New video - Model railroad photography part 1 - back to basics

Good to see you Joey!!! Funny but good info sir! I see you were down my way.....I love chasing trains through the New River......

Thank you a lot for your tips and tricks!!

as the old refrain say:

- is not the arrow, but the Indian that shoot it.

Andre.

 

Excellent video with very helpful hints & a few laughs.

Thanks for offering your tips and tricks Joey.  Now we can also see how many people have watched the this post. I am sure it will be many of us. Thanks a lot.   Scot

Great video and tips.  Now what was tip #3 again.  Nick

Great video !!!!

Nice video, good advice and entertaining, too! Keep posting them.

 

My job of selecting photos for publication--and having even a greater variety to choose from--would be SO MUCH easier if more folks followed the basic tips Joey presented in this model train photo primer of his.  I eagerly look forward to future installments in the series.

 

But the heck with trains...I get to see them just about 24/7.  I wanna see more photos of Doreen (she already knows I'm one of her biggest fans).    

Alan you should be ashamed of yourself this should be about trains, but on second thought i agree with you!!!!

Thank you for the lessons... guess I will be digging that tripod out of the closet.

like the setting delay hint too.

 

Good video Joey - I plan to experiment more with my recently acquired iphone 5s. I'm new to the Apple phone and am curious if it is as good as they claim?

Joey

thanks!!! Cant wait for the next segment, keep em coming, will start looking for a tripod this week

steve

As always, Great thread!

 

Allan and I just talked about this yesterday!

 

Dave

Joey, good reminders!  I know all that stuff, but have been too lazy lately.  Thanks to you, I'm back on track! 

John

I'm going to link this to the 3-rail forum as well.  Should be required viewing for anyone interested in doing a first-rate job of photographing his or her trains and layout.

Great video Joey.  Thanks for reminding us of the basics.

 

Art

Well done Joey. Thanks for posting.

New Shortcut: New video - Model railroad photography part 1 - back to basicsHey Joey Brandy here, thanks for remembering me! I forwarded this email and video, to all of our club members to view. I'm still pushing for the Club to make an effort to help pay your way to our Huntington Wva Show, weekend after Thanksgiving day! I did remember you saying you might having some conflicting date during that time.....................Brandy
Once again I watched all of this video a couple of times, and now, I believe I can do some videos of our layouts.
----- Original Message -----
From: O Gauge Railroading On Line Forum
To: Brandy
Sent: Monday, August 18, 2014 10:31 AM
Subject: New Shortcut: New video - Model railroad photography part 1 - back to basics

Thanks folks, glad you found it useful. I can assure you that I practice what I preach in my photography work as well.

 

Brandy and Dave, I'd love to be able to come but it would surely take some work being that time of year. Keep my posted, I am surely open to it.

 

Did I mention - use a tripod? My lovely assistant likes to make sure I am caught in the act.

 

Joey....the Thanksgiving show is a tough date and a small show in the overall scheme. But we can always wish! I may try to attend one of the MD shows you do.

 

And I like you....but would rather see a pic of your assistant than of you in the river!!!!

Thank you Joey--clever and very useful.  Look forward to more of your tips.

Thanks, Joey.  I got your message and enjoyed the lighthearted presentation.

Joey,

 

Thanks for the great advice and humor. Always a pleasure. I'm going to build myself a tripod!

 

Andy

I absolutely, totally and unconditionally agree with all the rules you set forth in this video. For those of you who have not watched the video, Joey's rules are:

1. USE A TRIPOD
2. USE A TRIPOD
3. USE A TRIPOD
4. USE A TRIPOD

 

Agree 1,000%.

 

Well done.

Well i watched the video and it got me thinking how good is a s4 camera and what can be done with it. So after reading a few internet searches o  the subject one thing it said was never leave it in auto. So with a small hand held clamp. I set out to test the s4 shooting model trains no helecoptor photos. Most with lights off no flash and the camera clamped in the handheld clamp to stablize the phone and a setting of 2 second delay. Alot of what was learned in the video. Here is the results.

Absolutely fantastic shots there. it's hard to limit what I show in each video, especially this one. As far as cameras go, in the future videos, its going to be more of a generalization.  Any less expensive digital camera that allows manual functions will do.  In laymans terms, I am referring to the ability to change the shutter speed for those not familiar.

Pretty much a "must" in my opinion.  I can't begin to tell you folks how many otherwise fine photos I receive that are diminished--and not usable for publication--due to limited depth-of-field.  (For the uninitiated, depth-of-field relates to the ability to depict the foreground and the background behind the primary subject in sufficiently sharp focus.)

 

Much/most close-up photography of models and layouts requires long exposures to achieve the camera apertures needed for extended depth-of-field, and this requires (1) a tripod and (2) adjustable settings so one can control shutter speed and the related aperture settings.  That is the most basic way to achieve good depth-of-field.  There are other methods as well, and I imagine Joey will also discuss those at some point in his excellent series.

 

The phrase "depth of field" is easy to explain in concept, but a little harder to explain in technical camera terms so honestly folks, for ease of understanding when I do explain it in an upcoming video, I am going to use the words "Focus and sharpness".

 

I say this because not everyone wants to be a camera pro, they just want to get better shots with as little hassle as possible.

 

Even with image stacking in most cases, NOT Everything will be in perfect sharp focus, nor does it need to be. In the most simple terms, if you can make your model photos look something like a real railfan image, that is good enough. 

 

Sometimes a shallow depth of field makes for very interesting images

I use my real world photos for explanation

 

I'll try to add some more examples of this over time if anyone is interested.

 

 

First 3 are very very shallow depth of field images

 

 

 

 

 

And..................................................

The complete opposite

 

This is a very wide depth of field where almost everything from 2 feet to 1 mile away is in "reasonably sharp focus"

 

 

 

As Joey amply demonstrated with his above examples, depth-of-field (also often called depth-of-focus) can be and is used very creatively in the photographic world.  On some occasions, it even has a place in model railroading publications, but the examples there are relatively few and far between.

 

Generally, when I am selecting photos to use with, for example, a layout feature in OGR, I look for images that come close--as close as possible--to depicting what a real person would see when viewing the particular scene depicted in the photo.  Our eyes--thanks to our brains--do not see the world in "limited depth-of-field," where the foregrounds and backgrounds of whatever we're looking at are fuzzy or out of focus.  All things being equal in terms of our human eyesight and minds, we see things close to us sharply focused and things in the far distance also sharply focused.  That's also kind of what is looked for in layout photos.

 

The difference is that a camera lens--any camera lens--can really only focus sharply on one plane that is in front of it.  Everything in front of and behind that one plane is out of focus to one degree or another.  But the perception of sharpness can be controlled by the photographer to a considerable degree via focus, shutter speed, and lens aperture manipulations, and this is what results in photos that, like Joey's last example, seem to be in focus front right in front of the camera position to all the way back to the distant mountains.

 

Anyhow, stay tuned, because you can be sure Joey will explain things with far more clarity and with easy-to-understand terms and examples.

 

 

 

Jerry

 

Great job Joey!

These were things I think we knew but dodn't practice.

How many lessons are there before we get our degree?

Steve