Lighting

Without light there’s no photography or screen shot. Since we don’t have paintbrushes or colored pencils or markers to alter the rendition, we have to use the controls we do have in order to bring out the emphasis we want. The controls at our disposal are direction of train, time of day and weather.

Sun in the South. Well, at least that’s the case here in the northern hemisphere. The sun here also rises in the east and sets in the west and is highest at noon. These aspects have a profound effect on the lighting of our subject. Have a look at the following similar shots and read the captions to see what has been altered for each shot.


P32 headed north at Valhalla station puts front end in shadow. This picture fails in that the light (attention) is on the least interesting part of the picture – the blank side of a colorless loco.


Still headed north, this time at Hawthorne, but more successful because orange and black are the main interest.


Valhalla, southbound. It’s 8 AM on a clear day. This shots puts the light on the front of the loco, which is the center of interest.


Same shot, but at 6:30 AM on a clear day and Golden October sky. The sky adds warmth and mood to an otherwise flat (low contrast) shot.


Again, same shot, but at 7 AM on a stormy day. This combination usually provides the most dramatic, contrasty shots.

Finishing Up

Now what do you do with all these “photos?” You can post them online or send them to someone who might be interested or you can print them. I’ve found that the online versions are more luminous and the printed versions are more contrasty. Sometimes what looks good online does not look so good in print and vice versa. The bottom line is, don’t be too quick to toss a picture. I’ve had good success with inserting the shots into PowerPoint and either making a slide show or printing them on 8.5 x 11 inch paper. To bring out the best in the print, use photo stock or have them laminated (I do this for display at train shows).

Selecting the Best. I usually create a subfolder where I place the better shots – or copies of them. That way I can trim 100 or more shots to a manageable 10 or 20.

Conversion. MSTS uses a PCX format and Trainz uses a TGA format. Neither displays in the Windows Thumbnail view, so I convert them all to BMP. I use IrfanView, which has a handy batch conversion function. That way the process takes only seconds or a few minutes depending on how many you have and how large they are. Converting to JPG is OK if you only want small files for easy viewing. For my final version, I go back to the original and resize it and then convert it to JPG for web use or go to the BMP and paste it into a PowerPoint document if I want a good print. It’s important to keep in mind that the JPG format is a compression format that tosses away information every time the picture is modified and saved. Thus, if you want to retain the best quality possible, don’t convert to JPG until all manipulations such as size and color corrections and cropping have been completed.

Resizing and Sharpening. For use on the web, resizing is a must. I generally keep screen shots to a maximum of 560 pixels. That’s in order to fit my online format. It also keeps the size relatively small for people with slow Internet connections. I find that Trainz screen shots almost always benefit from sharpening. I use the IrfanView Sharpen function for this. Occasionally this process degrades the image, in which case I revert to the original. MSTS shots generally do not take kindly to sharpening – perhaps the game engine has already done it (I’m only posing a question – I don’t know what goes on inside the various game engines).

Filing Away. I get the screen shots out of the collection folder as soon as I can. That way I can keep them grouped by session and I can avoid the MSTS bad habit of writing over older shots when a new operating session begins. I label the folder accordingly and eventually put it on a CD or DVD so I can remove the files from my hard drive. You’d be amazed at how much disk space a collection of screen shots can take.

Happy train-sim photographying!

Al

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Article and screen shots ©2007 Alfred Barten. All rights reserved.

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