Pointers wanted

My D70's lowest ISO is 200, and I will look into a noise reduction program in the short term.

Here's a horizontal shot of the Metro North in Poughkeepsie. Do you think it's worth submitting to RP?

EMT, what do you mean by cloning?

njt/mnrrbuff wrote:My D70's lowest ISO is 200, and I will look into a noise reduction program in the short term.

Here's a horizontal shot of the Metro North in Poughkeepsie. Do you think it's worth submitting to RP?

EMT, what do you mean by cloning?

Yea, 200 is the lowest my D40 goes too, but is that what you shot the Metro North shot at? I have never had a rejection for noise with my D40, and it never moves from 200ISO unless the shutter speed/aperture combination can't let enough light in if I max them out compared to the moving train's speed.

The horizontal looks good to me technically. I don't really care for the parking lot on the left, but I'm tossing my personal preference in.

Cloning: I was joking about cloning the shadow off of the loco. Cloning is a no-no on RP with the exception of things like dust spots, far away flying birds that look like dust specs, etc. There have been numerous shots in the DB that got through with bad/sloppy clones that the screeners missed. Things like utility poles sticking up above a loco in reality, but the photog cloned it out of the photo, but forgot to clone it out through the windows, etc.

With exception of the above approved clones, all I have ever cloned out was 1 wire that I didn't like going across the top of my pic, and 1 Mt. Dew bottle that someone littered into a field that I didn't see until I got home or I would have picked it up before the shot.

I'm unsure if you know what cloning is or not. Cloning is taking something from one area of your photo (clean part of sky), and duplicationg it over another (dust spot). In this case you take from as close as you can to the culprit area so your colors match as close as possible. I don't know what you use for editing, but I use Gimp. In Gimp, it is located in the paint section. You select an area to copy by CTRL+left click, then release and 'paint' over the culprit area by holding left click while you are painting.

If you ever had one of those tracer toys as a kid that had the scissor arms an held a pencil at each end and you traced one thing on one paper and redrew it onto another. This is essentially what cloning is.

Subject: Pointers wanted

The Rat wrote:I have seen alot of good images on RP.net. Hell, at one time, some of them were mine. And I have seen some real pieces of crap, some of them from the screeners. Most from RPElite members.

Railpictures.net is "not" the standard of good photography of the railroad. The screeners are human and very often cannot keep their personal preferences out of what a "good" image is.

After awhile, you'll learn that RP.net is a little boys club of a select few who can get most anything they want on RP.net, because they know how to get cuddly with a screener. The ol' Its not what you know, its who you b**w type of deal.

You're welcome to your opinion, but the original poster was looking for a critique of his photos, not other web sites.

If I could have pointers on these shots of LIRR DE30s

Well, I like the third one the best because it gives the clearest view of the locomotive and there aren't many distracting objects or shadows around the train or at the edges of the shot.

The first and second shots have shadows covering parts of the locos. The third one is nice, but I'd still break out the lens cleaner, there are spots in the photos.

This may be a matter of personal preference, but I would step back a bit to get more of the surroundings in the photo. There is little sense of place in any of the photos – all three strike me as basic roster shots. Now, roster shots are important and can be very pleasing, but after a while they all tend to look the same. I’ve been at this hobby for three decades and I’ve come to realize that my favorite photos are the ones where the train is just one part of an overall scene. You’ll be amazed over time at what changes (advertisements, the clothing worn by passengers, cars in a station parking lot).

What do you all think of these shots. Note that the 403 doesn't have shadows on the nose. I got rid of a dangling pole that looked like it would screw up the composition of the photograph.

Thank you for the feedback.

What is the saturation, sharpness, contrast? All default, too low? White balance?

- A