I finally decided to experiment with fluorescent tubes, after living with the track-lighting with CFL (compact fluorescent light) bulbs I’ve used to light the layout for the past two and a half years. I’m sorry I waited this long. The new fixtures, the first of which is shown above, weren’t cheap, about US$90 each by the time you add up all the parts. And they’re fiddly to hang properly given my less than perfect basement ceiling. But I’m getting twice (or more) the light from one 26W bulb that I was from four 14W ones, and it’s much more even lighting. I’m still debating using two tubes on the fixture, although that will raise the cost each substantially.
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Tags: Design, Lighting

In the previous installment I wrote about actually taking the photograph. Today’s post is about what to do next. You can, of course, use the JPEG just as it comes from the camera. But in most instances, that won’t give you the best photograph. What I do varies from image to image, and most require very little work, but “very little” isn’t none. Read More...

Tags: Tools

Most people build layouts to see or run trains, but increasingly we want to share that with people who can’t see the layout in person (or we want to hide the messy bits and show off the good stuff). But taking a photograph of a model railroad layout isn’t as easy as pointing a camera and clicking away. It is, of course, easier with a good camera. But mostly it depends on you understanding what the camera needs to take a good picture, what you can do the take the best picture, and what you can do after the fact to clean it up. Today I’m going to write about the first two parts: preparation and taking the photo. I’ll have a subsequent posting about image processing.
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Tags: Tools

Yeah, this is a bit late. I’ve been distracted. I’m throwing this up so I can summarize what did get done, before moving on.
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Tags: Administrivia, BDL168, PM42, SE8C