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Cheers for the advice. I have tried long exposure with light trickery before. Below is one I did a few years ago. It was a small shadow box layout (a quarter of a roundhouse scene with a mirror at one side) using car headlight bulbs positioned above pinholes in the roof. There is a few more pics somewhere in my blog. I have read about DOF and F Stop settings, but it’s difficult to understand if you are an amateur like me. I tried out the white balance thing today and will post tomorrow. I do have a true zoom on the bridge and will also be sure to have a go to see if it improves the focus.

This afternoon she took her first steps on an umbilical power cord having been weighted with lead in the front boiler and bunker rear. This is the first time I have fitted an MSC JH 40.1 motor and single stage gearbox. Quite a substantial unit for a small loco. She still needs some final centre wheel spring adjustment but she seems very smooth using pure DC power.

A good opportunity to evaluate the liveries. Design-wise, I prefer the older ones. Smaller letters tend to look better on wagons in my opinion. But less visible from afar of course. It's interesting how on several companies the trend seems to have gone from small(er) letters to large(r) ones to small again over the decades.

Just like soldering, depth of field is pretty simple if explained properly which I am now about to try and do at way past bed time and with a little beer inside! The smaller the aperture (the hole in the lens), the greater the depth of field so more will be in focus. Just remember that a small aperture is a high f number, say f22. The problem with using a small aperture / high f number is that it lets in less light so a longer exposure is needed (the hole needs to be open for longer), or in other words a slower shutter speed, so seconds rather than thousands of a second. If you have the camera securely on a tripod and the subject is not moving as in your case this is not a problem. If anything is moving in the scene you need a much faster shutter speed and thus a more open aperture which gives less depth. Hopefully you are still with me! I mentioned before that if you have the camera further away and you zoom in you will get a better depth. The only other variable is the ISO, a low ISO , say 100 will give better quality but will need more light so exposure times will be great or the aperture needs to be larger. A high ISO (1600 plus depending on camera). means you need less light for a correct exposure so apertures can be smaller or shutter speeds quicker BUT the higher the ISO the lower the quality. Every camera and situation is different so it is really just a case of experimenting to get the best balance between the variables, this is certainly much easier and cheaper with digital cameras than the days of film. I am happy to have a chat if you want to PM me

Great photo.

Must be something amiss with your hearing then Graham !! I`m relatively confident at getting a good performance from those fold up single stage gearboxes, but this JH Motor is even better ( and large and powerful ) there is some noise but it is getting quieter since I`ve run it in gently for 5 mins so far. It`s such good quality that the whole thing over runs when power is suddenly stopped. The whole unit is untethered between the frames at the moment but there is absolutely no lifting or movement under power. I always find that by using pure DC power any binding or stiffness in motion becomes very apparent. The whole unit has been running sweetly from the outset. Never used one before (£56 so good value I think) and the motor only draws a steady 0.4 amps so I`m happy about the Zimo MX645. I`d certainly invest in another. John

Of course I've just realised, with reversible wagons, if I decide to standardise on Sprat & Winkle couplings I'll have to put hooks on both ends if I only put loops on the loco... Every silver lining has a cloud

Cheers Andy and brilliant work on getting rid of the shadow. I don't think the camera can be trained, but it does have an auto setting and I'll try to see if that sets a datum as you've suggested. I'm off to work now, but had a quick look a the other topic - I'll study it in detail later. Thanks for comment also. I'll contact you soon. Mike

Thanks KH1. I just wish I could afford a better camera. Under manual control it will only stop up to about F11 and then only with longer shutter speeds. It's limited but okay for something I won in a photo competition. I love your blog by the way and must sit down later and have a good long look at it. I'd really like to have a go at image stacking as it seems the way to go now for layout photography. Andy Y has explained it in principle to me, but it just seems like yet another skill that will take hours and hours to master. It will also mean spending money on equipment and programs and to be quite frank I'd rather spend my limited funds on trains! I agree about the democratic digital camera, I used to have a go a long exposure photography with 35mm film years ago. I got some interesting results but it was expensive and you had no way of knowing what you got until the pics came back from the developer. Photography really is a bit of a 'dark art' in my opinion and I really admire those who can grasp it. Thanks again for the advice and I'll be in touch. Mike

A few more pictures. I've shot these using the white balance feature that has been set to Tungsten. They are all ISO 100, F8 with variable shutter speed set automatically by the camera. This is the same scene as the one in the first shot above. Personally, I like the other shot with the more afternoon sun glow feel to it. It'd be interesting to know which one people prefer out of the two. Under zoom from about 1 meter away. The camera is quite good at these zoom in shots under manual control and has picked up some amazing detail. I can quite get my head around the beautifully rendered valves. Hornby has done a brilliant job with the Q1. Also note how the camera has picked up the hairs and odd bristle of the glass fibre pen used in the weathering process. I quite like this 'across the tracks' shot. My Third Rail insulators aren't the best though. Another light and shade shot. A lot of modellers don't like 2D textures, but I love that Scalescenes brick texture used on the Theatre building. The last shot demonstrates the mirror trick under the station roof. Under operation the layout makes use of a three foot 'black box' extension.

Am amazed at the results you get just using f8!

Some lovely work here, reminiscent of Mike Sharman with his cracking oddities. Please keep it up ! G

Now that's what I call a hard audience :-)

Now if you had put a LSWR van on one side and a LBSCR van on the other, that would have impressed me. What the heck, I'm impressed anyway. Have a good break!

Thanks very much, David. I spent the last few hours looking at the menu and finally found the WB button staring me in the face! It has the options to shoot under tungsten and 3 settings for fluorescent lights. I’m going to have a go tomorrow. That’s what I love about RMweb - the free advice. You also don’t have go through reams of words to get to the point. Thanks again. Mike.

Any 'yellowing' in your photos is caused by the colour temperature of the lights and will occur regardless of f-stop. If you are using normal household tungsten, or LED equivalents, they usually give off 'warm' light of about 2700-3000 Kelvin (K). So-called daylight lamps will have a colour temperature of approx. 6500K and, as the name suggests, give off a much bluer light similar to a sunny day outside. Most digital cameras have an adjustable white balance function which gives you a true white under most types of lighting. I'd be surprised if your camera doesn't have one tucked away in the operating menu somewhere. David