Model Railroad Photo Manipulation

[wcfn100]

@wcfn100  Is that the insanely expensive brass K27 that was made a a few years back ? I thought about getting one , but the price scared me .

Yeah, it wouldn't surprise me if my dad was one of their biggest customers.  The only good thing about the price is you don't flinch when you find out a replacement motor is $80.   

Jason

[robert3985]

Although I've posted the photo I'm going to use here in other places at TRW today, I'm gonna do a before & after here.

I've been unhappy with the setup I'm forced to use when doing focus stacking, because I have to put my camera on a tripod and I can't get in close enough, and those nice perspective lines disappear when I zoom in up to 200mm.

I've got a Tokina SD 11-16mm F2.8 DX lens that I really like a lot for group shots, scenery work and architectural work, and it's not a particularly close-focusing lens, so I haven't attempted to perfect my model railroad photography using it. 

HOWEVER, I decided to give it a try and see if I can match Helicon Focus's DOF on my layout, but be able to get in really close with a single photo...hand-held.

So...I took a few shots down the length of my Echo LDE, which is 24' long.  My new 15w, 5000K LED's are giving me colors I don't especially like, but they're bright enough, and I was planning on Photoshop manipulation anyway to get rid of the overhead lights, walls, layout edge, etc.

Photo (1) - Un-Photoshopped jpg in all it's cluttered glory.  One day I'll get this scene scenicked, but DOF was pretty good, and diffraction from the F22 aperture was tolerable:


I messed with the color temp, contrast & brightness...sharpened it a tad, took away the drafting lamps and improved the rockwork waaaaay down there a bit, and added a headlight to the E9.  I then rotated it about 1.5 degrees counter-clockwise to straighten it up.  I then lightened the dark areas a bit and cropped away the white canvas left by the rotating process on the photo corners.  Then, I painted in some hazy clouds with the "airbrush" at 32% opacity a little at a time after masking off the Echo Hills and cliffs in the distance.

Photo (2) - Finished Photo...I think I need to crop it a bit, but I'll think about that for a couple of days:


This proves to me I've got a new photographic tool, which is going to replace HF for most of my shots in the future.  I like the fact that it's a one-shot process, with no funky HF artifacts to have to clean up.  Also, I'm pretty pleased with the lens' performance, even though it isn't known for its close focusing properties.  The signal bridge's closest edge is only about 4" from the front surface of the lens, so that's pretty close.

Cheerio!
Bob Gilmore

[wcfn100]

Bob, I'm surprised you like that perspective.  I never like how wide angle lenses stretch everything out.  There's also going to be some issues as you get into scenic areas.  Even in your photo you can see the signal bridge is distorted and the back of that F3 is out of whack.


Jason

[wazzou]

I think what Jason points out is a debatable argument in model railroad photography.
As we photograph model railroads, I guess it depends on what we are trying to convey in the image.
Are we trying to place the person viewing the photo actually trackside watching the action or are we trying to mimic the photography of a 1:1 train?
That is where the line can get blurry for some. 
If the intent is to place the person in the scene, I'd say Jason makes some fair points about the distortion, however if trying to mimic 1:1 photographs, it could be argued that the same distortions would be apparent in those cases as well.  YMMV

[peteski]

Bob, I'm surprised you like that perspective.  I never like how wide angle lenses stretch everything out.  There's also going to be some issues as you get into scenic areas.  Even in your photo you can see the signal bridge is distorted and the back of that F3 is out of whack.


Jason

I'm just the opposite - to me the exaggerated perspective when using wide angle lenses makes the tiny model train look more like 1:1 scale train photo taken with a normal lens.  Human brains seems to associate a strong indication of a vanishing point perspective with large size of the object in the field of vision and/or with great distance. That strong vanishing-point perspective is often missing from model photographs. So they look like models.  Well, it you want a photo of a model to look like a model then a wide-angle lens is not the way to go. But since in our modeling we usually strive to achieve verisimilitude to the 1:1 scale world, using wide angle lens helps to achieve that.  We go crazy making the models as detailed as possible and the scenery as realistic as possible but then when we photograph it, that realism is lost with flat perspective.

[Santa Fe Guy]

Here's an image I took of a shay on my now dismantled Lost Creek On30 RR.
I used my old EOS 400D and its standard 17-80 lens at the time and used Helican focus to stack the images.
No special lighting just the old fluros that were over the layout.
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Rod.

[nscaleSPF2]

Bob,  I never like how wide angle lenses stretch everything out.

