Another visit, another update.

Another first class trip to York and some photography updates.

At ten to eight on Valentines day I boarded another GNER 225 at Stevenage, destination York. Buying tickets in advance on the interweb.com means that first class seats still cost less than the petrol would. At one hour and forty-six minutes, the journey time is half a car trip and I can read the manuals to my latest camera equipment on the way.

This trip was no exception with a new Nikon Speedlight SB-800 to learn about. I have also bought the Nikon Capture NX software as I made the descision to make the most of my D-80 by taking my photoraphs in the Nikon Raw format - nef. As my copy of Photoshop is version 6.0, there is no facility for the Nikon raw conversion so It had to be Capture NX.

I spent a long time in the National Railway Museum (NRM), longer than I had planned. There was a 'Meet Thomas' event on in the yard, so the place was full of children, bad for noise, good for the future of railway interests. I wandered from the Museum, through town, to the Minster and took some nice indoor shots. The tripod was vital, low light and long exposure times meant hand held shots were, at best, poor.

Fed and watered, I was on the platform half an hour before the train home and got some nice moody night shots of the Northern Eye. I'm not sure whether it is a permanant fixture, but it does give the skyline in York an interesting feature.

New pictures have been posted in the Railways/real trains folder and the photographs folder.

A good day with some good results. Using Nikon's raw format gives a boost to the detail level in most pictures in most situations, but having to compress them so much for this site does squeeze alot of the detail out. The sky in the new Minster towers picture is a good example. In raw format there are an infinite number blues in the sky - the compressed jpeg has a dozen jagged blue bars instead.

If you would like a copy of that picture on A4 photopaper, send me an email and I'll tell you where to send an SAE, all you need to pay is post both ways and you can have the picture for free - as long as I have the paper left to print it on!