The eastern end of The Downtown Spur runs through a district of small produce related businesses. Especially in the mid-morning hours, you’ll see a hornet’s nest of forklifts buzzing in and out of them. Where you see produce companies you’ll find small business dealing in new and used pallets supplying them. Miguel Alvarez and Co. on 22nd Street was one of them.
My interest in railroading lies more in the rhythm and cadence of everyday existence than the overly dramatic. Part of that is the color and texture of weatherworn business that you walk by every day. When I composed this shot I wanted to see what I could do with lighting, especially as it hit the chain link fence in front. The photo was taken with my newly acquired, refurbished iPhone 6sPlus. I set a piece of quarter inch MDF on the layout surface to get the height that I wanted, took four shots, and combined them with Helicon Focus. Lighting was a single photo flood about four feet to my right and pointed downward at a forty-five degree angle. Finally, the sky was cropped in with Corel Knockout.
To create model photos that resemble what the human eye sees in the real world, we need a camera with a focal length and lens position that matches that of our eyes. The above photo was taken on my Downtown Spur layout using a recently purchased used iPhone 6sPlus.
We’ve all had the experience of being out and about, having something in our field of view catch our eye, and then photographing it. More times than not there is a bit of disappointment when the photograph somehow doesn’t capture what we saw. The optics of our camera aren’t the same as those of our eye.
It’s tricky enough with day to day photography but becomes a much larger challenge with model imagery. We build models to capture something in the real world we love looking at. How can we “look” at our work when we are such much bigger than our subject? The answer is in the camera lens but making it cave to our wishes can be challenging.
To rise to that challenge we need to address two issues. First is trying to get a focal length as close as possible to that of the human eye. A quick Google search turns up the following definition: “Lens focal length tells us the angle of view—how much of the scene will be captured—and the magnification—how large individual elements will be”. Keeping the Google screen open, we also learn that the focal length of the human eye is roughly 25mm. Good to know. Compare that to the typical SLR camera lens which is 50mm, pretty far from the 25mm of the eye. The effective focal length of an iPhone 6sPlus though is 29mm. Much closer. Problem one solved.
The second challenge is lens height. A typical adult railfan will be between five and six feet tall. When we stand rail side we’re always looking up at our subject…same when we watch YouTube rail fan videos. Unfortunately, SLR cameras are fairly large and, even when placed flat on a layout surface, the lens height is well over twelve scale feet above the rails. That’s way too high to be realistic. Even low angle shots taken with an SLR will look off, they’ll look much different than what we are used to seeing. Sometimes we’ll get lucky and have a case where we can drop an SLR below the fascia level but that can’t be counted on. Smart phones to the rescue again, at least the older ones. With the lens conveniently positioned at the lip of the device, we can get the camera low enough to get the angles we want, a scale four or five feet.
There is a caveat with the smartphones however, and that’s the move to the triple lens configuration with the newer models…great for general use, not so great for layout photography. I recently picked up an iPhone 13 with the newer three lens configuration. First, because there are now three lenses, we are back to being having a camera height that is too high again. Second, the algorithm gets confused when taking low angle shots and often jumps between lenses. The solution? It’s easy. Simply buy an older, refurbished iPhone with the single lens configuration. I picked one up for about a hundred bucks on ebay from an outfit called Upper Class Smartphones. It arrived in a week in perfect condition. (As a side note, having a second device is handy on a lot of levels which is something I never thought about.)
The Bottom Line:
We want model images that match what the human eye takes in while railfanning or watching videos. To do that we need:
1) A camera that has a focal length fairly close to that of the human eye and
2) A camera that allows the lens to be positioned very low and close to the layout surface, basically a scale five feet or so.
A refurbished, older iPhone, with a single lens configuration accomplishes both.
Having left the airport station, and crossed the Miami River, a northbound Tri-Rail train passes my recently completed Miami Jai-Alai fronton structure. Shot with Canon Rebel. Edited with Helicon Focus, Corel Knockout, and Adobe Photoshop.
If you were in the field viewing the prototype of these containers from several feet away you’d notice that the surface is quite glossy. If we model that degree of sheen on the layout, however, it will look toy like.
Sheen (shine vs. dullness) and color saturation are tricky subjects for model railroaders. As real world viewing distances increase, even shiny surfaces quickly dull and saturated colors become much less so. The question becomes, what treatment do we give to the subject? Do we model subjects as they truly are or how we are used to seeing them?
Here’s where the mental disconnect occurs, the common situation where something we can’t pinpoint just seems off. When we stand in front of a modeled scene our mind tells us we are four or five hundred feet away and expect to see a degree of sheen and saturation accordingly. That’s because we use scale. If we’re five feet away from a model that translates to roughly 450 “scale” feet in HO. But we aren’t four hundred feet away, we’re only several. That, in a nutshell, is the problem. We’re expecting the sheen and saturation of distance but the mind is getting that of being relatively close.
If we have zero awareness of the issue the end result is a toy like appearance. So, how do you handle it? Sheen is the simplest. With a few exceptions I dull EVERYTHING. Saturation is a little trickier, I don’t apply blanket rules, and handle everything on a case by case basis.
Structures: Shiny or not I apply Dullcote to everything. Generally I don’t change the saturation unless I want a different artistic interpretation, for example wanting to make a subject look older or more dilapidated. Generally, I leave windows shiny, but not always.
Signage: Dullcote and dial the saturation back.
Vehicles. Dullcote the tires at least. Depending on my mood I may or may not dull the actual paint.
Trees and grass: Generally this isn’t a problem but if you’re modeling palms or conifers you want to dull them. Otherwise, I don’t make many changes.
Locomotives: Wow, this is tough. Particularly in the modern era diesel paint jobs tend to stay pristine and glossy. It’s a matter of taste but to me, glossy models of locomotives just seem really off. I dull mine. I would also give strong consideration to using at least a slight color fade, even if it’s not entirely prototypical.
Stone and rockwork. Always as dull as you can get it.
Backdrops: Dull. Dial the saturation back just a hair, especially if you have a horizon that is miles away. If a tree line is clearly ten miles distant on a backdrop, but is a vibrant green, it will look off.
This shot was taken on the layout from 12th Avenue facing east towards downtown. Trujillo is on the left, the runaround track is in the distance. The Miami skyline is cropped in as I think it’s a better look than the basement door which is what you’d actually see if you were visiting the layout!
