Critique A day out on the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway

s162216

s162216

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Samuel
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Hi,

These pictures were taken during a day out to the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway during July. All of them were taken with a Pentax Spotmatic F and an SMC Takumar 28mm F3.5 on Provia 100F which was processed by Peak Imaging. These were scanned on an IT8.7 profiled Reflecta Proscan 7200 dedicated 35mm scanner, using a normal exposure pass and a higher exposure pass for the shadows. These were then fused in Photomatix using the exposure fusion auto/2 images function (this is completely free to use as the trial never expires, but all modes except that one apply a watermark) to increase the dynamic range and open up the shadows.

Levels and sharpening were applied in Photoshop Elements (for the first time I actually used the levels properly by adjusting each colour channel rather than just the luminosity, thanks for teaching me that @joxby !)


GWSR Steam Train by s162216, on Flickr
Putting out a small fire on the line outside Cheltenham Racecourse Station on the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway


Winchcombe Station Cafe by s162216, on Flickr
The platform and cafe at Winchcombe Station on the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway


Railway Memorabilia Hut by s162216, on Flickr
View of the little Railway Memorabilia Hut at Toddington on the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway. Taken from the station footbridge.

Comments and critique are welcome!
 
Love No1 - anymore of the loco?

That's some editing workflow for film. I think I'd just shoot digital if I wanted that level of control.
 
@-Oy- Thanks, I was mainly just testing the blending out to see what difference it made. The exposure blending definitely increases detail in the shadows (which can be very difficult when scanning transparencies). and decreases scanner noise drastically, but I'll probably only use it on shots with lots of heavy shadows etc (the last picture for instance did not benefit hardly at all from it) as it adds time on for another pass, the blending etc. Actually using the levels for each individual colour channel makes it so much easier to get the colours looking similar to the original slides and makes me able to get around the problems with colour balance that I had previously had.

I'll have a look through to see if I have anymore of the loco, although I think the other shots I have were of another steam train.
 
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Cool - thanks for the info :)
 
@-Oy- heres another shot of the loco taken from the front (and me dodging a Chinese lady with a 70 - 200mm who just would not let me get close enough in without getting in her picture, she must have taken over 50 shots of the same thing in the space of ~ 5 minutes from up close to far back [and just ignoring everyone else trying to take pictures] and with the train about to go I finally lost patience with her and just stepped in, I got the filthiest look possible from her!). With the same exposure blending as above (this has been slighly cropped to a 5:4 ratio):

Steam Train 2 by s162216, on Flickr
 
Looks like a nice old loco that - thanks :)

I guess she wasn't shooting film then? LOL :)
 
I do have a few more on the colour neg roll which I've not developed yet so I'll post some of them up when I've got it done and scanned them.
 
Samuel, some of these don't light my fire at all. I do like the last one, although it looks as if the shadows at the front are completely blocked... but that might be in the process of putting up on the web. But the standout for me is the second, where I think the composition and colour balance all work well together.
 
ChrisR said:
Samuel, some of these don't light my fire at all. I do like the last one, although it looks as if the shadows at the front are completely blocked... but that might be in the process of putting up on the web. But the standout for me is the second, where I think the composition and colour balance all work well together.
Click to expand...

Thanks Chris, I think its the mixed lighting that you get with the second one that gives it its pleasant colours, and I quite like it as well.

The last one is naturally on the transparency quite dark in the shadows (I didn't really have a lot of choice as its quite a contrasty subject including the sky etc, not to mention that I had to rapidly set the exposure because of that woman I mentioned above), on my monitor it looks o.k (e.g there is some shadow detail and more if you zoom in), but I have prepared another scan of it with a higher second exposure pass to try to capture more detail (the downside of raising the exposure so much is unfortunately that its increases the likelihood of halo's appearing around light:dark borders such as around the tree trunks)


Steam Train 2 higher exposure by s162216, on Flickr
 
Samuel, I think that has generally lifted the whole thing, and not at the expense of any obvious haloes. The circumstances of taking it sounded a real trial; that's a very good result!
 
We're all here to help each other...right ?

I might sound like an arse sometimes but.....I dunno...lol

So, back to colour casts, and I don't profess to run the latest visually calibrated gear, I'm just trying to get close cos I'm not really that bothered about perfectly toned glossy mag pictures, I feel a little bit of imperfection is part and parcel of shooting film, its why I like it, it has a certain relaxed honesty about it.
Anyway, imo.....the second one looks to have decent colour balance(y)

No 1. looks very cool
No 3. looks on the cool side
No 4. looks on the cool side.

Just looking at No4, I thinking I'm gonna take a grey with the eyedropper out of the chimney smoke just to get a start point.
Smoke is grey usually, not always of course, sometimes it has a tint, sometimes colours maybe reflected in it, sometimes a bold colour behind it can effect it, but....gotta start somewhere and in this particular picture I think the smoke is available....quite often I use clouds.
Once I've got a start I'll adjust RGB individually to tweak it to what I think it should be, but its only what I think it should be.
Allowing for monitor variations, personal preference and pictures that are too much fannying about to be arsed with like mixed lighting shots, I could let 3 & 4 go, but 1 stands out to me by looking particularly off.:)
 
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