Photographing steam in the Karoo

I managed to find one of my albums. These are the 'least worst' of my efforts with my Russian Zorki 4 camera.
I can still feel the vibrations and heat as these babies thumped passed.
Also a view inside the works at Capetown

 

This was probably my fav shot - I was using Kodachrome 64 iirc with a 200mm lens, so all my stuff is pretty ropey ...
I'd already had a go at editing it Windows Gallery years ago, but this is after letting ChatGPT have a go, and it's another step up. I'll try a few more as time (and free use limit) pemits.

 

A very nice photo. Kodachrome 25 or 64 were the usual films for Karoo steam photography. But of course they did rather limit telephoto use. To me I think that lovely shot looks to be have been taken with a standard lens.

And if it is just the Potfontein side of Houtkraal it was presumably taken before the new telecoms system with vast numbers of attendant shiny poles were installed this side of the road.

Bryan

 

You might well be right ref location and lens. I also used a 35-70 zoom and in both cases sometimes I’d add a 2x converter - no wonder I was short of light on occasions. Plus std 28 & 50mm. Also two bodies, one loaded with transparency film, the other with print.

Coincidentally I’ve done some more digging in my archives and found a pic taken by my wife ….
I perhaps didn't show my company Corolla the respect it deserved. The SD reg is Swaziland where I worked ......

 

A combination of Karoo photos and me taking still images from a just digitised Hi-8 camera video tape. Those images below are in July 1991 when I was using a Sony 3 CCD pro camera.

It's a very rough draft of a page for my eventual SA steam loco memoirs book that shows how an unusual shot can be taken from 25 fps video, which gives just one chance of getting a photo of a 25NC just about to leave for Beaconsfield, while an incoming train is arrving past it! I've also got some frame grabs where it is just one frame that captures a dawn sun burst behind a 25NC as it heads a freight train across the Karoo at dawn.

The very high quality digitisations I am getting from my current provider get the images at the size used close to normal still image photo quality.

Bryan