Photo play.

Today I purchased a small LED flood lamp that you can adjust the colour temperature for daylight or warm. I am still trying to learn how to create shots around the layout that look a little life like and get a reasonable depth of field. Lighting is the other challenge, up until now I have been shooting with the available room lighting which is LED fluro equivalent and sometimes let in a little morning sun. Occasionally I will set up flashes, soft boxes or umbrellas - but its a lot of mucking around that is becoming more awkward as the layout grows and available space diminishes.

A couple of aspects I played with today were trying to replicate where the sun would be in real life on  the various areas from Camden to Narellan. One of the aims was to create a golden hour type effect and dark storm type lighting.  The layout is currently bits and pieces with large sections of unfinished scenery and detail not to mention no backdrop for most of it. This makes it quite difficult to capture a tight little scene that appears finished so the lesson here is start finishing things off - only trouble is it takes so long.

I tend to use a 35mm equivalent of 24-80mm f2.8 zoom and focus stacking to get the required depth of field and this is still taking time to become competent at. The camera is able to do this internally, a big improvement over trying to do it in Photoshop. There are many parameters that can be tweaked to  set the range of depth of field and after reviewing the camera manual and google searches may be a little closer to getting this right.

The other approach is to photograph your model as you would on the real thing, basically track level or some realistic vantage point that did exist such as a loading bank (none of those helicopter shots - although todays drones allow overhead shots).

Got a little bit more fencing done and a good deal on eBay for a bulk purchase of 10 x 0.6mm drills for continuing more fencing.

Thats it for now some pics below taken around Kirkham. The bloke on the motorbike is a train spotter !