Has Digital Improved Railfan Photography?


IN HIS JULY 1997 CAMERA BAG column “Dig- ital is Coming” (also on the R&R web site un- der the “Railfan Classics” link) Editor Steve Barry wrote “Like it or not, photography is about to undergo the biggest change it has had since the advent of the 35mm camera. We are on the threshold of the computer age in photography . . .” Reading that 1997 col- umn recently I was struck by how much pho- tography has indeed changed in the decade and a half since. There has even been change since I wrote “Digital Photography for the Railfan – Is It Right For You?” in the April 2007 R&R, where I mentioned seeing just one digital camera (there were probably oth- ers) at a 2003 Cass railfan event. But at the recent 2013 Chama Fall Steam event on the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic out of Chama, N.M., the numbers were reversed. Although there were surely more in use, I saw only one fan with a film camera (a Pentax 6×7) be- sides my own (and I was shooting film and digital). On the other hand, many of the roadside chasers were using cell phones and a couple even were hold- ing out their iPads. In fact, digital tech- nology has taken over much of the world. In 1997 Steve asked “How many of you had home computers five years ago? Today (1997), com- puters are everywhere.” Today (2013), our lives pretty much run on computer technology. TV’s are digitized and car engines are comput- erized. TV news is “filmed”


digitally, and


we watch movies on dig- ital discs. “Moving pic- tures” are possible with the cameras we use for still photos. Our phones are now “smart” and we read books on comput- ers. Heck, even my pock- et watch has internet access, a digital camera and built-in phone. Steve also mentioned how CD’s (and now DVD’s and Blue Rays) have replaced vinyl recordings. (I guess I am still in the dark ages, preferring to record se- lections from my large record collection onto cassettes vs.


digitally


off music sites, to listen to on long railfanning trips.)


Even our language is “computerized.”


We


speak of dot-coms, brick and mortars, USB, wi-fi, 4G, and a cloud is no


longer just a fluffy looking white thing in the sky. We Google, Bing, Like, Pin, Tweet, download, use apps, Flickr, Photoshop, GPS, “burn” DVD’s, surf the World Wide Web, buy and sell online, meet on Webinars and talk on Blackberries and Androids. Conversely, long time traditional phrases like “dial me up” rate a “huh?” from younger folks.


Digitized, Simplified, and Cheapanized Change in photography is nothing new, from glass plates to roll film to digital, along with the development of automatic focus and ex- posure, motor drives, and better lenses, all making taking good train photos easier. Now new digital advances are enhancing railfan photography even further. At any given ISO, digital is less “grainy” than comparable film ISOs, and we can change ISO instantly to maintain fast shutter speeds when clouds roll in. Viewing screens allow us to check for accurate exposure while trackside. With film, we would not know until days later when our processed film came back if we


Off with their heads! I never printed this image taken from a vestibule of a Union Pacific steam excursion behind UP 8444 because every vestibule between me and the locomotive had a head poking out of it, each probably doing exactly what I was doing (taking a photo of the locomotive up ahead). Having the heads in the scene for me ruined the “authentic” look of the photo, but 25 years later digital technology (Photoshop) made it easy to remove the heads for a “clean” image.


13


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64