I started out before dawn to pack my view camera into Verde Canyon. I arrived deep in the canyon just as I had planned, in time for the afternoon lighting to highlight the golden foliage against the red walls of the canyon. Under the viewing cloth, I peered at the ground glass as my mule, Dusty, brayed … Well, okay, so I actually took the photo with a telephoto on a digital camera from a moving tourist train. This remains the Quick Shot Artist blog, not the Trying to Out Do Ansel Adams blog.

There are several problems in taking photographs from a moving train. Coping with window reflections and dusty windows are usually high on the list, but fortunately the Verde Canyon Railroad, near Sedona, Arizona, provides an open deck viewing car.

This leaves the problem of the motion of the train. As the train moves the composition changes continually. A nice-looking clear shot may end up with a tree in the middle of the image when actually recorded. I don’t know what can be done about that problem. I take lots of pictures, and remain grateful that with a digital camera I’m not paying for film.

Motion blur is another problem. Motion blur is minimized by forcing the camera to a higher shutter speed. Unfortunately, late afternoon lighting, gray days, or deep shadows may prevent high shutter speeds. If the camera is held perpendicular to the tracks, the motion blur everywhere in the image is exactly equal to how much the train moved during the exposure. For example, a train moving at 15 miles per hour [24 km/hr] moves about four inches [10 cm] in 1/60 second. Here is an example:

Note the highlighted segments from the near and far portions of the image. The two highlighted segments are shown here at full resolution.
Theoretically, the motion blur could be eliminated by moving the camera sideways at exactly the speed of the train. That’s not a practical choice, because you cannot look through the viewfinder and you cannot keep the camera pointed precisely. An alternative is to pan the camera slightly to keep the distant image centered in the viewfinder momentarily. Panning rotates the camera to keep a point centered.

Four inches [10 cm] of motion at a distance of twenty feet [6.1 m] is about 85 pixels of blur. At 500 feet [150 m], with a normal lens, it is 3.5 pixels. Hence if you avoid including near objects, the image will appear much sharper. To avoid near objects near the track in the foreground I put aside my beloved wide angle lens and used a moderate telephoto. The four inches of blur remains four inches, so there is still a problem. However, panning the telephoto to compensate is not too difficult, especially compared to the task of moving the camera sideways smoothly at four inches per second. In the example above, the distant leaves are reasonably free of motion blur.

The faster the train the worse the motion problem. On a Japanese shinkansen moving at 160 mph [260 kph] the blur is about 40 inches [1 m] at 1/60. Even at 1/1000 there is still a couple of inches [5 cm] of blur. Nonetheless, there is hope by panning on a distant object with a moderate telephoto lens.

Suggestions for coping with dusty windows and reflections are in View Through a Dusty Window in Aomori.