I often get asked about the superb photographs on this website and as some of you know this is down to the skill of John Humphries. I can recall asking John if he would come and take some pictures of Dyserth Road a couple of years ago when the layout was resident in my garage his comments were 'I have never photographed anything like this before, we will give it a go'. The early pictures were taken under fluorescent lights with a Fuji S1 Pro camera and even though the lights gave the pictures a orange glow I was well impressed!

So two years on and many hundreds of pictures later and John invested in a Fuji S2 camera and some studio lighting. The main light is a Bowens Esprite 500 with softbox and the fill light is a Bowens Esprite 500 with a white brolly acting as a softbox. All pictures are shot with the aperture closed right down usually at f27 and shutter set at 1/125 this gives the best depth of field possible keeping as much of the model in focus as possible. With the studio lights we are not restricted to using a tripod so can now get some different angles on the layout which must now have had well over 1000 shots taken in the last couple of years. Pictures taken with the S2 are taken using tethered mode direct into a laptop, this allows instant viewing of the image on screen and any adjustments can be easily made. Lenses used are are the Nikon 28-80mm, Nikon 24 -120mm and the Tamron 90mm macro.

After the photos have been taken all images are post processed using Adobe Photoshop 7, this usually involves cropping the image and any minor adjustments to levels colour contrast etc. The histogram function available when using the camera shooting software and in Adobe Photoshop 7 is extremely useful in obtaining the correct exposure.

Fuji S2 Pro

• 6.17-megapixel Super CCD delivering 4,256 x 2,848-pixel maximum resolution.

• SLR design provides true, TTL optical viewfinder with information display.

• 1.8-inch color LCD monitor.

• Nikon "F" lens mount accommodates a wide range of Nikkor lenses.

• Auto and manual focus modes, adjustable AF area.

• Program, Flexible Program, Shutter Priority, Aperture Priority, and full Manual exposure modes.

• Shutter speeds from 1/4,000 to 30 seconds, with Bulb mode for longer exposures.

• TTL metering with three modes.

• Adjustable ISO with six settings.

• White balance setting with eight modes, including a manual option.

• Color, Tone, and Sharpness adjustments.

• Single Frame, Continuous, Auto-Exposure Bracketing, and Multi-Exposure modes.

• Built-in, pop-up flash with five settings.

• External flash hot shoe and sync socket for connecting up to two external flash units.

• Variable self-timer.

• SmartMedia, CompactFlash Type I & II memory storage, also accommodates the IBM MicroDrive.

• Images saved in JPEG, uncompressed TIFF, and RAW data file formats.

• DPOF (Digital Print Order Format) compatibility.

• Power from four AA-type batteries, two CR123A lithium batteries, or optional AC adapter.

• USB and IEEE 1394 jacks for connecting to a computer.

• Video-out jack for reviewing images on a television set.

And finally my desktop PC

• 2.80 Ghz Intel Pentium 4 Processor

• 8 kilobyte primary memory cache

• 512 kilobyte secondary memory cache

• 120.03 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity

• 1024 Megabytes of DDR Random Access Memory

• IDE DVD-ROM 16X [CD-ROM drive]

• LITEON CD-ROM LTN526

• PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-105 [CD-ROM drive]

• 3.5" format removeable media [Floppy drive]

• NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 420 [Display adapter]

• NVIDIA RIVA TNT2 Model 64/Model 64 Pro [Display adapter]

• Proview  17" CRT [Monitor]

• Samsung 17" CRT [Monitor]

• Windows XP Home Edition Service Pack 1 (build 2600)

• BeanTech BT-80  Clear Acrylic Case

• Coolermaster Blue Neon LED 80mm Fans x 3

• Akasa AK-172 12" Cold Cathode - Blue x 2

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