Steam & Excursion > RailGiants Night Session 2017

RailGiants Train Museum at the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds in Pomona Ca held their 5th annual night session on August 12. Strobe lighting was by Steve Crise. Outer Harbor Terminal Railway #2 and Southern Pacific #5021 were the subjects of this year's event. Models in period dress complemented the night.

More to follow when I get a chance to screen and process the 200+ images.

Nights like this simply weren't possible back when we were using flashbulbs and film, so I must give progress and technology their due.

I'm also trying my first post from my iPhone. Who'd have thunk?

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Press25 Wrote:

> Nights like this simply weren't possible back when
> we were using flashbulbs and film

How so? I didn't participate in very many, but I've heard of and seen the results of plenty of railroad night photo sessions from back in the days when film/flash bulb was the only option. You had to grit your teeth a bit more at the cost of the single-use-only supplies you were burning through, but there were plenty of people with the resources and the willingness to expend them. I don't recall seeing actors in period dress staged in the scenes until fairly recently, but I can't see why they couldn't have been used back then, too.

Evan,

I cculd have been more clear about what was going on between my ears.

Yes, it was possible to use actors/models in period costumes with bulbs. I don't think that anyone gave it much thought 20+ years ago because I and those I knew were concentrating on contemporary railroading as it was.

What was going through my own mind was that doing 200 +/- shots in an evening with bulbs would have been possible - but prohibitively expensive (at least for me and my cohorts at the time).

Near the end of Sylvania's production of Press 25s, they were still going for about $3/dozen. I would have used 3 or 4 bulbs per image of HBTR #2, depending on the bulb to subject distance. We also shot SP 5021 that night - that engine would have eaten 7-8 bulbs per image. For the sake of discussion, let's say that 100 shots of each engine plus the ancillary model shots would have used about 1000 bulbs, or about 84 dozen - so about $252 plus tax in bulbs in pre-1995 dollars. Split among a large group, that may not have been bad. Until last year's session at RailGiants, I had never been involved in a night shoot with more than four people. Most of my flashbulb photography was done solo.

While I dearly miss the smell of freshly fried bulbs and the burnt fingertips that went with them, I see the many merits of using strobes.

The second part of my comments relate to the instant feedback that digital cameras give us. I used Kodachrome 64 almost exclusively for my night shots, and it generally took seven to ten days to know whether or not you got the shot - longer if they were in the middle of a roll. I evolved to using a unistrut bracket on my tripod to hold two Canon FTb bodies so I could shoot at two different apertures, which provided me with a higher success rate. At RailGiants, I was able to adjust ISO, aperture and exposure times based on near-real time feedback.

Similarly, while I miss the smell of opening a canister of Kodachrome, I appreciate the instant feedback that digital provides. I wish I'd had it on a foggy night in Binghampton NY when I was dealing with mist, yard lights and clean NYSW power.

Compared to "then", when shooting stationary subjects with strobes and digital, it is most certainly a different world "now", and I can't say that I don't like it.

So, that's what I was thinking but didn't clearly say. Hope this helps understand where I was coming from.

(I have several hundred night shots to be scanned, processed and shared. I just need that thing called time...)

Press25 / Kurt Stetzer

O.Winston Link used flashbulbs....
Lots of them!!

Bill Deaver
Tehachapi, CA