Wright writes.....

[Dominion]

This is the V front of Dapol cab. Very slightly above the firebox cladding. I hadn't noticed it before.

[gr.king]

19 minutes ago, Headstock said:

 

Good afternoon Ade the Pianist 4468,

 

The whole angle of the V wasn't changed. What was changed was the section of the roof that covered the Safety valves and also the had the tip of the V. It originally came further forwards so that it lined up with the outer edge of the firebox/cab cladding band. That is why there is a gap in the cladding band across the top of the firebox in BR and preserved locomotives. At sometime in the locomotives careers, pre preservation, the V was cut back to the position of the rest of the roof. The angle was the same, just staggered in its original form. This may be the case on your photo, though it is not very visible one way or the other. I would have to borrow one of Mikes images to draw it out if I am not being clear.  

 

Aha, now I see what you mean. Just the equivalent of a band width added at the front. I can see that making some sense. A top view from the thirties would still be nice to confirm the truth.

[Headstock]

4 minutes ago, Dominion said:

This is the V front of Dapol cab. Very slightly above the firebox cladding. I hadn't noticed it before.

 

I think Dapol have it right, despite the mind the gap effect. The cladding band intersects the front of the V.

[PupCam]

2 hours ago, Ade the Pianist 4468 said:

Not top down, but this image of Guillemot (pinched from Facebook) looks to me to show the vee ending in the same way as Bittern and Mallard above.

 

It would seem very strange for the whole angle of the vee to have been changed!

 

That's a cracking photograph!

 

[Tony Wright]

1 hour ago, Headstock said:

 

Good afternoon Tony,

 

it looks as if the Hornby A4 has had a repaint and lost its painted V front to the cab.

Good evening Andrew,

 

It has, by Ian Rathbone, who also painted the other three. 

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

[Headstock]

56 minutes ago, Tony Wright said:

Good evening Andrew,

 

It has, by Ian Rathbone, who also painted the other three. 

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

 

Good evening Tony,

 

it's a very nice looking paint job. It's sort of reassuring that even the best in the business can be bamboozled by Hornby's fiendish trickery.

[polybear]

3 hours ago, Tony Wright said:

I can't find my source of reference at the moment, but does anyone know during which weekend in August it is hoped to stage the Pickering Show, please? 

 

Hi Tony,

 

That's on 20th & 21st August 2022

HTH

Kind Regards,

Brian

[Tony Wright]

I've taken a few more pictures in tight perspective..............

 

 

I think B&W is more redolent of the period (now 64 years ago!). 

 

Class A1 60116 HAL O' THE WYND (DJH/Wright/Rathbone) has charge of the Down Northumbrian.

 

Camera placed on the track. 

 

 

A closer, tighter shot, this time of A1 60130 KESTREL (DJH/Wright/Rathbone). 

 

Again, camera placed on track. 

 

 

Class A2 60539 BRONZINO (DJH/Wright/Rathbone) heads the Down Scotch goods (make what you will of the train). 

 

Here, the camera was placed on a stout box to try and give the impression that the photographer was standing on a signal (unfortunately, there isn't one here). 

 

 

There is a signal here for the cameraman to exploit (the Up Fast home). Again, the stout box supported the camera.

 

Class A4 60014 SILVER LINK (Wills/scratch/Wright/Rathbone) has the Down Tees-Tyne Pullman (anomalous with Mk.1 cars, I know).

 

Since I made all these locos, if there are any 'bizarre' bits on them, they're entirely my fault. A fair number of the passenger cars were also my work. 

 

In three cases, I used the Nikon Df with the 35mm lens on its front. Using the minimum aperture (F.29), I placed the camera about 18 inches from the locos' fronts, then set the focus to just over three feet. Shutter speeds were around three seconds, with pulses of powerful fill-in flash to lift the shadows. The shot of KESTREL was taken with the 60mm Micro, pulled much further back from the front of the loco (about four feet). Focus was then set to seven feet (aperture F.45). It takes a bit of juggling to get the exact sweet spot.

 

Some Down trains next...............

 

 

[Tony Wright]

A couple of Down trains........

 

All these were taken with the 35mm lens.

 

 

There is a signal here to get an elevated shot, as A1 60128 BONGRACE (DJH/Wright/Rathbone) heads the Up Yorkshire Pullman. 

 

 

Taken from the footbridge (actually a box behind it) we see A2/3 60513 DANTE (DJH/Wright/Rathbone) heading an Up fast freight. 

 

 

And, from platform level..........

