Passenger Trains > Night panned pan - zap!

A sparking pan panned at night handheld at 1/25th; Metuchen, NJ 2/1/2025:

/Mitch

(Yes - it's a bit of a tease for the upcoming full frame shot)
 

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That's really cool and VERY unique! Awesome shot! Thanks for posting!

Cool.  This is contemporary art.  Good capture!

Was it a nonstop train, so 125 feet per second? The spark was quick enough to freeze the pantograph?

timz Wrote:
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> Was it a nonstop train, so 125 feet per second?
> The spark was quick enough to freeze the pantograph?

I zoomed out as the train zoomed in towards me. A “zoom-pan”. At that distance 1/25th does not impart a lot of motion blur but it does allow for a significantly lower ISO setting.

The spark could’ve been captured in less than the 1/25th shutter, during the exposure but then again, a faster shutter speed may have resulted in a more detailed spark - the timing would’ve had to be perfect, but then the resulting higher ISO would’ve meant a noisier image or no detail but the spark itself.

I’ll be posting the full composition tonight. I’ve actually attempted a few pan only uncropped pans with varying degrees of success. Even my Z8 does not seem to be very good at locking focus on such a small area like a catenary arm but the extra megapixels come in handy for crops such as this one.

/Mitch

Posted from iPhone

So the train was doing 80+ mph?

'Sparkling' image!  Thanks for posting .

-John

timz Wrote:
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> So the train was doing 80+ mph?

Not sure how you came up with 80 mph but sounds about right, if not slower, as it was coming off a curve and going into a curve ahead.

/Mitch

Posted from iPhone

Award-winning!

One technically demanding and fantastic image. Outstanding!

MC

Image Of The Day (IOTD) as far as I'm concerned.  Well done!

Loved your various pans and zoom pans on RailPics years ago - great to see you're still in the business!