I was on my way back from the grocery. I’d spotted Norfolk Southern’s outbound New Holland Branch local paused on the running track near the junction with Amtrak’s Harrisburg Line east of the Conestoga River bridge in Harrisburg.

On the hope of finally scoring a photo of a train at the Greenfield Road grade crossing near our apartment, I drove there without delay.

Since we moved to Lancaster last Spring, I’ve been over this grade crossing dozens of times. Only once had I a seen the train here. Kris had made a video, but I hadn’t time to get the photo I want. Most mornings, I hear the New Holland branch train whistling for the crossing, and on several occasions I’ve waited on spec. On this day, all the pieces fell into place.

While the big gun (Nikon Z6) was equipped with an impressive telephoto zoom, what I needed was a wide angle. Luckily, I had my ‘Wee Lumix’ (Lumix LX7) in my pocket at the ready.

This convenient small camera has a great sensor and an extremely sharp lens. The challenge using it in bright sun is seeing the image in the rear screen. Despite this handicap, I made the most of the situation and exposed two images as the local freight crossed Greenfield Road on its way to New Holland.

I have my LX7 set up to simultaneously save exposed photos as RAW and JPG files. In this situation, the JPG’s were profiled using the camera’s color preset mode: ‘Standard’. (Other choices include: ‘Vivid,’ ‘Natural’ and ‘Portrait’). Below I’ve displayed both the in-camera Jpg and a scaled version of the RAW file for comparison. There’s no right and wrong, which is why I always save the files in both formats.

Tracking the Light Posts Daily!