Pictures of Locos at speed

[298]

No problem!  Select the locomotive then choose "inverse" in the Selection menu before applying the motion blur filter.  The filter will then operate on everything except the loco, as below:

 

 

Nice prototype, it must help to use a steam loco without any connecting rods...

[MikeOxon]

There is a panned photo of GNR No.1 at speed, apparently taken during the Darlington works centenary.  The connecting rods seem suspiciously sharp!  The photo appears in "The Illustrated History of British Steam Railways, David Ross, Parragon 2004"

 

Another factor which influences these photos is 'depth of field'.  I suspect A_S used a fast telephoto lens for his car shots, which has added to the blurring effect because of the very shallow depth of field provided by this lens.

 

(edited to remove photo - my original caption said the centenary was in 1938 but I now find it was 1953, so the photo may still be in copyright)

[A_S]

I've just checked the exif info and the lens in question on all 3 appears to be my 70-200 F4L so you are right in that respect mike, the F1 cars @ 200mm and the Porsche at 70mm. Perhaps there are not many opportunities to use that sort of focal length in railway photography? (Just speculating?)

 

 

Just checking the portraits thread - something like this would be a prime candidate for such a shot, and I feel would add so much to what ortherwise is a pretty standard picture without much interesting detail forground or background:

 

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/73847-locomotive-portraits/page-11&do=findComment&comment=1129507

 

If anyone can suggest anywhere around the Sutton Coldfield area where I could try this for myself then I will. When I say suggest i mean somewhere where I can get a similar perspective and pan the train along the line from about 20m or more

 

Andrew

[eastwestdivide]

Panning for gold - or experiments with panned shots...

 

Thanks to the OP for planting the idea, I took a few trips to a local bridge where you can get a fairly side-on view of the trains (even if they're wrong side for the sun), I tried out various combinations of shutter speed and focal length, as well as different positions.

The speed of most of these trains would be between 40-60mph. All taken at ISO 200 or 400 in sun or fairly bright cloud, and all using an 18-200 lens on a DSLR with an APS-C sensor (not a full-frame sensor). I pre-focused on where I wanted the train to be, rather than relying on my fairly slow auto-focus jittering over a moving target.

The file names (visible if you hover over) show shutter speed and focal length - most are taken at the wider end of things rather than any extreme telephoto. None are cropped or otherwise processed.

 

Lessons?

Hard to get it right.

You don't need a particularly slow shutter speed - I think my best ones here are at 1/90 and 1/125. That might well vary with a faster or slower train speed. (For comparison, if I'm taking a shot with the train deliberately blurred, I'll use a tripod and 1/30th or slower).

You can still get the effect even if the train is close to head-on, but it's more pronounced if you're side-on (as you'd expect from the relative movement of the background and the camera)

Framing is harder, as you're concentrating on the motion of the train rather than what's in the background or the position of the front and back relative to the edges of the viewfinder.

Watch out that you've got a clear swing as you move the camera.

 

I don't think any of these could be described as panning for gold - they won't win any prizes, but hopefully the experiences might help anyone else willing to give it a try.

 

At 1/45th second:

 

At 1/45th and deliberately tilted for dramatic effect:

(not quite right, but I like this effect, and will probably try it again)

 

At 1/90th:

This one was going much slower, approaching a red, so it's not at all obvious that I panned it:

Focus at the wrong point - I'd pre-focused on the track, but head-on, the train is a lot closer than where I focused:

 

Going away from the camera:

 

More at 1/90th:

Still at 1/90th:

 

Now at 1/125th:

(I reckon this might be the best of the bunch, with a little cropping and lightening)

 

At 1/180th:

(Not too bad either, other than the bush in the way)

 

1/350th and accidentally tilted as my strap got caught up:

 

1/350th:

 

At 1/1000th - I flicked the shutter speed dial the wrong way

[Oldddudders]

I think depth-of-field can help here, and of course this puts those of us with smaller sensors at a disadvantage. Even though the 18-200 becomes a 27-300, it retains the greater depth of field of its actual focal length. So max aperture is important to limit depth of field, and give a further distinction between the intended subject and the background. I suggest that the shot of Raymond Narac's 2007 Porsche in post #26 was probably taken at full aperture, and the closeness helped by limiting d-o-f.

[Glorious NSE]

I use this technique from time to time, either when doing the 'trying something a bit different with an everyday subject' angle...

