Two large red and yellow metal beasts tethered by cables and anchored on tracks slowly climbed up and down the side of the city. We had arrived at one of the famous inclines, the Duquesne.
Built in the 1870′s, when steel companies in the Midwest supplied the entire world with building materials, these cable cars provided a quick and easy way for people to navigate the hilly city.
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Today they serve mainly as a tourist site or for the occasional traveler and we saw several handfuls of out of towners board them.
What I found fascinating was that these cable cars were named right – they really are powered by cables. Inside the control room, we saw a thick steel cable about 1/4 mile long, powered by a large motor, slowly start coiling as the car ascended from the city.
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But how best to photograph them?
I wanted to capture the motion but not too much so that you could still tell what it is.
The best way to get different motion speeds, for example a choppy harsh waterfalls versus a silky smooth stream, is actually to use aperture priority mode.
Some photographers recommend using shutter or time value priority and then shoot 1/10, 1/15, 1/20, etc until they get the ‘flow’ that looks best.
However, aperture priority is actually more accurate because you always get the best exposure. With shutter priority you might have both 1/10 and 1/15 sec for an opening of f 4.0 so one of these is not exposed right – too dark or too light.
But aperture priority always gives the proper exposure so you’ll only see one time for f 4.0 such as 1/10. For either method though, you might have to add a neutral density filter if you’re photographing in broad daylight – otherwise the camera might not slow the motion enough.
By shooting at several different f stops, you decide what looks best!
[Excerpted from Photography Insights, Volume 1, by Scott Ober, MD, Copyright © 2010 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED]
