Blaenavon and Pontypool Charter 13 January 2019

A few images from the Charter yesterday with ex Cadley Hill Colliery Bagnall Empress along with a picture I took back in 1974 when it was still earning it's keep at the Colliery
Reasonable results considering the flat light

 

There are also a few from me available at my flickr page

This was my first photo charter day, and I am still building up my photography knowledge. Be gentle!

 

For a "first" attempt your selection is pretty good Kingston, we all have to start somewhere..... I attended my first 'charter at the Tanfield Railways' open house '[£10 a head on the gate] Friday evening photo shoot at their "Legends of Industry" Gala last June [2018]. I'll have rummage through my photos and post some later.

 

Thanks 2392

 

You did really well there with exposure as we had the worst of all lighting conditions, flat poor light but with a bright sky on the horizon. (How much Photoshop editing did you have to do?) The difficulty being capturing shadow detail without completely burning out the sky. I don’t know what camera you were using but this is were Nikon has the advantage with dynamic range. At 1000/1600 ISO I was using most of the day it’s about 10 stops on a D800 (14 stops at 100 ISO).
One thing I noticed is that the focus seems to be slightly off in some of them but it’s fine in your other albums so it might be worth checking the auto focus, it might be just a case of having the focus point in the wrong place. I once ruined a day’s photography by inadvertently switching to manual focus.
I like the one coming under the bridge where you have timed it just right not to let the exhaust block out the diesel on the track above.

 

I don't photoshop, but did find that I got a lot of shots that were either over or under exposed. There were well over 250 shots during the day, before I started weeding out.

I relation to this I did notice a couple of times during the day that moisture was building on the lens protector, almost certainly because we did appear to be in a cloud for most of the day.

 

The soft focus effect would be explained by the moisture on the filter. If those shots are straight off the camera without editing you did very well but to make the most of your images you do need some photo editing software and you should shoot in raw not jpeg. A raw file contains all the data recorded by the camera and the raw converter is the only place where you can recover blown highlights to a certain extent and deal with your overexposed shots. The raw converter is also the only place where you can change the colour balance.
I use Photoshop CC which is cloud based, available by subscription at just under a tenner a month. To start with PS Elements is OK and you can do both raw and jpeg until you know your way round it. In the lighting conditions we had it's always a compromise to maintain both highlight and shadow detail, but the rule is it's always easier to lighten up a dark image than darken down a light one. To show an example I'm attaching an image of the first shot on my post above taken from the original raw file but unedited.
None of the above is meant as a criticism, if you are just starting out in digital photography you did very well

 

Lovely selections, one thing that always strikes me, and I never saw industrial steam in the flesh is that these charters always look a bit clean and sterile to capture what I imagined things to be like?

 

You are right, although Cadley Hill was a bit of an exception and kept their locos in good order and the place was tidy (see the last picture on my post, that was taken there in 1974). The mineral wagons in the rest of the pictures are much too clean and rust free but the general clutter around the yard is about right.

This is also the real thing at Bold in 1980, a working loco rather careworn and the usual paraphernalia you would see around a working coal mine
The engine is Joseph that was spruced up for the Rainhill calvalcade just over a year after I took the picture

 

Lovely picture, however the very young me was at Rainhill with my dad (dead exciting it was the first time I ever stayed in a hotel) and I am sure that the Industrial there was 'Robert' (I specifically remember as I wondered to my old man what this little engine not in a big 4 livery was doing amongst all the ones I knew?

*Edit looking at this my memory has not entirely gone*, 8.54 in. Looking at the film, first time I have ever seen film of the event, it was a funny old do wasn't it.



This is where you tell me that Joseph was renamed Robert

 

Memory failure, You are right, it was Robert.

 

My gallery from an enjoyable windy Sunday... http://preservedrailway.weebly.com/pontypool--blaenavon