# Night photos



## dangell (Jul 15, 2012)

I have been taking a lot of "night shots" on our clubs railroads. Love to do this!



















Madame Woo's Photography. I did photoshop in the sky. And the light from the streetlight. Everything else is in camera










Inside the mines 










Outside the mine at the tipple.


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## alecescolme (Dec 20, 2010)

Beautiful photos, really nice. 

Alec


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## Bob in Kalamazoo (Apr 2, 2009)

All I can say is, WOW! Those are fabulous photos. Great job.
Bob


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## Rail Planet (Jan 22, 2012)

Nice! I really like the 2nd and 3rd pictures.


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## dieseldude (Apr 21, 2009)

Very cool! Thanks for posting them. 


-Kevin.


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## Zonk (Feb 20, 2008)

Really nice job on your photos. Your lighting is great for the effect. 

Matt


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## denray (Jan 5, 2008)

ABSOLUTELY AWESOME I love nite time shots 
Dennis


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## Zonk (Feb 20, 2008)

What club layout do you operate on? Looks like there is a lot of detail involved with your shots, and if possible I would love to see more of it. 

Thanks again for posting. 

Matt


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## dangell (Jul 15, 2012)

We (the o scale guys) have had several layouts over the years, but at this point we only have one, Steve's railroad at his home. We do have two more layouts starting up, and I'm hoping to get a new 1:20 scale inside-outside layout started soon. Just nee a place. check our web site:
http://www.oscaleguys.com/oscaleguys.html
Dale


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## Steve Stockham (Jan 2, 2008)

Dale, 
You do nice work! Your website is nice too.


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## Randy Stone (Jan 2, 2008)

Those are great photos. 

Thanks for posting


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## Randy Stone (Jan 2, 2008)

Shad, photos like this is why we need a Gallery so these photos can be enjoyed for years to come.


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## Semper Vaporo (Jan 2, 2008)

Those are excellant photos! 

Could you share some of your expertise in what all you did to obtain them. I understand the digital touchup... I do that a lot... but what about the initial setup to get the photons in the camera? 

I used to do night photography to be able to "paint" the light where I wanted it. I usually did this on the end of a roll of film that I wanted to develop that had just a couple of shots left on the end. I would put the object to be photographed in a particular setting (sometimes just on table on the front porch) and put the camera on a tripod. Then I'd open the shutter "on bulb" and use my penlight flashlight to illuminate various portions of the object that I wanted to be visible. This would fill in shadows and dark areas (the black boiler on a steam locomotive would never show up well otherwise). Then I would set off a handheld flash unit from some distance behind the camera (being careful to not have the camera cast a shadow) to get a good general illumination. I never really calculated how much time to leave the shutter open or how much light or flash to use... it was all just "by guess and by golly" and NEVER got a bad shot that way, (except that one time I stubbed my toe on the tripod!). Generally the shutter was open for about a minute. I kept the f-stop small to get good depth of field.

I have now gone digital and I have not found a way to do long time-exposures so I have time to do the "painting" with the flashlight. I wonder if it even can be done.


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## dangell (Jul 15, 2012)

My set up is this
I turn on any structure lights, and dim the room lights. I keep some distant florescent light on, and often add some light from LED flashlight, but at a distance, usually. I the mine shot the flashlight was only about 2 feet away making the pool of blue light. I set the camera to tungsten light, not daylight, so the Florissant and LED are bluish. The structure lights still come off quite yellow as they are much lower in color temperature even than the tungsten setting. 

I use f16 @ like 1 or 2 seconds. I'd use f22 if I had it just for depth of field. Then I take as many as 8 exposures, usually only 3, but sometimes 8. each at one stop over and under. I sometimes turn these into HDR in photoshop, but more often just layer all exposures in one photo, then set layer blend modes to darken or lighten, or even leave normal, but erase layers to reveal lower exposures so I can control which exposure is seen. Sometimes I do the same thing for depth of field. I have software to combine these, and Photomatix to make HDRs but usually just use layers in Photoshop. In this photo I used a closer focus to pull the tree into focus and placed in front of the soft layer. The rest is just Photoshop messing with color and exposure and a bit of burning and dodging.


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## Randy Stone (Jan 2, 2008)

Another great shot. 

So you layout is inside. 

How about some more pics of your layout. 

Is it in a basement, garage or?


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## dangell (Jul 15, 2012)

Our group of friends have had several railroads over the years, sad but only one is still up and running, a On3/On30 in the top of an old barn that was converted to a house years ago. One of "the guys" Don H is building a new On3 railroad in a bedroom, and another one of a"the Guys" , Don S, AKA "Boss Man" is working on an o scale standard gauge line. I am building lots of 1/20 scale with no place to run at this time, as my "Colorado & Utah is sold and gone (sob). But I am planning a new line, 50% inside and 50% outside for the near future. I have some cars up on the models blog here. And Figures. We have a web site for our railroads and models at www.oscaleguys.com . Check it out, I have some shots of the garden line, not good ones sadly, but still some. And lots of shots of our other railroads. http://www.oscaleguys.com/oscaleguys.html


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## FHER_operator (Sep 7, 2012)

Beautiful photography. There's nothing quite like an industrial night shot! I hope we can see more.

Edit: Just realized I might as well put my megabytes where my mouth is and share my one decent night shot. Click to enlarge:

 

-Steven


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## TonyLou (Sep 3, 2009)

The great layout and beautiful pictures. Nice shots !


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## John J (Dec 29, 2007)

Great Night Pic's Got any more? 

Thanks for posting them 

JJ


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## Phippsburg Eric (Jan 10, 2008)

I don't have many lights on my line, but I Installed an LED headlight on #9 (a live steamer) which is good fun at this time of year when it gets dark EARLY!

Taking night photos is fun but tricky. fortunately digits are cheap...I have like 10 bad shots for each OK shot!


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## Gary Armitstead (Jan 2, 2008)

Nice photo Eric!







Not easy to do.


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## GaryR (Feb 6, 2010)

Outstanding images Dale. Congrats ( Gary takes notes) 


GaryR


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## East Broad Top (Dec 29, 2007)

I had the perfect kind of snow the other night, and snapped this one. 










Later, 

K


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