Contacting MRH

Joe Fugate is the publisher of MRH and Charlie Comstock is the editor. I sent the e-mail below by clicking on the "Have an article idea" drop-down on the Authors heading at the top of the MRH page.

On 5/11/2011 6:02 PM, tpatterson@isoc.net wrote:
Tom Patterson sent a message using the contact form at
http://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/contact/Article_query.

Joe/Charlie-

I'm getting ready to modify a Central Valley Pratt truss bridge and wondered if this would be of interest as a short how-to article. I built the bridge shortly after the kit came out in the late 1980's and installed it on my first layout. I subsequently learned that this specific design wouldn't be appropriate for a main line coal-hauler set in the mid-'70's and I've been looking for ways to modify it ever since. I recently came across a photo of an SP train on a bridge at Winchester, OR on the CarrTracks website and the inspiration hit. It also struck me that this is the same bridge that Joe modeled on his Siskiyou line. I then checked the MRH website and found the discussion regarding the CV bridge, links to photos of Joe's bridge, and potential modifications to make it appear to be a heavier duty bridge. In any event, here's the article outline:

1. Brief history of the bridge and the kit
2. Description of the existing structure and reasons for changes
3. Planned modifications (removal of the diagonal braces and portals, replacement with B-B girders and styrene, using the new Micro Engineering decals to represent rivits, etc.)
4. Photos of the modifications
5. Painting and weathering with artist's acrylics, brushes and cosmetic sponges
6. Conclusions: don't be afraid to re-do something that's already finished, applying new techniques to old models, etc.

I've uploaded a photo of the existing bridge in my MRH folder- it is dsc_0027. I assume you have access to this folder- if not, let me know and I'll e-mail you a copy. Let me know if this would be of interest.

Regards,

Tom Patterson

In my inquiry, I made sure to provide some background information on the project along with a brief description of what the article would include. This isn't cast in stone, and changes and or modifications can be made as the article progress.

Tom Patterson

Getting Ready

While waiting for a reply, I printed and reviewed all of the article submission material I could find on the MRH website. I made a list of what would be needed, i.e. bill of materials, listing of photo captions, etc. and set up folders on my computer for the project. I also went back and reviewed a number of previous construction articles in MRH with an eye toward how the article was put together. Now comes the good news to the folks at MRH- the article is of interest. Well, maybe good news. Remember the part about my not having much experience at digital photography? It's clear that I'm going to have learn enough about this so that my photos will work for the article. 

Tom Patterson

Checking in with Charlie

My biggest fear was that my pictures weren't going to be of acceptable quality for the article. So I decided to send an e-mail to Charlie to let him know what I'm about to do and ask for a little feedback. I had received an e-mail from Charlie regarding the article submission, so I sent the e-mail below to that address.

Charlie-

Thanks- I hope you were off doing something fun. I look forward to working
with you guys, too. Along those lines, and since this is my first railroad
article rodeo, would you please check the attached photo and make it sure it
meets all of your criteria? I've started the article and now need to take
photos. I don't want to get through the project and find out the photos
won't work.

I reviewed the photo submission criteria and, being somewhat new to DSLR's,
was confused by several comments. Here's what I have been shooting, and I've
used these settings for the photos I've posted so far on MRH:
Camera: Nikon D3100 14.2 megapixels
Lens: Nikkor 18-55mm
Image size: 2304x1536 (small setting)
Image quality: basic (compression ratio of 1:16) - this is the lowest
quality setting on the camera. If I move it up one step to Normal, the file
size is slightly in excess of 1.0M. Any higher setting, like RAW, and the
files get huge.
F-stop: smallest possible for the lens and available light- generally 29-36.
White balance: set to cool white fluorescent which matches the lighting in
the layout room.
Shutter speeds: shooting 3-4 exposures, usually starting at the optimal
exposure in the indicator and then stepping up in overexposures. The lighter
exposures seem to give a better representation of the colors and add some
depth to the photos.

