Uploading photos?

Are your photos getting successfully uploaded to the MRH site - or are you hosting them somewhere else?

Are your photos getting

Are your photos getting successfully uploaded to the MRH site - or are you hosting them somewhere else?

Yes they are are on the site but I can't seem to get an approriate link.I reread the notes in the help section and I will try again.I'm feeling kind of dumb today.

   Brian Clogg

   Cariboo Western Railway

Inserting Images

Brian,

Clicking the insert image button on the toolbar should open the Image Properties window.  Choose browse server.  This should bring up the file browser for your space on the MRH servers.  Select a picture you have uploaded and it should appear in the preview window in the lower half of the file browser window.  If you hover your mouse over the picture it should turn into the "link hand" and a popup will say "send to FCKEditor".  Click the picture and it should appear where you left the cursor in the post editor window.

Does this work for you or do you still see a red X?

photo question

Yes that worked thanks Blue/Kevin.I don't know why it didn't work yesterday,operator malfunction no doubt.

My question was regarding operating session photos.I enjoy these so I thought I would try some .They turned out blurry like this.

Do people leave the camera on auto or pick a fast shutter speed or?

Thats Blair getting a clearance to leave Garibaldi.

Blurrrriiineessss [long post!]

There are several ways to take blurry photos...

1) The focus gets messed up. This might be operator error like leaving the camera on manual focus and not focusing before each shot.  Or the camera may just blow the autofocus - sometimes blown autofocus is due to insufficient light.

A focus problem will typically have some of the image in focus but the rest is kind of blurry.

2) The camera is being 'jiggled' while it is taking a photo. This will generally result in EVERYTHING in the photo being blurry).  So how much jiggle is acceptible?  That depends on the shutter speed and focal length of your lens. A telephoto lens is much less forgiving of jiggle than a wide angle setting. A general rule of thumb is the shutter speed should be faster than 1/focal-length.  So with a 50mm focal length you'd need a 50th of a second to successfully hand hold a 'steady' exposure. Note that I said 'hand hold' - if you put the camera on a tripod there jiggle is nearly 'nil'.

Another factor in jiggle reduction are 'image stabilization' systems. These can let you shoot with 4x or 8x longer exposures before camera jiggle (from hand holding) becomes a factor.

When hand holding always hold the camera as steady as possible and squeeze the shutter as if you were shooting a rifle at a distant target - gently does it, no quick draws, not sudden shutter presses.

btw. the focal length computation is for 35mm cameras and lenses. So if you have an APS size sensor or a point and shoot use the 35mm equivalent. With an APS sensor focal length is multipled by 1.5 (Nikon) or 1.6 (Canon). So a 50mm lens setting on my Canon is treated as an 80mm focual length required 1/80th or faster exposure.

3) The subject is moving - using a tripod or having the world's best image stabilization system won't solve this one. If the subject is moving you need to use a faster shutter speed - I used 1/1000th of a second when I was shooting my kids playing soccer.

At an op session you've got a whole new world of grief photographically. This is because the typical train room isn't particularly well lit (especially by daylight standards)!

If you speed up the shutter speed to freeze the action (or negate camera jiggle effects) you'll need to open up the lens. Going from 1/25th to 1/50th of a second exposure will merit opening up from f5.6 to f4.(f numbers get smaller for a wider aperature).  However there's only so far you can go with a lens - once it's wide open that's it.

On a digital SLR max aperature (wide open) will usually be no more than f2.8 (unless you have very expensive glass - or a fixed 50mm focal length). Many consumer (read affordable) lenses for a DSLR will only open to f3.5 or even f4. With a compact point and shoot these numbers may be a bit lower (wider).

So why not just set the aperature to f2.8 (or what ever wide open is)?  Well, because wide open kills depth of field. At f2.8 only a limited amount of the scene will be in focus (surrounding the focus distance).  This is especially acute when shooting stuff that's close up.

The other factor under your control is ISO setting (or the light sensitivity) of the camera. Doubling the ISO number will let you decrease shutter speed aperature being the same.  Going from ISO 100 to 400 will let you got from 1/25th to 1/100th second and have the same illumination of the film/sensor.  Changing ISO with a film camera required loading different film - with a digital it's a knob or a menus setting.

My Canon has a max ISO of 3200. So why don't I just crank it all the way up and leave it there?  Graininess ('noise' ) is the answer. The higher the ISO the grainier the photographic results. My camera does fairly well at ISO 1600 so I use that for op sessions. But where I care about photo quality I take it down to ISO 400 or lower (for less image 'noise').  There are newer DSLRs that have extremely high ISO capability. If you're going to be a pro sports photographer (where you live at ultra high shutter speeds like 1/4000th second) or a pro op session photographer you might consider one of these. Be prepared to drop $2000+ for such a camera body.