Jason

Well, ok.  But here's what happened in the above photo.  Bob's combination of lens and camera resulted in a horizontal angle of view (this is what the camera captured) of about 140 degrees.  The average human eye has almost the same angle of view.  The difference is that, for most people, only the center 50 degrees or so appears to be sharp.  The other 90 degrees is what we call our peripheral vision.  Bob's photo is a panorama, and, strictly speaking, does not represent what the human eye would see.  You could say that he crossed the boundary from reality to art.  He does that sometimes. 

Even in your photo you can see the signal bridge is distorted and the back of that F3 is out of whack.

Jason

I can't explain this one.  If you look at the "before" version of this photo, the distortion you mentioned is much, much less.  Maybe he PhotoShopped this image one too many times.   

I'm just the opposite - to me the exaggerated perspective when using wide angle lenses makes the tiny model train look more like 1:1 scale train photo taken with a normal lens.  Human brains seems to associate a strong indication of a vanishing point perspective with large size of the object in the field of vision and/or with great distance. That strong vanishing-point perspective is often missing from model photographs. So they look like models.  Well, it you want a photo of a model to look like a model then a wide-angle lens is not the way to go. But since in our modeling we usually strive to achieve verisimilitude to the 1:1 scale world, using wide angle lens helps to achieve that.  We go crazy making the models as detailed as possible and the scenery as realistic as possible but then when we photograph it, that realism is lost with flat perspective.

Just to be clear on this, Peter, if your camera is set up to take a photo that has 140 degrees of view, then the image, whether it is a 1:1 subject or a model subject, will capture a field of view of 140 degrees.  Some people like that effect, some don't.  It's a matter of personal preference.  To my eye, the most pleasing perspective results when the field of view is about 55 degrees.  (This is what you get when you use a 35mm lens on a full frame camera).  But that's just me.

I'm not trying to be negative with any of these comments, just trying to make us all think about what we are trying to achieve.

[wcfn100]

  You could say that he crossed the boundary from reality to art.  He does that sometimes. 

Which is no problem and makes for a neat shot.  It was just his remark about this lens taking the place of using focus stacking.  I don't think this lens is a substitute for what focus stacking can achieve.  But if someone can make it work, it would be Bob, so maybe he'll show us some other shots.

I'm in the camp of trying to duplicate the old photos I have that were typically shot with a 35mm film camera and 50mm lens.  I can try and mimic it by adjusting for Nikon's DX crop factor and shoot with a 34mm focal point.  My issue right now is focus stacking can flatten out an image because as you move the focal point back, those parts get adjusted in the frame.  I'd like to find a balance of maintaining a realistic perspective but avoiding the fish-eye.  Not sure if that can happen without some sort of post process which I'm fine with because I may be able to just write a script for it in PS.

Jason

[robert3985]

Well, ok.  But here's what happened in the above photo.  Bob's combination of lens and camera resulted in a horizontal angle of view (this is what the camera captured) of about 140 degrees.  The average human eye has almost the same angle of view.  The difference is that, for most people, only the center 50 degrees or so appears to be sharp.  The other 90 degrees is what we call our peripheral vision.  Bob's photo is a panorama, and, strictly speaking, does not represent what the human eye would see.  You could say that he crossed the boundary from reality to art.  He does that sometimes. 

Of course I've "crossed the boundary from reality to art."...which is what we all do when capturing an image, either by sketching it, drafting it, or photographing it.  Even our eyes interpret how reflected light appears, so even the process of just "seeing" is art, since even at this most basic level, we are interpreting "reality".  However, thanks for the compliment, since I am, and always have been an artist.

However, you're way off on your figures as far as degree of capture is concerned.  When I read this, I thought "There's no way this photo is more than 90 degrees...", so, not being able to quickly find the actual degree of capture the Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 zoom has at 11mm, I took a couple of 4' long dowels into the train room and duplicated the camera location and what the photo had captured, then took my old Pickett adjustable triangle, and measured the angle of the two dowels. Best I can determine, the angle of capture is 84 degrees, which I would not consider to be a "panorama". 

However, the angle is still greater than what is considered to be "normal" for the human eye...in other words, what's in clear, color focus and producing recognizable images rather than black & white "general shapes".  The mm of lens the human eye generally is compared to is around 50mm (for a full-size 35mm FX sensor), but a more careful calculation places this figure at 43mm, which translates to about 28mm for a DX sensor equipped camera body.

The point to this reply, is that although your premise is correct, the actual photograph differs much less from a "normal" human view than your erroneous figures concerning degree of capture would indicate.

I can't explain this one.  If you look at the "before" version of this photo, the distortion you mentioned is much, much less.  Maybe he PhotoShopped this image one too many times.   

