Advice Needed on Through the Glass Shooting

[DocGeoff]

In a couple of weeks my wife and I are taking the train from Phoenix to Seattle. I took part of this trip down the coast several years ago with my Pentex SLR. Now I am taking my G3. I took 8 rolls of film over my entire trip and now feel the need to fill a couple of 256CF cards before we get home.

When I took pictures from the train with the SLR I used a lens hood against the window glass and had excellent results. Now I am wondering if a hood is a good choice, or my latest brainchild, my Canon wide angle lens against the glass. I will be taking mostly scenery shots so wide angle seems best suited, and the lens does have a bit of a hood that would fit against the glass and hopefully cut any glare?

Now, if that is something that will work, should I use the landscape mode, or what? I am open to any and all suggestions since this is a great opportunity. I shot mostly from my bedroom on my last coast trip. This time I would hope to use the first class club car for much of the shooting since it is for sleeping car patrons and will hopefully be less crowded that the open lounge.

Any advice, suggestions, comments are welcome,

Doc Geoff [/b]

[Biko]

I have taken pics out the window ok, not used any lens hoods - it depends on where the sun is and how much flare you get.

I would only use Landscape mode for quick shot. It would be better taking some time setting camera using M. I would set camera on 5.6 or higher and check camera speed as I presume you are taking as train is moving so need to experiment with which camera speed is best. I would watch for focussing, again I would be inclined to set to Manual on infinity and adjust to suit - but depends on aperture - higher you get means more DOF, also need to watch out when taking through glass that camera is not fooled on focusing nearer to glass means its less likely. I would not go above 100 iso and keep to 50 as much as possible.

Shoot RAW if you can but in knowledge that focus is spot on as you can't check properly in preview