Planes, Trains and Automobiles. I'd like to find a way to lump Great Lakes Freighters in there as well. All are large. All are very powerful. All are mechanical. I often wonder if the information outlets that exist today existed in my 'learning' years where my life might have taken me. I'm fortunate to have had an exposure to automobiles and planes early in life. I have thoroughly enjoyed my experiences in the large aircraft world. Could I have done the same on the water or the rails?
Enough musing on a Sunday afternoon. But it does lead me to do more research on some of the photography subjects. I tried to find information on the Union Pacific Engine 489, but was not successful. I was able to find out more about the BNSF 5681. And yes, there is one in existence working the lines as of March 2018.
The working BNSF 5681 is a GE AC44CW, built in March of 2004. The AC44CW model was built between 1993 and 2004. There were over 2800 engines produced, with 121 going to BNSF.
The 4,400 HP engine was built for standard gauge track. It weighs in over 425,000 pounds carrying 5,000 gallons of fuel. It is 73 feet long and 15.5 feet high.
And this one has orange and yellow paint. Can't be all bad.
At ISO 2000, there was some noise that had to be removed. Now that I'm getting the hang of it, just have to remember to do this.
With the lights on, I had to go with a -1.0 EV.
At the DMRRC, this was just sitting without much going on around it.
One of my favorite locations for a back drop at the DMRRC is a bit hard to get to. Setup for these shots is from an access point in the middle of the set. That's the easy part. Getting to the access point is not the easy point. There are low points to crawl around. Once you can get there, the effort is worth it.
I was lucky enough to get an interesting set of engines in front of the station house. I wasn't stacking at this point, going with single shot. To get a clear shot, I was going with 1/80 second on a 35 mm lens. I could have gone slower, maybe down to 1/50 second, but I needed to be sure. I wanted to get some DOF, with speed considerations I went with f/6.3. That put the ISO up around 5k.
Getting a focus point is critical. With critters and humans, go for the eyes. For me, with the trains, it is the train number placard above the cab windows. if I can get the focus on that, the rest will take care of itself. It's even tougher if the placard is backlit, which is not the case here. Usually with the model trains, if the numbers are lit, the train has a chance of moving. Usually. Anyway, getting the placard sharp is critical.
Here's the focus point:
I did get it where it needed to be. Good start.
The original image needs a lot of help. As I mentioned before, I was taking this from an access point and hand holding the camera. It's not exactly level. I was just happy there wasn't any evidence of camera shake.
The weathering on these units is really good. Engines look used. Realism.
This looks good on the monitor as a screen saver.
No day is bad when the skies are clear and the temps are approaching 60 at the end of March. It's a Friday and the work week is over. I'm going Eagle chasing, close to home.
I've been living here over 20 years, and I'm just getting out.
I staked out the nest for close to two hours this afternoon. I could see some movement in the nest. I have this shot from earlier in the week, when the food was delivered via air.
Photographically speaking, there isn't much going on here. But, just to be here to see this is awesome. I had seen the fly in Eagle come in, no images and probably just as well. Just to see it come in.
And today's effort was to see the fly in Eagle deliver the food. This was as close as I could get.
Damn tree held the auto focus...... I can laugh about it now. But again, I watched the drama unfold with both eyes and it is something I won't forget for some time.
In the end, I was in the woods for about 2.5 hours. Time well spent.
Probably the best image of the afternoon was a Canadian Goose. There were a few of them 'sunning' themselves on a body of water. I was surprised I could get close to them, but I did and watched for a while.
So far this year, I've been shooting Manual with Auto ISO on. I like it.
So here is my Canadian Goose shot for the day.
I like the sun angle, just before sunset. usually doesn't work that way for me. I'll take it.
This year at the DMRRC model train shoot, there were two trains that I had not seen previously. One was a US ARMY painted locomotive with cargo cars loaded with Army tanks.
The other engine was 'weathered'. Weathering model trains is the same as weathering other models, that is the process to make a model a bit more realistic. A lot of the trains at the DMRRC have various degrees of weathering. For some reason, the job on the PC 6816 really got to me. Maybe, because if I were to draw a working train, this would be it.
