{"id":43348,"date":"2026-01-13T06:52:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-13T11:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/?p=43348"},"modified":"2026-01-08T23:00:26","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T04:00:26","slug":"pushing-the-envelope-at-bird-in-hand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/pushing-the-envelope-at-bird-in-hand\/","title":{"rendered":"Pushing the Envelope at Bird-in-Hand"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

From LED headlights to distant twinkling starlight, there’s a lot of contrast in this sequence of Amtrak’s westward Keystone<\/em> train 651 passing Bird-in-Hand, Pa.,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ve been pushing the envelope of still photography at this location for several months. My goal has been to ‘stop’ the action of a relatively fast train using only existing light (no flash).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This goal has been aided recently by a very fast camera sensor (in my Nikon Z6-III), a ‘fast-fifty’ lens (Nikkor Z-series f1.4 50mm), and modern PureRaw image post processing that uses AI technology to make the most of photos exposed with very high ISO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For this sequence, I mounted the camera on my 3Pod tripod (with legs carefully tightened to avoid any unexpected sudden downward movement). I used all manual settings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several minutes before the train came into view, I focused on the rails roughly parallel in the film plane to the front of the old freight house (on right). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the train passed through the scene, I made subtle adjustments in exposure. After the lead engine passed me, I dropped the shutter speed from 1\/320th of second to 1\/200th to allow more light to reach the sensor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following conversion to DNG files using PureRaw, I made a host of selective cosmetic adjustments in Lightroom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Tracking the Light Posts about railroad night photography.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From LED headlights to distant twinkling starlight, there’s a lot of contrast in this sequence of Amtrak’s westward Keystone train 651 passing Bird-in-Hand, Pa.,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43349,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[6060,10,6108,48],"tags":[7802,8449,8225,8491],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/20260108-Amtrak_Keystone_651_Harrisburg_Line_at-Bird-in_Hand_\u00a9BrianSolomonDSC_0701.jpg?fit=2048%2C1308","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2BVuC-bha","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43348"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43348"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43348\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43358,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43348\/revisions\/43358"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}