(220028 at Didcot, 9th June 2012 - there's potential for shooting pan shots of trains on the avoiding line through the gaps in the greenery here...)

 

Or alternatively, when attempting (not always completely successfully) to capture something which is moving way too fast for my kit to stop in the available light... 

 

(Didcot Oct 2011 - 75mph intermodal, side-on, full dull day...)

 

One challenge for railway photographers that motorsport photographers will suffer less from is field of view - we don't get the benefit of large, empty, well maintained runoff area's with minimal greenery to get in the way! - One good reason for the 3/4 being more popular is that in many locations it's almost all you can do....

[eastwestdivide]

Following the links, 1/40th for the XC, 1/125th for the container.

 

How many failures do you get for the good ones like the XC above?

[Glorious NSE]

Probably about 2/3rds binned (with a little practice), at that very slow speed, but you get 2 goes with most trains there, 220s brake disks make a nice feature and the number is also handy (when it's a pain in the neck on a wedgie shot!)

[Glorious NSE]

Another way...this technique is much harder to pull off than panning, but if you pull it off can look quite impressive - I think this is the closest I've managed (which i'd rate as 'close, but no cigar') - the technique is to zoom out as you shoot, and if you can zoom out keeping the train in the same place (relative) then you get a 'deep' speed blur with a mostly sharp, fixed train...

 

[eastwestdivide]

That zoom-blur technique - I've seen a photo where it was taken head-on, so that the blur appears to radiate outwards from the point of focus. Think it would work on a stationary subject?

 

Aside from that, I think I've found another answer to the OP's question as to why so few - it's quite hard to pull it off successfully.

[Glorious NSE]

Yep - would probably work on a head-on shot of something stopped...

 

Definately trickier, but every so often it just 'comes right' - the payoff is good when that happens...

 

 

And with the Didcot ones, it's a great place to watch trains, but the conventional shot of anything on the avoiding lines tends to be 'Meh!' at best, so you might as well have a play, you don't need to show folks all the ones you delete...  

 

[A_S]

some really good examples there and it shows that if you get it right it looks fantastic.

 

I've been thinking of somewhere I can go locally to try it, but I'm not an expert on the local lines (apart from x city towards bham) and I cant really think of anywhere at the moment. Perhaps if I found somewhere in the severn valley that I can look across the river/valley and get a good view of the line?

 

Ian, the exif for the Narac Porsche is below:

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/andrew_s84/4952618604/meta/

 

for some reason i was shooting at ISO 400 which has pushed the apature down to F22, not wide open! (you can see all the dust spots..!). I wouldnt normally shoot at that apature, I think coming from head on shots at copse (this is taken at Maggots, Silverstone) I would have needed to quick shutter to "stop" the cars coming towards me and I hadn't changed the ISO. In any case the effect is the speed of the pan in this case because you are very close.

[Peter Kazmierczak]

Glorious NSE, on 21 Aug 2013 - 16:32, said:

I use this technique from time to time, either when doing the 'trying something a bit different with an everyday subject' angle...

(220028 at Didcot, 9th June 2012 - there's potential for shooting pan shots of trains on the avoiding line through the gaps in the greenery here...)

I do like your shot of the Voyager. Hadn't realised the wheels were so small. Makes it look like they've put on a bogie from the wrong scale.

[Glorious NSE]

Yeah they do look rather 'tippy toe' don't they!

 

 

 

I've been thinking of somewhere I can go locally to try it, but I'm not an expert on the local lines (apart from x city towards bham) and I cant really think of anywhere at the moment. Perhaps if I found somewhere in the severn valley that I can look across the river/valley and get a good view of the line?

 

You don't neccesarily have to be a looong way back from the tracks, I would think for those Didcot ones I was less than 100' away from the train, the 87 was shot from the opposite platform at Carlisle! - I think anywhere that you can put a couple of track widths between you and the target would be acheivable (although maybe harder to do the closer it gets). It doesn't even neccesarily need to be somewhere that the trains are moving very fast, to some extent you can do that anywhere, and on anything, but it does get easier if the train is moving faster... 

 

I would suggest that somewhere where you can (at least mostly) get a clear view of the running gear is  something good to aim for in a location - you can grab views between (for example) lineside trees, but it takes a little practice.

 

I would suggest that somewhere where there's some scenery behind it is a good aim also (looking up on an embankment you'd be relying on the foreground to be blurred to convey it, I think this works best if it's 'in the scenery' a bit.)

