Western Railroad Discussion > Night shot tips(?)

This may not be the right board
But I feel as if I will get more responses here
I want to photograph Amtrak 6 tomorrow near Leyden and want to get a decent night shot. A clear picture of the locomotives. Not a long exposure of the streaking lights.
Any tips?
I use a Nikon D50 if that helps
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Posted from Android

Unless you're shooting in a very bright environment, if you don't want motion blur and/or severe pixellation, you're going to have to get some synchronized strobe lights.... fast.
 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/21/17 20:19 by toledopatch.

You might do  better to shoot from the bridge when #6 backs in to the depot. Obviously with a tripod and shutter release.

James Nelson
Thornton, CO
www.flickr.com/mojaveflyer

If the train is moving, try to shoot it in an area where that is brightly lit.It mght still be necessary to increase the iso.Increasing the  iso will increase the grain in the picture, however, 
you should still get a decent picture with an iso of 1600, sometimes higher.Definitly use a tripod also.Get that shot!

I haven't shot anything at night in years, but for the experts, would it help him to park his car at an angle and put his headlights on the units as they approach?  Also to frame the units in a 3/4 shot, rather than a side shot, to cut down on motion blur?

mapboy

I guess we need to redefine what is a night shot.  In the old, film days, night shots were loosely defined as a "time exposure, often supplemented with flash to fill in dark spots and to even out exposure". Some more famous night shot folks (O Winston Link, for example)  added sycronized flashbulbs to a moving train, but that was essentially a timed flash/shutter event.   I can recall, in the days of cheap Press 25B bulbs, using a dozen or more bulbs for one shot over a 1 minute exposure while running around in the dark painting light at various locations.   Steinheimer also took this process to very high levels in his B&W studies of steam.  

Today with almost infinite ISO on demand the term night shot can also include "very low light action photography".   So in the old school, a night shot is a time exposure (say 0.5 sec to over a minute or even more)  with or without added flash, normally with a still train or object.   In the new school, night shot can add capability to photograph a moving train, thus you need to look at low light conditions, highest ISO vs acceptable grain, etc.     

So, not to be critical in any way, I guess the question needs more definition, as advice on how to take a night shot depends a lot more on the subject, location, movement, etc. 

frntinplate Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> ... So, not to be critical in any way, I guess the
> question needs more definition, as advice on how
> to take a night shot depends a lot more on the
> subject, location, movement, etc.

The OP said it is Amtrak #6, moving at Leyden, CO, after dark.  In 2009, passenger train speed was 60 MPH, probably still is.  It's a steep downgrade for #6, 2.0% coming into Leyden, 1 1/4 to 1 1/2% thru Leyden.  Now can you help him out?

mapboy

The term Night Photography is very loosely defined, and can mean anything from filling the scene with flash, to color light painting using gelled flash or color LED flashlights, to "ambient night photography" which uses only moonlight or starlight to illuminate a landscape.  How it is defined pretty much depends on who is talking at the time.
Having said that, if the point is to freeze motion at night, you need very bright lights or flash - even ambient urban light from streetlights may not be enough unless you want to use wide open fast lenses and high ISO values, with the narrow depth of field and grainy shadows most cameras will give you with that technique.  Using the old Kodak definition of Exposure Value, bright urban light has a brightness in the range of EV 0 to EV 7 or so, which is about 8-15 stops dimmer than sunlight (EV 14-15 range).
If the subject is not moving, you can use longer exposure times, as well as a moderate f-stop and low ISO if the scene is lit by streetlights.  However you may end up with uneven light that needs to be supplemented with flash to fill dark areas.  If you do that, you need to pay attention to the different color of the flash compared to the streetlights - flash tends to be blue by comparison.
Trying to fill a scene with car headlights works for things close to the ground, but since headlight beams are fairly concentrated for looking down a road, trying to paint something as large as a train with them can be tricky.
If all you have is natural light (moonlight mostly) you are left with a light streak - until someone comes up with an ISO one-billion sensor, that is.  Moonlight brightness is in the range of EV -2 to EV -8, starlight even dimmer (down to EV -17 if the milky way is not overhead).

The thing to do is to make test shots at the location you want to work in to measure how much light you have to work with, and then if needed add more light using whatever means are available to you.  That includes car headlights, flash, hand-held spotlights, LED flashlights (either white or colored depending on the effect), etc.  With digital cameras, you can make a test and evaluate the results right away on the camera's display, or even pull the SD card and stick in in a laptop to use more powerful tools to process and evaluate the image.  It just comes down to trial and error, supplemented with judgment and experience as you learn how things work together.  Once you make enough trials, you will have what you want for the lighting, assuming you have enough sources available to you.
Making tests like this has been the best approach even back in the days of film, though then you had to go make the exposures and then process the film before evaluating the results - something that took days.  I can think of several shots that took months to get right back then.  These days, an hour of testing in the field is often all that is needed to get the thing right, but you have to give yourself the time to do that before your train shows up.

I've been doing night photography for just over 40 years, and this pretty much summarizes that experience.  There is a lot of more technical information on my website if you want to get nurdy about it.
- Kit
http://www.lunarlightphoto.net       (note the tech info pages are currently being revised, since they were originally written for film photography).
 

Kit Courter
Menefee, CA
LunarLight Photography



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 01/22/17 10:12 by CimaScrambler.

>  passenger train speed was 60 MPH

You are going to need a nice bank of flash units to stop a train moving that fast in a poorly lit night scene.   Think Steve Barry and his setup using 4 Alien Bee flash heads.

Kit Courter
Menefee, CA
LunarLight Photography

There is a boat storage and a self stoage trackside, usually extra lighitng but with a D50 and probably a zoom lens little can be done without some extra light.
If there is some light shoot at 1/125th 1600, shoot wide and close. if you try to use car lights keep the car back from the tracks to get a wider view.  Probably will not
look good but ight get something.

Bob



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/22/17 13:43 by robj.

Digital cameras make this a lot easier and are or flexible tha the film I used years ago.  You used to get a roll of high ASA film (that's a term you don't see these days) and set your light meter for several times whatever the ASA/ISO was on the film and do the best you could.  Lot's of trial and error and notes.  Then you took it into the lab and pushed the processing to increase the effective speed of the film.  Today you just turn a dial to ISO 2000, or whatever you think you need and go from there.  Click and see ngsswhat you got.  Too dark, crank up the ISO a bit or extend the exposure.  

The one thing that doesn't change is that it takes light to expose the film, or the sensor.  You either have to get it with a bright light, a long exposure to a weak light, or amplify the light in the camera electronics with the higher ISO setting.  You can also do some post-processing in you computer to sometimes save a photo.  Kit gave a very good explination of the process.  

The term of "painting" has been tossed around.  I have used it in the past.  I had a handheld spot that plugged into the lighter socket and was very bright.  With the camera on a tripod, I opened the shutter for maybe 30 seconds, turned on the light, and quickly covered the subject with light in a painting motion.  I would go bck and forth, left to right, then up and down, diagonal both ways, and shut the light off.  How much time and how to set the camera is still something you have to play with.  The brightness of your light, the distance from the subject, other light sources, etc... will all figure in to the exposure.  Of course, this only works on a stationary subject.

If nothig else, get out there and play with it some.  It's a lot easier and cheaper than when we only had film.  

John