John Allen Clinic VV23 - Model Railroad Photography

[@fastmail55]

This is a real jewel! To hear John Allen's voice describe lighting and photographic techniques while viewing the immortal Gorre and Daphetid RR is beyond words! Thank you so much for posing this!

[@Grainexpress]

No works in the English language to describe this other than WOW! Such a trip back in time! Thank you!

[@ThornappleRiverRailSeries]

Wow! Dude was a true artist. Would never have thought of atmospheric effects. Imagine if that railroad saw DCC and digital photography. Long live the Gorre & Daphetid!

[@B-and-O-Operator-Fairmont]

THANK-YOU! I never thought I would sit in on a John Allen NMRA Clinic in late 2022. I have often wondered what John would have thought of digital photography and editing software.

[@trainliker100]

I am pretty sure he would have embraced it. Even in this video near the end he describes a distracting feature on a slide saying, "...the distraction in this one could easily be painted out on the slide with opaque. Then the whole sky would be a less disturbing black." That is one of the "old school" versions of photo "editing". There are also many tricks that can be done in the darkroom when making prints and I'm sure John Allen knew them and likely used them. One trick is to partially block the light from the enlarger with a card and slowly draw it away to make exposure more even if the negative has light falloff across it. Or moving a small paddle on a stick around over an overexposed area for a period. I would be surprised if he didn't use techniques like this at times. In his time, he was simply limited to the tools available and seems to use them all. He seems very focused on the final image and think he would use any means available to improve it.

[@kevinmacomber1336]

People forget he was a photographer first and this clearly shows that.

[@progressiverockvocal]

Nice find, and so good to see some things have been saved and are now preserved as a digital recordings and images. As the photographs tapes and film will eventually will all disappear from record. And to see these shared freely is just wonderful. 50 years since John Passed on... That's long enough for everyone who has recordings and photographs to keep cashing in on John Allen's life's work.

[@johnbanicki7232]

Just fantastic to be able to see all the different views of the Gorre and Daphetid. And hearing John discuss his photography techniques is priceless.

[@redbarnz]

John Allen wasn't only a Master Builder and Modeler... he was a professional Photographer! Today, film is virtually gone. Kodachrome is gone and Ektachrome almost the same. The compensations need to be done in Photoshop or similar photo editing program.

[@cecilharper8723]

pքɾօʍօʂʍ

[@kevinmacomber1336]

It would be interesting if this film could be restored with color enhancement.

[@pmsteamrailroading]

Or the original film transferred with modern equipment.

[@trainliker100]

He mentions the "reciprocity factor" a couple of times and I've found not everybody knows what that means. (usually called "reciprocity failure.") It is where film emulsion in low light behaves differently and has lower and lower sensitivity with lower and lower light. The curve is non-linear. So back in the film days, you needed to learn this and not just use what your light meter said but add in more time for the time exposure to compensate for the "film reciprocity failures.". That's why so many time exposures made by people who didn't know this came out dark all the time. It is not applicable to digital cameras at all - yippee. They just have "digital noise" in low light - boohoo.