Trains, People, and Santa - Help me shoot them.

bsclark_1

Hey gang,

I've always been a bit of a photobug. I love getting out with a camera and taking cool shots. But lately I have shots of being a professional amataure hobbyist photographer, so to speak.

I live in Northwest Arkansas, and there isan event each year for charity called the Northwest Arkansas Christmas Train. People buy tickets for a 1 hour (or so) excursion with Santa.

I know one of the people on the committee for this event, and mentioned to them that I'd love the opportunity to come out and photograph the event. They have a professional photographer to take pictures of the kiddos with Santa, but are having me out to take pictures of the event (train, people, etc).

Assuming my pictures are up to par they will be published in a local magazine.

So, now that I have worked myself into a gig, please help me do it justice. Any tips you can give me on getting great shots of trains as well as getting good shots of people in the confined space of a train car will be greatly appreciated.

I'll be using a Fuji Finepix S5200.

Thank you!

wadesworld

I'm no expert, but a few tips:

1) Avoid low light situations if you can. That camera doesn't have a fast lens and the ISO performance isn't great, so low light is really going to be a struggle. Using the popup flash is likely to give unpleasing results. If you must use it, tape some (white) tissue paper over the flash to give it some diffusion.

2) Probably best to use Aperture priority mode, and keep the aperture as wide open as possible (lowest number) when shooting a single subject or subjects the same distance from you. You can use a smaller aperture if there's something in the background that needs to be in focus.

3) Remember that you don't always have to be inside the train car to get a picture of someone on a train. You can shoot them from the outside before the leave (assuming the car has windows), as they wait to board the train, etc.

4) Keep your eyes open. It's often easy to get so focused on getting a not-so-great posed family shot that you miss a great kid candid.

Gary752

One thing not mentioned so far is the camera you are going to use, as you should already know, is a battery hog. So take plenty of spare batteries with you. I had one of these a few years back, before I went DSLR, and would typically go through 3 or 4 sets of AA batteries during the course of a day shooting pics at a local drag strip. I would also recommend re-reading the manual on making changes to the aperture if you're going to shoot in aperture priority, as was suggested. You should be able to make the aperture change almost without thinking about it, so as not to miss a shot.

GaryB