I am lucky to live within spitting distance of a preserved steam railway. This was the scene a few hundred yards from my house earlier this evening. West Country pacific* 34007 "Wadebridge" waits to depart with a Real Ale service (a sort of mobile pub serving cask beer!) I used a tripod, a K5, a DA16-45 and a Metz 48 (gelled to warm towards tungsten balance) 0.5s f6.3 ISO 5000. RAW developed in Sagelight with Topaz De-Noise to take out some of the chroma noise.

Wadebridge at Night | Flickr - Photo Sharing!




* A locomotive with a 4-6-2 configuration is known as a pacific
Whyte notation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[stormtech]

Beautiful shot! I was wondering how much your flash had any effect but I can see now how it brought out some detail on the nose and probably lit up the signal post.

[StephenHampshire]

Beautiful shot! I was wondering how much your flash had any effect but I can see now how it brought out some detail on the nose and probably lit up the signal post.

Indeed, the smokebox door area is very dark as the station lights do not reach there- and anyway the "air smoothed casing" throws shadow over the front of the loco. The flash lifts these shadows, but I didn't want to lose the available light look. I had 7 or 8 minutes to play around with the balance, although I was totally enveloped in steam a couple of times when the driver emptied the cylinder drain cocks! If you go for a lower ISO and longer exposure, the steam doesn't look so natural. The lighting inludes oil and electric lighting on the loco, tungsten lighting in the coaches, gas lighting on the station and of course the flash with a CTO gel on!

[carrrlangas]

amazing shot! well done

[penguinsoda]

Wow! Thats a great shot!