 

Has anyone else tried any tight-perspective model railway photography? 

[Tony Teague]

11 hours ago, Tony Wright said:

Has anyone else tried any tight-perspective model railway photography? 

 

Here are a couple of mine, although not possessing a lens that will go down to f.29, I confess to having used 'focus stacking' which I am sure Tony will identify as being the devil's work!

 

 

The first shows a Hornby M7 on a short local milk train & displays one of Steve Hewitt's excellent semaphore signals (well part of it!).

 

 

The second shows a Hornby N15 heading a Southern postal train which has benefited from being weathered by the late Mick Bonwick.

 

I find that there are two issues with this type of photography, being first, that it is quite difficult to find places to easily fit the camera, and second, that it shows up all of the things that you wish you had done better!

 

Tony

 

 

Edited January 30, 2022 by Tony Teague

[Dunsignalling]

34044 'Woolacombe' alongside 71B shed, taken with the camera resting on the down platform. Note the front step, indicating it has visited Salisbury depot at some time!

 

Lumix G9, Leica 12-60 zoom at 22mm, f/3.3 (wide open), but using the in-camera focus stacking facility. I've since acquired 15mm and 25mm prime lenses (the camera is half-frame format, so equivalent to 30/50mm), which I'd use if taking this shot today.

 

The G9 is my general purpose "outfit" camera. It's not as bulky as Tony's Nikons, but if I contemplated doing a lot of this, I'd probably supplement it with the much smaller GX9 body, which would get into many more positions. 

 

Only post-processing in the laptop was cropping, and a bit of tweaking to brightness etc.

 

 

John

Edited January 30, 2022 by Dunsignalling

[AdamOrmorod]

18 hours ago, Headstock said:

 

I think Dapol have it right, despite the mind the gap effect. The cladding band intersects the front of the V.

Does it intersect? To me it looks like there's one rivet's gap between the firebox cladding band and the front of the v. Am I looking at the wrong thing?

 

18 hours ago, gr.king said:

 

Aha, now I see what you mean. Just the equivalent of a band width added at the front. I can see that making some sense. A top view from the thirties would still be nice to confirm the truth.

It occurred to me to have a look at the 1935 model of Silver Link in the NRM, which also seems to have the gap between the v and a continuous firebox band. I appreciate using a model as a reference is a dangerous game! Photos pinched from Science Museum Group website

 

 

[Tony Wright]

1 hour ago, Tony Teague said:

 

Here are a couple of mine, although not possessing a lens that will go down to f.29, I confess to having used 'focus stacking' which I am sure Tony will identify as being the devil's work!

 

 

The first shows a Hornby M7 on a short local milk train & displays one of Steve Hewitt's excellent semaphore signals (well part of it!).

 

 

The second shows a Hornby N15 heading a Southern postal train which has benefited from being weathered by the late Mick Bonwick.

 

I find that there are two issues with this type of photography, being first, that it is quite difficult to find places to easily fit the camera, and second, that it shows up all of the things that you wish you had done better!

 

Tony

 

 

You've achieved fantastic depth of field, Tony,

 

And I can see the merit of stacking. Does it always work, however?

 

In the past, I've found aberrations in the stacking process (not by me, because, as you say, like DCC, I consider it 'the spawn of Satan' and leave it well alone, but by examining others' work). Please don't think I'm being hyper-critical, but the process seems to have got a bit muddled in rendering the M7's chimney and dome - they're oddly blurred. 

 

I've also seen examples where trackwork has been completely mixed up as the perspective recedes. 

 

It'll be interesting to see whether Mike Wild uses the technique when he photographs LB for Hornby Magazine on Tuesday. 

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

[Tony Wright]

54 minutes ago, Dunsignalling said:

34044 'Woolacombe' alongside 71B shed, taken with the camera resting on the down platform. Note the front step, indicating it has visited Salisbury depot at some time!

 

Lumix G9, Leica 12-60 zoom at 22mm, f/3.3 (wide open), but using the in-camera focus stacking facility. I've since acquired 15mm and 25mm prime lenses (the camera is half-frame format, so equivalent to 30/50mm), which I'd use if taking this shot today.

 

The G9 is my general purpose "outfit" camera. It's not as bulky as Tony's Nikons, but if I contemplated doing a lot of this, I'd probably supplement it with the much smaller GX9 body, which would get into many more positions. 

 

Only post-processing in the laptop was cropping, and a bit of tweaking to brightness etc.

 

 

John

Impressive depth of field.