I had taken this image after I put away all the stacking stuff, meaning this is a single shot. There's a bit o' bokeh in the background but I can live with it.
The other item of note, I was using manual mode with auto ISO. In my case, it is live and learn.
The settings:
Look at that ISO - 11,400. Yikes.
What does an image at ISO 11 - whatever look like at 100%?
Since I very rarely shoot anything over ISO 2000, my experience with removing noise is somewhat limited. Always a chance to learn.
All of my noise decreasing programs/filters didn't help much with this image. Most just sharpened the noise, which I think is funny. I ended up using ACR's noise reduction sliders. Again, a learning thing.
When I finished that process, I hit it with AI Clear. Not so much for the noise reduction, but to add just a bit of sharpening back.
And that gave me this:
The noise irritation is gone, and some definition still remains. I like this a lot. That is a lot of noise removal. So the final image is this.
This was a learning adventure. And it works for me.
Spring is on the way. Nothing confirms that fact like a very un-Michigan like cloudless day and seasonal low 40s temp. Just beautiful. I didn't need much coaxing from a club friend when asked if I wanted to chase some Eagles.
I've been living in mid-Michigan for close to 25 years. And I'm now finding out that our county park system has areas of 'wilderness' where the wild critters live. And along with the critters are the Eagles. Less than 10 miles from the house, with some luck, I'll get to see something more exciting than a sea gull.
Today would also be a great day to experiment with different auto focus modes. I had visions of using all the modes that follow a target in flight, because I'd be watching Eagles in flight. Right?
The good news is I did use more than one AF mode. But what really happened was the AF caught all the branches around me. I really didn't have a clearing to work from. Again, I learned a lot. Sometimes less technology works better. Single point would have worked much better.
And as to photographing birds in flight, well I have a long way to go.
Although I had only a few good shots, being outdoors and seeing these birds in flight, it was a no lose deal.
This image will not win any prizes, but this is a personal success story. I can't judge distance, other than to say very far away. And it is a very aggressive crop. But this goes up as a spring is here tribute.
The settings:
(Note to self, change clock time. It was really 5:30 ish.)
I was using Manual Mode with Auto ISO. Just happened to work out to ISO 100. The focal length says 300, but combined with the D500, it is effectively 450 mm.
As is recorded, the AF was dynamic. And this is the target the camera hit.
Close. Again, it was really far away.
When I'm working to convince myself I either need/don't need a bigger lens, I think for airshows I have enough with 450 mm. But If I'm going take the bird/nature thing seriously 450 mm just isn't enough.
There's a lot of blue there. Won't be printing many of these, the ink balance would not be maintained.
But it is a magnificent creature on a great looking day.
This is the first of the photo stacks from the DMRRC 2019 shoot. I like the Santa Fe 330 engine. Actually, I like all the colors on the engines, and one that I'll look at later that looks very weathered. But for now the reds, yellows and silver of the Santa Fe are on display.
This is an eleven shot stack. Somewhere around shot five, the train was moved. Fortunately, the train was moved in a backward direction. And fortunately I have good images of the train before it was moved.
Fortunately.
In all the previous stacking projects I've done, I've pretty much let the software do its thing and that was good enough. Here was a challenge.
The basic settings:
When I did the original eleven shot stack, this was the best I (the software) could do with respect to the train.
If the ultimate goal is a sharp image, that ain't it.
So I decided to blend a five shot stack to get the sharp train and blended it in the final eleven shot stack.
Tough to tell, but the images are different.
After I had the two together, and a little cleanup. This is my finished effort.
There is a lot going on here, and I like it. The blue background is what the walls in the club look like now. To go much further with this, I'd have to think of something. And with any luck, the club will have something on the wall next year.
And the painted version.
Both will make wonderful screen backgrounds.
Yesterday was the Club's annual photo shoot at the Detroit Model Railroad Club's location. I think this is the fourth year we've done this.
First, four of my images from 2018 were chosen for the 2019 calendar. Very happy to see the work is appreciated by others.
