Bob and All,
I am one who has gone the electronic route to drive my turntable and it
hasn't been what I had hoped--being close enough doesn't work with rails
lineing up. However it's difficult in my case to be close enough to
have a manual interlock to assure an exact fit. I have the New York
drive system with an extra cost device that sort of squeezes the motor
shaft to prevent slop--sometimes it works in both directions and other
times, only one. I'm sure it due to my installation, but I'm not
certain what direction to go to make the correction.
I did notice that you had tapered your rail quiet a bit, that might
help in my situation. Also it appears that you are dropping a locking
pin into position, is that correct? There is a small 1:1 turntable
located at the Stock Yards in Fort Worth (tourist train) that uses an
actual locking device that is fool proof in the real world. My good
friend Rusty Paulus had the Bowser turntable that he ran by hand. He
locked it by simply dropping a small piece of plastic across the gap and
it worked well.
Your idea of digging out your dioptors for closeup work is a great way
of making things work. For many years I've owned a Nikon Micro-Nikor,
which will get you down to 1:1, but it's a normal focal length lens.
They also made longer focal length versions...at 105 and a 200mm that
were beautiful for limited applications. More lately they have produced
several lens in the macro range with shift and tilt features. I
purchased a used 85mm version and also broke the bank in the process.
The latest version of the 24mm version is someplace between 2-3K--maybe
some day.
With that in mind I also dug out my diopter lenses that I bought in high
school. They work quite well and for model photography generally work
better than extension tubes where you want more depth of field. So they
are a great $20 solution!
Bob Werre
PhotoTraxx
On 1/19/12 8:16 AM, shabbona_rr wrote:
I came up with an excrutiatingly simple way to hold the turntable
bridge at Terminal District steady while equipment moves on and off of
it. Those abnormally attracted to electronic complexity and mysteries
may want to turn their heads and not view it in polite surroundings
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/S-Scale/photos/album/1775582643/pic/587261192/view?picmode=&mode=tn&order=ordinal&start=1&count=20&dir=asc
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/S-Scale/photos/album/1775582643/pic/587261192/view?picmode=&mode=tn&order=ordinal&start=1&count=20&dir=asc>
As important as the the turntable latch, though, is how I made the
photograph. I had to send my Fuji S3 DSLR in for repair, so have been
using my Fuji S9000 P&S as a backup.
