Photography from the train
This is an "extra" post about photography. If you take all of your pictures on an iPhone and don't care about the mechanics (actually physics and electronics) of photography, you may want to skip the rest of this post.
Many of you may know that I rekindled a long dormant photographic interest about a year ago. In today's digital world I have a lot to learn and am far from an accomplished photographer. That said, taking pictures from a moving train through train windows is especially challenging. To get yesterday's shots I tried the following techniques.
The first decision was in the equipment that I decided to bring on the trip. In order to save space and weight, I chose to bring only the 50mm f1.4 prime lens (I'm shooting full frame). This limits my options but saves a ton of space and weight. My 14-24mm f2.8 lens is huge and weighs over two pounds by itself. However, the 50mm won't do "inside hotel room" shots so I resorted to my iPhone for those pictures yesterday.
I set the camera in shutter speed priority mode at 1/500 of a second to give me a fighting chance to stop the blurs from the train movement. Using the fast glass of the 50mm f1.4, I let the f-stop float and used auto-ISO starting at ISO 64 with a max of ISO 3000. I wasn't too concerned over f-stop since my focus distance was always fairly far away. I used a circular polarizing filter to attempt to minimize (not eliminate) reflections from the glass windows which worked surprisingly well. Conventional wisdom says to minimize reflections by placing the lens close to the glass and at right angles to the glass. Of course, right angle won't work when trying to get a shot of the front of the train from the rear of the train! The circular polarizer cost me two to three stops of light but in broad daylight wasn't too big of a penalty. If we have sunlight tomorrow, I might try 1/1000 of a second.
Then there is the problem of obstacles. The human eye does a good job of overlooking distracting elements such a power poles and wires (of which there are many as the train is electrically powered). A photograph does not. So looking out of the train window, power poles go by at relatively regular intervals and can be timed but wires, foliage, bridges, abutments and the like occur randomly. And things are happening quickly in the moving train. I have my share of shots containing a very blurry (since it was close up) power pole or an up close tree. Happily, in the digital age, I can take many shots and discard the many "losers".
If anybody has other suggestions, I'm all ears!
Many of you may know that I rekindled a long dormant photographic interest about a year ago. In today's digital world I have a lot to learn and am far from an accomplished photographer. That said, taking pictures from a moving train through train windows is especially challenging. To get yesterday's shots I tried the following techniques.
The first decision was in the equipment that I decided to bring on the trip. In order to save space and weight, I chose to bring only the 50mm f1.4 prime lens (I'm shooting full frame). This limits my options but saves a ton of space and weight. My 14-24mm f2.8 lens is huge and weighs over two pounds by itself. However, the 50mm won't do "inside hotel room" shots so I resorted to my iPhone for those pictures yesterday.
I set the camera in shutter speed priority mode at 1/500 of a second to give me a fighting chance to stop the blurs from the train movement. Using the fast glass of the 50mm f1.4, I let the f-stop float and used auto-ISO starting at ISO 64 with a max of ISO 3000. I wasn't too concerned over f-stop since my focus distance was always fairly far away. I used a circular polarizing filter to attempt to minimize (not eliminate) reflections from the glass windows which worked surprisingly well. Conventional wisdom says to minimize reflections by placing the lens close to the glass and at right angles to the glass. Of course, right angle won't work when trying to get a shot of the front of the train from the rear of the train! The circular polarizer cost me two to three stops of light but in broad daylight wasn't too big of a penalty. If we have sunlight tomorrow, I might try 1/1000 of a second.
Then there is the problem of obstacles. The human eye does a good job of overlooking distracting elements such a power poles and wires (of which there are many as the train is electrically powered). A photograph does not. So looking out of the train window, power poles go by at relatively regular intervals and can be timed but wires, foliage, bridges, abutments and the like occur randomly. And things are happening quickly in the moving train. I have my share of shots containing a very blurry (since it was close up) power pole or an up close tree. Happily, in the digital age, I can take many shots and discard the many "losers".
If anybody has other suggestions, I'm all ears!
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