Digital NIGHTS
O Winston Link has to be the pioneer of nocturnal railway photography, how difficult it must have been in the days of film and flashbulbs to produce the fantastic images he did. The cumbersome equipment, restrictive shutter speeds and slow ISO reducing depth of field, his work is inspirational.
Recently, there have been night photos taken by Andrew Rapacz and the cover picture of issue 175 of No. 34007 by Duncan Langtree, but what encouraged me to experiment more with photography after dark was the Metropolitan Railway’s 150th anniversary where most of the workings were through the tunnels and either flash or an extremely high ISO was the only option.
Having dabbled with night photography over the years using film, I found it only worked with stationary subjects due to the limited shutter speed with flash, 1/60 or 1/80 of a second. The preferred option was to mount the camera on a tripod, using a cable release to open the shutter