For the detail photos, I'll be shooting against a white backdrop using 2
incandescent reflector spots.

Please let me know if I need to make any changes. I plan to send you a wide
variety of angles and exposures for each of the photos so that you can
choose the ones that works best.

Regards,

Tom

I was a bit concerned about wasting Charlie's time on this, but I wanted to make sure I was headed down the right path.

Tom Patterson

Asking for and receving help

Charlie Comstock, who has forgotten more about photography than I'll ever know, responded to my initial e-mail request for some guidance with a long e-mail outlining tips and techniques for white balance, depth of field, composition, etc. The information was extremely helpful and I began to think that I just might be able to pull this off. At this point I visited his website to review his tutorial on model railroad photography ( http://s145079212.onlinehome.us/rr/howto/photography/index.html). I also visited numerous other digital photography websites and began taking pictures of the layout and some test construction pictures.

Tom Patterson

Refining the photos

Armed with just enough knowledge to wear out a good camera, I started taking pictures. In order to make sure that what I was shooting would be acceptable, I responded to Charlie's helpful e-mail with the e-mail below along with several shots.

Charlie-

Well, I spent a bit of the weekend taking pictures, taking notes and reading
up on some the technical aspects of digital photography. I also read and
re-read the information you sent below. Attached are six more test images,
all of which were re-sized to 2,000 x 1,333 using Microsoft Office Picture
manager. I also set the image quality to Fine (compression ratio 1:4).

The two photos of the existing bridge were shot at f22, shutter speed 1.6,
white balance set to fluorescent- cool white and DSC_0023 was shot with
manual focus and DSC_0026 was shot with auto focus. I can't see the
difference in the two, but perhaps you can. These files are slightly in
excess of 1.0M, but I assume that's o.k.- correct?

The four close-up shots were taken at f16, shutter speed of 1/13 and 1/10,
and manual focus with the white balance set to incandescent. I'm using two
reflective spot lights with 150 watt bulbs with a sheet of white styrene as
the backdrop. I was surprised how far from the recommended shutter speed I
had to go to make the background appear white. The photos started to wash
out at any shutter speed slower than 1/8.

Please let me know your thoughts on the photos. If the pictures of the
existing bridge are good enough, I'll get started on construction. If there
are some changes needed to the close-ups (I'll use a new #17 blade for the
construction photos), let me know.

Thanks again for your help.

Tom

Here are the photos that were submitted:

I included several different exposures of each of these shots.Here's hoping that we're getting close to something that will work. And that Charlie will continue to be patient with the rookie.

Tom Patterson

More help from MRH

Shortly after I submitted the photos in the previous post, I received the e-mail below from Charlie.

Tom,

That's a pretty decent job on the photos.

The only thing I'd do for the 'finished' bridge photos would be to shoot
some with a train on the bridge for use as a lead photo for the article.

The construction photos look pretty decent. The white balance appears OK.
On the shot with the Exacto chisel blade you might consider stopping down a
bit further to increase depth of field since the bridge is oriented
running away from the camera.

However, with the chisel in decent focus and it being the main point of
interest of the photo f32 might not be required. In fact, having all the
bridge in focus (even f32 probably wouldn't do that) might detract from
the point of interest. If you want to give it a try (f22 if you don't
have f32) you might go ahead just to see the difference in depth of field
between f16 and f32 and how you react.

The existing bridge photos are pretty nice too. I'd suggest maybe seeing
how badly depth of field decreases if you shoot at f16 and f11 -- the
camera may be far enough away from the scene so depth of field would be
maintained. One thing I would suggest is the camera is a bit tipped side
to side. This is most evident in the vertical truss members of the bridge
which aren't perfectly vertical in the photo. This is NOT a big deal as
it is easily corrected in photo shop, but with the composition, exposure
and white balance of these shots being pretty good, not having to crop and
rotate is a little time saver that makes editors smile (we're a lazy
bunch). Not that I'd frown at receiving these photos -- you’ve done a good job.