 

I would suggest somewhere that you can follow the train on a relatively long field of view (several seconds at least) - the biggest 'mistake' I find myself doing is to move the camera in an arc rather than a line whilst you're following, and you end up with an angled image, which looks a bit strange...

 

Two places i've tried it in the midlands are Rugeley (This was back in June from the side of the bypass, North of town):

 

 

And Rugby (these were shot a little over a month back, from near the end of the London end bay platform):

 

 

I reckon the long platform at the North end of Stafford would work also.

[bluebottle]

Sorry and all that, but however much you wave your cameras about at them, they're still boxes on wheels, aren't they?

 

(Ducks, quickly) ...

[Froxfield2012]

I have read this thread with interest.  My background with railway photography goes back to the 50s and the great railway photographers like Earley, Ashman and Treacy.  I was brought up to think that pin sharp was the first absolute of railway photography.  And of course the tradition was always to try to capture the whole train and not just the front bit.  Locomotive portraits were taken at rest in sheds, etc.

 

Why the tradition I wonder?  Certainly not necessarily shutter speed: cameras in the 50s could achieve a notional 1/2,000th.  Although not always accurate(!), certainly fast enough.  And certainly not poor lenses:  all fast enough and sharp enough, although limited in coping with issues of colour.  Perhaps first and foremost for those days would be, "Have you ever tried panning with a quarter or half plate reflex, using a cloth over your head and dark slides etc.?"  Second, most of those photographers worked on the lineside, not from a distance so the train was passing too close to pan most times:  trains are much bigger objects than cars or bikes.  Third, those great photographers (I think particularly of David Fish and Peter Bowles in Devon) who did often shoot from distance were at least as interested in capturing the landscape (with the train in it).  Can I also suggest that they all called themselves "Railway" photographers not "Train" photographers or "Locomotive" photographers?  The general infrastructure around the train was always of some interest to them:  and of course now often "gold dust" for the railway modeller.

 

The first member of the Railway Photographic Society to really advocate a format as small as 35mm was, as far as I can recall, one Pursey Short (some of whose work appears in Railway Magazines back in the 50s).  And there is no doubt that back then, the definition and level of detail resolution available was less than ideal: film simply did not offer sufficiently fine grain.  But the ability to throw the camera around to dramatic effect is really dependent on having smaller format equipment.  Serious photographers back then tended not to want to suffer the degradation in quality offered by 35mm film.  M W Earley, for example, only turned to "smaller" two and a quarter squared in his old age.  He would never have compromised with 35mm.  Those photographers who did turn to 35mm tried to use the "grainy" effect of the medium to their advantage in photographing dark and smoky scenes, aided by the fact that steam was entering its final decline.  From a technical standpoint, as I digitise my own and my father's work from the 50s and 60s, the difference in image quality from quarter plate to two and a quarter to 35mm is clear.  So perhaps that is where the tradition for sharp three quarter view came from.

 

Of course, there were exceptions (some of them have been named above) who produced the occasional "panned" shot:  it was a very small proportion of Blenkinsop's work, for example.  And it is very much each to his own.  As an "old-timer" I struggle to like disconnect fronts of trains against blurred backgrounds, or indeed disconnected fronts of trains, missing buffers or fuzzy photographs at all.  I still have some of the Railway Photographic Society criticism sheets (yes, they used to circulate pints and write criticism of one another's efforts!).  Some of them make one's eyes water and would make even the most aggressive comments on the average web forum look mild?  Most of the photographs I see today would have been drummed out of town!!  So, having proved myself firmly to be in the "Grumpy Old Man" category I will follow bluebottle and duck quickly.

 

It proves only one thing.  Time moves on and likes/dislikes change.  I suppose one has to try hard to do something to make a diesel interesting to photograph.  Oops, ducks again...

 

Richard

[A_S]

I appreciate that historically things may have been done that way but I don't think it can be used to explain why things are stil done that way - as an art ,photography comes from the minds eye, it's all about what an individual can see as artistic rather than being defined by rigid criteria set by other people, hence I'm surprised people seem to stick to one form of loco portraiture.

 

Having said that I went down to the SVR on Friday and had a drive round to try and find somewhere to pan but with the amount of trees I couldn't find a suitable place - I know there are places. A bit more research required.

[robmcg]

HI all,

 

I'm just wondering why people do not take panning shots at slower shutter speeds to capture the movement of a train?