A point and shoot will usually have terrible photo quality at ISO settings of 400 and up (there may be a few that do better - I"ve not been living on the dpreview.com digital photography site lately).

Let's look at the original poster's photo an try to figure out why it's got some blur to it.

First, are there any places where it's not blurry?  I don't really see any. This probably means it's not a focusing problem. Either Brian is doing ok with manual focus or the camera is doing reasonably well with auto focusing.

If the problem was having the subjects moving around I'd expect to see the parts of the scene that aren't moving (like the benchwork) to be in half decent focus. I'm not seeing that. This suggests that subject movement isn't the problem.

That leads me to conclude that your shooting at too slow a shutter speed for the focal length of your lens.

Brian, what kind of camera are you using? What lens and focal length were you shooting at?

Remember, for a 50mm focal length (in 35mm camera equivalent terms) the most steady handed photographers will be able to get decent results at 1/50th of a second.

If you go wider angle - say 28mm - you should be able to get decent results at 1/30th second exposures...

But how much light is present in there? Your camera is likely struggling to get enough light. If you've got it on full automatic exposure it's probably not opening the lens up wide (to let in the most light) and is then compensating with a longer shutter speed - voila! instant blurriness in low light (like a train room) situation.

Try setting aperature priority exposure - if your camera supports this mode.  Set it to the largest aperature (lowest f number) and see what the camera decides to use for exposure speed.

What kinds of ISO selection options do you have available on your camera?  If you're at the low end of your ISO range try cranking it up a bit if going to aperature priority exposure wide oepn (previous step) doesn't help.

You may get grainy/noisy results doing this so experiment to find out where the acceptible image quality results line in your ISO range.

If you still can't get the shutter speed fast enough there's a little trick you can try. Go ahead and put the camera in shutter priority mode (you set the shutter speed and the camera picks the exposure). Select the shutter speed you need for your focal length.  If your camera will go ahead an take pictures under these conditions they'll come out dark - this may be correctible in photo shop. Or it may be too dark to be workable....  Just an experiment to try.

Some cameras will try to protect you from taking really underexposed photos and won't shoot this way. If there is a full manual mode try manually setting shutter speed and aperature. This is a real pain when shooting live action because by the time you figure out what these settings should be the moment you wanted to shoot is gone....

Ok, what if none of the above yields decent results? Well you've got two options:

1) Use a photon torpedo (flash or speed lite). The flash built into most cameras is generally not very useful. It tends to absolutely blast out close up objects while stuff in back is very dark. It also will create nasty shadows.

If you can use an add on flash that's much better. But don't aim it directly at your subjects or you'll have the same problems as with the on camera flash. Instead bounce it off the ceiling. This will diffuse (distribute) the flashes' light around the scene much more evenly. No inky shadows. Greatly reduced blasting out (overexposure) of close up objects.  But it still won't light up distant objects very well. When Winston Link went out to shoot night time flash pictures of the N&W railroad you wouldn't believe the amount of flash equipment he used - multiple truck loads of the stuff...  If you really want to do flash photography you'll need to get a number of slave flash units, umbrellas to diffuse the light etc. And spend a LOT of time figuring out how to use it.

2) Persuade the layout owner to increase the light level in the train room. Not altogether practical at some one elses layout. But something to seriously consider for your own layout.

I have dual T8 wrap fixtures over my aisles. These are 4' long and have a pair if decent CRI 4100K tubes in them with each tube rated at 3000+ lumens (for 32 watts each!). I have 2' of separation from the end of one fixture to the start of the next fixture. My train room looks freaking BRIGHT - that is until you walk outside and then you realize that even with 23 or those 6400 lumen fixtures in my ceiling outdoors is still WAAY brighter.

But it's bright enough that at ISO 1600 my Canon DSLR can shoot at 1/50th at f5.6. Not great, but it gets the job done for op session (read candid) photos.  When I'm shooting important (read magazine article photos) I use ISO 400, f16 to f32 and a tripod (or other means of stabilizing the camera).  I can take 'candid' photos in a bit less light but things get really tricky. I don't have any image stabilized lenses, which would make hand holding easier - BUT at 1/50th second or slower exposure speeds if the operators don't pause (and pause their trains) I get some motion blur (the non moving objects are in decent focus).

I tend to shoot with a fairly wide angle lens to reduce the jiggle induced blurriness. I'll also shoot an f-stop dark (and correct in photo shop) if light is really a problem.

I seldom shoot with my speed-lite. It's a whole different realm of photography.

