Due to the usual late running on the Saturday of the East Lancs Steam Gala, the planned nightshoot was also running late, so by the time the assembled throng were let in, the engines were still being put down for the night. Never one to miss an opportunity to do something different, I hiked up the ISO to 12800, and hendheld at 1/50 F2.8 to try and capture some of the goings on. Sod’s law meant that I’d decided to leave my stabilised 70-300 VR telephoto at home due to it the fact that its focal length meant it rarely if ever gets used at nightshoot, so it’s just weight in the bag.  In the circumstances, 70mm was barely long enough on the 28-70mm, but it’s constant F2.8 was some consolation, and using my tripod as a monopod helped as well. Lesson learned – better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it.

Still, in the circumstances, the photo’s came out OK. I’d like to have got closer, but that was never going to happen due to H & S, plus there were 30 odd other snappers trying to get shots using flash and tripod.

I couldn’t really avoid post processing due to the strange colour of light (adding blue and red in colour balance neutralises the effect), but I still struggled to get something I liked. ISO12800 is noisy, but a quick lick of noise ninja improved things no end, and then I ran the images through Nik Silver Efex, with either an Ilford HP5 or Kodak Tri-X filter to add some grain back in.