Railroad Forums 

  • Best GPS and digital camera

  • Discussion of photography and videography techniques, equipment and technology, and links to personal railroad-related photo galleries.
Discussion of photography and videography techniques, equipment and technology, and links to personal railroad-related photo galleries.

Moderators: nomis, keeper1616

 #473174  by NJTRailfan
 
I'm in the midst of shopping for a good GPS and digital camera for my parents. Alot of the GPS systems title the M&E and High Bridge Line close to my area as "Conrail" You would think that with this new high speed technology they'd call the lines "NJ Transit, M&E, CSX, NS,etc.

What GPS is good with showing alot of points of intrest that has the up to date stuff on railroads. Complete with turn by turn directiosn that talks to you and has maps of both US and Canadian points of intrest? Good for railfaning.

Also what is the best digital camera to buy that's simple but will get your great results and a large zoom lens and large viewing screen that's small enough to fit in your pocket. I've heard good things so far on Nikon, Canon and some Kodak models. What do you NJ Railfans recomend?

 #473192  by washingtonsecondary
 
My GPS shows the railroads, but doesn't name them, atleast not at the detail level I have it set at. Mapquest still calls old Conrail lines by Conrail including NYS&W which never was a part of Conrail.
 #473215  by Ken W2KB
 
NJTRailfan wrote:I'm in the midst of shopping for a good GPS and digital camera for my parents. Alot of the GPS systems title the M&E and High Bridge Line close to my area as "Conrail" You would think that with this new high speed technology they'd call the lines "NJ Transit, M&E, CSX, NS,etc.

What GPS is good with showing alot of points of intrest that has the up to date stuff on railroads. Complete with turn by turn directiosn that talks to you and has maps of both US and Canadian points of intrest? Good for railfaning.

Also what is the best digital camera to buy that's simple but will get your great results and a large zoom lens and large viewing screen that's small enough to fit in your pocket. I've heard good things so far on Nikon, Canon and some Kodak models. What do you NJ Railfans recomend?
I have a Garmin 396 GPS with Garmin's optional automobile map database. Railroads in any mapping software are typically not up to date. There are only a handful of base sources for the mapping data and those sources direct most efforts to updating road, street and incidental travel info/points of interest (hotels, gas stations, etc.) For all but railfans, railroad names are of no interest to GPS users, but rather the ability to find addresses is what is important, followed by the travel info.

I have always liked Garmin brand GPSs, this is my fourth one over the last decade, and would recommend any of the models that have the ability to load maps from a CD so easily kept up to date, and for auto use, having a voice prompt for directions. Garmin's website at http://www.garmin.com has a lot of info.

For the camera, I don't have specific knowledge, but for zoom be sure it has optical zoom. There is no benefit to a digital image zoom since the quality diminishes with the digital zoom and zooming can be done after the fact on a PC if desired.

 #473363  by RussNelson
 
I use a Nokia N800 Internet Tablet with a bluetooth GPS receiver, running maemo-mapper. I load up my New York State railroad database using GPX files. In the future I may make my own WMS server for tiles that have the railroads rendered on them.

 #474856  by glennk419
 
I don't own a GPS but can highly recommend the Canon Powershot A560 digital camera. It runs on AA batteries, has a 4x optical zoom, 7.1 megapixel resolution, 2.5" screen and easily fits in your pocket. I use it as a compact companion to my EOS Digital Rebel XT. The software that comes with it is great and it's very easy to use while still allowing some creativity with the different shooting modes. While it's slightly bigger than the comparable Elph model, I prefer the AA batteries since you don't have to worry about carrying a spare rechargeable battery. They can be found for around $150 or less if you shop around.