 

Thanks for showing us.

 

You're right about the Nikon being bulky..........

 

 

I've surprised myself by realising that I've had this Df for nearly eight years now.

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

[Dunsignalling]

1 hour ago, Tony Wright said:

You've achieved fantastic depth of field, Tony,

 

And I can see the merit of stacking. Does it always work, however?

 

In the past, I've found aberrations in the stacking process (not by me, because, as you say, like DCC, I consider it 'the spawn of Satan' and leave it well alone, but by examining others' work). Please don't think I'm being hyper-critical, but the process seems to have got a bit muddled in rendering the M7's chimney and dome - they're oddly blurred. 

 

I've also seen examples where trackwork has been completely mixed up as the perspective recedes. 

 

It'll be interesting to see whether Mike Wild uses the technique when he photographs LB for Hornby Magazine on Tuesday. 

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

The in-camera facility does occasionally suffer from "artifacts" where the camera just has too much to deal with. So long as one carries out the "merge" immediately, one can have another go. I didn't in this case.

 

Not "tight perspective", but attached is that example (note the weirdness in the greenery behind the bridge), together with one that did work very nicely. Note that both were taken hand-held!

 

These were among only my second session using the focus-stacking facility and I think I have since learned enough to be able to avoid that particular problem. All that lattice work probably overloaded the camera's processing capacity that day!

 

John

 

Edited January 30, 2022 by Dunsignalling

[Tony Wright]

Some more 'depth of field' shots from a few years ago; all taken with the Df with the 35mm lens.........

 

 

The focus was set to be on the second carriage, resulting in the slight blurring of the signals. Stacking, I assume, would have resulted in the signals being sharp, but would this have improved the image? Without being too arty-f@rty, the eye is invited to look at the train.

 

 

From a similar angle, but this time the focus is closer, resulting in the signals being sharp (as is the loco and carriage). This time, the further distance is blurred, but (I hope) this more mimics actual perception. If stacking rendered the distant objects pin-sharp, would this have improved the picture?

 

The point I'm trying to make is that do we always need infinite depth of field in our model railway pictures? Obviously, my depth of field is achieved optically, so will have limitations.

 

As here. 

 

 

The main elements of interest in this picture are razor-sharp, but the canopy edge to the top right certainly isn't. 

 

 

Similarly here, with the canopy and platform edge to the left being slightly less-than-sharp.

 

 

The vans to the bottom right are 'fuzzy', but (again, I hope) the eye is invited to look further. 

 

Model railway photography is an excellent example of a hobby within a hobby. 

 

 

[Tony Teague]

39 minutes ago, Tony Wright said:

 

And I can see the merit of stacking. Does it always work, however?

 

In the past, I've found aberrations in the stacking process (not by me, because, as you say, like DCC, I consider it 'the spawn of Satan' and leave it well alone, but by examining others' work). Please don't think I'm being hyper-critical, but the process seems to have got a bit muddled in rendering the M7's chimney and dome - they're oddly blurred. 

 

I've also seen examples where trackwork has been completely mixed up as the perspective recedes. 

 

 

No, it doesn't always work - and unlike Dunsignalling, my images are post-processed using a programme called Helicon Focus; the two images I posted are each made up from about 30 frames.

 

Where I find the software has difficulty is when an object such as a loco chimney has a considerable distance between it and whatever else is behind it, when as you say, it can select the wrong image to sample. Later versions of this software are improved over what went before and there are also options for manual intervention, but given that the outputs are only going to be used on socail medai, such as RMWeb, and at very low definition, I don't generally feel that I could justify the time to work through and validate or correct every pixel!

 

I have exchanged mails with @AYmod on this and I think that broadly, he experiences the same issues!

 

Tony

[Tony Teague]

6 minutes ago, Tony Wright said:

The point I'm trying to make is that do we always need infinite depth of field in our model railway pictures? Obviously, my depth of field is achieved optically, so will have limitations.

 

Model railway photography is an excellent example of a hobby within a hobby. 

 

 

Totally agree on both counts!

[PMP]

13 hours ago, Tony Wright said:

 

Has anyone else tried any tight-perspective model railway photography? 

 

This one’s always been a popular image, taken with Canon 2.8 70-200 deliberately focused on the loco.

 

Very much deliberate forced perspective on this image

 

[Tony Wright]

45 minutes ago, Dunsignalling said:

The in-camera facility does occasionally suffer from "artifacts" where the camera just has too much to deal with. So long as one carries out the "merge" immediately, one can have another go. I didn't in this case.

