This is my go, Kx with Tamron 500mm mirror lens, ISO 200 and 1/400s




I took a load of shots, many of them not all that sharp, this is about as good as I could get. I was hoping for more, though this is also cropped from the camera jpg as I haven't had chance to play with the raw stuff yet. Doubt that will make it much clearer though.

Cheers. I was happy with the smoke (I'm pretty sure it is smoke from the firebox, the steam is used in driving the wheels) in those, both in terms of the texture and the way it helpfully covers the not-too-nice coaches and the diesel engine on the back end.

They're both quite heavily cropped so there's a limit to how large they can be. I will update a larger one when I get a minute - I usually scale them down to save bandwidth.

A couple of shots of Tornado just past Beeston, on the way to Chester on Saturday lunchtime.







As usual, any comments or criticism welcome. I think these worked a little better than the shots of Galatea from last week, as I've tried to keep the ISO down a bit more. I had a go at cloning out the wires in the second shot, but it didn't go well so I left them in. And those marks are birds, not a dirty lens.

I did catch Oliver Cromwell - after Chester, it came back to Crewe, and then through Nantwich and off again. Unfortunately it was totally dark by then, so you can imagine the results of no flash, hand-held and 16.57 through the station. If I figure out a way to turn them from "rubbish" to "atmospheric", I'll post one somewhere.

Yes, I'm not familiar with the line from Wrexham so I figured I'd go for Tornado instead. Weather seems to be looking good for tomorrow.

I was quite pleased with catching that between the trees. Of course, one of the other shots has a telegraph pole slap bang in the centre of the loco, so not quite as good. I must confess to editing out some wires across the shot, and a lot of birds that make the lens look very dirty.

A shot of Galatea as it passed just after Beeston last Saturday afternoon. I'm not entirely happy with the sharpness of the image, especially around the loco itself, but maybe that's just down to the ISO 800.




I've played around with it a bit, and I'm also not sure I haven't over-darkened the sky.

As usual, any comments or critique are welcome, I'm out again at the weekend as Tornado is passing. Not sure whether to go for the same location or try somewhere different.

Thanks for the link. I have v8 but haven't done much with it, I must try to get around to it.

It depends on what kind of images they are, and what kind of quality you want out of them. I bought a cheapo slide scanner (35mm only) from Maplins for £20 when they opened a new shop locally, I think the regular price is around £30-35. It's OK, but I'm only scanning old B&W negatives and some colour slides, and they're scenes rather than photographic masterpieces. So I want the image more for what it recorded than because it's a great image, generally. It's basically a close-focussing webcam with a light source, in a handy box. They do versions that will scan directly onto an SD card, without a PC connection, which I imagine are quicker to use.

I did wonder about getting an old projector (loads of them at car boot sales and projecting onto a handy white surface, then taking a photo of the image. Probably would be no worse quality than the cheapo scanner. I have read that some "proper" scanners produce much better quality images, if your slides warrant it.

I've always used something around 3s exposure for firework shots. And I usually take too long a lens as well.

I always think the foreground helps with firework shots in general and with these in particular - my local displays have nothing in that regard, so I haven't been out shooting for 3-4 years until I can motivate myself to go to another location.

Last time I was in there I asked about used Pentax stuff, and they said the main reason they don't have any is that they didn't sell Pentax stuff new there, so people trading in wouldn't be coming there.

Ah, OK. I couldn't remember what mine was set to (with Eneloops) and that's set to auto-detect as well. I can't remember what firmware I'm on, though.