Bare bulb flash advice, please ...

[Luddite Frank]

DMR,

Nice shot of UP X 844 !

We have an ex- UP "Big-Boy" ( 4-8-8-4 ) here in town at Steamtown NHS.

The reference to "The Last Steam Railroad in America " was from a book written by Thomas Garver with photos by O. Winston Link, published around 1960. It a follow-up to a previous book: "Steam, Steel and Stars".

http://www.amazon.com/Last-Steam-Railroad-America-Tidewater/dp/0810935759/ref=pd_sim_b_3

And while it is true that UP never officially "retired" the two steamers it still has on roster, Norfolk & Western was the last major American RR to utilize Steam as its major motive power...

To our north, Canadian Pacific and Canadian National both kept running steam power into the 1960's, giving the preservation movement a chance to save quite a few of them as they were retired from revenue service.

By and large, American RR's "couldn't wait to Dieselize", and by 1955, most American steam locomotives were victims of the cutting torch.

Good luck with your photo project - let us know how it goes for you ! 😎

 

[charjohncarter]

Hey DMR, what 18mm do you use on your Pentax? I have the Pentax SMC 20mm (K-mount). I have used it with flash and the shots are different, but there is, especially with film, a highlighting feeling that is very nice. Let us know haw this difficult shoot goes.

 

[pagpow]

dmr -- you may have done this already, but if you google bare bulb flash photography, you'll get a lot of hits with suggestions for equipment and technique.

One of the large professional societies I belong to had an official photog who seemed to use a pretty standard flash unit -- like a 283 -- aimed upward into a conical coffee "cup", the thin plastic ones, not the styrofoam ones, taped to it. We met in cavernous rooms where bounce was not possible.

Alternatively, if you look at Shutterbug, one of their standard advertisers used to sell rectangular translucent units that were dimensioned for the popular flash units. Many of these units had a swivel head, so you could point the flash head up and have the sensor still pointing forward.

Bare bulb used to refer to units that had the flash unit w/o any reflector, threw 360 degree light.

Good luck.

Giorgio

 

[pagpow]

I'm back after checking some lighting books I have. They suggest opening up 2-3 stops from the standard w. a flash unit when it is used bare bulb -- as a starting point.

All suggest prior testing.

Sto-fen were the rectangular commercial modifiers I mentioned above.

Would the strobist site give you some help?