matt: those are amazing!
Annual lighting of flags on Memorial day weekend at local cemetary. Old Speed Graphic with 90 Optar. Large prints looks great with no grain and sharp stars on flags.
What an evocative image, Alan; I can smell the coal-dust and steam. Both my grandfathers drove steam engines for the Royal Indian Railways under the British, and continued on after independance until their retirement. I even saved a ceramic teapot with the Northern Railways logo on it. I believe there's still a solitary steam engine running on the narrow gauge in the Himalayas somewhere.Last one in the subcontinent.
Two shots: one with the lights on and the flames off, and one with the lights off and the flames on (night picture?)
That would be the "toy train", a.k.a, the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway narrow-gauge railroad to the eastern hill station of Darjeeling in Bengal. And yes, it still runs on steam! There is also the Nilgiri Mountain Railway in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. Main line steam operations have been phased out, but they were running well into the early '90s, mostly on remote, non-profitable routes.
Actually, stars are helped by using large format lenses. Since stars are considered point sources, the larger the effective diameter of the lens, then faster the expsoure. Just like with telescopes, the larger the opening on the 'scope, the fainter the stars it can see.
Take a 90 mm f/5.6 lens and wide open, it has an effective aperature of 16.1 mm (90/5.6=16.1). Compared with a 24 mm f/2.8 lens which has an effective aperature of 8.6 mm. The 90 mm has nearly twice the effective diameter of the 24 mm and it will record fainter stars. Even stopping down the 90 mm to f/8 gives us 11.3 mm, better than the 24mm f/2.8 lens. You'd need a 24 mm f/2.0 lens wide open to get better (12.0 mm).
It's the non-point source parts of the scene that the LF lenses are at a disadvantage over 35mm lenses.
Kirk - www.keyesphoto.com
The Fringe Club in Hong Kong. Picture taken with a Voigtlander Bergheil.
Cblurton,
Nice pic, very sharp with deep blacks. Would you mind posting some technical details such as shutter opening and time, development procedures and enlargement or printing?
Would be nice.
Merry Christmas!
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