Camera type?

What type of camera do you normally use for railroad photography?

Technically mine is a point and shoot digital, but with an adaptor, it will accept additional glasses on top of its own, and telophoto lenses. But, for now I use it as-is, it has a built-in 61mm optical zoom (actually more like 97.6mm to compensate for the digital area). Go to my website (below) and click on "StL area photos" to see some of my photography.

Here's a little taste of my work (I took my display pic too):

Until about 10 days ago my response would have been either 35mm SLR or medium format SLR, both Pentax. Now it's a Pentax *ist. What can, I say, I've used Pentax cameras since 1964.

I use a Canon D30,digital SLR. It is fine, BUT, I do like the results of the Canon 630 tho I would not go back to it. Digital seems to lack the range between hilites and shadow areas. I am really really tempted to go back to the Bronica 4x6.................. but I haven't........yet...... Ed

I collect cameras so I frequently take different kinds out to railfan. I like to use older 35 mm rangefinders with hand held light meters, or sometimes an older manual focus SLR, but I guess when I want to make sure I get the pictures I want it will be a newer auto focus SLR. Don't know that I want to go to digital. I take so many pictures that I don't want the extra work of printing them myself. The one hour labs do a fine job and I like the low cost of those flea market and garage sale finds.

You don't need to print digital photos yourself. With inexpensive digital rapidly displacing emulsion film in the consumer market, many, maybe even most, labs now offer prints from digital as well as from film. Walmart, I've heard and mean to check, even can be emailed the print files and you can then pick the prints up at the store you specified. The cost is around the same, maybe even less since there is no film processing necessary.

Seems I am the only one still shooting medium format

Not sure how much longer that's going to last for. Having the debate between and darkroom and film vs My Apple G5 and Epson 2200 printer.

35 mm point and shoot for me :D

EdM wrote:Digital seems to lack the range between hilites and shadow areas.

DSLRs tend to have characteristics similar to slide film, particularly when you shoot in JPEG mode. However, they also have a raw mode, which is a direct dump of the image sensor. Such images must be postprocessed to produce useful pictures, but it can be worth it, especially in difficult lighting situations.

Cameras that can shoot in raw mode can capture a lot more than one can normally see when shooting in JPEG mode. Most raw images contain 12 bits per color channel per pixel, giving 4096 levels of brightness. Computer displays normally can't take advantage of this directly, but by converting the raw images to 48-bit format and using a 48-bit-capable photo editor (e.g. Photoshop CS, Picture Window Pro, Cinepaint), you can bring out shadow detail very well. It is more work, but the results can be quite good.

If your monitor is calibrated (very important for photo work), the darkened lenses of this semaphore that I shot are visible in spite of the backlighting and the non-use of exposure compensation, and they're also visible in the print I made.

Another tactic that can be used with raw mode is to postprocess two copies of the raw image, one for highlights and one for shadows, and merge them. I have yet to try this, though.

One of the most important tools in the digital realm is the histogram. It shows a graph of how many pixels are present at each light level. Most high-end digital cameras have the ability to display a histogram when you preview an image, and some can even show overexposed areas by making them blink. As with slide film, overexposing with digital will blow out highlights, and they can't be recovered. The general rule is, expose "to the right" on the histogram, but try to stay just short of overexposure.

Some very nice sites for digital techniques:
http://normankoren.com/
http://luminous-landscape.com/

My Drebel has shown me that there's a lot more to digital photography than merely pointing and shooting. In any case, the images I've taken with it are at least as good in quality as my old favorite, Kodachrome 64, scanned at 2400 DPI. Even at ISO 800, the Drebel's images come out very nice, and, IMHO, the Drebel at ISO 1600 isn't any worse than fast print films.

Ken: When you talked about not having to print your own pix with digital at drug stores etc. how do you actually get the pix out of the camera and into paper prints ? I thought you had to do this yourself ? Do you hand over the camera ? Some removable component to someone ? Is the camera usable while the lab is doing this ? The only time I've seen this done the customer pays to use a machine and the customer inserts something and then does the printing themselves. I'm not sure I want to spend the time at this machine doing what the one hour lab was doing for me. On one occasion a customer had to wait until the previous person was finished. Thanks for any info you can provide. I may try digital but I am reluctant to start throwing money into a technology that may go the way of laser discs and aps.

There are several ways to get the prints. As mentioned, you can e-mail the photo files to Walmart and either pick the prints up or have them US mailed to you. See:
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/catalog. ... h=0%3A5426

Other processors likely offer similar services.

So you (1) download the photos to your computer and (2) copy to a CD or floppy and bring that to the processor or e-mail to the processor.

Depends on the camera as to removable recording media. I have a 1gig flash removable memory in mine, and up to 8gig sizes are available, but that's high end. A wide variety of options are available.

Some processors will take the camera or removable media and download them while you wait.

spRocket,
How are you converting your images to 48 bit? I only see 16 bit RAW processing in my Canon Digi-Rebel software... Are you using Photoshop 8 to do the conversion? I currently have PS 7 on my 'puter.

I really like the speed, strength, reliability, and stability of my Minolta Maxxum 9 35mm... The Digital Rebel is nice, but not what I'm used to... I recently missed a great shot because my D-Rebel was still busy writing my previous RAW files to the card! I don't think I'm ready to give up film just yet...

Eric

hehe i use free cameras.. maverica digital .. 35mm minoltas... pin hole.. free use and free processing... nothing better hehehehe :D

shhhhhhhhhh dont let the teacher know!! :D

lrhs_webmaster wrote:spRocket,
How are you converting your images to 48 bit? I only see 16 bit RAW processing in my Canon Digi-Rebel software... Are you using Photoshop 8 to do the conversion? I currently have PS 7 on my 'puter.

Actually, Canon is going by 16 bits per color channel per pixel; combine the red, green, and blue channels and you get 48 bits. In other words, they're the same thing.

I used dcraw and ImageMagick to convert the RAW file to 48-bit TIFF, and then used CinePaint to process the image.
All of the processing was done under Linux. My Windows box only has Photoshop Elements and the Canon software... PE doesn't do 48-bit, and Canon's software leaves much to be desired.

Ok, I didn't even notice the little "ch" after the "16/"in my software...