taken out back in, thinking it was the new one (this required leaving a short tail sticking out of the cassette – most of us wound the film fully into the cassette most of the time, but there were times when you might have leave the end of the film sticking out). I’ve done all three – happily not losing too many pictures. Rather worse was getting mugged in Buenos Aires and losing camera and film – again happily only a few shots – but without physical damage to self! I find I remember the pictures I missed or lost much better than I can recall those I actually took – thus showing that the pain of loss greatly exceeds the joy of success – and not just in the investing world. Happy transAtlanticking!
I wish my camera would act up and produce photos like this Brian ☺