On the same trip where we visited the Lakewood Gardens discussed here (part 1) and here (part 2), we also visited the Lancaster Train Museum. Not only were there plenty of historical photos discussing the history of trains in the United States, but there was a huge warehouse sized building with actual steam engines, cabooses and passenger cars and much, much more!
I was intrigued with the designs under many of the trains. All the cogs, push rods and wheel spokes seemed like a wonderful photographic opportunity. Not a lot of my photos came out well, but I particularly like that one.
I really liked this bright blue train. Unfortunately, I had only acquired my D200 a couple months before I had purchased the Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 lens a couple weeks before. this resulted in some very oddly exposed images! The ceiling is overexposed and there are some dark parts of the train which are underexposed. Luckily, with Lightroom 2.0 and the new selective adjustment brush, I was able to add a layer mask with an exposure mask of -1.0 to the ceiling and it doesn’t look too bad.
I had the same problem with the overexposed ceiling here, but to a lesser degree. Much easier to correct using the same technique.
I finally got my act together for this last photo. I used some fill flash dialed way down to just lighten some of the shadows. While it may not be a great shot, it’s at least exposed correctly. I can’t imagine being an engineer on one of these things. Very complicated! Unfortunately, they had to go and ruin it by putting a “NO SMOKING” sign in the middle. The fact that there was no smoking anywhere in the building apparently didn’t deter people enough.
We’re supposed to head up to the Syracuse Zoo tomorrow. Hopefully, the rain holds off and I can post some good shots of animals tomorrow!