Fwiw I have a number of op session photo pages on my web site so you can see what a Canon 40D can do with the light I listed above...

Train room light photography: http://s145079212.onlinehome.us/rr/operations/bcsj3_ops/ops_090829/index.html

For a contrast, here's some images I shot using a Canon 380EX speedlite on my old Canon Powershot G2 compact camera (full auto exposure mode). I bounced the flash off the ceiling:

http://s145079212.onlinehome.us/rr/operations/bcsj3_ops/ops_061007/index.html

Good luck to you! Keep on posting with your progress!

Charlie Comstock

Layouts & Media editor, MRH

School is in session!

Charley,

Great post.

You have confirmed that I am learning how to use my camera as I now understand enough to tell that you really know what you are talking about!

Some great ideas and information.

I think I know where I was going wrong when I took photos at the show on the weekend.

I shot most of my pictures using my tripod and the self timer to rule out camera shake.  I did increase the ISO but not enough.  I only went as far as 400.

Based on your teachings, I think, given the lighting I had to work with that I should have tried 1600 ISO and a wide aperture to see if I could get a fast enough shutter speed to freeze the motion of a train passing through the scene I was shooting.

Thanks for the great lesson!

Trying to do the photography during an operating session

may be difficult.  As charlie pointed out, you are not likely to have enough lighting in the room to get by without flash, and flash is more than a single flash unit mounted on the camera.  I would suggest foregoing still shots during operating sessions.  Instead, if you operate on friend's layouts in addition to your own, see if you can enlist them to help you with some posed operating sessions.  When you are shooting still pictures, it won't look any different if the shot was done "on the fly" during a session or if the switching move was set up and "posed" to allow optimum focus,  depth of field settings, and exposure.  The advantage of posed operations is that each shot can be set up perfectly.  When you are finished, the shot will look like it was done during an operating session.  I'm not sure, but I think that is the method done for train layout spreads in all of the model railroading magazines including MRH.     

Still shots

MRH publishes both still (pre-staged) photos and candida photos (which are shot in the heat of the moment). Most of the shots appearing in my articles are pre-staged - that is the trains are stopped. This gives huge advantages (for the photographer) over ynamic/candid shots:

1) a very long exposure is no problem at all - assumng a tripod or other steadying device under the camera. This allows stopping down (decreasing the aperature) to maximize depth of field in the photo. In my opinion, one of the biggest give-aways that a photo is of a model is abreviated depth-of-field (foreground blurry, background blurry, subject in focus). Proto phots are taken with a long distance 20+ feet between camera and object. Depth of field goes up exponentially (or something like that) with the focus distance. N scale is the worst because the camera has to be so close to the models depth-of-field all but vanishes.

2) you get multiple tries at taking the photo. In an op session (by contrast) you need to wait for the trains and operators to reach the 'optimum' point, you (photographer) need to be in the right place at that time, with the camera set and ready to go.  Much harder to get pleasing compositions.

3) WIth camera on tripod and a static subject and lighting focus stacking software (such as Helicon Focus) can be used to make depth-of-field nearly infinite.

Regards,

Charlie

Thanks for the Photo training

Thanks for the Photo training session only one problem after the read as I looked around the room everything is Blurry.

but I did take notes for my trip to Costco to buy my new camera since the repair shop told me my last digital camera should not be used for Ice fishing in parking lots. So we wiil be back.

Film at Eleven Flash includedand filters.say Cheeze

Dan

photos

Thanks for the excellent reply Charlie.Your op session photos are what inspired me to try this.

The camera is a Nikon d40 and the lens is a Nikor 18-55.I changed the iso to 800 for these but should have left it at 1600(the highest).The camera will do aperature or shutter priority or fully manual.The light is set for flourescents.It looks like I want to set the shutter to 1/50,leave the apperature auto and iso 1600? I will experiment.Still getting used to the notion that i'm not wasting film.

Here is a photo I took last week of Checkamus canyon using a tripod, iso1600 and aperature at 5.6

Looks good Brian

Your photo looks good Brian. But if your camera's on a tripod you don't need the high ISO. Unless you've got trains moving in the scene a long shutter speed isn't a problem.  If you set the ISO to 400 you'll get a photo with less grain in it.

For op session photos don't just go with 1/50th. Instead tailor it to your focal length. If your lens is zoomed out to the 18mm end of things 1/20th should work (if you have steady hands - 1/30th otherwise). If the lens is zoomed in to its 55mm setting then 1/50th may work (with steady hands).  Always try to be away of what the camera is picking for the other setting.  If you have 1/20th and it's picking f-11 then try going to 1/30th or 1/50th (which should cause the camera to pick about f6).  And for those dim light, handheld shots try the ISO 1600.