The reason you can't 'splain this one is that the "distortion" you think you are seeing isn't.  I rotated the photo about 2.5 degree counter-clockwise to straighten up the vertical lines on the trains and distant coaling tower.  Evidently, the signal tower isn't perfectly vertical!  I'll have to check that. 

Just to be clear on this, Peter, if your camera is set up to take a photo that has 140 degrees of view, then the image, whether it is a 1:1 subject or a model subject, will capture a field of view of 140 degrees.  Some people like that effect, some don't.  It's a matter of personal preference.  To my eye, the most pleasing perspective results when the field of view is about 55 degrees.  (This is what you get when you use a 35mm lens on a full frame camera).  But that's just me.

This is where "art" comes into the picture (pun intended).  However, once again, your figures for degree of capture are wrong.  Degree of capture for this photo is around 84 degrees horizontally.  As for what lens produces the "most pleasing" interpretation of perspective...it depends on the subject, and what the artist/photographer is attempting to accomplish.  Attempting to say what lens mm depicts "reality" most accurately is like attempting to define beauty, or love...it's one of those "indefinable" things.   Just got to do what pleases you most is my advice.

I'm not trying to be negative with any of these comments, just trying to make us all think about what we are trying to achieve.

Here's an interesting article about the human eye, vision and cameras that will get ya thinkin' even more:  https://petapixel.com/2012/11/17/the-camera-versus-the-human-eye/

Cheerio!
Bob Gilmore

[robert3985]

Bob, I'm surprised you like that perspective.  I never like how wide angle lenses stretch everything out.  There's also going to be some issues as you get into scenic areas.  Even in your photo you can see the signal bridge is distorted and the back of that F3 is out of whack.


Jason

Jason, being a long-time photographer and artist (how I make my living), I have a selection of lenses that give my camera body different capabilities.  Each lens has its own characteristics and capabilities, which I learn to use for different photographic opportunities and to express my personal artistic preferences for the occasion.

In this photo, I was attempting to explore the inherent deep DOF of an ultra-wide angle lens, as well as see if diffraction would be too objectionable at f22.  The other main goal was also to see if the lens would generate a view that created "perspective lines" which are quite evident in many prototype railroad photos, because photographers, when confronted with huge objects, often use wide-angle lenses to capture those objects, rather than just pieces of them.

Although I like the effects in this photo, I am not 100% happy with it, and I'll fiddle around with cropping it, or re-shooting it with another subject.  However, I am rarely 100% satisfied with anything I do! 

Some photos will have high distortion, some won't.  Some will be taken with a telephoto, some with a wide-angle...some in B&W, some with vivid color.  Having the tools to accomplish different photographic effects is a lot of fun for me, and so is the creative process, which means that I'll always be using different techniques in both photography and art...depending on my mood or what I need to accomplish.

Cheerio!
Bob Gilmore

[wcfn100]

  The other main goal was also to see if the lens would generate a view that created "perspective lines" which are quite evident in many prototype railroad photos, because photographers, when confronted with huge objects, often use wide-angle lenses to capture those objects, rather than just pieces of them.

And that's the crux of it I guess.  My frame of reference and what I hope to duplicate in my model photos are the Joe Blow shots like I posted in the Thursday Proto Pic thread. That's just my dad with his Nikon.  If you had something big to shot, you either backed up or found an angle.

Jason

[robert3985]

And that's the crux of it I guess.  My frame of reference and what I hope to duplicate in my model photos are the Joe Blow shots like I posted in the Thursday Proto Pic thread. That's just my dad with his Nikon.  If you had something big to shot, you either backed up or found an angle.

Jason

Yup.  On the other end of it, what I am attempting to accomplish are photos taken by company photographers, which UP had plenty of, especially taking shots of their big power...

Photo (1) - Here's one of UP's famous Big Boy photos, taken at Echo with the cantilever signal bridge (with semaphores!!) and plenty of wide-angle hints, such as receding cliffs, definite perspective lines and high DOF:


Even UP wasn't satisfied with the stock photo, so the photographer added more smoke and dodged the engine to bring out the details, move a telegraph pole and made the background hills different near the front of the engine.

Photo (2) - Retouched UP Big Boy shot used in their annual calendar with added smoke and more details in the shadows:


I've wanted to duplicate this shot for years.  My main problems were DOF (which HF takes care of) but, the other problems are (1) Camera placement, and (2) Duplicating perspective lines. 

The closest I've gotten so far is this shot, which I took several years ago using my Nikkor 18-200mm at 90mm because of my tripod-mounted camera location, and consists of about 15 shots combined in an HF stack.