That was the good part of the day, the rest seemingly went downhill from there. But as the noted philosopher Yoda noted years in the future, "The greatest teacher failure is". And so as it goes with most of my life's education, by the end of the day, I learned a lot.
First, my coordination with other people needs work. People skills. Also doing some camera work were some members of the DMRRC. I should have explained what I was doing with stacking and the process. While I was stacking, some trains were moved, some flash shots went, and well, challenges come in many forms. I will have to overcome. To be very clear, this was my issue, no one else's.
And then there was my choice of camera.
All week prior to the shoot, I told myself to use the D7200. The connection to the tablet via Bluetooth works, the images are very good. A proven performer for this event. And then I said, well let's try the D500. And as the noted philosopher Homer (Simpson) philosophed, "Doh!".
Well, I guess I had to try.
I had put a quick release on the shoulder straps of the D7200. Must have been a reason for that? Ha, well that was an unexpected source of frustration. That shoulder strap was a pain.
Then there was the tethering from the camera to the tablet. The D7200 has a great simple WiFi set up. The D500 was set up to use Snapbridge. If I have one issue with the D500, it is the network is way too proprietary. Snapbridge and I are not friends. That is another post in itself, but I made the conscious decision to bypass WiFi for a cable. I chuckle at my foolish thoughts.
For some reason, and I will find out, but my stacking didn't read the NEF files from the D500. This is not an issue with the D7200. That mistake could have been a real disaster, except I was also creating JPG files. And in large format. Luck comes in many flavors. And for the failure/teacher part, I have to work with JPGs. I worked on a stack this morning, and Yoda would be proud. I overcame the file format issue, JPGs work just fine. I also overcame the train moving and it turned out OK. That post will follow with the story.
All in all, through my failures I have learned a lot. I didn't leave with as many stacks as I usually walk away with so I'll have to work with single shot images.
On a more positive note, I did get some shots with ISOs over 10k. Will be interesting to see how they turned out.
More learning.
After looking at the Heron in the Green image for a while, I thought a paint take might look good. I laughed a bit, as most of the green was gone. But this would look good in a smaller print - and would certainly would beg the question if it was real - or painted.
What happened to all the green?
Reviewing some of the images from Reno, getting ready for the summer season. I saw this one of the Jack Links bi-plane. For more of the Jack Links story and my attachment to some of the parts used in this unique aircraft, read here.
This image is severely cropped, maybe to less than 20%. It won't win any prizes, but looks good on the monitor.
But what really gets me is the prop blur. And the sky background. This was at the far end of my reach, 450 mm. And really cropped. Like all images, if it stars as crap, nothing you can do will help. But, if your image is in focus you can get away with a lot. And I think I did.
The settings:
I need to remember f/8 and 1/500 sec for future shots. The prop is just about perfect for me with this one. I can live with f/8. For planning purposes, I can go to f/11. But this far out, F/8 is pretty sharp.
It looks good on the monitor. And for now, good enough.
As the temperatures crawled into the mid-50s today, I started thinking of visiting my feathered friends in a few weeks. It's been a few weeks since I've opened up some of these programs, tough to get in the picture mood when the wind chill is at 0 and the days are so short.
I've not been totally forgetting about photography over the last few weeks. I've done some work with a variable neutral density filter at a near by man made waterfall before it froze over. If I elect to use a ND filter for my airshow work, at this time it won't be a VND. I found a lot of color shift. It could be fixed, but why add to the post processing.
Last weekend the sun was out on a Saturday, that I didn't have to do the real job, so I hit the road. I hit a few lighthouses. My plan was to take a number of JPG images and see how they compared to my processing of a RAW image. Long story short, Nikon's JPG just doesn't do it for me. My processing for anything I'd want to show still includes ACR so I'm not really saving that much time. The RAW file size hasn't been an issue in the D7200 so far. So unless I get trapped into some 'vacation' photos, I'll be shooting RAW.
So back to the Heron. I like this image because it is busy. Busy to me anyway. Some of the image is artfully out of focus. And the bird is in focus. You can really see the yellow eye.
Settings:
I'm still a few weeks away from going to the Refuge, but the season is on the way.
