West Somerset Railway General Discussion

Final comment from me on this drift:-
The Vehicle Construction and Use Regulations require a vehicle speedometer accuracy to be in the range of -0% to +10% .That is as fitted to the car. My +3% comment earlier may have been confusing because that was for the instrument only. Things like the make of tyre, tread depth and tyre pressure also affect the accuracy. Different manufacturers tyres do differ in diameter for the same wheel size, tread depth causes about 2% difference between brand new and minimum legal tread depth and under inflated tyres will cause the speedo to over-read even more.

Oh, and if anyone thinks it would be cool to take the 15" rims off their passion wagon and fit the shiny, go faster 18" rims don't forget that your speedo will seriously UNDER read because of the greater circumference of the bigger rims. Watch out for the pretty flashing blue lights....

 

Simply wrong! Good results can be got with most kinds of camera, but it has to be handled by a competent photographer. To suggest otherwise is nonsense.

 

That's why I said "with practice". Being technically competent at photography isn't that hard a skill to learn, and almost anyone can pick it up.

 

Technical competance in using the equipment is just part of the skill. The phtotographer need to be able to see what nakes a good picture. and that does not come easily. But you said "taking a specific good photo requires a specific type of camera" which is nonsense except in very specialised circumstances not relevant to what we are discussing. The reality is that the person behind the camera is the most important fcator. It does not matter how good, or expensive, the camera unless the photographer knows what they are doing good results will be pure chance.

 

It's not nonsense at all. Possibly I should have phrased it: some cameras are no use for some applications. To expand on my earlier example: a number of my cameras are cheap folding rollfilm cameras that date circa 1930-60, with a limited aperture range and usually only a handful of shutter speeds. You cannot take a good picture of a moving train, even at 25mph, with a camera that has a fixed 1/60 shutter. On the other hand, the photos I do take with these cameras, especially those whose bellows could do with replacing, are simply impossible to take on any sort of digital camera - you can approximate some of the effect with careful post-processing, but it is not straightforward to do.

I'm not an iPhone user but I do use my Samsung phone camera. There are some shots that just don't work on this camera, and there are some that work much better on my phone camera than on an SLR or on any of my vintage cameras.

The reason I suggested to Robin that she try taking some of her "now" photos on a vintage camera is that it would be interesting - and it's something that producers of this sort of "then/now" pair rarely do - to take the modern photo on a vintage camera, so that it has some of the feel of a vintage camera that is almost impossible to reproduce with a modern one.

Now this is true - but it's not a particularly difficult skill to pick up. My three-year-old daughter loves photography; she hasn't learned the technical details of aperture, shutter speed and depth of field yet but she's as good at composition as most adults I know. Better than many.

 

This evening's I-phone efforts at Stogumber.

Robin

 

You have only quoted part of what I said in a way that distorts things. Having made a sweeping statement that plain wrong now you now try to narrow the argument just to 50 or more year old cameras. Just how many cameras of that vintage have you seen being used currently on the WSR? Not many! In fact I suspect that many of the static old shots used by Robin were taken with very simple, by modern standards, equipment. In fact it is quite possible to take shots of moving items with a good phone camera if you record a video and select the best frame. Likewise people can take hundreds of pictures and just select a good good one. That does not take much skill, just time and chance which is why you think a child can be a competent photographer. I come back to my main point which is skilled photgapher will always make most of the equipment he has and that is not a skill learnt easily, or without considerable effort. A genuinely skilled photographer will be able to produce consistently good results whatever equipment they are using. Casual photographers will not.

 

I've done it again...........

 

Excellent processing. Now, if you can remove the sign from in front of 53809 .......

 

Hmmm.

Makes second one look the stop for Mordaw Central, or Mount Doom Junction....

 

Why?.... its part of the furniture.........

 

Its what's in the image, even if it is just a jpeg!

Don't forget your eyes/brain filter out a lot when it comes to outside light!

 

You can probably get an 'inappropriate sign' filter for your camera. It should be on the shelf next to the 'people' filters.

Caution: if you use a digital camera & then go back to 35mm, don't open the back to see how the picture came out.

There are some very odd signs for sale at Dunster, according to wsr.org.uk.
They say Stop Look Listen Trains Cross Here.
Do they mean trains pass each other here?
or Trains comma Cross Here - & get hit twice?

 

West Somerset Railway - Then and Now #105

Dunster Sea Lane Crossing - 1973 / 2017

The last of Bob Prance's snaps from his 1973 visit brings us neatly to Dunster, where we will be spending the next few days. Once again the gates - here massive examples - were replaced as part of the process to reopen the line in 1976.

Copyright Robert Prance / Robin White

1973


2017

 

What did you do to make the changes?

Robin

 

That is a barefaced lie. My post quoted every word of yours. I'm sorry you think that your own words distort what you said; you must have a problem expressing your thoughts if that is the case.

All sweeping statements are wrong, of course.

The mistake you have made here is to confuse "narrowing the argument" with "providing an example which demonstrates the argument". Other examples can be provided. You cannot take some types of photograph on a phone that you can take on an SLR. If you try, they will not look right or will not be of the same quality. That's due to a number of things: the size of the lens and sensor, the physics of the light path from the first to the second, the controls available to the user and the shutter lag (which I have always found both high and unpredictable on phone cameras)

But that same equipment may well have been rubbish at taking pictures of moving trains (unless Revd. Malan was involved!)

But they won't, objectively, be as good. They will be lower-resolution; noisier in low light levels; and will be more highly compressed with more artefacts as a result. All the "select a frame from a video" approach helps us to work around the shutter lag, but it doesn't solve the other drawbacks and can make them worse.

The key thing here about what I think is that my thoughts on the subject are correct.

Most professional photographers will freely admit that they get more selective in what they publish the more experienced they get. It's not that they have a higher hit rate so much as that they are more willing to throw away the duds.

My daughter is very competent at composition, as I said, much more so than some adults I know; and composition is the hardest part to learn.

The technical aspects of photography are dead easy to learn. There are after all only four fundamental settings you can vary on all cameras; on analog cameras two of those are covered by your choice of film stock. You can learn them in less than a day (well, an intelligent person can).

My point is that: I agree, a skilled photographer can get a good result with any camera especially if they are familiar with it. My daughter, for example, can get good results with both her own camera, a small Kodak compact; and with my DSLR if she has a surface to rest it on, as it's too heavy for her to hold comfortably. However that statement requires you to have a free choice of what constitutes a good result. Say you're at a viewpoint half a mile away from the line and want to take a beautiful shot of a train chuffing through the landscape: a phone just can't do that. You *could* take a good photo, with a phone, at that location, but it wouldn't be a railway photo.

 

Gentlemen, as the OP here, can I call 'time' on this diversion.

I am fat more interested in your comments on the photos.

What I will say is that Ian Coleby and I discussed the 'Then and Now' book we have in mind yesterday, and agreed that, having selected our 50 or so comparison shots. We will be looking very carefully at quality and might well want to re-take a significant proportion of the 'Nows'.

Robin

 

Really impressive photos Robin.

 

And remember you only get 36 shots on a roll of film, not the (almost) unlimited shots you get with digital.

 

The I-phone failed you badly this time Robin. The contrast is all wrong and it makes that sign stick out like a sore thumb....