Thanks Marty, …yes, I forgot to blow before taking the picture, an easy mistake to make but noticeable with a closeup :roll:

It is as you say, easy to get carried away with PS, my brother commented on the lack of condensation with the rain hitting the hot parts of the loco, but also said that maybe this would not show with the speed of the loco, so that saved me a bit of time  

Phil

That is some lovely work, looks very convincing.
Might I suggest though that you tweak the grayscale one just a bit more to give it the grain of 35mm film? I think that would make it perfect

Here's just a touch of grayscale added.

Ah, yes, I remember it well, Summer Holiday weather in Wales. Rain needs to be a bit more horizontal if memory serves.

Nigel

Ah…lovely Welsh summer 

A train of empty wagons approaching Pen y Bryn colliery, the corner of the room has been PS'd out.








Pretty much the same picture but this time with greater depth of field, ie the background blurred which gives more focus to the main areas.









The same picture cropped.

Here's a couple more, the "colliers" train approaching Pen y Bryn Halt (not built yet) !!!

Those are absolutely gorgeous and convincing, especially the shot of the passenger train from behind

Thanks, I had to add the mountain on the right, to the last but one picture as the 45deg ceiling angle there looks bad.

For camera guys…I tried something different with these, I took around eight to ten focus stacking shots and rendered them in Helicon 6, I find that this is not as good as just a few shots as multiple pictures seems to confuse the software some, noticeable with blurred areas here and there.  :roll:

Phil

Lovely trains, Phil.  :cool:

I find with the new version on Helicon, I usually take about 20 shots, very closely spaced apart and then pick the middle dozen, starting from the furthest one in focus - to the closest one in focus.

I do an exposure every one notch on the focus ring

I don't see well enough to rely on the camera view finder, but once they are downloaded, I'm OK.

I have a 70 cm screen, which helps a lot as well. 

As far as I know Max, unless things have changed in the past few months, Helicon 6 is the latest version, my focus points vary all over the scene and I find that the exposure is pretty constant with every shot. I must admit though that the shots I am talking about were done with the g12 and in very awkward positions, so it's basically, click in the focus square move it the the desired position press the button for auto focus in that area and shoot, when Chris Nevard used his with my layout, he only ever took three focus points…so that says something in relation to the g12.
Now my Canon D6 is a different animal, big screen and I find it best to zoom in on the focus areas, just a couple of clicks, the exposure use usually the same according to the meter with every shot.

Phil

Yep.  I just checked and mine is Version 6, Phil.

I've found that I need to Render the images in focus order to avoid out of focus patches.

It's all a bit academic, as uploading to any forum degrades them anyway.

I start off with a crisp 800 x 600 shot and once it uploads, it's fuzzy by comparison.

I can only imagine how good yours are before they arrive on the forum.

It's not the overall quality of the picture, it's small out of focus areas.
Phil

Once again we are talking at cross purposes.

You'd think I would learn.   :lol:

It only happens on very close/distant shots and with the g12, probably because I am using focus sampleing on areas all around the scene, I will try the same shots again but with simpler focusing.

Phil

Brilliant shots, Phil, the closer in versions being my favourites by a short head.

Regarding Helicon, which of the rendering methods of combining do you use? (Early days of me using the program, I take 3-5 images at the moment. I'm using version 6.7)

All the best

Jon

Thanks Jon, I'm using the Method (B) Depth Map which is recommended.

I think it is down to the fact that the g12 only goes down to f8 so a limited DOF to start with, and by sampling various parts of the scene, there would be a lot of blurred areas elsewhere, I have only had this problem happen when doing this sampling with the g12…other shots in the past have been great.

BTW my version is up to date.

Phil

Another one just taken.

Absolute wonderful pictures,

 My only comment is the Signal man is a time traveller, he appears to have a modern mountain bike, rather than an an old sit up and beg he would have.

Like this http://www.roxeymouldings.co.uk/search/  ( type in Bicycle in the search line…)

Thank you Q,

Actually, the bike is very similar to one my uncle gave me in the late 50's, a BSA, the difference is the handlebars which on mine where butterfly, it had three gears too, I remember the sit up ones, but there were also others  :)

Phil