N&W U28B 1905 - From Proto 2000 Shell and Atlas U23B Drive
This is the first of my trio of U-boats to be completely finished. Well almost. It's also the first to be photographed with my new D70S. Shall we say, it wasn't hard. I used a tripod, manual focus, aperture priority, spot metering, and my rather well seasoned (13 year old) 60mm f2.8 micro lens stopped all the way down. It's nice to be able to make use of that rather nice lens in the digital world. This is all under some rather ordinary lighting... the track lights over my kitchen counter. I slightly cropped and resized these photos to 1024 width, the originals are 3008 x 2000! It's also extremely ironic that the check I wrote for this camera, 1 gig memory stick, extra battery, and... the cool SB800 flash (not used in these photos) is LESS than the check I wrote in 2001 for the Nikon 990 digital, memory, and battery pack. Although today's purchase cost a little bit more than the proceeds from disposing of the woefully inept 990 on ebay at the age of two months. The bottom line is, ya need some control over things like f-stop, focus, lighting, and such - or you are at the mercy of a designer somewhere that probably isn't thinking close-ups of plastic diesels. Anyway, enough on the camera, here's the first of this latest GE building binge that began... a whole year ago with the release of the P2K U28B.
The hardest part of this project is fitting the outstanding Proto 2000 body shell to the Atlas drive. Why the Proto drive is an unusable mess is another subject, but suffice it to say, in order to operate this locomotive in my Super Fleet and have it look and run in consort with the others, this expensive 2-for-1 makeover was necessary.
The end result is the correct stance off the rails and a performance range matching my other mostly Atlas and Kato based fleet.
I can't wait to try more lenses.
The best thing about shooting in room light is that the model ends up looking in the photo pretty much like it would look in person. The flash up close makes the weathering look garish and out of place. It will be interesting to see what it's like with my new SB800 flash, which I can position *anywhere* without a cord, and not be stuck with the blinding effects of the flash on top of the camera.
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