Be aware though that if operators are moving around much an exposure of 1/20th may not do a good job of freezing their motion. 1/50th or 1/80th might be required to stop their motion (and that assuming they're not dancing the polka).

Sounds like you're on the right track. Now's the time to experiment like crazy.

Cheers,

Charlie

Using a Kodak Easy-share 340, any hints?

  I have a simple (and cheep) Kodak Easy-share 340 camera (my first, and my dad's old camera) but, dispite all possible care, my model photos are all still out of whack ( not focused at all)  I am using the "Close-up" mode, but to no avail. Can anyone help? ( No, I can't buy a new camera. My budget won't allow for it right now)

Photos

Is this the Easy Share M340 we are talking about?

My first question would be are you using a tripod or setting the camera on a solid base to avoid any camera movement during shooting?

Does the camera have a self timer feature that would help avoid any camera shake caused by operating the shutter release button?

Does the camera have a manual focus option?

Sorry I don't know your camera very well.  I'm just learning the ropes too really, so forgive me if the questions I ask are not the right ones.

I think it's an M340

Like you, I have no (real) clue as to how to do this type of stuff (with scale models, at least)

I'm acually very good with real world photography (You should see some of my photos. They look good enough to be comparable to a professional) but my scale-model photography is not good at all.

Timer: I got no clue, every time I play with it, the batteries die on me once I figure out how to get to the menu

Manual focus: What is that? (all I know how to do is press 2 buttons that say ZOOM "IN" and ZOOM"OUT" Even then, it will go backwards)

Tripod/solid base:  I don't think it will use a tripod, but I do try to take photos at the "scale" eye level (so the camera is on my temporary shelf layout) yet somehow, movement occurs.

         I don't know the camera model, but I know it's a very basic (I mean basic as in a car with just 1 seat, an engine, 2 axles, 4 tires, brakes, steering wheel, and 1 flashlight for a hedlight basic) camera, and it doesn't do much.

     I tried video once on the Folkston Funnel (only way in and out of Florida by rail, unless you go to New Orleans) and the beautiful rumble of 3 AC4400s and an SD-70MAC comming through came out on video as an over-worked water-logged, 1/12 HP engine placed in an 18-wheeler, and the horn didn't register on the film. Glad I had my trusty tape recorder that day.

 I wonder how I can still take good photos (even I'm amazed)

Dreaded Red X

Brian,

You are getting some awesome photography advice from the readers. Just as an FYI regarding your original post about the dreaded red X in your browser should you encounter it again. The red X means the image (or video or any other non-text content) is not supported by your browser. Since you were uploading images and all popular browsers support virtually every image format out there it is highly unlikely your browser support is at fault. More likely, a data packet or two got lost during the upload thus corrupting the image file. There is a substantial amount of error checking built into the file transfer process but nothing man made is infallible. On rare occasions the check sum may balance even though the data sent is not identical to the data received. This problem becomes more prevalent when you try to transfer very, very large files due to the huge number of individual ones and zeros that are being moved. One little glitch in just the right spot can render the file unreadable yet not trigger an error/resend. Your browser would interpret the resulting file as an unsupported format and present you with the red X. You may have heard of ftp (file transfer protocol). This is a method of transferring files over the Internet that attempts to avoid the very issue you may have experienced. ftp can only be done from ftp client to ftp server so it is not applicable here on MRH but I mention it as its use is a result of a need for more reliable data transfer method so issues like you experienced are minimized.

As you witnessed, the best solution is to re-upload. 99 times out of 100 things go right the second time around.

-alan

Camera features

CSX,

If you do have an M340, that camera has a self timer that can be set for 2 seconds or 10 seconds.  This means when you press the shutter release it will delay either 2 or 10 seconds before activating the shutter.  This is a great way to avoid movement when you press the button to take the picture.

The M340 does not have a manual focus option.  Manual focus is just that.  The ability to focus the camera yourself, manually, through a menu option or by turning a focus ring on the lens.

Is there a threaded hole on the bottom of the camera?  This is the tripod mount.  I take ALL of my closeup photos using a tripod and the self timer.  This allows me to be sure the camera remains still while exposing the shot.  Taking closeups indoors often means longer exposure times and camera movement during this time will ruin the shot.

From what you have written my first advice for you is to get the manual for your camera and find out how to use its features.  Taking photos outdoors with natural light is easier, IMO than taking closeups under artificial light.  This is where you need to learn the ins and outs of your camera.  The more time I spend learning about my Nikon D60 the better I have gotten at using it.

Here are two links with some good tips and advice on taking model railroad photos.

Bob Boudreau's model photography

Charlie Comstock's photography how-to