August 29, 2024 11:00 am
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As described yesterday, a night out at Pittsburgh’s Sly Fox Brewery allowed for some fun socializing time, as well as multiple opportunities to photograph passing rail traffic. The Pittsburgh Subdivision tracks of the CSX outfit run directly past the brewery – and since I like both beer and trains – it’s become a regular ‘spot’ for me to kill a few brain cells and spend some camera time.
Our Lady of the Pentacle was accompanying your Humble Narrator on this particular evening, so food was ordered, and we ended up hanging out at the establishment for a few hours with a friend.
Good times, I tell’s ya, you’re lucky if you got ‘em, good times.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
CSX was having a fairly busy night, and there were trains moving through pretty frequently. The drill goes like this: I’m sitting there, joking around and sipping on a pint when the signal arms begin chiming, and then a train horn blares in the distance. A humble narrator leaps to his feat saying ‘here we go’ and scuttles over to the fencing separating the tracks from the public seating area. One rapidly figures out the camera’s exposure triangle for the current conditions, and then gets busy.
The trains are moving quite a bit faster than perception suggests, and the lens I was using operates best at narrow apertures (f8) so a higher ISO (800) is called for. Ideally, shutter speed should be at least about 1/500th of a second in this sort of scenario. That freezes the action, and the higher ISO allows for detail without the shadows consuming all the detail.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
When it got actually dark, the 24-240mm zoom lens had been swapped off the camera in favor of the 35mm f1.8 lens which replaced it. The sensor ISO sensitivity setting was jacked up to ISO 6400, and the shutter speed reduced to the lowest I could go without motion blur becoming a problem – about 1/200th.
Back tomorrow, with something different, at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
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Posted by Mitch Waxman
Categories: Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh
Tags: CSX, photowalk, Pittsburgh, railroad, South Side Flats
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Nice night shot
By Steve on August 30, 2024 at 9:51 am