More speedlites = more power?

A shot I have been trying to determine the proper exposure for, which I seem to have a good idea how I need to do it, the problems I'm running into are lens flare and flash power.

The idea, is a long-exposure of the gate drop, and first locomotive pass, but freezing the first locomotive halfway through the crossing? Sound easy? Apparently, it isn't. This was my result from a few nights ago.

Adding more power has diminishing returns. You get one stop every time you double the power. So You'd need eight flash units to get three stops more than one flash. I'm thinking this sort of begs for some serious strobe power - as in monolights w/ battery packs, not hotshoe flash units.

Distance is a huge factor. Cut the distance from light to subject in half, and you gain two stops. If you can get a flash unit on the other side of the gate post, and maybe another near the tracks and just out of the frame to the left, it will help greatly.

As for the lens flare - if you're using a UV filter, get rid of it. Thank me later.

It would be really cool to catch the gate drop via long exposure and the locomotive via flash. But you'll get the headlight trails going back over the locomotive like your second shot. Maybe best to take two shots and merge in post.

It's a cool idea though. Keep us posted, and show us the results!

super cool, hope you get it nailed but these are already cool.

velcro some wireless flashes to the gate with some kind of wide modifier, just dont get caught.

trespassing on railroad property and/or tampering with railroad equipment is absolutely out of the question, not happening. Very illegal, it's enough I get the police visiting me every time I do this, I didn't think I had enough facial hair to be a terrorist.

If I could do this all in one shot I would love to, the lower ISO and smaller f-stop the less flare. I may end up having to use a single strobe or something. I already have 7 speedlites, and a subject like this wouldn't need any special functions if I'm using full power.

It would be nothing to clone out the individual flash units if I placed them closer. The first shot I could hide them behind the defect detector (the blocky thing in the foreground)

Track speed is 60mph in this particular location but I know of another spot with a 35mph speed that could freeze the train even better, at the expense of ambient light.

The light trails wouldn't be too bad, I think they would add to the image if I could keep the sensitivity way down.

j-dogg wrote in post #14206697
trespassing on railroad property and/or tampering with railroad equipment is absolutely out of the question, not happening. Very illegal, it's enough I get the police visiting me every time I do this, I didn't think I had enough facial hair to be a terrorist.

If I could do this all in one shot I would love to, the lower ISO and smaller f-stop the less flare. I may end up having to use a single strobe or something. I already have 7 speedlites, and a subject like this wouldn't need any special functions if I'm using full power.

It would be nothing to clone out the individual flash units if I placed them closer. The first shot I could hide them behind the defect detector (the blocky thing in the foreground)

Track speed is 60mph in this particular location but I know of another spot with a 35mph speed that could freeze the train even better, at the expense of ambient light.

The light trails wouldn't be too bad, I think they would add to the image if I could keep the sensitivity way down.

I didn't realize having facial hair was a requirement for a terrorist... not to mention the "COINCIDENCE" that your post count is currently 911

Joking aside, how often do trains pass these locations on a given night? Just trying to figure out how "easy" it would be to merge multiple photos in post if only one train a night passes this area.... and you have to return on repeated nights to get various shots. Since you mention the number of flashes you have, I assume another method could be to setup different strobes at the different locations as you mention and have them setup on various groups, firing only the group you want to fire for particular shots.

If I followed what you are trying to do, and you really want to capture it in a single exposure, would doing some sort of choreographed bulb exposure work? Longer exposure giving you the light trails and train blur you mention, and sometime during the middle of the train passing manually fire your strobes (e.g. hand controlled trigger off-camera, such as hitting the test button)? I don't even know if that would work, but it's what came to mind for me...

drvnbysound wrote in post #14207713
I didn't realize having facial hair was a requirement for a terrorist... not to mention the "COINCIDENCE" that your post count is currently 911

Joking aside, how often do trains pass these locations on a given night? Just trying to figure out how "easy" it would be to merge multiple photos in post if only one train a night passes this area.... and you have to return on repeated nights to get various shots. Since you mention the number of flashes you have, I assume another method could be to setup different strobes at the different locations as you mention and have them setup on various groups, firing only the group you want to fire for particular shots.

If I followed what you are trying to do, and you really want to capture it in a single exposure, would doing some sort of choreographed bulb exposure work? Longer exposure giving you the light trails and train blur you mention, and sometime during the middle of the train passing manually fire your strobes (e.g. hand controlled trigger off-camera, such as hitting the test button)? I don't even know if that would work, but it's what came to mind for me...

There are 4 trains that pass through this area at night within 2 hours, two northbounds followed by two southbounds. The first shot is a NB and NB shots seem to be the ticket for this sort of composition.

That was exactly how I made the first image, one long exposure then as the train approached fire my flash in test. If you look very carefully I'm actually in the shot but walking to induce camera blur and to make myself disappear.

As I mentioned via PM, this was a very quick merge of 2 of your images. I cloned out some of the red flares in the sky... I think it could benefit from additional PP work, but I just wanted to see if this was along the lines of what you were trying to achieve...

drvnbysound wrote in post #14209399
As I mentioned via PM, this was a very quick merge of 2 of your images. I cloned out some of the red flares in the sky... I think it could benefit from additional PP work, but I just wanted to see if this was along the lines of what you were trying to achieve...

Note: This edit was larger than the allowable attachment size so I just uploaded it to my Imageshack account.

thats pretty much it, minus the flare, which I have calculated to be the angle of the camera itself, so I will be changing that slightly soon.

flare could be from any filters as well

j-dogg wrote in post #14209511
thats pretty much it, minus the flare, which I have calculated to be the angle of the camera itself, so I will be changing that slightly soon.

The merging and masking literally took less than a minute in Photoshop. Not saying they are the best steps, but this is what I did:

I opened the photo with the train in it, then the photo of the lights. I moved the latter photo over to the first file, essentially putting it on it's own layer on top of the first photo. I used the magic wand selection tool (with a tolerance of 80), clicked somewhere in the black area, to select the underexposed sky, then ALT+clicked on the 'Add Vector Mask' icon at the bottom of the layers panel; this masked away the darkness and allowed only the lights to be shown. Then I changed the blend mode to screen, and adjusted the opacity to around 85% (so that the lights had roughly the same intensity). This gave the majority of what is shown above.

After that, I found the brighter red spots in the sky distracting, so I used the clone stamp tool to remove them; I also began to clone away some of the base of the telephone pole, since it looked [to me] like it was growing out of the center of the train.

All filters were removed, I never shoot trains with filters, even in the day.

What lens were you using? Maybe I'm nuts but the flare seems bad for a pro-quality lens without filters.

24-105/4L

also if you can - get those remote flashes higher off the ground - no need to light up the ground to light up the train!