 

I've not got any examples myself as I dont photograph locos, but i've got a lot taken in motorsport.

 

Forgive me if there is a technical reason for this, for example a telephoto lense at long distance, for example photographing an engine on a viaduct would not allow you pan fast enough to capture the motion etc - but still shots with the wheels and rods in motion should be more than possible, however everyone seems to "stop" the loco and not capture any movement for some reason?

 

even googling doesn't yield too much

 

Andy

A little panning in my experience. Started photographing trains with a box brownie in 1959, and always enjoyed the photos of the greats like Treacy via my father's magazines. Ended up using 35mm then a 6 x 6 reflex camera in the 1960s, and now when I photograph models with a digital camera I often enjoy adding a panned effect with a little editing.

 

 

Rob

[bluebottle]

A_S, can I ask, as a matter of interest, what proportion of your photographs of racing cars - (and now of trains?) - are panned shots of the type you've shown us? And have you experimented with any other techniques such as zooming during exposure?

[B954673]

pure accident this one, I like it, but don't stare at it, it makes your eyes go funny

[Dunsignalling]

I used to take panned motorsport shots (mainly hillclimbs so slower than in A_S's Porsche shot).

 

Back then I used a Pentax MX (manual focus and exposure) with a 200mm lens and eventually got a reasonable proportion of decent results.

 

However, the failure rate made it an expensive business and required good note-taking so I could work out what I'd done right or wrong when the results came back from the processors.

 

I haven't yet tried it with my DSLR on railway subjects but I'd guess the technique to be Shutter Priority and play around with the ISO to get the aperture where it's needed for d.o.f. purposes.

 

Practice comes free nowadays and I can check the results immediately. Also, most lines have the same sort of trains again and again through the day so I won't be missing anything vital before I start to get it right! 

 

John

[A_S]

A_S, can I ask, as a matter of interest, what proportion of your photographs of racing cars - (and now of trains?) - are panned shots of the type you've shown us? And have you experimented with any other techniques such as zooming during exposure?

 

 

Is that important?

 

I couldn't really give you an accurate proportion - I'd probably guesstimate about 30% of racing cars - but it depends on circuit, brief etc etc. In terms of trains, I can't say I've ever really photographed them seriously, only "holiday type" snaps when I've visited a preserved railway, no concerted effort to do anything seriously, hence why I started this thread to question whether there was a technical reason why people do not, as has been suggested, trying to find the space to do such shots seem to be the main limiting factor, also trains at 25mph on a preserved line (for instance) would not be easy to make the effect very pronounced. I took a shot at under 1/100s on friday and the loco was still pretty static in terms of wheel movement and rod movement so to get something acceptable you are going to have to go way into the relms of camera shake.

 

I've never tried the zoom out during exposure technique on something moving. The example of the Cross Country above is great though.

 

Andy

[jonny777]

HI all,

 

I'm just wondering why people do not take panning shots at slower shutter speeds to capture the movement of a train?

 

I've not got any examples myself as I dont photograph locos, but i've got a lot taken in motorsport.

 

Forgive me if there is a technical reason for this, for example a telephoto lense at long distance, for example photographing an engine on a viaduct would not allow you pan fast enough to capture the motion etc - but still shots with the wheels and rods in motion should be more than possible, however everyone seems to "stop" the loco and not capture any movement for some reason?

 

even googling doesn't yield too much

 

Andy

 

This is not quite on topic, but in a moment of avant-garde madness I did take this on a lower than normal shutter speed.

 

 

Class 33 on Bath Road, taken through the passing vehicles of the St Blazey - Severn Tunnel Junction Speedlink service.

[MikeOxon]

Time moves on and likes/dislikes change.

I think the creative vision was always there but the technology of the time was 'too difficult' for most people. 

 

Lack of inhibition enabled the very young Jacques Henri Lartigue to achieve remarkable effects at the very beginning of the 20th century - see,for example, http://www.local-life.com/krakow/articles/jacques-henri-lartigue

 

Nowadays, with technologies such as autofocus and digital photography, which enable us to experiment at no cost and very little effort, plus the possibilities offered by digital image processing, it is much easier to experiment.  Thus, it is now possible for many more people to fulfil their creative ambitions.

[Glorious NSE]

Sorry and all that, but however much you wave your cameras about at them, they're still boxes on wheels, aren't they?

 

(Ducks, quickly) ...

Pendolino? Boxy? Should have gone to specsavers!