All the photos seem slightly soft, but a bit of unsharp mask in photoshop
should cure that. If your camera has live view and you can magnify the
'viewfinder' image on the back of the camera, setting focus that way is
the most trustworthy. My Canon 40D which is otherwise a really nice
camera, has the thru-the-lens viewfinder ever so slightly out of whack as
is the autofocus. Live view lets me shoot noticeably sharper photos.

Overall I'd say A- on the photos!

Cheers,

Charlie Comstock

So we're making progress and receiving some invaluable feedback in the process.

Tom Patterson

Grading on the curve

I told Charlie that I believed there was a little incentive baked into the grade, but I was very pleased that the photos would work for the article. At this point I made an outline of the various steps that would take place in the construction process and noted where I thought photos would be appropriate. So armed with the outline, construction commenced.

Next up- putting it all together for submission.

Tom Patterson

The real work begins

As I worked on the bridge, I started the article and outlined the various steps taken during construction. I also started taking photos- and more photos, and more photos, and... Did I mention that I didn't have much experience with digital photography? I got a spiral-bound notebook and each time I took a set of photos, I recorded the specifics of each individual shot.

Across the top of each page I made heading for photo number, f-stop, shutter speed and focus. After taking a round of photos, I would load them into the computer for review. I made notes about photos that worked and ones that didn't, and kept taking shots until I got the photos I wanted for a specific step in the construction process.I kept folders for each of the photos on the computer and decided to come back later to pick out the ones for submission (more on this later). Along the way I made many mistakes, such as forgetting to change the white balance from incandescent to fluorescent. So it was back to the layout or workshop for more photos.

Tom Patterson

Putting it all together

Once the article was finished, I put together the bill of materials and the list of photo captions. I printed out each of these and reviewed them in detail while looking at the photos for each step. One last pass through spell check and the text was ready for submission. At this point I went back through the photos and selected two or three exposures of each construction step for submittal. (A quick note- do not put the photos in separate folders when submitting them. Simply list them as "Photo 1(a), Photo 1(b) for different exposures of the same shot).

The photos I had taken were too large for the submittal, so I resized them using the standard picture editor in Windows. The text and the pictures were then sent to MRH, in a zip file, by clicking on the "Submit an Article" drop-down on under the Authors heading on the MRH banner. So, I had finally finished my first article- now we'll see if it is good enough to get published.

Tom Patterson

Good News!

Good news arrives- MRH is going to use the article. But not so fast- the bad news (but actually really good news) is that Joe and Charlie want to use it for a cover article. So it's back to the basement to take more photos. About this time I learned about Helicon Focus, a computer program that allows you to combine multiple photos at different focal ranges in order to get incredible depth of field. So I find a free version by the name of CombineZM  (http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file/fid,84627-order,4/description.html) and start taking more photos. After submitting a number of new photos using the CombineZM software, we finally have winner!

Tom Patterson

Even a rookie can do it

All of this took place over the span of about two months. It was an extremely gratifying project, and it was very rewarding to see my work published in MRH. It was a bit more work than I anticipated, but I wanted to make every effort possible to insure that the article had a good chance of getting published. So give it a shot- Joe and Charlie couldn't be any more helpful or easy to work with. And we all benefit from sharing our experiences and ideas with others. But be patient, too, as they both have a lot on their plates with everything involved in producing a monthly publication and running a small business. And let me know if you have any questions, thoughts or ideas.

As you can see from my experience, even a rookie can do it!

Tom Patterson

Yea!

5 Stars and a big thanks!

We have hope!

Excellent article

Thank you, Tom.  That was an excellent article.  The questions I had not even considered yet were covered by your descriptions.

I believe I may be the extreme test for whether a "rookie can do it".  And, I've got lots of homework to do, first.

Thanks for laying the roadbed.

Question #1 for whomever:  Should I expect ownership and proficiency with an SLR camera to be a precursor to good photos, or is my current Canon A520, with a lot of work on my part, a possible candidate?