Commuter Trains, Ewing (West Trenton), NJ, 2010.
All the pixels, no ticket required, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/4377309058
#photography
This was captured with a DSLR and a 400mm lens, which contributed to the compressed perspective. The conductor boarding the leftmost train is essential to the composition, I think.
Ewing, NJ (“West Trenton”) is the last stop on SEPTA’s commuter trains from Philadelphia on the former Reading Railroad’s line to northern NJ. CSX freight trains still use the tracks north of the station, beyond the end of the overhead electrified wiring used for passenger service.
Very long lenses like the 400mm, with their narrow field of view, are essential for some compositions (such as this one), but I find I only rarely actually use them. In fact, the longest lens I have for my main medium format camera system is 180mm (which yields the 35mm equivalent view of about a 120mm), and I hardly ever use even that for the most of the photography I do.
For wildlife photographers, on the other hand, 400mm is practically a wide angle.
@[email protected] I have the Mamiya 500mm which I modified to mount on an XF, have yet to use it beyond experiments. I don’t take it with me, but the 300mm isn’t too bad. I tend to stop with the 150mm (or occasionally a Zeiss 180mm if I really want a heavy manual setup)
@[email protected] taste, as ever.
My longest usual lens is a 250 which on 6x7 is about the same FOV as your 180, but I think I use it for about 25% of my photos.
Currently staring longingly at the 500/6 but wondering how much use I’d actually give it. Doesn’t help (for handheld) that fastest shutter on an RZ is 1/400 :(
One of the challenges of very long lenses is that they tempt you to compose images of subjects that are very far away. But the farther away something is, the more the atmosphere can distort the image. The effects of heat distortion, pollution, humidity, and weather are amplified across longer distances, no matter how sharp the lens is or how high resolution the sensor.
I use 400 to get a foreground object with a rising moon.