Photo (3) - Big Boy at Echo West End Signal in N-scale:


It appears to me, that IF (a big "IF") I can get my camera location more properly positioned, I can use my ultra-wide to get pretty close to this shot.  Maybe not.  I'll give it a try in the next few days.  Yeah, I like this shot, but it just doesn't duplicate the drama of the famous UP calendar Big Boy shot, which a wide-angle lens catches, which was my goal at the time.

A more "normal" focal length lens, just isn't up the task for me and what I wanted, at least in this photo.

Cheerio!
Bob Gilmore

[robert3985]

Which is no problem and makes for a neat shot.  It was just his remark about this lens taking the place of using focus stacking.  I don't think this lens is a substitute for what focus stacking can achieve.  But if someone can make it work, it would be Bob, so maybe he'll show us some other shots.

I'm in the camp of trying to duplicate the old photos I have that were typically shot with a 35mm film camera and 50mm lens.  I can try and mimic it by adjusting for Nikon's DX crop factor and shoot with a 34mm focal point.  My issue right now is focus stacking can flatten out an image because as you move the focal point back, those parts get adjusted in the frame.  I'd like to find a balance of maintaining a realistic perspective but avoiding the fish-eye.  Not sure if that can happen without some sort of post process which I'm fine with because I may be able to just write a script for it in PS.

Jason

Jason, the main reason for Helicon Focus (and other focus stacking software) is to increase depth of field.  However, to do so, you take multiple photos of the same scene, with identical exposure settings, focusing on progressively nearer or more distant focus points.  This can be just a couple of shots, or more than a hundred, depending on the subject and the depth/length of the subject.

Some of the problems with HF is not really with the program, but with the equipment.  Most lenses have what is called "focus breathing" which means as you focus either near or far, the focal length of the lens changes, either enlarging or reducing the field of view, and what the sensor captures.  This is why when I am shooting a scene specifically for manipulating in HF, I attempt to capture just a bit more of the scene in my composition than if I were taking a single photo, as focus breathing will cause HF to crop the stack when it combines all the shots.

Hardware aside, HF produces artifacts...especially in areas in-between things such as scenery between the railings on a signal tower, or backgrounds between grabs on a caboose cupola and the actual cupola roof.  It also produces funky flare artifacts if there's an especially shiny highlight that is part of the subject, such as reflections off of shiny driver tires, which turn into gray blobs when the stack is combined.

What a single shot does from a lens that inherently has a high DOF, such as an ultra-wide macro lens, is it eliminates focus breathing composition problems completely, and also weird artifacts from software attempting (and failing) to distinguish out-of-focus details vs in-focus details when the stacks combine.

Another big problem is that to use HF, you MUST have your camera mounted on a tripod, and a sturdy one if you manually select your focus points.  This usually means that your camera then has to be located off-layout, which virtually eliminates most eye-level, extreme close-ups...unless you zoom in.  I take a lot of photos at 200mm just because it's the only way I can fill my frame with the subject, and the equivalent of a 300mm full-frame lens has its own particular distortions, which may or may not be appropriate for what I want to achieve in my model railroad photography.

With my 11-16mm ultra-wide lens, when I remove the under-camera battery pack from my camera body, I can get very close to my subject ON THE LAYOUT...take a series of single shots, each with a DOF of a few inches in front of my lens to at least 15 feet away...eliminating the need of combining multiple exposures focused at multiple distance points, which allows me to concentrate on composition and get more differently composed shots of my subject.

The only drawbacks I can see are (1) small apertures require both high ISO's and fairly long exposures...meaning I have to very careful when hand-holding, and high ISO's also degrade image quality. (2) small apertures also induce diffraction in the photo, which is evident as a lack of sharpness and contrast the smaller the aperture unless the lens is specifically designed to minimize this distortion. 

Truth is, the close focusing ultra-wide lens doesn't eliminate the need for focus stacking, but it will do a lot of what is a much more complicated process using HF, and allows the complete elimination of that very limiting tripod for much more choices as far as positioning the camera is concerned.

Another excellent tool for taking model railroad photos!

Cheerio!
Bob Gilmore

[wcfn100]

Seeing those UP shots makes me get it.  I'm very interested in seeing if you can get to your goal.

I wish you had joined TRW a few years earlier as we covered much of what you've mentioned about the issues and limitations of Helicon Focus.  You would have certainly added to that. 

I'm currently trying to utilize the tools within Photoshop along with it's focus stacking to reach my goals.  But I still keep a demo version of HF 3.1 since it only puts the watermark along the bottom. 

Jason

[Blazeman]

Time-wise, how long does doing something like this take, knowing there may not be a definitive answer given every composition presents it's own set of challenges.