Behind The Scenes And 27001 At The Bo'ness & Kinneil Railway

[JonathonAG]

Today, being the last day of the school holidays for me, I went on a small research trip to Bo'ness. I was just expecting to see a diesel running the timetabled services, and to go along beside the line to take photos. However, I saw 27001 on a engineers train and also got a tour around the steam related sections of the site at Bo'ness. I would normally have kept the Behind The Scenes ones to myself and BKRTS members for reference, but I thought it would be far nicer to show you all the photos as it shows what the SRPS gets up to behind closed doors, and the great work that they do:

27001: http://www.jonathonag.fotopic.net/c1059077.html

Behind The Scenes : http://www.jonathonag.fotopic.net/c1059107.html

Just like to say sorry about the quality of the photos of Morayshire and 419 in the steam shed, lighting isn't very good and it's very cramped, so is difficult to take good photos. Another reasons why a new steam shed is needed.

Anyway, hope you like the photos.

 

[Dennis]

Enjoyed looking at the 27 shots - thought some of them had a good 'feel' about them, like this one - http://www.jonathonag.fotopic.net/p33088230.html

The slight graininess (dull day I'm guessing) and (to my eyes at least) unusual colour balance gives a rather pleasing, timeless appearance. This is enhanced by the absence of any obvious clues to the fact that it's 2006 rather than 1986 (peoples clothes and any vehicles present normally giving the date away).

 

[JonathonAG]

Hi Dennis,

I'm still trying to tinker with how I should edit the photos before i upload them, because it is known that fotopic unfortunately reduces the quality of images uploaded on free accounts ( i'll probably upgrade soon ). judging by graininess, i should maybe blur photos before i upload them? I'll try and solve it out during the coming weeks

 

[Dennis]

Although in this instance I feel the graininess (which is actually just CCD detector noise) adds something to a couple of the images, normally it is undesirable.

There are ways of minimising the problem by optimising the camera settings (depending on what you're camera allows you to do), but I've found something like Neat Image (which is freely downloadable) can help reduce noise in images - the automatic settings generally giving good results with little effort.

On the subject of using packages like Photoshop to minimise noise, always apply a smoothing filter before sharpening (otherwise you will 'sharpen' the noise and make it more pronounced!). Better results may also be obtained if several small smooth - sharpen cycles are performed rather than trying to eliminate all the noise in one go.

Another thing to be aware of when using photo editing software is that using 'auto levels' to automatically correct brightness and contrast problems is often undesirable - by their nature, these functions make the darkest parts of the image black and the lightest parts white - this is OK in many situations but will tend to hide detail which is in shade and may also result in overbrightening of lighter parts of the image (particularly sky).

Personally, I enjoy tinkering about with my photos and there are very few on my Fotopics site which have not undergone some degree of editing (normally only rotation, cropping, sharpening and colour balance changes) although I have been known to brush out unwanted items (like the lighting towers)....

http://dennis-lance.fotopic.net/p31734811.html
http://tcfoto.railuk.org/displayimage.php?album=34&pos=5