Birmingham New Street and Brettell Road in P4

[Jim S-W]

Jim, your low light scenes have all the atmosphere of damp winter evenings in the Black Country, It seems ridiculous that they make me nostalgic for those times, that I last endured almost 70 years ago. Brilliant, aar kid!

Thanks thats really kind. I guess I'm doing something right if it makes you nostalgic for a place that never existed and I never knew myself

[Jim S-W]

This weekend I was helping Tim at Railex (helping in the loosest term - I was there anyway!) and had a very interesting chat with a chap about lighting on layouts. He explained that lighting is what he does and he was obviously somewhat of an authority on the subject.


Anyway the subject of this image came up, Apologies for posting it again, I get people are probably sick of seeing it but I have added a bit of rain as some people asked for it.  He explained that sodium lighting on a scale of colour gives a very high spike in the yellow range and doesn't output any other colours. For this image to have the colours it does it would need a white light source, I cant say its the moon because its raining!  It actually does have a white light source as I have a string of dim-able LEDs on the wall of the shed that I use to infill my night pictures.  He very obviously knew exactly what he was on about!  People may have noticed that at night we sometimes see in black and white.  It was something I was already aware about on a very basic level.  Cameras are much better at picking up colour in low light than the human eye as anyone who recently saw and photographed the northern lights probably noticed.

So I could say that the above image has a certain degree of artistic licence to it.  Or at least I could if it was deliberate but the reality is it wasn't.  I hate it when people throw the term artistic licence around to justify missing something or some sort of mistake after its been pointed out.  It's OK to miss things, just don't try and claim it was deliberate after the event.


So by taking all of the colour out except yellow (and putting some back in for the lorry lights and inside the phone box) we have an image that more accurately depicts what you would see if you were really standing on a rain sodden bridge in the Black Country at the end of the 1950's.  Two questions now though, The first is which of the two is actually the more pleasing, or nicer image? and the second is anyone actually bothered?

[aleopardstail]

second image doesn't look so much like it was taken with a modern digital camera and is far more atmospheric.

I suspect though for low pressure sodium its nowhere near orange enough, its very hard to emphasise enough just how monochromatic the light they spit out is. modification is borderline greyscale it then add an orange tint, which is realistic but also rubbish

the only real way to light such is likely having actual monochromatic street lights at least (LEDs are pretty good at this), and then other whiter spot sources of lighting (room lights, headlights etc) with a few hints of red her and there (tail lights, brake lamps, my sister in laws lounge etc)

and then at a guess quite a long exposure as it will all be so flipping dark.

as it is the pics you have work fine

[Bigmet]

The second image is best, especially with my spectacles off; that has the blurry effect of rain in the eyes on a dark night with relatively poor street lighting.

I could cheerfully drone on for hours about monochromatic and nearly so light sources...

[Bufferstop]

Specs on or off can make a big difference in night vision. If the image on your retina is shifted from the point at which you specs would deliver it, then some or all of the colour receptors may be missed leaving you with a monochrome image.