 

Not "tight perspective", but attached is that example (note the weirdness in the greenery behind the bridge), together with one that did work very nicely. Note that both were taken hand-held!

 

These were among only my second session using the focus-stacking facility and I think I have since learned enough to be able to avoid that particular problem. All that lattice work probably overloaded the camera's processing capacity that day!

 

John

 

Ah, yes........

 

Jeff Day's lovely Sanford and Banwell in P4.

 

 

 

Did you take your pictures of it at Southampton? It's interesting how our two cameras have rendered the colours differently.

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

 

 

[Tony Wright]

33 minutes ago, Tony Teague said:

 

No, it doesn't always work - and unlike Dunsignalling, my images are post-processed using a programme called Helicon Focus; the two images I posted are each made up from about 30 frames.

 

Where I find the software has difficulty is when an object such as a loco chimney has a considerable distance between it and whatever else is behind it, when as you say, it can select the wrong image to sample. Later versions of this software are improved over what went before and there are also options for manual intervention, but given that the outputs are only going to be used on socail medai, such as RMWeb, and at very low definition, I don't generally feel that I could justify the time to work through and validate or correct every pixel!

 

I have exchanged mails with @AYmod on this and I think that broadly, he experiences the same issues!

 

Tony

Thanks Tony,

 

So, there are two stacking processes? One, in the camera itself, and the other in a photo programme afterwards? Can the two be combined? The process is certainly effective, either way.

 

I can spend up to an hour getting the most from an image (but, then, many are published in print, so that time taken is essential). What takes the time is cutting round items such as telegraph poles, signals and building roofs, etc, to give a neutral background which the designer can then do what he/she likes afterwards (though NOT digital smoke!). However long it takes, it's still much quicker than using transparent, self-adhesive frisk film, a scalpel and designers' gouache on a 12" x 8" print; I'd never want to go back to that. 

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

 

 

[Dunsignalling]

5 minutes ago, Tony Wright said:

Ah, yes........

 

Jeff Day's lovely Sanford and Banwell in P4.

 

 

 

Did you take your pictures of it at Southampton? It's interesting how our two cameras have rendered the colours differently.

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

 

 

Yes, I like yours. Did you use any extra lighting? I was rather winging it as I'd only had the camera a few months and hadn't yet familiarised myself with it sufficiently to take the settings off the factory defaults. 

 

It has "photo style" modes, which simulate (allegedly) different kinds of film. Default is "Standard" but I've since developed a preference for "Natural" which softens the colour response somewhat and lightens shadows to some extent.

 

John

 

 

[Tony Wright]

39 minutes ago, PMP said:

 

This one’s always been a popular image, taken with Canon 2.8 70-200 deliberately focused on the loco.

 

Very much deliberate forced perspective on this image

 

Thanks for showing these Paul,

 

I really like the last one, mainly because it's sharp. In that respect, it's by far the best; a personal opinion, of course.

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

Edited January 30, 2022 by Tony Wright
to add something

[Headstock]

1 hour ago, Ade the Pianist 4468 said:

Does it intersect? To me it looks like there's one rivet's gap between the firebox cladding band and the front of the v. Am I looking at the wrong thing?

 

It occurred to me to have a look at the 1935 model of Silver Link in the NRM, which also seems to have the gap between the v and a continuous firebox band. I appreciate using a model as a reference is a dangerous game! Photos pinched from Science Museum Group website

 

 

 

Good afternoon Ade the Pianist 4468,

 

As you say its a model. Take a look at the arrangement on Saver Link as built. A smooth transition into the edge of the V, no gap.

 

 

 

Edited January 30, 2022 by Headstock
add info

[Tony Wright]

1 minute ago, Dunsignalling said:

Yes, I like yours. Did you use any extra lighting? I was rather winging it as I'd only had the camera a few months and hadn't yet familiarised myself with it sufficiently to take the settings off the factory defaults. 

 

It has "photo style" modes, which simulate (allegedly) different kinds of film. Default is "Standard" but I've since developed a preference for "Natural" which softens the colour response somewhat and lightens shadows to some extent.

 

John

 

 

Thanks John,

 

Any 'extra' lighting was provided (as usual) by pulses of fill-in flash from my big Metz gun; not coupled to the camera, just fired several times manually during the exposures (about three seconds on average). The lens aperture would be between F.29 and F.45 (dependent on which was being used), and the gun set to F.16. The camera was supported on my Benbo tripod.

 

Regards,

 

Tony.